Monday...a new week.

 Here's a glimpse of the things that made my past 4 days so full that I could barely get on the computer!!

Aren't they beauties ??  Grandson, niece and friends grandbaby (friend in the wing chair)

We painted our faces...(If I look pretty rode hard and put away wet...it's because, believe me, I was!!) Youngsters take a lot of energy...no wonder it's the young people that have children.  lol

And here, is Bella. The grandson's dog that is gonna live with us. For a while?? For EVER ??  who can tell. She's very sweet, 4 months old, and is being taught about boundaries and etiquette by the other dogs and kitties. lol So far, so good...though I do wish she could figure out about peeing outside ALL the time..mostly she's doing okay, if I keep an eye on her.

 The weather has been atrocious. We had 12 people here on Friday for supper and had to stay indoors it was so hot and humid. It went well though, and we had a good time. My niece begged to stay when her parents were ready to leave, so we cajoled and pleaded until they gave in. So for Friday and Saturday nights I had 2 kids to play with. I declared Saturday an "Internet and TV free day" and they looked at me like I had stolen their popsicles. "What are we going to do?" they asked in unison. I laughed my best witch laugh and said that they were going to play like real kids. They went down the road to the bridge and creek and promptly fell in the mud and made a wonderful mess.  When the Irishman got home around noon, we started making plans. We went to see Zookeeper at the movies, played on playground equipment at the park, went to the lake and fished minnows out of the water, went out for pizza and then came home, where we promptly got buckets and headed for the garden, where we picked over 2 gallons of beans, plus some squash (zucchini and crookneck) and cucumbers.

 Later we watched Harry Potter and it was a fine day. Oh yeah...somewhere in there we also painted each others faces with watercolor paints. They both slept like the dead that night. lol  On Sunday, we took the grandson home first (he lives 20 minutes away) and then headed south to meet up with my brother and sister-in-law for lunch at a halfway point between them and us. This was the first time their little girl has slept away from home, so you can imagine how THEY were. She, on the other hand, wasn't ready to leave and wants to know if she can come stay a week before school starts.  LOL  Her daddy got a rather wild look in his eyes...


  Yesterdays heatwave somehow caused an explosion at one of the electric company (not ours) substations, knocking out power in the entire town of Bunker Hill and all outlying areas. We got ours back on (God bless our little rural electrical cooperative!) within 4 hours, but the town was out until this morning, waiting for the big guys to get it back on. It was dangerously hot and humid  and the temps in the house quickly climbed to suffocating mode.  It was already 90 this morning before 10 o'clock...they're saying 101 with heat index of 112. Crikey--that's PHOENIX!!!!!!  lol Hopefully things will be up and running for everyone, as this kind of heat can be dangerous.

  I have a little housekeeping to do and some decisions to make about something and then I will be off to MissB's house in the middle of the afternoon. We have plenty of leftovers for eating, so I do not feel the need to cook, probably for a couple of days. lol Yippee.  There's a big bowl of salad, some Scandinavian potato salad, cucmbers and onions in vinegar, pulled pork,watermelon...mmmmm...good summer eating.

  Taking it easy today.  Should pick beans, but probably won't. Did water the petunias and my big spider plants. And myself. lol  But it's already too much out there. May have a friend coming for lunch...we'll see. If not today, then tomorrow. She's at the doctor just now...


  Have a cool day, all. It's cloudy like it might rain, but I'm not holding my breath. We could [surprisingly] use a little wet.

 

Namaste.

This friend thing is harder than you think...

  I spent the day at the birthday party of an 8 year old and some of her friends.  I have never heard so much racket in  my life...surely I was never this kind of a little girl...all screechy and laugh-y....lol

The fun part was watching them all interact. Some were cousins, some were school friends.  All of them at different times were hugging and whispering and holding hands. (When they weren't shrieking like banshees).

  They all helped her with her presents, helped her bust the pinata, and helped her eat ice cream and cake. They all oohh'd and ahhh'd over all the birthday presents, especially the clothes and the new bike. They were there, supporting her all the way. Just the way friends should. Of course, it's easy to support your friend at a party. Or when things are all going well.  Or when life is rosy. Not so easy when times are tough, or awful things are happening, or you just don't feel good yourself. That's when the true nature of friendship shows itself...when you know that you have to push past your own frailties and your own limitations and be there for someone else, regardless of how you're feeling. And when you can put your own stuff on the shelf for now, and be there 100%.

  A friend of mine is facing one of the biggest challenges of her life. My job is to stand there and keep my mouth shut and let her say and do the things she needs to do right now. It isn't easy. But I know she'd do the same for me, and I know that when she is ready for advice or help, she'll let me know. Because that's how we operate. We have learned the dance of trust and love that enables us to communicate on a higher level than many. I know, as does she, that our friendship is a lifeline for us both and that we can be especially grateful to have that. It has stood the test of time, good weather and bad.  Hurt feelings and joys.  In sickness and in health. I know her like no one else does and she knows me as well...knows things that even my husband doesn't know. This substantial knowledge connects us in a way that nothing else can. It is an incredible blessing.

  Watching these little girls today, I was reminded of my 2 best friends in grade school, Joan and Randi. We were the Three Musketeers. Inseparable. All for one and one for all. I wonder where they are and what they're doing now....sometimes the friendships we think will last forever don't. People move, people die...people just outgrow each other. There are a million paths we can take, and if we're lucky, we take that path with at least one good friend in tow.

Namaste.

Forever Friends...

  

   This is Molly and Lucy.  Molly McGee is our Jack Russell Terrorist and Lucy is her faithful sidekick.  Molly came to live with us after my dorkus baby brother bought her as a puppy for his then 3 year old daughter.  Of  course, the pup was way too whacked for a three year old and was constantly knocking her down and running all over her.  JR's tend to be a little on the exciteable side...one of the most manic dogs I have ever owned.  My brother begged us to take her, and bring her up here "in the country" where it wouldn't matter that she had to run away and go a million miles an hour all the time.  At the time we had a black lab named Seamus and I said we'd bring him by and if they got along okay, we'd talk about it. Well, they hit it right off and so Molly McGee (whose former name was Daisy..ick) came up here to live at Honeysuckle Hill.  

  Molly loved Seamus to death. JR's tend to be very loyal dogs too. She would run along side him and chew on him and wrestle with him and play play play. One day I was petting him and said, OMG--Pat, look at his jaw!! The little puppy Molly had chewed him raw, all along the bottom of his mouth.  But he loved her so it didn't matter I guess.That little JR would grab that 70 pound lab's collar, and drag him around the living room carpet! They loved to play. When Sophie had gone from us, Seamus went through a period of intense grieving...walking from room to room looking for her. He would go outside and check everywhere, and when he couldn't find her, he would get very depressed. SO when Molly came to live with us, he was ecstatic and took her for his own.

  We lost Seamus, we think to a pack of coyotes. He had come home on 2 occasions all chewed up, and I nursed him back  to health. Then one day, he didn't come home. It was Valentine's Day, and we went out and looked everywhere and couldn't find him anywhere. It was desperately cold and I was so worried...we looked for days on end and never found a trace of him. It broke my heart...he was a wonderful dog. 

  Molly went through the same grieving process for him that he had gone through for Sophie. If it was possible, Molly was even more depressed at the loss of her best friend. After watching her grow more and more despondent, we decided to go to the animal shelter and get another dog.  We found a young pup. There were 2 of them, litter mates, and they had been rescued only a week before. Apparently some heartless bastard had moved and left his pregnant dog tied up outside the house with no food or water or shelter. By the time someone called the animal control people and they got there, the mother and 4 of her pups had frozen to death. The surviving pups, both girls, were named Flora and Dora by the shelter workers. We fell immediately in love with one of them and took her home with us. We named her Lucy , as in " Luuuuuucyyyyyyy......you got some 'splainin' to do !!!" At first Molly wasn't real sure about this interloper, but we sat down and explained that Lucy's mommy had died and she needed a family and so we brought her here. In very short order, Molly had accepted Lucy and the two became inseparable. Lucy is now 3 times the size of Molly, but Molly still reigns supreme, lol.

  These dogs run together, sleep together, play together, eat together. They share everything and that now includes little Caylee. lol  Where one is, you will almost always find the other. The fight each others' battles, they defend the homestead and they protect us too...always side by side. They run raccoons out of the backyard gardens, possums away from the chicken house, and errant stray cats away from our garage. They both love all the kitties that live here, but have no tolerance for outsiders. 

  These two best friends forever are a shining example of friendship in it's purest form.

Namaste.
  

 

Friends along the way....

  Some of the best people in my life...aren't people at all. Like this little girl. Her name was Sophie, and God brought her to me via the Band of Angels rescue organization, in Hendersonville, North Carolina. I was at work, doing my job as the receptionist at a busy veterinary practice. You know, the usual stuff: answering phones, setting appointments, shooing parrots off the counter. A typical day. I got a call from this p[articular rescue organization asking if  one of the vets could have a minute to check out a little dog they'd just picked up. I asked and the answer was "If you can be here in 10 minutes"  They said it was not a problem, as they were pulling into the parking lot right NOW.

  The people I worked for did a lot of free stuff for these organizations, all of the vets in the area did.  Dr. Chris was a particularly soft touch, no matter how hard he tried to not be. The woman came in to give me some info so I could start a chart for the dog. They said her name was Susie and she was a Cocker Spaniel. "Oh!" I said foolishly, "I LOVE Cocker Spaniels!" Her eyes lit up, and she whispered, "An adorable little black cocker spaniel" and i swooned. "Very well behaved" she said slyly, "and as sweet as all get out."  I had a Cocker once before and loved the dogs. I think she had me marked from that point on. She leaned over the counter and said "You should take this dog."  "What? NO, not me. I can't. My boyfriend will kill me"  "She's so sweeeeeeet" she tells me.  Poor little thing...And then she turned to the big window and waved her co-conspiritor in. "You are going to LOVE this pup"  and then she commenced to tell me this heartbreaking story about the rescue of this poor dog. How the people who had her last were an elderly couple. He had had a stroke and she was not well. The dog never got walked or taken outside except just to the steps to "do her business". The elderly woman was forgetting to feed her and forgetting to take care of her.  She had called the rescuers to come help her by finding the dog a good home. 

  The dog was terrified, trembling and whimpering. They set her down on the floor by the side of my desk and she leaned her head against my leg. Of course, I petted her. And she licked my hand.  "She has cataracts" they told me. "We don't know how much she can see, but she was born with them, a result of the mother being overbred. "  I'd heard of this kind of birth defect, mostly dogs coming from puppy mills.  She looked up at me and I could see the extensive white tissue covering her eyes. NO wonder the little thing was so scared. Taken away from her home, plus blind. They told me that she had already had 3 homes. The first couple that got her took her back because she was defective.  Then a young couple got her, knowing her problem, but when they got pregnant with their first child, decided that they just couldn't have a dog in the house anymore, so they gave her to the old couple. She was a throwaway,  and my heart broke for her.  By this time Dr. Chris came to take her back to the examining room. He took one look at me and shook his head laughing. "You are such a MARK"  he said to me.  I took the little dog back for him and she let me pick her up and set her on the examining table. I was amazed by how motionless she stood, letting him poke and prod and look her over. Aside form the cataracts she had a bad yeast infection in her ears, and worms. He cleaned up her ears and washed them out with Novasol and put drops in them. She barely reacted.  The doc looked at me and he looked at the rescuers. "Well?" he asked.  They all turned and looked at me. "I..I....she's so sweet...but I...."  And she turned and looked me square in the face and made a little squeaking noise and practically jumped into my arms.  And I came home that day with a new dog.

  I named her Sophie. My boyfriend fell madly in love with her (after the initial shock wore off). We had Sophie for over 10 years.  She was the best dog in the world. When I got hurt in 2001, she was beside herself while I was in the hospital. Pat brought her to see me a couple of times,. but I was too hurt to do much besides a lame stroke on the head or two. After I came home, she never left my side. She would lay beside my bed on the floor, getting up on her hind legs every now and then to make sure I was still there and lick my face.  When I could sit propped up on the couch, she would crawl up there and snuggle in, always careful not to hurt me.  We sat on that couch and in that bed for months. We watched the Twin Towers come down. We cried (well, okay, mostly I cried) because my life was irreparably changed and I was crippled. She stayed with me, helping me to get a grip, loving me no matter what. When I could finally walk with a walker, she knew exactly how close she could stay and not get tangled up in the walker legs. She learned how to walk with me on crutches when that finally happened. She was the best friend I ever had.

  We moved to Illinois in 2005. In 2006, Sophie was diagnosed with liver cancer.  As she got weaker and weaker, we knew we were going to have to let her go.  I talked to her all the way there and we went into the vet and I couldn't stop crying. He offered to take her back and I could stay out front until it was finished, but I said no, and I told him that all through my ordeals, she never left my side, and I wasn't going to leave her either. She was so small as I held her in my arms while they put an IV in and administered the lethal drugs. I talked to her and she never took her eyes off my face until she closed them that last time. I told her what a good dog she was and how much we loved her. I told her that it was alright for her to let go, that we would be okay. When she took her last breath, I felt the spirit leave her, and she was as light as a feather,  I looked down at that little curly mass of fur and I cried my heart out...harder than I did, I think, when my parents died. My heart was broken in two, and I knew there would never be another Sophie, that I would never be able to own another Cocker Spaniel ever again. I sat there with her for almost half an hour, before I was finally able to turn her body over to the vet's assistant. I cried all the way home and long into the night. I cried for days, every time I thought I heard her, or looked around for her, forgetting momentarily that she was gone. I vowed that I would never have another dog, because I can't take it when this happens.

  I am crying now.  I have 3 great dogs now, because I have to have pets. But they aren't Sophie.  I also have a house full of cats and fish and birds. No one will ever take her place, that little blind dog with a heart the size of New York. I was so blessed to have her for as long as I did, and to get her exactly when I did.  And I will never forget her...

Namaste.