Queen Jolene

End of June 2025

A couple of months ago, I reportedly awoke in my sleep, sometime in the middle of the night, and asked Dear Husband:

“Can I be Queen Jolene?”

My nocturnal sleep behaviors are always an adventure.  I do my most difficult work, if not most of my work, before I wake up in the morning.  Daytime thoughts, and activities, are often devoted to trying to figure out what the Dream Sequence meant.

I knew a gal who suggested I write down the contents of my dreams, first thing in the morning, or whenever it is that I awaken.  (As I informed my General Contractor for the final home inspection of The Dream Home, at 8 p.m., "I’m up, but that doesn’t mean I’m awake.")

I did try that technique of sorting out the sleep-insights, but, for me, taking pen in hand to annotate the REM creative animation was a real drag on the process of imagination.

i prefer to let the “meaning”, whatever it is — or is not — come to me.  Whenever it comes, however it comes, IF it comes.

It’s a definite victory by My Muse over the Scientist in me.

I used to be so logically-driven to assess life around me that I was nicknamed Spock by well-intended friends.  The Spock part of me still consistently dominates most of my take on events, public as well as private.  I love logic, symmetry, flow charts that flow, balanced equations, senses that make sense.

Needless to say, my interfaces with the events and faces online, especially of Fake News, form a blur of incomprehension.  I’ve arrived at the point where I only read the “Headline” and no longer click for The Story.  I opt for the Bait, and eliminate the Switch part of the gotcha-cycle.  I know there’s a Middle-Man there somewhere, but I’d rather not know who Him/Her/It is.

It’s a liberating achievement for me!

Independence Day has always been a favorite holiday of mine.  I recall several 4ths of July, during my savage single years, when I timed The Relationship Break-up (which was more of a blast-off) on My Independence Day.  The private and the patriotic impulses in my heart, mind, and soul merged long ago.  I’ve no intention of trying to separate them, ever.

It’s not a coincidence that 3 of my 5 beagles were born very close to July 4.  Bootsie was the Original Yankee Doodle Dandy; Chance was the Yankee Doodle Dandy Boy; and Jolene is the American Legend of the West

By the age of two, she’s become quite a comedic character — an Action Figure who wants to take part in all of my Action Scenes.  I’m trying to figure out the precise nature of my Super Power, strictly to assist her in her role.  She dearly looks to me to point the way, so that she can be by my side, in tandem, in harmony, moving together — forward.

The pressure from her to know where I’m going is slight.  She figures I’ll figure it out.  In the meantime, she’s asleep, right by me!

I do not intend to fictionalize her.  I’ve a comically ominous feeling that Jolene du Près would require too much action within the plot, as part of feeling she’s part of the pack.  She’s not an Alpha Pup.  She’s more of a Beta-Buddy.  She merely wants to be My Pardner, heading out on the trail. 

The wish is admirable.  It’s the fulfillment of it that hurts!

Whenever I’m seated on the sofa, performing creative feats on The Laptop, she jumps onto the cushion, then marches onto me, in one swift seamless motion.

I really wouldn’t mind her expectation to saddle-up with me, riding shotgun, if she didn’t plant that big paw of hers, smack-dab in the middle, right of top of my very sensitive shin bone.  The Baby Love, Bridget, who was most definitely an Alpha Female Beagle, used to plant her paw on the TV remote/beamer in much the same way, thereby activating, every time, the Fast Forward or the Fast Rewind.

Beagle hounds have that extra sense to detect and direct the paw, and snout, to the jugular of a situation.  I admire their efficiency in motion.

I also admire the resolute devotion of this hound to Be There For Me.  I simply must let her know, while she’s asleep at my feet on the sofa, WHEN she must spring into action.  Until then, she’s in dreamland.

She is a dependable, conscientious soul!

Whenever I compose a literary gem, whilst seated at a table, she stays near-by, dozing on her dog bed.  Setting up writing-shop — atop a bed — elicits a plaintive cry from Jolene.  She wholeheartedly wants to join me in all of that activity that must be happening without her, and so urgently requires her involvement.  I confess to feeling very inadequate to meet her needs for a purposeful shared activity.

On the other hand, when she observes my yoga routine, she gives me a puzzled look, cause she’s unable to have a clue as to how to partake in this odd human ritual.

It’s a very sweet, engagingly chummy comportment, akin to the quiet delight in participation in my world that was the essence of Bridget.  Bonnie, however, was the ultimate in The Independent Alpha Beagle, the canine form of Rugged Individualist.

Bonnie took being bottom-line to new heights!

There I was, reclining on the kitchen floor, in the Suburban Home, in a state of silent pain.  It was, I believe, early afternoon in late summer.  Whilst chopping veggies to make a pot of soup, I too quickly slid a pile of ceramic bowls out from a cabinet shelf.  The stack went splat, on my left foot.

Bonnie was alerted, or awakened, by my outcry of sudden agony.  She came to me,, took one look, and walked away.  There’d be no walk for her that day, at least not by me!

I owe a lot to that broken big toe during the summer of 1997.  I was forced to sit, and rest, in between crutch-walking to the corner to meet my two tykes walking home from the Government Elementary School.  Forced rest is the surest way for me to embark upon timely and long-needed action!  Like the decision to home-school, and to move out of the Cliquey Cul-de-Sac, one year later, to Newcastle, Gem of the Foothills!

I’ve a feeling that the process of becoming Queen Jolene was afoot because of that broken toe!

Jolene du Près is quite the social-butterfly beagle, but she is also a pack-rat with her toys.  She’s very particular and territorial about where she hides each one.  She doesn’t want anyone watching her; but, then, she comes rushing toward me, stuffed raccoon in mouth, pitifully crying: she needs my help in finding the right hiding place.

There’s a bit of a conflict going on there.

Once I was informed by Dear Husband that, yes, I can be Queen Jolene, I spent a few days, pondering how that elevated state of being might be achieved.  A definite direction didn’t come to mind, so I moved on to other quandaries, such as locating a feather pillow to purchase that doesn’t flatten to a pancake within three nights of sleep.

For all I know, it was the inability of my noggin to snooze in an elevated position that prompted the Queen Jolene question.

In the Olden Days, the pillows I used didn’t have feathers, goose, duck, chicken, pigeon or any other fowl.  The rectangular support was stuffed with foam, or some sort of synthetic fiber whose origin I don’t wish to contemplate.  Those pillows lasted forever.

Exactly when the goose-down, or goose-feathers, became standard, and exorbitantly priced, filler for pillows, I do not know.  In view of the foul fowl-crisis in the USA, I think foam should make a comeback.

Not memory-foam, which really doesn’t remember the last place where you plopped the cranium, desperately in search of those ZZZZZs.

Whenever any piece of merchandise, be it a mattress for the personal think-tank, or a Congressional atrocity to sink the economy, receives a too-good-to-be-true name, it’s a con-job, rip-off act, and bleeding-heart heist, all rolled-up into one marketing masquerade of global proportions to enrich the ossified Rotten Ruling Class.

I try not to look at their soul-less atrophied faces.  They’re not exactly oil paintings, are they?

Some of them have tried to cash in on The Mother Thing, but the profane use of the mother-term keeps popping up.  It shouldn’t happen to a Mother.

For Mother’s Day this year, I gave a present to myself.  I am, have been, and always shall be a proud mother — long before Proud Mother became the online Identifier of Insincerity.

I’m quite different, however, from the Mothers who use their children as props for their own overblown egos.  I’m proud of my two progeny, but they are their own unique individual selves.  Because of that attainment that I helped them to realize, I am proud of myself.

I’m proud of myself for having made the hard choices quietly, even silently, that other American Women use for ghost-written book titles.  I’m proud of myself for having waited until my children were grown, adults, and on their own, to return to, or, more accurately, move forward to — making use of the God-given talents that I was able to nurture through being a wife and a mother.

I’m proud of myself for not having realized, much less fully understood, that I undertook such serenely noble tasks, and asked nothing in return.  Cause if a woman expects a reward for her labours of love, they aren’t labours of love.

The week before Mother’s Day, I decided to reward myself for believing that I can be Queen Jolene.  Somehow, Tecova’s Online called to me.  And there it was:

The Jolene Boot.

Made in Mexico by Artisans.

They arrived lickety-split.  They’re gorgeous, with supremely tooled leather.  And they fit!

The sumptuous smell (scent?) of the truly fine — and real — leather is so captivating that I set the boots on the kitchen counter for about a week, merely to partake in the heady aroma.

Jolene, however, didn’t understand what all the fuss was about on that very warm May day.  I pranced around in my Jolene boots as if they were made just for me!

I shall permit my Jolene the honour of placing her snout on the Jolene boot, and not on my shin bone, as I sit on the sofa and type on the laptop.

At least, unlike Chancey Boy, she does not deem my leather footwear to be delectable chew-toys!

Queen Jolene does grant me all the space I need when I am standing at the ironing board, cutting out fabric pieces for a quilt.  She does not understand what I’m doing, but, just being there for me, pouting, on the floor with her favorite toy, makes all the difference to her in her Doggy-World!

As the Human part of the pack, I keep her loving intentions in mind.  That perspective helps me to more calmly contend with my Dog-Eat-Dog People-World!