Sherpspace

Hey there, Finnster:

You are so good to me. I can’t get over my treasure. I mean, wheat flower, rolled oats, peanut butter, rice bran, canola oil, yogurt, sugar, palm kernel oil… it goes on and on. Everything I’m not allowed to eat because they stuck me on a diet and said I’m a fatso.

I’m supposed to weigh 30 pounds. I weight 35 pounds.

So… that’s somewhere a little over 15% overweight. IS THAT REALLY OVERWEIGHT!

I loved your card, for sure. I’ve got toys, treats, tummy rubs (but then again, I get that every single day). The treats are dietetic now and I have to get little pieces of steamed carrot and little pieces of steamed broccoli and I have to pretend they have a taste but at this point, anything you stick in my mouth is worth it, but it can’t be fattening.

They try to run me four times a day but I got the better of them. I don’t even run one time a day! When the running kid comes, I jump up and down as if I’m excited to see him. We go outside the house. I lay down and put all four legs out flat like a stuffed animal that is too heavy to be dragged. He sits down and 30 minutes later they pay him money.

We have it down to a science. (Plus, he gives me all the treats he carries with him!) I have this great racket going. He’s complicit in it and I continue to be a fatso.

I guess I’m middle-aged now because 6 times 7 is 42, so I’m over 40 years old. Wow! That’s a long time.

I would like to do a circus act but then again, I think that the old-fashioned circus acts have gone the way of the Ed Sullivan show, Finn… Young people today have grown up today with Cirque de Soleil shows and they think that that is a circus!

There’s no side show. Freak shows are considered politically incorrect. Everyone’s afraid to have all of the animals for fear they are going to be sued by animal rights activists…. No one in his right mind would swing on those trapezes or really be shot out of a cannon like in the old days. No one can balance their entire body on their forefinger on the point of a ball or on a pin or do anything like that. There are no tattooed ladies. I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I was born too late, so I don’t think the circus is in the cards for us.

Your folks were pretty nice too. They sent something to the people and they send something to me or for me and just between us, they refer to you as “sassy” and they said you were indulging yourself in “adolescent independence”. I’m not sure what that means but I don’t think that’s good!

Your mom has a great way with words, particularly when she referred to KPK being wickedly busy. Wickedly, indeed! I think that’s what the word said, but wickedly busy? I hope so.

It sounds like he visits airplanes and airports with backpacks (no wonder he has a bad back) and I don’t know why anyone in his right mind would go to Hotel Rwanda and if they did, why they would go in August… If you go to the Magellan catalog, you can find pith helmets with mosquito netting attached (which might be a good investment).

I don’t understand that workshop that you’re doing with the Mashiuki Theatre or is it the Mashiriki Theatre Company… Is that the Rwandan AFTER THE GENOCIDE program? Is that like the AFTER THE STORM Katrina program? I wasn’t making fun, I’m just being curious… intellectually curious.

You see, I don’t care about food ONLY!

I’ll tell Mr. Sondheim that in reviewing my calendar, you were able to quote his “not a day goes by” but please be aware that lazy daddy, lazy daddy, lazy daddy ain’t gonna do a calendar this year. He said he’s not motivated. It is not worth all the time and energy and effort and he was trying so hard to get a calendar into the SherpSpace that we could access and maybe put in our own local pictures. He got bogged down in technology he doesn’t understand and then got irritated with people who were not appreciative of the hard work that went into the last few years of calendars or never acknowledged even getting a calendar… and the other people who did not like the positioning of their dogs in the supplementary book, that they didn’t get the right billing… gimme a break! Everyone is a diva nowadays – even canine divas. I don’t think it’s the dogs, of course. I think it’s their parents. They’re all like Rose out of GYPSY.

Listen Finn, Sweetie, Baby, Cookie, Honey… You take care. You be well. Don’t let them boss you around. If you want to be adolescent and petulant, do it! I get away with it. There’s a lot of ways you can get to them. They’ll never know what hit them. Remember, it’s for us to manipulate them. Not for them to put a leash around our necks and just walk us. They don’t get the truth (which is that we are leading them).

That is our role in life. We lead. We round up animals. We herd. We’ve been doing it for thousands of years. Don’t let them beat you down, honey. Just let them think they’re winning and then drive them in the direction you really want to go. That is the secret.

Be well. Take care, Finn. You’re definitely the best Tibetan in all of Washington… that I know and you’re certainly the most gorgeous (for sure) of any of them.

Your New York buddy, with great memories of our Walk for Cancer,

The Sherpa