That might be true today.

It’s hard to know where that fine line is between being ready to say goodbye to a much-loved pet, and giving up too soon. We’ve all faced it, or we will, if we haven’t yet. The gray hair creeps over the senior muzzle, eventually whitening the entire face; the eyes cloud over, the ears stop up, and the gait shifts from exuberant to hesitant. But still she eats, drinks, roams the yard (bouncing off the fence due to the clouded eyes), and barks imperiously when she needs your attention.

Then one day she just doesn’t get out of bed, choosing instead to sleep all day. You wake her up and carry her outside (if she’s carry-size), and when you set her down, she falls over and can’t right herself. She stands spraddle-legged, shaking from the effort of maintaining balance. You bring her back inside to her food dish because she hasn’t ‘t eaten since the day before, and she sniffs it and turns away. You take her to the water bucket, because she drinks water 20 times a day, and she sniffs it and turns away. You put her back in her bed, and she goes back to sleep almost immediately.

So you call the vet, make an appointment to have them checked out, and you worry. And you cry, because you realize that 16+ is a fantastic age for an iggy, and her paws are totally entwined all around your heart.

Meantime, you glance over and she’s standing up, getting out of her bed, hobbling to the water bucket and drinking deeply, and your heart smiles, thinking maybe it was a false alarm. You bring some BilJac liver treats to her bed, and she eats them with no hesitation. You pull the expensive lunch meat from the fridge, and give her a couple slices, breaking it up into bite size pieces. Your heart smiles again, thinking maybe it really was a false alarm.

You cuddle with her awhile, loving the weight of her 10 lbs gathered in your arms and resting on your chest, grinning when she rests her head on your shoulder, hoping she’ll fall asleep there. But she lets you know she’s had enough, and you gently place her back in her bed, in front of the little ceramic space heater that’s been running all day for her on this fairly warm day. You notice, as you rearrange her blanket before putting her back in bed, that the bed is damp, and your heart sinks again. The little one has never peed the bed before, to your knowledge. Maybe it wasn’t a false alarm.

At any rate, there’s nothing you can do tonight, so you make sure she’s warm and cozy, the water bucket nearby in case she wakes up thirsty, and you head to your own bed. Your other dogs curl up beside you and you find comfort in their presence and their enduring, unquestioning love.

You find yourself waking early the next morning, listening for the imperious, demanding bark of the senior iggy that always starts your day, and it doesn’t come. Then you realize you haven’t heard her bark since the previous morning, and she usually barks several times a day. Your heart sinks again, and you lie there cuddling the big dogs while pondering the little one.

What is the right thing to do for her? What is BEST for HER? It’s hard to say. She eats, she drinks, but the sleep-aggressive dog has to wear a muzzle 24/7 because she’ll walk into him while he’s sleeping, not realizing he’s there. She has to be carried into the yard so she doens’t walk off the side of the ramp. Once there, she walks in circles, like a canoer paddling on only one side of the boat.

You think about your friends who have faced this journey before you, about Giorgio, the IG who lost both is eyes to glaucoma and lived at least one more year, confined to the kitchen and carried in and out for potty breaks. You remember how you thought that was no fit life for a dog, and you remember hoping it would never reach that point for yours. Has it now? She used to have the run of the house. Now she has a portion of the kitchen and laundry room, and her bed in the office during the day. She lost her human bed privileges when she started pooping in her sleep.

You ponder the next 10 days on your schedule. The first three are relatively light – a Friday doing course development instead of teaching, and a weekend. But the next week is packed full with a tight schedule that would leave no room for an unescheduled vet trip, if one is needed. You remember the pain of letting your last dog go without being able to be there to say goodbye, because that was best for her, and you resolve to not face that this time.

You think about asking an animal communicator to talk to your little one, but remember when she tried to do that with another dog, and how she said the dogs were surprised you had asked her, because we all communicate fine with each other. And you realize that the little one *has* been communicating with you through her cloudy eyes, the unhappy droop to her head, her gentle snuggling the night before. And you weep as you realize you might be saying goodbye today to the best little iggy that ever walked the face of the earth.

Then you start doubting yourself. Maybe you misunderstood what you saw. Maybe she’s not that bad. She still eats, doesn’t she? Still drinks? Maybe it’s not time. We’ll let Doc tell us. Doc is good at knowing this stuff.

Having decided that you’re not making a decision, you get up and take hte big dogs outside. When you come back in, you go wake the little dog, and realize as you lift her from her bed that she’s soaking wet. Your heart sinks again as you realize maybe you didn’t misunderstand anything. You carry her outside and set her down, gently catching her before she falls over, and watch her stand spraddle-legged to keep her balance, head shifting from side to side like a snake, entire body quivering from the strain of standing. Your heart sinks again as you gently pick her up and bring her back inside to her bed in the office in front of the space heater. Since her bed is wet, you appropriate one of the beds from the big dogs and put that in front of her heater.

Then you go to your PC to type a post on GreyTalk.com and are interrupted by the sound of her toenails scrabbling on the kitchen floor. You bring her back and put some water in a dish. Because you love her, you hold the dish of water directly under her pretty little nose until she realizes it’s there and starts drinking it. Then you find the BilJac liver treats and feed her some of those for breakfast, becuase she ignored her food dish when you pointed it out to her in the kitchen.

And you doubt yourself again, because she’s eating and drinking, standing and walking, looking for what she wants and needs. To be honest, at this point you don’t know if you’d rather she be ok or not. You don’t know for sure how happy she is with her very limited life that would drive *you* crazy. So you email Doc and give her a status update, and end the email with: “Just so you know, if we have to let her go today, I’m ready.” And you try not to hate yourself for saying that, and try not to think about whether you’re saying that because it’s best for the little one entwined in your heart, or because you can’t bear the thought of watching her decline further over time and aren’t willing to do the heroic things that other friends have done with/for their dogs. You reassure yourself with the knowledge that she is a much-loved dog, and she knows that she is loved and will continue to be loved no matter what happens today.

And then you sit and weep because you have no idea how this day is going to turn out, and 11am is still so very far away.

Update: 11am came and went, and at 1140, I left Doc’s office alone, a tiny blue collar tucked into the pocket of my jeans, and a big piece of my heart lying on a table in Doc’s exam room. Run free to good health, baby girl. Your mama loves you more than she has words to say.

…but on a much smaller scale.

When I’m not working my day-job, or playing games on Facebook, I write short stories.  I finally have enough to compile into a small e-book, which I am publishing through SmashWords.com with a tentative release date of Feb 22, Ash Wednesday.  The date is tentative because it depends on my newly hired graphic artist getting a cover created for me by then. She’s confident she can do it, even though there are several people ahead of me on her project list. I have no graphic art genes anywhere in my body, so I’m trusting her.

Like you, I’ve watched and admired Sgt Mom on her journey from blogger extraordinaire to “real live arthur,” and I gotta tell you honestly, I don’t want to work that hard. I’m more of a dabbler.   My day job comes first and the writing is only a hobby, albeit a slightly more serious one than it’s been in the past. Short stories by unknown authors are hard to sell, which is my primary reason for self-publishing. I’m just glad we live in a time when the technology makes it possible.

Now, if you’ll pardon a little self-promotion… (clears throat self-consciously)

 Front Cover:

Their lives changed forever when they saw themselves

..and their God…

Through Love’s Eyes

 

 

Back cover (for the print edition, whenever it happens):

A chronically ill woman; a crazy man; a grieving mother. Only God could ease their pain, but would He?

 

You think you know their stories: you’ve read them since childhood. Read them again – it will feel like the first time. Mary Young takes you inside their heads and hearts, and shows you their encounters with the Christ through their own eyes.

Anyone who has ever doubted whether God would really help him or her will find encouragement in these pages.

I was originally going to just print a few copies and give them to friends last year for Christmas, but as I worked on perfecting the stories, I felt they deserved a wider audience. It will be interesting to see if I was right.

Hopefully, you’ve never had to suffer through a presentation like this one. I’m confident none of our readers has ever been the perpetrator of a presentation like this one.

Mostly Cajun has a good post with a couple political cartoons that are spot on for today.

More than fifty years after he came home from Korea, my dad finally told me how he got injured. Someone parked a tank in front of the foxhole sheltering his 2 buddies and him. When the tank was destroyed, shrapnel ripped through the foxhole. One Marine was decapitated, the other severely wounded. Dad had a “minor” injury that took a year of rehab.

We know that all gave some. Today, we remember those who gave all.

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Note: I don’t normally blog here about internal things, preferring instead to share thoughts on my “yardening” or memories of other phases of my life. But since I was 13, part of my self-identification has been “writer.” But I had lately begun to wonder if I could still use that description — is one a writer if one isn’t really writing? Apparently so. Apparently thoughts and ideas have been wintering in plowed ground, waiting for spring’s warmth to sprout into new growth. I posted the following on my personal blog this morning, but I wanted to share with my friends here, as well.
***********************

I’m writing again, for the first time in a decade or so, and it feels like coming home to my true self. Really writing — the kind of writing that I used to do, that left me marveling in awe as the words flowed from my pen to paper, almost as if the pen had a mind of its own.

That’s how it used to feel, when God would give me ideas for stories. It was almost like watching the story on a movie screen in my brain, and simply transcribing what I saw on the screen. I had thought the dearth of words related to my very desultory Christian walk. I claim Jesus as my savior, and believe the truths set forth in the Apostles’ Creed, but I do no daily Bible reading, attend no weekly church services.

That said, I constantly dialogue with Jehovah God, and recognize that all good gifts in my life are from His hand. Like this gift of writing, that has recently returned with so much power. The more ideas flow into my brain, the more I return to Bible reading, specifically the Gospels. I’m seeing things I don’t remember seeing there before. And I see stories.

In “Steel Magnolias,” Truvey says “Every person has a story.” The same is true of the Bible characters – no, not characters. These were real, live people, like you and me. They worried about keeping their jobs, their homes, their sanity. They loved and laughed, wept and prayed, cooked and sewed and cleaned, got married, had children, lost children…

Their lives were more immediate than ours, less removed from reality. No air conditioning there – when it was hot, their own sweat cooled them. If they caught no fish, or grew no crops, they went hungry.

Life was struggle and joy all in one. Sometimes, life was sorrow. Through it all, they persevered, holding to the hope of their faith that Yahweh was not as other gods – that Yahweh was a God who listened, a God who cared. He had delivered them from Egyptians and Philistines – he would deliver them again.

If he didn’t? He was still Yahweh, still in charge. The prophet Habakuk perhaps said it best:

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. Hab. 3:17-18

Those are tough words, from a tough person – a faithful person. I’ve wanted those words to be true in my own life for years, and never really noticed that they already were.

The fig tree of my writing has not blossomed in close to ten years. Oh, there were little buds here and there – snippets of stories, or thoughts or poems that reassured me I could still write when it mattered, but not the effortless flow of words that I remembered.

Until this spring, when all outside was green with new life, and it was time again to remember our Lord’s sacrifice on our behalf. This Easter season, the words began to flow again, and I pray they never stop. But even if they do, like Habakkuk, I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

Meantime, I’ll revel in the feeling of being home again.

No, really… I mean it! I don’t really care if you go whole hog for the bound copy, or go with the very affordably priced Kindle copy (which can be read via the free kindle app on any PC)… BUY IT! READ IT!

You won’t regret it.

Well… that’s not entirely true, but the only regret will be that you have to wait six more months for the next installment.

My autographed copy arrived in my mailbox far earlier than I expected, especially as I hadn’t gotten around to purchasing it yet. Sgt Mom sent me a copy just to celebrate our friendship. I read the first few pages and set it aside, not wanting to ruin the binding by reading it in the bathtub, which is where I do most of my book reading these days (someday I’ll own a couch again, and read in places other than the tub).

But then I realized it was available in Kindle format, and having succumbed to the Kindle siren this past January, I was good to go. Daughter of Texas flew wirelessly to my Kindle, and I flew into the past, riding the wings of her vivid imagination and prodigious talent/skill at writing.

Texas is my heart state — of all the places I’ve lived in my life, San Antonio is home, even though I no longer live there. I still remember the first time I learned about the Goliad Massacre, the first time I toured the Alamo (like so many Air Force people, it was on a day pass while in basic training there), the first time I learned about the massacre of the German settlers who were Union sympathizers during the Civil War years.

Sgt Mom’s books bring all these things to life. First with the Adelsveiren Trilogy, which had me wanting to Google the characters when the book ended, to see what happened next in their lives, and now with Daughter of Texas.

You’ve read her sample chapters here over the past few months. They pale beside the completed whole. I told her today I was hesitant to finish the book (Kindle told me I was 85% complete), because I’d read her samples here and knew somewhat of what was ahead, and didn’t want to face it. I knew a character was going to die, and I hated to see it happen — couldn’t bear to read it. What I didn’t tell her was that I couldn’t bear having the book end and still have 6 months to wait for the next one.

You can read the reviews on Amazon, and other places. I’m not a reviewer – I’m just a reader who knows what she likes, and I like Sgt Mom’s style of writing, and her choice of topics. In my opinion, you can never go wrong grabbing one of her books — and there’s a link to them conveniently posted just over there, on the upper left side of this blog.

So what are you waiting for? Buy her books! Read them! You won’t be disappointed, other than having to wait for the next one.

I learned long ago to ignore most TV weather forecasters, but I’ve found that Weather Underground gives me fairly accurate forecasts for my area. Even so, when they said Christmas snow, I was skeptical. I’ve lived in GA for nine years now, and have never seen snow on Christmas, not even flurries. Heck, before this year, I had never seen snow in December here! About two weeks ago, we had some flurries one morning, so I figured if we got snow at Christmas, it would be like that.

Christmas morning, the forecast for my zip code was 100% chance of snow, and the skies were clear. At 1130am, the forecast was still 100% chance of snow, and the skies were still clear. I was about to put a very sarcastic post on my Facebook status about the odds of GA having a white Christmas, when I glanced out my window, and saw big fluffy white flakes in the sky.

I put the dogs in the backyard and grabbed my camera. As I explained on FB, I needed the dogs so you could have some scale by which to judge the size of the flakes. LOL Pippin, the 90lb greyhound who is afraid he’ll melt if he gets rained on, was NOT impressed.

This being Georgia, if it had been any day other than Dec 25, the stores would have been jammed with people buying bread and milk, convinced the world would end (or at least be shut down for several days) if the white stuff stuck to the ground, as it seemed like it was doing.

When I left my house at 1230 to head to Christmas dinner with friends, the streets were wet. When I drove back home 3 hours later, they were slushy. By nightfall, they were white.

Our final tally after eight hours of steady snowfall, was approximately three inches. Laughable to our northern friends, but exciting to us. Apparently, the last time it was snowy at Christmas was 1993, and that was only a dusting, not measurable snow. The last time Georgia had measurable snow on Christmas was around 1889. Yep – it’s been 121 years since GA has had measurable snow at Christmas time. (I reserve the right to be wrong on the actual year, but I”m in the right century and decade)

The sub-freezing temps kept the snow on the ground through Boxing Day. We’re projected to hit the mid-30s today, and 40s tomorrow, so it will soon just be a memory.