…and after:
Monthly Archives: February 2010
Valentine conspiracy
My husband and I have a 94 year old aunt who is doing really well living alone but who is needing a bit more assistance with things as her eyes begin to fail. This winter is becoming increasingly long as she can no longer see enough to drive and even reading is difficult. So her life revolves around television, phone conversations and visits from family and friend.
Often when I visit I go downstairs with her to get her mail and I see the disappointment when all that emerges from her box are junk mail fliers and the inevitable bills for health insurance and her phone. Though rarely is there anything interesting in her mailbox, she continues to hope and this is where the Valentine Conspiracy comes in. I have contacted almost all her family members, by phone and email, suggesting that we all send her a valentine this year…independently and “spontaneously” spread over the entire week…even going into next week. It doesn’t matter if they arrive late; what matters is that they arrive.
So far the response has been wonderful. Everyone says they will send her one. This could amount to a dozen or more valentines arriving in her mailbox. When she wasn’t really expecting anything. I hope she smiles as she opens them, smiles as she reads them, and smiles later on when she sees them piled beside her chair. Such a simple thing, so easy to generate a smile, so important to take that bit of time to make it happen.
So of course my message is that everyone can take a moment and look around. Is there someone you know and love who might be having a difficult time with the long winter? Who is a bit lonley? Perhaps home bound? Who feels perhaps that there isn’t much to look forward too? Doesn’t matter how old or young they are; if you know someone that could use a lift, send a valentine this week.
It’s only Tuesday, there’s plenty of time.
Rules about toys
One of the new doggie household rules is that Katie’s toys are not available to her unless we give her something to play with. She doesn’t get to chose out of a basket like she did before. This is supposed to help us be Masters of the House. As opposed to her. Katie doesn’t like the new rule at all.
Today I gave Katie the toy that Ludo sent her. Katie hadn’t seen it in a very long time; a couple of months anyway. So she was very excited, it was almost like it was brand new to her!
It’s very hard to photograph an exchited Sheltie and her toy. But here’s my attempt:
After so much play she was exhausted. And a bit disheveled.
And we put the toy away to wait for another day. Thanks Ludo!
What Katie loves
We’ve been challenged by the Key West Collies Essex and Deacon (http://keywestcollies.blogspot.com/) to come up with ten things Katie loves. I think we’ll try to come up with ten things Katie loves about going to school.
1. Treats. Lots and lots and lots of treats. Fresh chicken. Roast beef. Cheese. Yum!
2. The car ride to school. With the windows down so she can get a breeze in her face.
3. The place all the doggies go pee. Such lovely fresh smells!
4. Doggie butts. Need I say more?
5. Ignoring her mama and vacuuming the floor for any spare treats anyone else dropped. Just in case.
6. Looking at herself in the mirror. Because she’s such a princess you know.
7. Making goo goo eyes at that little brown aussie named Charlie.
8. Jumping. Over any kind of jumps those silly humans can devise.
9. Tunnels. Oh tunnels are soooo much fun!
10. Getting told how pretty she is. In case she didn’t already know.
I’m supposed to ask ten of our closest dog friends to think about 10 things they love…but I don’t think I have ten dog friends that haven’t already been asked by Essex and Deacon…so if any of you want to jump at the chance to share your favorite things…well, Katie and I would enjoy reading about them!
Happy Birthday Sister!
The story is that my mom was very pregnant with my sister on dad’s birthday and she didn’t feel up to making a cake. So she made him meatloaf and “frosted” it with mashed potatoes. My sister was born the next day. I think my sister was actually Dad’s best birthday present ever. Even if she was one day late.
Happy birthday sweetie! I know you’re having a good day today substituting for a band director in middle school. How cool is that! Didn’t we always want to be the leader of the band? Well, today, on your birthday, you get to actually do it! That has just got to be something that was meant to be. Have fun!
And I want to hear all about it tonight!
Happy Birthday Dad
Today is Dad’s 81st birthday. I was walking at the mall this morning and a smallish man was walking ahead of me, built quite a bit like Dad, baseball cap on, and if I squinted he could a sort of might have looked like Dad. But not really. Funny how I keep looking for him.
A week or so ago I was corresponding via email with the mother of a young woman named Channing who was killed in a crash a year ago. She was struggling at the one year anniversary with the fact that she felt worse now than she did at the time of the crash. She also said she felt bad that she had been “taking” and not giving anything back, as she knows we have suffered a similar loss. This is what I wrote back to her. I didn’t mean it to run on the ways it does, or get so philosophical, the words just came.
“I don’t think it’s unusual for it to be more difficult for some people after the first year. I think at first you’re running on adrenalin, getting through the first day, the first week, month, first holiday, first birthday without them. And sometimes you think that if you can survive the first year that it will all go away. But it doesn’t go away and that causes you to be even more depressed. Because you start to believe that you’re facing years and years and forever feeling just like you feel right now, and you feel pretty horrible right now. And the pain is so intense that sometimes you can’t breath and you can’t imagine not being able to breath for the rest of your life. And you feel hopeless and you want to crawl away somewhere and cry forever.
But I’m here to tell you that though the pain doesn’t go away entirely, it will eventually recede to a manageable level. I don’t know if the pain actually moves away or if we just learn how to manage it better. Your counseling sessions with your family, if led by someone you connect to, will help you learn, will give you hope, will teach you tools to make some days better. And then a few more days will be better. And someday you will laugh about something and you will be surprised because you don’t remember the last time you laughed. And then you will fee guilty. And than later on, maybe days or months, you will laugh again, maybe even at a memory of something Channing did, and you will realize that it’s alright to laugh. That you’re not dishonoring her by being happy. Her life is not discounted because you have moved beyond the pain. That making yourself stay in the pain is not going to bring her back, and that the way to honor her is to do good works, tell her story,and love her forever.
Someday you will be there, I promise. And then you will be able to take some newly injured family and hold them close to your heart and they will say, “we’re taking but we’re not giving.” And you will know that they are in fact giving, they are giving you the opportunity to do something good with your pain. And then you will have completed the circle. And Channing will smile.”
I tell you this, dear blog readers, not to tell my story all over again, because I’ve done that here many times, but to let you know how much I appreciate your patience when I head down this road again. Because it’s here that I can lay the pain and let some of it go. For whatever reason, if there is something sad hanging onto me and I put it down in writing it loses some of its hold. And though I know that it’s not fair to spread that pain among all of you, especially those I’ve never met and aren’t related to, it does help.
And so I thank you for reading and listening and caring and helping me remember my Dad. On his 81st birthday. Tonight.
Katie update
It’s been three weeks or so since we had the animal behaviorist in to tell us what to do with Katie’s idiosyncrasies. We’ve been keeping her off the furniture including the bed but we haven’t been very consistent with pulling Kleenex out of the box to desensitize her. It really takes two of us to do this and we just can’t seem to coordinate the training time. Even though neither of us has a real job at the moment.
So anyway, no more of this for Katie:
Or this:
Poor puppy.
Katie is so smart. She knew right away what the new rules were and after the first night really didn’t try to jump up on the bed often. At least not when we were looking. I came home once and watched through the window of the front door as she casually jumped off the sofa to greet me. So I’m not so naive as to think she follows the rules when we’re not around.
She has a big pillow bed in the living room that she flings herself down on and pouts on when she wants something that we won’t give her. Or when we tell her to get “OFF!” a chair on the few occasions she gives furniture another try in hopes that we’ve forgotten the rule. In the bedroom she has two bed pillows with one of my T shirts on top that she sleeps on. It’s right next to the bed and she goes there on her own, curls up and sighs when I go to sleep at night. Later in the night she migrates to the hallway floor and then back onto her pillows depending on her mood. But she won’t jump on the bed unless she’s scared about something; say the noise of her dad shoveling the driveway, or some carpenter guys banging away in the living room. She also has her crate, which she runs to when she thinks we’re getting ready to go anywhere scary. Like the vet or something. As we pick up car keys she slinks down the hall and into her crate where she will wait us out, not leaving it until she hears us walk out the door. It’s her super safe place and I won’t pull her out of there, even if I did want her to go with me. I take the time to entice her out because I don’t want her to feel she doesn’t have anywhere special to be safe.
Speaking of vets, Katie developed diarrhea last Saturday evening and by Monday when it had only gotten worse I called the vet. We got in on Tuesday morning and it turns out she has a bacterial virus. So for now she’s getting yogurt in with her food. And a daily antibacterial pill with a treat. She loves both! Today there was improvement in her stool, not normal, but a lot better. But the vet said no school this week, so we are missing a night of agility and a morning of rally. Oh well. She’s feeling better so that’s all that matters.
What a princess.
Avatar
We don’t get out that much but my husband and I went to see Avatar last night. It’s not my usual (romantic comedy) fare, but I thought we should see what all the buzz was about. And the chance to see something in 3D and on an IMAX big screen was too good to miss.
It’s a visually stunning film that just starts. None of the usual title scenes with the names of actors, no lion roaring at the beginning to tell you that the movie is about to begin. In fact I thought at first we were watching a trailer for some other movie. Because all the bits I’d seen on TV were of the blue Avatars and this was some sort of space craft with real actors. But eventually I figured out I was watching the feature film.
Many things in the movie reminded me (and my husband) of other events or movies. When the huge tree which had been their home came crashing down in flames after being attacked from the air, I saw horror in the Avatars’ eyes just like the horror in New Yorkers’ eyes when the twin towers fell. When they rode their horses into battle I saw just a bit of Brave Heart and when the old leader of the clan handed off his bow and arrow to his daughter as he lay dying I saw a piece of Lion King. My husband remarked after that some of it reminded him of the Custer’s last stand, when individual bands of Indians gathered together to fight.
It was a visually stunning film. But I knew I was going to be in trouble early on when the main characters ran and jumped and fell among the jungle and I felt the first twinges of motion sickness. I don’t know if it was the 3D or the IMAX experience, or maybe all that in combination with lots of flying off of cliffs and along waterfalls, but I was swallowing hard and staring at my feet, hand pressed against my mouth, silently counting how many laps I would have to climb over in a rush for the bathroom during most of the movie. And it’s a long movie.
In the end I listened to it with brief peeks from under my eyelashes. Nice music! I got the story, enjoyed what small pieces of it I got to see and would recommend anyone without a propensity to motion sickness to go see it.
And the rest of you? Maybe take a Dramamine first!
Change Is Hard 