Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Sheepish

The photo above is from a trip for a speaking engagement in Dublin that resulted in a weekend side trip to Northern Ireland to play tourist for two days on my own dime before flying back stateside.  After a LONG time between villages and way too much coffee there in middle of nowhere nature called so I found a very  isolated spot (which was pretty much a description of my whole "direct to Portrush" route) and got out of the vehicle to well, you know . . .

I suddenly had an audience.  A minute later, as I got my pants up, a farmer appeared off in the distance, chuckling merrily, with feed for the sheep.  Apparently, I showed up right when they were normally fed, and he was gracious when he spotted the rental car and redhead sprinting for the tall grass and gave me some privacy while I finished up.
Watcha doing?


Cheers!

Thursday, September 21, 2023

On Memories

Barkley lies on my dresser so I can say goodbye to him when I leave the house. I put his all-time favorite toy on top of the box.  Mr. Squeaky was an infuriatingly loud toy but Barkley carried it everywhere. His doggie day camp had a purple one and they had a cam in the yard so we could see the dogs at play on their website and he ALWAYS had that toy so I found him one after searching about 87 different pet stores in Indiana.

So when I found this photo of him, I just had to place it here so he can keep an eye on Mr. Squeaky.

Monday, August 21, 2023

Lorelei arthritis update


Lorelei, who had a serious flare-up of her arthritis (coupled with serious hip dysplasia), is doing much better. We were really worried as she just wasn't herself, not wanting to play, and obviously in discomfort, which came on pretty suddenly. Our vet recommended a nearby Veterinary orthopedic center where she has been going for checks and is having a weekly course of acupuncture and/or cold laser therapy and a couple of doggie chiro adjustments (favoring one side with the pain led to a decrease in mobility). The difference has been amazing in just about 5 weeks. She's waggy and wiggly again, eating well and wanting to play (though no running). Yesterday was her first session on the hydro treadmill to help her walk with an even gait as she develops her strength. With the encouragement of the technician and my husband, she was a trooper.

Monday, July 31, 2023

Home Improvement

Dad was gone FUREVER at the big home improvement store.
Is that for me?
He's flat but crinkly.
And he squeeks!

 I love Menard the Monkey!

Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Love and Hope - a Journey Through Alzheimers


Do you ever wake up and not know where you are?  If you've traveled a lot on business, you know the feeling. But to wake and not know who you are, that would be a terrible thing to behold.

My stepmom married my Dad two years after my Mom died.  He grieved for my Mom terribly, but he was still a relatively young man, and lonely. She was a widow with three grown kids. They were set up on a blind date by a female friend of my Dad's.

She was always a bundle of energy, 5 feet nothing and 95 pounds of whirlwind motion, laughter and care.  An expert seamstress, she joined a group of ladies from the church who handcrafted stuffed teddy bears to give to kids being brought into the trauma unit at the hospital.  I've written of them before, the ladies making the bears from scratch with clothing and accessories, all unique, cowboy bears, farmer bears, made with love, and all at their own expense. 

I remember one story of a trip the ladies made to the hospital with the newest batch of bears. While they were there, a very elderly man was brought in, muttering in pain and confusion, hurting and alone.  His eyes lit up at the bears and he asked to hold one. She gave him one and he hugged it to him, like a little child would, talking to it, breathing deeply of the comfort of soft fur. The ladies let him keep it, a small bit of peace for someone lost and alone.

She had her little moments of forgetfulness, like any aging person, but a previously diagnosed cancer was in remission and she was doing really well, still active in church and in volunteering, taking dance classes, and working in the garden.  But one morning, a few months later, she came into the kitchen and sat down, looked at me and I realized she did not have a clue as to who I was.

What struck me, was not that, but the look on her face as she realized this, realized she should know. I obviously wasn't a burglar or a neighbor over for coffee, I was a girl with red hair like everyone else in the family, wearing a fuzzy robe that she herself had washed and put in the guest closet the night before.  I will never forget the look of her at that moment. It was the most starkly exposed face I'd ever seen, a face in which unknown terrors haunted the edges; the face of a fledgling dove about to tumble from the nest.

It came into our lives quickly, one moment she was laughing, engaging in board games and puns with us, her face bright, her wit razor sharp. Then came those moments where everything just went sort of dim. The doctor only confirmed what Dad had suspected and kept from us for some months until he knew for sure.  Alzheimer's.

It's a terrible disease for all involved. We read what we could about it, we planned as a family and we prayed.  There really wasn't more we could do.

As the next year and a half passed, there were a  few moments she was quite lucid, and happy. But those were the hardest for all of us, for in those brief moments she was fully aware that her mind was going, what was happening to her, and how helpless she was to do anything about it.

The disease's progression is as predictable as its course is certain.  Mood swings and aggression, words that made no sense, dropping to the floor like marbles, tears as she tried to mentally gather them up, anger at the very air around her. She always was gentle with my Dad though. Only with him would she remain calm, the reasoning that was blind and deaf somehow responding to something in him that her mind could still see.  Dad cared for her at home, no matter how bad it got.   We arranged for a home health aide to come in and lend a hand a few hours a week but he refused to let anyone else care for "his girl" or to send her to skilled nursing care. When she passed, it was quite sudden, after she contracted pneumonia. From her sudden coughing to her collapse, was just days.

Sometimes when you get to the far edge, the edge just breaks away.

We laid her to rest on a tree-covered hilltop. We visit, we bring flowers, we hug and shed some tears, neither of us immune to having our hearts broken.  Then we smile through the tears, sharing their stories as we make the long trip home to photos and a little stuffed bear wearing the colors of the flag.

Would she have lived her life differently had she known her fate ahead of time? Perhaps not. Perhaps, in essence, she did, her mother dying of the same disease, as she and my Dad courted. 

She lived life to the hilt, a wheel in motion, racing downhill, a light against the darkness, the whir of a needle into the soft fabric. I have a picture of she and my Dad on their first date, and you could see something in their smiles that would be lost on so many people.  Love is a story that tells itself.

I woke up the other morning abruptly, the glaring ringtone of the bat phone waking me with a message just after I'd fallen asleep.  For a moment, I did not know where I was at. The small room was cold, with no sound of a dog checking on me as I came awake.  I was in a hotel room, traveling in the previous day when duty called.  My heart was pounding as that particular ring will do that to me, the surge of adrenalin. There would be no going back to sleep.

But I was aware, of every tick of the clock, of the feel of my skin, missing the soft panting of doggie breath waiting to see if I was going to get up and leave or go back to sleep.  I was so blissfully aware, of these moments, these sounds. It was a new day, and even if tired and cranky, I'd leap right in, like a deer into the brush, feeling no thorns.

So I go, and so I watch, finding sense in the senseless, finding my purpose even as sparrows fall to earth. People watching from a distance would think me too quiet, too still, shouldn't this activity be a frenzy of lights and motion, like on TV?  But there is a great activity in being the quiet observer, standing in a stillness that smells of silence,  breathing in so many scents in damp cold air. Sweat, blood, and a flower that only blooms in the dark, the wind so scant it's like breath on a mirror. Each smell blended yet distinct, always overlayed with the copper tang of life spilled. The air hums along to the night's quiet as all I see, smell, and feel, forms into a substance I can almost feel on my flesh, capturing it, recording it there in the stillness. The truth is often still, inarticulate, not knowing it is the truth.

When I get home again, I'll once again see that photo of them on that first date, the feelings there so sudden and so very unexpected, incapable of being formed into sound. I'll look at another photo, the last one we have of her where she was completely with us, a laughing woman on my deck in the Indiana summer, her movements that of a bird, free and spirited. There is no fear in her, in that memory, even as the picture lies silent. But there is hope.

Those last days with her were difficult, but they taught me a lot.  Not just visible confirmation of what my Dad was truly made of, but that words aren't necessary to define what you believe, that nestled in the strong crook of an arm of the one who understands you without words, you know exactly who you are.  Even when she didn't know who I was, she taught me about not being limited by fear but going forward with hope, even if the future is not articulated.

Home and love, love and desire, can be what propels us silently onward.  Hope and love, love and desire, can also merely sound, that people who have never hoped or loved or desired have for what they never possessed, and will not until such time as they forget the words. 

Friday, July 7, 2023

I'm Not Fat I'm Fluffy Banana Bread

I was up early to bake before it got hot out. I've been tweaking a banana bread recipe to make it (1) really low sodium < 20 mg per slice and (2) a super light fluffy texture with a crisp exterior, instead of the standard denser throughout banana bread. It took a couple of tries but this is a keeper, tasty, and moist with a wonderful light texture. I used goat milk butter and sour cream and Bob's Red Mill organic unbleached flour.

I’m Not Fat I’m Fluffy Banana Bread
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter softened 
1 cup white sugar. 
2 eggs 
1 teaspoon vanilla extract 
1 teaspoon lemon juice 
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (210 grams - weighing really helps) 
1 teaspoon EnerG baking soda substitute
1 ½ teaspoons Hain Sodium Free baking powder (if using regular baking powder decrease to 1 tsp)
½ teaspoon Morton salt substitute 
½ cup sour cream 
2-3 medium-sized ripe (just starting to spot/darken) bananas, mashed well (1 cup total which was 2 and 1/2 bananas) 
A couple pinches of cardamom


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 C.). Spray a 9x5-inch loaf pan with non-stick spray or lightly grease it with unsalted butter. 

 Cream the sugar and butter together in a large bowl with a hand mixer until fluffy. Add eggs, vanilla, and lemon juice and mix well on low/medium speed.

 Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cardamom in a separate bowl and stir into the butter mixture until smooth. Fold in mashed banana and sour cream til blended.


 Bake in preheated oven until a thin knife inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean, about 1 hour. Cool loaf in the pan for 10 minutes before inverting onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Friday, June 30, 2023

Gotcha Days

June 2019

It's been 4 years since we adopted breeder release rescue Lorelei Lab.  She was given up when she quit having puppies and Chicagoland Lab Rescue made sure they coordinated with everyone to get her a good home.  She'd had good medical care and nutrition but in looking at the photos, at age 11 now, she's happier and healthier, living a good life.  She rides the doggie escalator my engineer husband built to get into the Bungalow due to bad hips but otherwise loves her yellow ball just as much.

Adopting her was one of the best things we can do, and though it doesn't take away our missing Barkley and Abby Lab - she has healed our hearts.

June 2023

Thursday, June 15, 2023

Barkley Memories - Road Trip!

Winter 2013. It was time for the weekly commute to work, a several hour drive in the usual heavy truck traffic. I left early, to get here before dark, but with what was left of an accident closing all but one lane, it took over four hours.

I'd driven this route for a couple years already while dating my now husband, no accidents and no tickets.  The secret is -

(1) drive a vehicle with an engine that sucks fuel like a CF700 turbofan  engine
(2) don't break any traffic laws
(3) don't break them as bad as anyone driving around you.

#3 is easy.  Find the worst possible driver in the world (which is not hard to do on I-65) and when you spot him or her, stay back at their 8 or 4 o'clock position, whichever keeps them between the Highway Patrol on the median and you.

Or simply draft behind the trucks sharing the road responsibly until that smile and glazed look (brains!) in the eyes of the Dart Guy on the back of the truck creeps you out and you have to pass.
Barkley would with me, with a harness that assured in a sudden stop he couldn't turn into one of the Wallenda's.  It did, however, allow him JUST enough room to sit with his rear end on the seat and his front feet on the floor. 

You think I'm kidding, that was  how he sat at home when he wasn't napping.
When we finally got to the crash pad,  he would be all excited, RUNNING to the back door in the garage.  Then he realized, this was the small place, with no "Dad", with less toys per square foot, no squirrels to bark at and his pretty friend who took him to the dog park when I worked wouldn't be here until the morning.

And the sulk began.

No one can sulk like a lab.
At least he didn't have to go on call at midnight like some people.

Monday, June 5, 2023

Guess What Day It Is?

Hey, Lorelei - isn't it a GREAT day!
You know what day it is don't you?
It's MONDAY!

Tuesday, May 30, 2023

View From a Lap


A Lap is a terrible thing to waste.

 -  Guide to Human Care and Feeding - Labrador Retriever Edition

Wednesday, May 17, 2023

A Barkley Memory - An Attempt Was Made to Breach the Perimeter

Another stuffie makes the attempt to breach the perimeter and it doesn't end well. Barkley with G-Dog - her pal and co-conspirator.

Friday, May 5, 2023

Scene of the Crime

Me:  "What happened here!?"
Lorelei - "I thought they said "PupTarts".
"What do you have to say for yourself?"
Lorelei: "I like Toaster Poodle better."

Wednesday, May 3, 2023

Thoughts on Books

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
 Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
- Groucho Marx
Lorelei Lab here.  I was just hoping for something simple like

Treats.   Bacon.   Stuffie.

But Mom decided to write about books.   



She didn't know what she would do without her books. Remember the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury?  It was set in a dystopian future in which firemen intentionally burn any house in which a book is located because it's against the law to possess them.  In the end, a fireman who had grown to love books escapes the city of quick, mindless but big-screen, reality-based entertainment, to find a small group of book-loving refugees banded together.  Each person is assigned the memorization of one complete book -- Aristotle, Dickens, James Joyce, and more -- so the books will survive until society is ready to embrace them again
She didn't read a lot of popular novels, though she had a rather large collection of classic Sci-Fi.  When her grade school classmates were reading The BoxCar Children and Pippi Longstocking, She was reading the works of Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein, and a whole world beyond her quiet, hushed one at home, opened up to me.

Reading for her was not just intellectual but embracive. She loved the way the spine of a book feels in the crook of her fingers. The smooth, hard end boards snug on either side of the pages are sewn together, their edges flush and perfect. The smell of ink, the texture of a page as her fingers gently turn it.
She tended to read a lot of non-fiction and books that teach you how to create and maintain things. She likes to read history. She loves reading about long ago. know more about her own life when she knew more about the past. It's a sense of perspective; of days full of people that killed, tortured, struggled, and suffered, agonizing for things that were of the utmost importance to them; working and living for reasons that may be well the same as ours. Now they've been gone some 500 years and all that is left to us is the essence and quintessence of their lives so she can remember all that they never forgot.
To her, history was more than a story, more than a book, it's the life, heart and soul of ages long ago.  It's the ultimate myth and inevitably ambiguous, but she did believe, as Lord Bolingbroke stated, "History is philosophy teaching by example and also by a warning." History not read is like ammo not used, someone once said, and without reading, for herself at least, the past is silence and the future is haze.
Quantum Physicists have stated that time, as most of us think of it, is an illusion. They have postulated that the past, the present, and the future are here, now, captured in a touch, the blink of an eye, or perhaps, simply between two pages.

Between two pages here is a photo of her Mother in her garden. Outside the window here now, a plant opens up, spilling forth its seed onto the soil. She remembered days of working in the flowerbeds that her Mom so lovingly maintained. After her death, She kept it going as long as she could for her Dad until adulthood called me away. As she toiled in the garden, the sun kissed the top of her head, the touch a benediction, a blessing.
She had not yet learned of other kisses, the ones in the crook of the neck where the head joins the body and the body knows not its limitations. The one that dances on the skin like light that falls upon it, outstretched hands gathering fistfuls of flowers imprinted upon starched cotton. She had not yet learned that love is not just as wild as the flowers; it’s as fragile and elusive as glass; that in nature, the most delicate of things are often trod underfoot as they go unnoticed. So much contained in those pages never read.
At the bookstore recently, an engineering manual, two generations old, was opened to browse. In it was an ancient leaf, carefully pressed within the pages, the person who had done so likely long gone. She has many books like that old book, purchased from stores that contain more light than dust, yet containing within them things old and forgotten, things that in the wrong hands would only grow older. Finding the right one is like finding treasure, fingers tracing the spine, fingers that are gentle and forgiving, not wishing any further scar upon that which binds.
Such books find their way to her home, where they lay looking out from under leaded glass, pulled out to be read on late nights, the mind marveling that other minds marveled, the mysteries, the mistakes, playing out across the pages as if they were penned today. They tell their tales like the lonely, animated elderly, to anyone who is willing to listen, lessons are given without rancor or heat, so many words that need to be said while they can still be heard.
Nothing for her is worse than being in the back of an airplane or at a hotel with nothing to read. When in one mountainous far off place, she had to downsize a bag as the little airplane being piloted by what she believed was a Yeti, was weight restricted and her books were left behind for materials she had to have for the missionary work. She almost would have given up her tools, her poncho, and her hiking boots than her little collection of paperbacks, of Earth Abides and Stranger in a Strange Land, and a small leather-bound book of Shakespeare sonnets.

Let the weather play God with her itinerary, let the tanker bringing in supplies break down somewhere, let the post sell the last bottle of whiskey, but if she'd laid up alone in the middle of nowhere after she busts a move down the Himalayas and breaks her leg, she wants a book. Curled up in strange places among a couple artifacts of family that get toted around in her suitcase, she may be lonely, but she will be content. 
For she has a book.

It's a big old paper dead tree book because she wants to hold something in her hand that feels alive, to me even if a living thing died to create its pages. It's words that form pictures, laid out upon a living thing that never slept, never dreamed of the soft perch of birds or the sharp blade of the ax, never mourned the tender leaves that it nourished and abandoned. It’s a piece of wood, that can be warmth, support, and shelter, or the perfect, pristine bed of memory laid down bare.
Such is it tonight as she is alone tonight.  But in her head is history, the cries of warriors, rushing forth immortal beneath disported sabers and brandished flags, men rushing forward into time, propelled by gunpowder and righteousness, underneath a sky of thunder. She has a book.  She is caught up in battles, in loves, both forbidden and forgotten, coursing like blood as long as the words will, that immortal, fresh, abiding blood which bears respect above regret and commitment above the ease of dishonor.

Her housework is put aside for at least an hour or two before bed and she'll pick up that book. She'll let it transport her to somewhere far away until a chime will toll for warriors, for battles won and those so easily lost. As her hand turns the pages, she will move among people who lived and died, or perhaps never existed at all, their shadows not of flesh or blood but of imagination, shadows as strong as finely honed steel and shadows as quiet as murmuring breath, forgotten until they were put upon paper.
Then, on the sound of that chime, perhaps a clock, perhaps something that just travels within her, the note cutting the air, as sharp, clear, and quiet as a blade, she will fall off into sleep, there in that lonely bed. The book lies prone on the nightstand next to her, two forms, creating one shadow, the stories in both of them, never ceasing, even at rest. Outside the world continues in that illusion of change, the sky letting go of its tears, washing a parched landscape anew.