Luft Balloon

image here

Yesterday I was laying in the sun and happened to look up into the flawless blue sky and noticed a white balloon shimmering many feet above. The irredescent white balloon was moving quickly , dancing in the cross breezes with a glittery silver string dangling beneath it. I wondered how small I must have appeared from that distance above the earth and I contemplated what it must feel like to float and fly above the Earth at such a great distance. For the millionth time, I wished I could fly. Just raise myself off the ground floating and swooping with my arms to my sides or out like wings. When I was a child I would have dreams of flying like this and in one particular dream I was flying over the playground propelling myself faster or slower at will, turning somersaults and flips as I went along. The feeling of absolute freedom is still with me when I recall that dream.

A book I cherished when I was that age also came to mind: The Wednesday Witch. A little girl found a tiny witch in her doll house and the witch would come to life on Wednesday's, taking the girl on adventures. One such adventure included riding a cannister vacuum high in the night sky over the girl's neighborhood and across her city. It was an enchanting fantasy for me and the creepy factor of finding a doll that would come alive and kidnap a child never occurred to me until yesterday.

I remember twirlling round and round and falling to the ground, eyes closed for a few seconds to continue the sensation of spinning so I could imagine I was actually flying through the air. My favorite time to do this was night because I wanted to open my eyes and be amongst the stars. It was always greatly disappointing to be bound by stubborn gravity. My next attempt at flying was the whole mind over matter thing. I must have read about Yogi's levitating or some such thing because I spent time willing myself to levitate just a little above the ground. Flying would have been great but I would have been satisfied with hovering a bit over the ground but that even proved more than my brain could muster. Just for the lark of it, I gave it another try yesterday afternoon, closing my eyes and freeing my mind hoping I would feel the weight of the earth drop away from me as I floated up and away from the yard and into the sky so I could grab the balloon and bring it back to earth with me when I was tired of flying. A souvenir of my adventure.

I imagine the visage of a flying middle-aged woman clad only in a bathing suit wouldn't have been as charming a picture as an eight year old on the back of a canister vacuum. Lucky thing I stayed on the ground.

Frogs And Snails and Puppy Dog's Tails

Twenty years ago tonight, about this time I was sitting in our stifling hot living room in a wee bungalow listening to the rain as the fifteen day record setting heat was finally broken. I also felt my contractions start as the weather changed. Our dear friend and neighbor, B, was sitting up with me. She wasn’t sleeping well, the heat coupled with a recent lay-off was insomnia making. I appreciated the company, too. I had been home waiting to have a baby for four days and I was bored even though I was relieved to be on maternity after struggling to continue working. I was a NICU/New Born nurse at the time and had to shuttle between the nursery, the mom's rooms and the labor deck. Each unit was positioned down a long long hall and the distance from the nursery and the labor deck was getting longer with each passing hour as my edematous sausage legs and I trudged the stuffy hot hallway as I checked on the babies and moms. I insisted on having the walking job: hoping the activity would stimulate labor so I could just pick up my bag and drive to the hospital down the street. My sweet patients--most of them Spanish speakers--were prone to leaping from the rocking chairs in their hospital rooms so I could sit in my “delicate” and “advanced” condition. They would cluck and carry on about how huge I was and ask me if I was delivering twins. It never failed to make me laugh despite my misery. B and I discussed my last week at work, the grace these Mexican women brought to my life with their ability to care for their caregiver. We talked about how I had been disappointed I wasn’t having a girl. How much I had wanted a girl but I had come to terms with a boy. Because a girl was going to turn 13 and suddenly hate my guts for a decade a so; a son would only hate me for a year or two. I would try to live vicariously through a daughter: pushing and prodding until she was a puking anorexic mess on a therapist’s couch. I didn't tell her how impossibly young I felt in the face of having a child because I couldn't tangibly name what it was that made me feel so terribly young and unprepared. When I look at that picture of me and Wally, he seventeen days old and me younger than my nephew is now, I am alternatively consumed with relief I am twenty years older and seized with a desire to turn back the clock and fix terrible mistakes. But what frightened me most, that night, how would I relate to a boy? I, being so innately feminine and female…what would we talk about?

I was a quick study: We talked about Bear and how much he loved Wally and about road construction, dump trucks, ambulances, fire trucks, trains and dinosaurs. Snails and puppy dog tails stuff. But it wasn't all fun and games and rubber and steel for Wally. He was a deep thinker, that one. He was about two when he had an epiphany at dinner. Wally thoughtfully and reverently intoned:

“My Dad is not a fire dog.”

A big existential moment, to separate one’s parent into the category of human from beast.




I’m not sure how successful we have been staying in the human category. I know I’ve moved back and forth between the two. Tonight I said as much when I reminisced about sitting up the night before he was born. Wally was polite and indulged me as I told him the story of that evening with B. I also told him how thankful I was I had boys even though I wasn’t sure how well I had done relating and how parenting was a really hard education into adulthood for me. We were in the car when I told him all of this. That forced intimacy of a car ride at night made it easier to talk to him about these things. That, and he was a captive audience, too and listened probably because I was giving him a ride some place. He rarely asks for a ride so I volunteered to pick him up later,too. It won’t be the first time I’ve stayed up late waiting for him. I was doing just that, twenty years ago.

Getting The Facts Straight

image from Creative Commons by jag64551 "Peek-a-boo"

Yikes!

I pride myself on telling the truth on my blog so of course getting facts wrong calls for an immediate correction. I received an email from Dad this morning, it was beautiful note and one I will treasure always. He told me how much he had enjoyed reading my blog from start to finish but he did have a bone to pick with me. It seems I had always had the story of how M and Mom had become friends all wrong for...um like my whole life. I have included a cut and paste of the truth, names have been shortened to protect my family's privacy:

One critique....M didn't stand with us at our wedding. That was R and RK, who have long ago divorced and gone their separate ways. . .M's husband R and I also worked together at ---- and played sports together. Your mother and I met M the day before we got married. Both ladies had to have blood test and physicals before we could get a marriage license. R and I were spared that because we were in the AF....We met M while waiting in the Doctor's office. We were married on April 2 and they were married on April 5. We were immediately "adopted" by M's family. Her mother was a jewel, and had the greatest sense of humor. She loved to tease me.

Ok, so they didn't witness one another's weddings so I guess I can use that detail in a future novel because it didn't really happen. But you have to admit it's still very dear how my mother became life long friends with a woman she met in a doctor's waiting room.

Going Home For The Second Time

Looks like this entry will be all over the map, much like I’ve been the last 50 hours or so. Beav and left for the airport at the lazy hour of 0530 to meet a bus to catch a plane to jet off to see my dad and meet our new family in San Antonio. I call them “my” new family now but 50 hours ago, they were just his new family and I was a part of his other family. (sheesh, I sound like a ten year old going to meet Daddy‘s new wife and their new baby, don’t I?) Anyhow, we left one cold and foggy place for another cold and foggy place (I know, I know WTF is up with this, twenty degrees in San Antonio, Hell-O Al Gore?. . .) I was pretty nervous about meeting my father’s special someone and her family. I wanted her to like me; and maybe love me someday. I’ve met her before when I was much younger and remembered her as a beautiful and sweet friend of my mother‘s. I knew who was who in her family and the victories and their losses over the years. My dad’s beloved was my mother’s Maid of Honor 58 years ago and my mother in turn witnessed her simple ceremony that same week when she married my dad‘s Air Force battle buddy. My mom and M were confidantes over the years and shared a special bond only women who have weathered the same things at the same time forge. I remember my mother calling me when M’s oldest daughter died after a brief but valiant fight with breast cancer. Mom could barely speak for her own anguish. Mom treasured the jewelry Daughter had made and spoke with pride (as if she were her own child) when M and Daughter went to France to sell her pieces. It wasn’t any surprise that M opened her heart to Dad immediately after Mom died and helped through those first difficult months from her own experience of grief and loss. M’s daughter (just about my sister’s age) died a few years ago and M lost her husband about ten years ago. So much grief to weather in one life but M loved my mother very much and helping Dad probably helped her, too. As the year has passed, their friendship has turned to love. I am terribly sentimental and this turn of events and their shared history makes me sigh, smile and believe this Universe is benevolent. The two of them are building a life together and my father “impetuously” moved to San Antonio. I say “impetuously” because my dad isn’t one of these people who would rush home from work on Friday and announce: “Honey! Load up the kids! We’re taking a trip!!” No, my dad is very methodical and a planner. So when he asked me (why he asked, I’ll never fully understand!) if I would mind if he moved to San Antonio to be closer to her I knew this wasn’t some half-assed idea like I would have (and have had. Lubbock, I’m looking at you). So he did it and he bought a project house in a delightful mid-century neighborhood. I thought I was in love with my folks house in NoTX but I really see the potential in this one and can’t wait to see the transformation. I’ve already planned the flower beds with things that only bloom indoors at my house and are invasive in SoTX. (when it’s not part of the artic circle) I told M if The Girl had come with us she would have been chomping at the bit to get started on some of the projects. I saw a couple I wanted to tackle, too. M and her daughter L arranged furniture and the UDO (useful decorating objects) for him and it was lovely and in many ways looked as if my mom had done it. M had been in the NoTX house a few times and must have a photographic memory because the guest room I was in had many of the same pictures and such as before. It was touching she had included my mother’s old family photographs.

Anne Lamott says that grief is like a lazy susan, some days it turns and you get rage, other days you turn it and it’s just a fact of life, this loss. I had discounted that summation as not applying to me, I felt like I had reached a point in my own grief for the loss of my mother where it lived deep inside and it was just something that happened to me. Mother died. Of course she did, she was old and she was unwell. She was also miserable with pain and depressed because of her failing mental status. Her death was a blessing for her in many ways and much harder on the rest of us. A couple of weeks before Christmas, I noticed I was feeling a free floating sadness and it took a day or two to figure out what was wrong. It was grief. Christmas was important to my mother and I think I was still in a state of shock last Christmas so I felt her absence keenly this year. So I was already had the seed of revisiting grief and loss in my mind. I was prepared to love these people based only on the evidence of the way they had swept my father into their circle and helped him through his own tremendous loss in ways I couldn't because this is my first time with grief so close to my heart. On Wednesday, I didn’t have a lot of time to think about my own experience of grief as I was reintroduced to M and her delightful family who all welcomed Beav and me like we had just come home from a long trip and my own raw insecurity makes such warmth from strangers a little overwhelming. Which is probably why I cried for about two hours yesterday as I drove through the unspeakably beautiful western edge of Hill Country? My tears came from relief because I experienced the same people my father did and I understood his affection and love for them. I was so afraid my father’s new life would exclude his daughters. This morning I thought back to a dream I had last week. It was one of those lucid dreams which I believe is a visitation from those we love. Dad, me and Mom were standing in the kitchen of our old house and she was packing things in paper and putting them in a box. She was talking to me and unfortunately I don’t remember what she was saying which had troubled me last week. But this morning when I flashed on the dream, I remembered she was happy and animated: excited to be packing the kitchen. And again, I cried. I cried tears of joy and relief for my father. Tears of joy for me. I can’t wait to get to know my new family in South Texas. Dad showed me a letter M’s son wrote and it was so tender and sweet as he described the “light returning to his mother’s eye” and how he had been afraid she would spend the rest of her life alone. I knew that fear, I didn’t want Dad to be alone, either. I had also seen the light C described his mother having. It lives in my Dad’s eyes.

So now I have a new home and a new family special gifts for the new year. L, who is near my age with a son almost exactly Beav's age, is a funny, intelligent and a strong woman, M’s sister C is just as smart and capable with a deliciously wicked sense of fun, and M's grand daughter--Violet Bella--who’s photography I’ve gushed over at etsy (lovely serendipity) after following links of newly listed items is someone I'm hoping to meet in person this spring whom I getting to know through her own art and words. M herself who is tranquil and thoughtful in ways I only hope to be.

No accident I met them on The Twelfth Day of Christmas because that’s just how grace works.

One Wild and Precious Life

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
--Mary Oliver


I can’t remember the first time I read Mary Oliver’s question but this week when I rediscovered her poem I remembered how much I love these lines. What do I plan to do with my precious and wild life. It’s a little overwhelming to think about it in the big broad sense of years and years so I think that’s where I get hung up and then paralyzed. Maybe the way to the paralysis is to focus on tiny increments of time. Like the AA “one day at a time“. I can attest the One Day…One Minute…One Second at a time thing works because it’s the only reason I’m not puffing on a Marlboro light (that and it’s no degrees outside and smoking in the house was absolutely verboten).

All of this “life what does it mean to me” naval gazing I’ve been doing this week has vividly remind me of a pivotal moment in my early twenties. The summer just after college graduation was an amazing time in our lives: some of us had just graduated from nursing school and were beginning to negotiate what it meant to be a Nurse; others of us had just graduated from medical school and now after years of school Real Life was about to begin. We were poised on the edge of everything and when you are that young and brash The Edge Of Everything was so terribly Important and everything we thought and felt was so Terribly Important. I can still see myself that evening, sitting next to my friend Cliff--the one of us who was actually working and engaged in a Real Life--we were sitting close to one another, intwined and if you came upon us we would be mistaken for lovers. I remember pulling away from him and looking squarely at him as I intoned my fervent desire: “I want to lead a remarkable life.”
I’ll never forget the amused look Cliff shot at me with his wizened twenty-eight year old eyes when sagely remarked: “Shit, June of course you want a life like that. No one wants to be remembered for banality.” Fabulous, I was actually ordinary in my striving to be out of the ordinary. In the moment I hated Cliff for his remark; now it makes me laugh because his retort was dead on. I was a pompous git.

My life has had it years of banality but the last decade has been anything but banal. Now that I’ve got all the growing up and putting on and throwing out bits over with, it’s time to do something with this person I have become. But I am is dangerously close to becoming complacent as I simply place one foot in front of the other. I’m not discontent. Yet. If I allow myself to become existentially stuck I will become complacent. The complacency I speaking to is when I do what I’m supposed to do because I’m supposed to do it because that’s just what I do even if it makes me miserable and feels like my soul is being sucked out of the side of my head. I don’t mean a sort of Peter Pan reaction: “I don’t want to grow up! I always want to be a boy!“ I’m speaking to just keeping my head down and doing what is deemed right and correct by others rather than what my heart is asking after. When I get to points like this in my life I picture myself walking down a sidewalk, my head down; missing the houses and buildings and flora off in the distance because I’m concentrating on my feet. But it’s equally tempting to look way way off on the horizon and I forget to notice the cracks on the sidewalk forming their own microcosmic road map. The key is changing my gaze every few steps; remembering to look at the horizon and then down at my feet. Rob Brezsnky addresses this in Capricorn’s horoscope. Not my sun sign but it’s just damn good advice. (Most horoscopes are just that: sound advice)

"I am a man of fixed and unbending principles," said American politician Everett Dirksen, "the first of which is to be flexible at all times." That's the kind of playful and resilient spirit I urge you to aspire to in 2010, Capricorn. I think you're most likely to have a successful year if you regularly explore the joys of improvisation. The more empirical and less theory-bound you're willing to be, the better you'll feel. Practicing the art of compromise doesn't have to be galling, I promise you; it may even turn out to be more fun and educational than you imagined possible.

It’s impossible to plod along staring at one’s feet if you improvise now and then. A spontaneous act now and again always serves to enhance my contentment.

Luckily I’ve stopped beating myself with a stick for taking so many years to figure out that a principled, stable life doesn’t equal a banal life. Mary Oliver’s sense of the word “wild” has more to do with the “amazing or incredible” sense of the word. My favorite definition of wild is: “to grow unchecked: and I think “fanciful” is the most evocative for Oliver’s ideal of “wild”. This past year, I’ve come dangerously close to allowing my old friend Fear and her henchman Indecision to limit my growth. I picture fear as a bully who comes up behind me and grasps me by my coat collar, preventing me from running away until I can slip from my coat and stumble forward. Life doesn’t have to be scary in it’s uncertainty. I believe it’s the Zen Buddhists who believe uncertainty is an absence of faith. And didn’t C.S. Lewis attest when there is a lack of faith there is a lack of joy? Fear is certainly the big buzz kill in my life. I love to blame a lack of time or money or intellect but that’s a handy excuse for fear.

Brezsny’s predictions for my sun sign made me wince and squirm a little because “deluded rationalization” is another expression of my fear.

The philosopher Nietzsche said there was no middle ground: You either said "yes" to life or you said "no." You either celebrated your vitality, enjoyed your power, and thrived on challenges, or else you practiced constant self-denial, hemmed yourself in with deluded rationalizations, and tormented yourself with indecision. I'm not so sure it's always as clear-cut as that. While I'm usually in the "yes to life" camp," I've gone through "no to life" phases, as well as some extended "maybe to life" times. What about you, Pisces? Whatever you've done in the past, I hope that in 2010 you will take maximum advantage of the cosmic rhythms, which will be encouraging you to give life a big, resounding, ongoing YES.

It’s time to say yes. Time for me to live like I’m dying. My ipod gave me this song yesterday while I was thrashing my knees running on the treadmill. Tim McGraw’s song is sound advice even if you aren’t staring 49 in the face or shaking hands with a dire diagnosis. He sang to me about a man who discovered what it meant to live each day like a special gift and all the things he was doing with his life as a result of knowing he was dying. This man was going to “love deeper. . .speak sweeter. . .gave forgiveness I’d been denying. . .“ And he jumps out of an airplane, climbs a mountain and rides a mechanical bull (it’s a country song, of course there is a mechanical bull involved, duh) If I had been given a dire diagnosis I can assure you the chorus to my song would not include healthy activities like mountain climbing or fishing. Nope it would be a ballad to smoking cigarettes, dropping acid, maybe eating mushrooms and a sex club in Manila. (Ok, maybe not a sex club in Manila) Because a lethal prognosis calls for outrageous acts of previously unforeseen stupidity and danger. Because really? What‘s the worst thing that‘s going to happen? You might…I don‘t know…die? (you all think I’m joking don’t you.)

When McGraw got to the last few lines I had to stop running on the treadmill because I was about to cry and about to make an ass out of myself in the middle of the gym. I do not want to close out 2010 kicking myself in the ass because I’m not any closer to having the life I want simply because I am afraid to articulate and then act upon my heartfelt desire.

"And I took a good long hard look,
"At what I'd do if I could do it all again,
"And then:

Like tomorrow was a gift,
And you got eternity,
To think about what you’d do with it.
An' what did you do with it?
An' what can I do with it?
An' what would I do with it?



The question isn’t really all that hard; allowing yourself to act upon the answer is the challenge.

My resolution for 2010 is separating the can’ts from the won’ts.


Happy New Year!

Good Morning Yesterday

I swear, my Texas accent returns the second I step off that airplane. Hell, I even start thinking with a Texas accent. Years ago, when I was an even bigger bitched up snob than I am now, it would have unnerved me slide back into that drawl! Now it just cracks me up to hear the stuff coming out of my mouth. I’m never about to do anything. Nope, immediately, I’m fixin’ to do something or go somewhere. I’m not southern enough to “bless” someone’s heart but that will probably happen after I visit Wally on family day in the Deep South. TG is from the Midwest and she thinks the accent is charming. I must admit Sophocles sounds preposterous with a Texas accent and it was at that point when we were doing this play in high school my accent began to fade. Mr. Evans, bless his heart (snerk) tried to educate it out of us.

Which brings me to the real subject of this week’s entry: my high school reunion (nice sequay, huh!)

I was one of those rare people who really enjoyed high school. Yeah, there were days I thought the world was ending. I had my heart broken in small pieces on two momentous occasions. I broke a heart. I was teased about my height, my skinny and endlessly long legs and returned the teasing in kind. Despite all of this, I loved high school and was lucky enough to make lifelong friends. So I always look forward to these ten year reunions. Each gathering has been completely different, too. Each one better than the last in some ways and I always learn something about me and people I was lucky enough to grow up with.

This year, I got to see a woman whom I never fail to remember when I see a Goth chick walking into my boys’ preppy high school. My high school was all about preps and sports and I thought the key to survival and therefore happiness was to be just. Like. Everyone. Else. She was a little bit hippy and a little bit punk and had the most amazing hair I have ever seen. When we were all ensconced in our helmet head Farrah do’s, Her hair was dressed simply and spilled down her back without a drop of AquaNet on it. When we were girls, She genuinely liked and got on with everyone because she was such an individual everyone knew her not because she was the girl who got pregnant or busted for dope or had to miss school because she lived in a terribly abusive situation but because she was just She and completely unlike the rest of us desperately trying to conform. She is still wildly original and creative. She’s also extraordinarily beautiful and appears to have been cryogenically sealed and frozen for the last thirty years because she looks absolutely the same only with a touch of experience around her eyes. What a pleasure to talk to this woman who wasn’t afraid to just be herself. Too bad I said something terribly awkward and goofy (I haven't changed, either) I hope I can fight the urge to stop one of the art chick’s at Beav’s school to tell them this story! (can you imagine the level of humiliation I would visit upon him if I did this…hmmm maybe I can use it as a threat to get him to make his bed)

Another amazing woman, shares my name but with a sharper edge. EdgierJuneCleaver has five children. Five. That’s a lot of children. I would be drunken-in-and-out-of-rehab JuneCleaver if I had five children. And while she is proud of them and has nursed one of them through the unspeakable experience of cancer, Edgier has her own life and a career. Edgier is the Quiescental Texas Girl: smooth as butter but can cut you like a knife. She also has those classic Texas looks: beautiful and leggy.

I was lucky enough to be escorted to both parties with my original Prom Date (PD). I was his galpal in high school and we spent a lot of time hanging out together. PD always had an opinion about what I was wearing or my hair. So he was better than a girlfriend because he would tell me the truth. One day, I was fussing about my hair or something stupid and he gave me--to date--the funniest compliment I’ve ever received: “June, out of all the girls I know you always look consistent [this was good, really!].” It’s the “consistent” word that cracks me up. He was a Mathy boy so variables are something he spent time thinking about.

This year neither of us had dates or spouses in tow and we talked to one another like we did all those years ago: as one another’s sounding boards and confessors. I learned to trust him when we were kids because he was the only person out of all my friends who had the courage to tell me the boy I had dated for almost two years was also seeing one of my friends. He of course shrugs it off as, “It was a question of loyalty.” Loyalty in friends goes a long way with me. So months later, we find ourselves without dates to the prom; we decided to go together. The people we wanted to go with had other dates. But I don’t remember feeling like a consolation prize because PD was one of the people I most liked spending time with. Besides that, he borrowed his brother's hot car and wasn't afraid to wear a baby blue tuxedo so we matched. And I knew he was a gentleman.

He still is a gentleman. Thankfully he left his baby blue tuxedo at home.

I am teh Alpha Dog Byoch!

The Mom’s are working and I got the smart cat across the street to help me with the computer because I need some help here, and I’m hoping Mom’s internet friends can help justice be served.

Here’s the deal, before it was warm enough for me to stay outside I had to go to the bath place and then all the sudden, everyone is crying and I had to go the doctor’s office and they are all looking at my tail and putting shiny things on my chest because my heart sounded funny and Other Mom is crying and I’m trying to make her feel better but couldn’t. I hear Moms talking to each other Sea Ach Ef whatever that is and they are letting me sleep on the big white bed without me even having to sneak up there!. They are telling me I’m going to have a good life and we will make the best of it even if I only have two years.

Two years??? I’m a little upset about this. If I survived the garage door hitting my back, poison berries and a car hitting me; this old mutt can manage a little Sea Ach Eff. I get peanut butter in the morning before breakfast and peanut butter at night, too. Hey, this thing with my heart isn’t too bad. And no one makes fun of my big belly because it wasn’t from eating too many snacks and sneaking cookies from the pantry. I have a condition.

And that my friends is quality of life. Sort of. I have few complaints.

So what I want to know if I’m all sick and dying and stuff, why can’t I take myself for walks. I tried that and got yelled at: “Kipper get back in the house!”

I can’t help myself to food sitting at my eye level on the coffee table, its right there; I’m old and according to these people dying. But what do I hear? “Kipper, what do you think you are doing? That’s not your’s!”

A couple of days ago, Mom’s were sitting on the front porch and the front door was open, I had to investigate, make sure everything was ok, right? I walk out the front door and see a plate of food, on the ground. Must be for me, right? Especially seeing’ there was a bone on it, right? I pick it up and walk down to the mailbox where Mom was standing. Instead of her being all happy for the dying dog getting a bone this is what she says to me:

“Oh my god! That’s a chicken bone, give me that! Drop it! Now! And what are you doing outside? Get back in that house!”

I stand my ground, if I’m dying and stuff then I can parade around in front of the house with a bone in my mouth. So what does she do? Humiliates me, leads me into the house and pries the bone out of my mouth.

Last week we had snow and it was so cool. I love snow. I had to wait HOURS before I could play in it and so I ran out of the backdoor and buried my nose in the snow and I rolled in the snow and I dove into the snow and sniffed. Mmmmmmm it smells so good in the snow. Moms were grouchy about the snow and fussed at me for being wet when I finally came in the house. But the best part of the snow? My new stuffed animal, THAT MOVED AND WAS ALIVE. I found it in the backyard. Too bad Moms saw it at the same time. I had just picked it up in my mouth, had a firm but friendly hold of it when ALL HELL BROKE LOSE!

They were screaming stuff at me like: “OH MY GOD, HE HAS THE GUINEA PIG IN HIS MOUTH!! KIPPER DROP IT! DROP. IT. NOW!!! Holy shit this is someone’s pet and he is going to kill it!”
“NOW Drop it now!!!

I can’t remember everything because they were so loud and screeching it hurt my ears so I dropped the soft toy to have a big howl. And they scared me, too. Two years ago, I found another real toy and was in even more trouble because I killed it. Which is why I made sure I used what Other Mom refers to as my “soft mouth” on this toy? Then the toy ran away from me and you guessed it. Mom escorted me into the house and upstairs to the room with the big bed, shutting me in. Probably to give the soft toy a special treat. I haven’t seen that special toy since the big snow last week. But I smelled it. It’s here somewhere.

You would think they would let a dying dog have his own REAL pet instead of the not real toys like my Pounce Baby and the “Saurs. Not these two, they are determined to make my last two years feel like fourteen.

But this dying thing isn’t all bad, I still like my walks and I can keep up, too just like before the doctor put the shiny thing on my chest and said I was murmuring or something like that. I love my food and I love my treats. I’ll miss my boys and Moms but I’ll see them again. And when I do: I’ll explain to them why I gather the bunny-in-a-hat, my moose, the ‘saurs, Pounce, baby rabbit, Shamu the whale, my sea cow and snake in the back yard, all in a circle around me.

Cuz you all are so nice to read my blog, I’ll let you in on a secret, don’t tell Moms: I’m telling them stories about the time I moved the woodpile, could jump high enough to grab an apple off the tree, and ate tomatoes straight from the vine.

In the meantime I’m chillin’ on the couch. I'm allowed.