Busy, busy, and another blog for you to check out

Sorry I haven't been blogging much here, but life has been busy, all for good reasons. Much of it are things happening to dear, dear friends of mine, big life changes sort of thing. Some of which, happy though they are, mean a lot of work. I'd say that this is another thing that Jaime taught me, help your friends. Also help those who aren't friends yet, but right now I'm busy helping friends.

So, for your Bionic blog cravings, I'll point you to a new blog I discovered today Bionic Blonde. Go, check it out and have fun. But if you take your bionics too seriously I'd suggest avoiding it, but you're probably already avoiding this blog so I can't tell you that. Really, if you take this too serious you did NOT live through the '70s era of television.

I hope life is treating you all so bionically wonderfully as it is me right now. Much love!

Happy Hallowe'en!

Sharing some video love

We've got some gorgeous unseasonably warm weather and so I'm heading out on the trail for the rest of the day. I thought I'd leave you all with this video I found this morning.

Living on a horse ranch

I'm still waiting for my season 3 Bionic Woman, because where I live running to a store to pick it up when it came out is out of the question. After all, in keeping with my quest to be like Jaime Sommers, I live on a horse ranch.

Well, a horse farm. Well, a little place in the country with a couple of horses.  And not in a carriage house apartment at my foster parents, but my own place. But still. The horses are the important part.  Of course, when I was a kid I really wanted my parents, as I really wanted to keep them and not have foster ones, to build me an apartment in the barn or something, but never managed to convince them. But we did have horses!

To be honest, the horses came before the Bionic Woman, so (and it's much the same with loving dogs, really) I can't totally blame Jaime. In fact, it might partially be the horses that got me to love and want to be Jaime. I

In "Jaime's Mother" we see Jaime  rode as a child too.

remember being so happy when she was introduced in The Six Million Dollar Man to see her riding with Steve Austin. It was a connection for me, my love of horses and this dynamic woman riding with her blond hair blowing in the wind (I do know enough now to wear a helmet, however, lack of hair blowing in the wind beats head injury). I think it was when I first saw her on the horse that I realized I had a real role model...except about helmets (I have been unable to find photos of her riding from those episodes, but would love to have some if anyone has them! Please!

Sadly, Jaime didn't ride a whole lot on the show. I suppose that they had trouble coming up with that many story lines where she'd be on a horse. There is, of course, the fact that she could run faster than a horse so using one for transportation, except when a "cover" wasn't necessary. There are some episodes where she sends others off on horseback and gets there before them.

In the episode "Rodeo," which I'll get to watch soon, shortly after "The Bionic Dog" and then the Fembot one that I'm not as crazy about as many other fans are, she does ride. According to The Bionic Book: The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman Reconstructed by Herbie Pilato, the beautiful mare she rides in this episode, Scooter Dolly, was so amazing Lindsay bought her. Next to "The Bionic Dog," this is one of my favorite episodes even though I'm not really a big rodeo fan, but...horses!

Now I've tried to watch all the Lindsay Wagner movies I could and she's ridden in several of them, such as The Incredible Journey of Doctor Meg Laurel shortly after BW and Nightmare at Bitter Creek but my favorite Lindsay Wagner movie is, admittedly, the Hallmark Channel's Thicker Than Water. In this movie, she plays a rancher who is trying to protect a herd of wild horses from another rancher trying to kill them. She ends up being helped by a city woman who turns out to be her half sister.

I love this movie because of my love of horses and my wish to save them, both wild and domestic, from slaughter and abuse. To see Lindsay play a character fighting to save horses, even without bionics, and looking beautiful and Earthy doing so, was wonderful. Jaime would have done the same thing. I hope I would in what ever way I could.

So, I live on a horse ranch, sort of. Both of our horses were "unwanted" until we found them. I am teaching others to love and respect horses and I want to have a strong focus on training rescued horses. While Jaime might not have turned me into a horse lover, I think that she and Jess Jarrett of Thicker than Water and, of course, Lindsay's outstanding compassion, have helped to inspire me to be an advocate for them.

Jaime, Max, me, and a motley pack

One of the things I mentioned in my list yesterday was rescuing dogs. Perhaps the most memorable episodes for me, which I'll again get to see in a matter of days now with season 3 finally coming out, were the ones with the Bionic Dog Max.  This is also a huge way that I have been influenced by Jaime Sommers and have tried to emulate her all these years. I love German Shepherd Dogs, I love all dogs and I've never had a purebred GSD but that's okay, they don't need to be pure, and I totally believe in the importance of rescuing and reclaiming dogs that others have given up on.

In The Bionic Dog, Jaime finds out that Max-a-Million (who cost a million to rebuild) was a test animal for bionics. He had been in a fire and lost his legs and jaw, which were replaced. No one in all that time (and he had to be pretty old, but then her childhood dog showed up in a first season episode, so dogs there live long, too bad they don't in real life) realized that he suffered severe trauma from the fire. Instead they blamed bionic rejection for his behavior and called his fear response aggression. This is not far fetched, sadly, I have learned. Most people do not get that dogs actually have feelings, that they remember trauma, or that when they are "vicious" it's in fact fear that they are reacting from.

I totally blame these episodes for raising my awareness of how mistreated so many dogs are. I started adopting dogs in my teens, with a good deal of begging and negotiation with my parents. Not all my dogs have had GSD in them, but some have, my first one had. Except for a very short time, I have not lived without at least one dog in my house since I can remember, as my parents did have dogs when I was younger but until I got them to understand they had bought the earlier ones. I also learned to teach basic training, to help others with dogs who have developed issues due to their past. It's something I always want to continue to build.

I am apparently not alone in having at least some influence from Jaime for this passion. I came across this blog post today Summer of My German Shepherd and I just thought I'd share it here. This is one of the things about this show, the level of compassion, the ability to raise awareness. Not just on dog issues, but on many things. This blogger and I might have become dog rescuers anyway, we might have just had something already in ourselves sparked. But there is an importance of having something even innately within us awakened, verified, supported in this way.

A few of the things I learned from the Bionic Woman Jaime Sommers

Some of these I have done better than others:

Teach, what ever you give is returned tenfold.

Don't marry unless you really know you love the person.

If you're really strong you don't have to hurt people to show prove it.

Be adaptable.

If possible live on a horse ranch.

Dogs, all animals, suffer too and need understanding, rescue them, especially those others have given up on.

Run free....

What got me going on this

I loved the Bionic Woman as a kid, I have realized recently how much the TV show and the character of Jaime Sommers helped me develop. I lost that for awhile, but I feel like that influence is back now. And with the series coming out on DVD, the third season coming out next month (MAX! the bionic dog!) I just got really back into the fandom.

The star of the series (because we're talking the original), Lindsay Wagner, has appeared on some episodes of Warehouse 13. In this season there was an exchange, perhaps a message to her Bionic Woman fans. She had two men vieing for her attention.  One was an old lover (Rene Auberjonois who had appeared with her playing an artist, forger, in the BW episode "The DeJon Caper"), who drew a picture of  her looking as she did in BW as it would have been about that time, another someone who came into her life recently. The latter expected her to reunite with her old lover, but she showed him the drawing and said something like "when he looks at me he still sees this young girl. She's inside of me, but she's not me. When you look at me you see me."

I realized that I do see how she's grown, the things she's done since then, changes. But I still want to be that young girl!  Or what she might have become. And not necessarily what Lindsay has become, although I'm not saying that's bad but she's a real person and I'm not her. I'm not Jaime either, but at least it seems a little less creepy to want to be a fictional character than it does someone who's living a real life.

So for how Lindsay Wagner developed since the Bionic Woman you should go to her websites LindsayWagner.com and Lindsay Wagner's "Quiet the Mind & Open the Heart".  This will be bits and pieces of how this show influenced me in my life. And how I failed to live up to it and how I got back. So this is about me, not bionic, but still trying to be Jaime. Sort of.