This newest retirement adventure is another one I could really have done without.  My little dog, Jessie, is very ill.  She has a mass growth on her liver and her kidneys are not working properly either.  We decided not to make her go through an extensive biopsy to determine if this is cancer or what.  She is 13 years old and has been going downhill for the past year.  The last month has been just terrible for her.  She refuses to eat.  She still drinks her water (way too much) and goes outside to potty but she sleeps and shakes most of the day and night.

I have been force feeding her the medication the doctor gave her for nausea, liver and a hormone.  She hates it but swallows like a good girl.  I see that that stays down and then I forced feed her some baby food and a syringe of water.

She shakes terribly and I know she is in pain from her little squinty eyes.  My heart just aches for her.

I read an article today on line about when to decide it is time to put your dog down.  It said to make a list of the things your dog loves.  My list was:

1.    She likes to eat.

2.    She likes to play.

3.    She likes to take rides in the truck.

4.    She likes to get tummy rubs

5.    She likes to get ear rubs.

6.    She likes to lay and sleep in the sun.

When you get down to half the list you must decide. I am down to numbers 4 and 5.  On the other hand she is being force fed her meds and her food.  She is in obvious pain.

I can’t even hold her any longer because she is so uncomfortable.  I just lie next to her on the steps and pet her ears and tell her that she is the best dog in the world.  She sometimes opens her eyes and looks at me in the most pitiful way.

I don’t want to let me little girl go but I think I must.  We will no longer go on long truck rides and bark at the cows and horses.  We will no longer go to the campground or into the woods and walk and chase the gophers and see the deer.  We won’t be walking across the dam with the wind blowing at our faces.  We will no longer be chasing the ball or playing with the chew toys.

The hubster and I have just discussed it and we will wait until Monday to see if there is any change.  If not then we will request a pill for her to take at home while we hold her.

My heart is breaking, his heart is breaking.  Her little heart has already been broken.

Today is a very difficult day for me.  First of all, I don’t feel very well.  My throat is sore, my sinuses are irritated and I keep coughing.  And second of all, my little dog is hurting and I cannot do anything for her.

I just made a call to the vet and am waiting for her to call me back.  We have decided because of her age (13) we are not going to put her through the stress of being knocked out, cut apart and then waking up to be in a cage surrounded by other dogs, who she does not get along with, and would probably be so irritated.  We are going to get her some drugs and make her as comfortable as possible and hold her and pet her and tell her what a good dog she is.

I just hope that she will be able to eat something and keep it down.  What a Jewish mother I am.

My friend told me once that when I adopted Jessie, she won the lottery.  We have spoiled that little girl to death, literally.  She had bladder stones when she came to us and it cost a small fortune for her surgery.  She was worth every penny.

We have had so many memorable walks together.  She still looks at me around 4:00 each day like she is ready to go outside and walk.

The worst thing she has ever done since she has been here was to eat one of my lipsticks.  I looked down at her and her mouth was covered with this bright red and I thought for certain she was bleeding to death.  When I reached down to look closer I discovered one of my lipsticks chewed to pieces.  And that is the worst thing she has ever done.  Bless her heart.

Since I have had her she has only puked once.  And now she is puking every day.

I just talked to the vet and I am going up to pick up medication for Jessie.  I haven’t even cried.  I just feel numb.

My newest retirement adventure is all about mucus and dog puke.  This started a while back when I noticed that I was taking an allergy pill most every day.  Then I woke up with a sore throat.  Now I am using the netty pot every morning.  I picked up some Musinex at the drug store yesterday.

Now the worst part of the deal is that my little Jessie dog is ill also.  She started when she lost a toenail outside in the snow.  She came in bleeding all over the kitchen floor.  I got the bleeding stopped by holding her paw and the hubster counted off three minutes.  It was just a nail and we were so relieved.  Unfortunately, she started walking oddly to accommodate the foot that lost the nail and her arthritis kicked in.

She started refusing her dog food.  Then she refused the treats that I make for her and which she loves.  She refused milk bones.  Now she refuses her medication and the Dasuquin that I give her for the arthritis.

I finally broke down and scrambled and egg.  She did eat a few bites.  Last night I made chili and I gave her a few pieces of cooked ground beef which she ate but refused the rest that I put in her bowl.  I made her homemade dog food using a can of tuna and some veggies and wild rice.  She ate that a couple of times.

I am wit’s end.  Any suggestions out there?

I took her to the vet and he gave me arthritis medication for her and she got worse.  Now she is not eating at all.   But she is drinking copious amounts of water and barfing.  I have had this dog for almost 8 years and in that time she has puked only once.

So I am upstairs on the computer and I hear her retching.  I run down to clean it up and my nose kicks in.  I am trying to clean up dog puke and my nose is running down into it.

Yes, I have a husband but he has this problem.  If someone pukes and he is around, he has to puke also.

And so my adventure in mucus and dog puke is going pretty well.  I just got an appointment to take her back to the vet. Perhaps the vet will give me something for my snot nose.

Oh and to top it all off, I had my teeth cleaned last week (good check-up) and my tmj has kicked in and I can hardly open my mouth.  I can’t even open it enough to see if my throat is red or swollen.

I Got a Library Card!

I drove to Pecatonica recently to get some prescriptions filled.  While they were doing that I went to the library.  I discovered to my amazement that I could get a library card for only $50.00.  I was ecstatic!  I purchased the card and went and picked up the prescriptions.

When I got home I immediately went to my computer and surfed the Pec Library site.  Sure enough they had the gardening book that was the next on my list for my Book Club.  It was The Writer’s Garden: How Gardens Imspired our best loved authors by Jackie Bennet and Richard Hanson.  It was a huge book with lots of lovely photos of the gardens of Virginia Wolfe, Sir Winston Churchill and many others.

As this book was quite expensive I figured I had already saved myself $50.00. 

Yesterday I picked up the next book, The Roots of My Obsession: Thirty great gardeners reveal why they garden by Thomas C. Cooper.  I’ve already started it and it is very interesting.

My girlfriend, Ellie, suggested a book for me – Still Life with Bread Crumbs.  I just ordered it from the library.  Oh this adventure is going to be such fun.  I have a humungous list of books that I want to read.  It includes: Outside the Lines, The Peach Keeper, Everything I Never Told You, The Woman with Seven Names.

There are so many books and so little time.  One book at a time.

Photo is the day Garnet and I made our audition tapes for the movies.  Me reading my script.  Cereal box, ketchup bottle, junk mail, pill bottles and more.  I ready just about everything.

Never forget.

I was reading on FB about a lady that had predicted the September 11 events.  And other predictions that she made before her death.  It was pretty scary.

I wanted to share a dream I had the week before the bombing of the twin towers.

September 8, 2001

I had a most disturbing dream.  I dreamed I was at a party and Kim Clark and I wandered outside.  There was a beautiful garden and I noticed that there were fish swimming in the air around the garden bed and I thought what a beautiful thing to be in a garden.  I hear airplanes overhead and I looked up.  Airplanes were crossing over the sky and crashing.  They just kept on and on until there was a pile of wreckage.

Kim decided to go back to the party and I told her not to go.  I was afraid.  I looked up and there was a skyscraper and I screamed, “it is going to fall.  The building is going to fall.”  I rushed inside to warn my friends.

When I awoke I told Rick of my dream.

This happened the Saturday before September 11.  When I called Rick that day he said to me, “nice dream!”

The photo is my friend Kim Clark who died at age 39 from cancer.  I miss her so much.

Four grunts, an indignant voice asking why nobody could leave a hat alone, a slammed door, and Mr. Packington had departed to catch the eight-forty-five to the city.  This was the second time this week that someone had taken his hat and left theirs.  Could they not tell the difference in the feel, the smell, the fit of the hat?  He would have worn the other hat but it just did not feel right and it smelled of some kind of foo foo men’s cologne.

He was picking Maude up at 9 for dinner at her favorite Italian restaurant.  He was looking forward to some Ribollita and a lasagna.

Mr. Packington noticed that the bus was not especially full tonight.  That was a relief.  He dreaded those thugs that just sit there and stare at you like they want to eat your liver and with those pants down past their ass crack.  What are they thinking these days?

He had decided to close his eyes for a little bit when someone kicked his foot.  Looking up he connected with the eyes of a stranger.

“Give me your wallet,” the stranger said.

He had his hand in his pocket as if to insinuate that he was packing a gun or knife or some kind of weapon.

“You have got to be kidding me!”  said Mr. Packington with astonishment.  “We are on a public bus, buddy.”

“I’m not your fucking buddy and I want you to give me your wallet,” the stranger said surprisingly calm.

Mr. Packington looked around the bus for anyone to notice what was happening.  There seemed to be someone in the very front all hunkered down in their seat.

“Help me.  This man is trying to rob me,” he cried to the front of the bus.

“No one is going to help you so you might as well give me your wallet.”

“Can I just give you the money and let me keep my wallet?”

“Hell no.  I want the cards, the money, the photo of your woman and the spare condom you probably keep in your wallet.”

Mr. Packington realized that he had no choice.  God, tomorrow was going to be hell.  Oh, no, he would have to ask Maude to pay for their dinner and his bus ticket back.

He handed the wallet to the stranger reluctantly.  The stranger grabbed it from his hand.  He sauntered to the front of the bus and pulled the cord for the bus to stop.  He had the wallet in his hands looking it over and was not watching what he was doing.

As the doors of the bus opened, a hand shot out from the front seat and the wallet was grabbed.  A foot stretched out and kicked the stranger out the door.  The door closed and the bus took off.

A thug with a smurky look walked back to Mr. Packington.  He had on pants that fell below his ass crack.  He had a tattoo on his neck and on the hand carrying the wallet.

“Did you lose something?” the thug passed the wallet from hand to hand.

Mr. Packington swallowed before he spoke.  “Yes I did.  Will you please return it?”

The thug handed the wallet to Mr. Packington and Mr. Packington opened it and took out a twenty.  “Here, thank you so much.”

The thug shrugged his shoulders, “No man.  That is not why I did it.  I’m just helping out my fellow man.  You keep your money.  Next time you see someone in need, help them out, will you?”

Mr. Packington could not have been more amazed.  Here was a poster boy for all the thugs in this town and he had just done a good deed.  “I guess I must be wrong.” Mr. Packington thought to himself.

Mr. Packington walked to the front of the bus and sat down next to the thug.  He stuck out his hand and said, “My name is George Packington and I would like to know your name.”

“The name is Nelson.”

They shook hands and Mr. Packington set out to have a conversation with Nelson.  He discovered that Nelson worked as a butcher over at the grocery store near downtown.  He was going there now to put in a night shift.  He had a wife and two daughters and a newborn son.  He was Baptist, sang in the choir, and secretly wanted to buy a Harley Davidson but doubted he ever would.

Mr. Packington told Nelson that he was a semi-retired lawyer and a widower.  He had a girlfriend downtown and they were going out for Italian food tonight.  He also told him about his three grown children and the dog he had to put down about six month prior.

The bus came to a stop and the driver pointed out to Mr. Packington that it was his stop.

Mr. Packington shook hands again with Nelson and left the bus a better man.  And the next time someone was in need, he helped them.

This was a writing prompt for the day.  I was to choose a book and use the first sentence to write a story.  Thanks to Agatha Christie's Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective which I have not read in a very long time.

Photo is Baja, Mexico where we went for my younger daugher's wedding.  I wish I was there right now.

Be Here Now

I had a very interesting Yoga/Pilates/Qi Gong session this morning.  I woke up around 1:45 after a stress dream.  I was trying to block out the next door neighbors drunken card party and couldn’t get the windows to close or the blinds to shut.  Why am I having stress dreams when I am retired without a care in the world?

I read for an hour in my The Time Traveller’s Wife, which is turning out to be a tremendous read.  Last night they were playing a game they made up called Modern Capitalist Mind Fuck and I was chuckling in bed reading at 2:00 in the morning.

I turned off the light at 3ish and could not shut my mind up.  Everything from singing “Sky Rockets in Flight” to remembering a date I had in college and he never called me again.

I finally got up around 4 and put on my yoga outfit.  I did my stretches and yoga postures, some Pilates and then did my Qi Gong.  I then sat upon my sit upon to do Zazen.  I try to calm my mind and count to ten over and over while breathing deeply.  My mind will not shut up no matter what I do.  I came to the realization that the reason I love my morning yoga session so much is because I do not think.  I am being here in the now and that is why I love it so.

I read the book Be Here Now many years ago.  It is by Babba Ram Dass and I highly recommend it.  I have often meditated to “be here now” but the thought that the moment has already passed as soon as I think it comes into my mind and I can’t even settle down with that .

I got up and did another Qi Gong movement and noticed again that my mind was at peace.  I was thinking of my count (she says we should do nine sets of each movement) and I am thinking, “slow down, slow down.”  I did not have a bad memory or song enter  into my head but just beautiful peace and contentment.

I got up and put my jammies back on and climbed back into bed and I am thinking that God should have put a light switch on our bodies so when we laid down to sleep we could just flip the switch and off we would go into blissful, peaceful, blessed sleep.  (I am sure the hubster has one of these switches but he won’t share where he keeps it.)

If there is anyone out there who knows where God put this light switch (I guess it would be an on and off brain switch) please let me know.

Namaste.

The photo is a room at the Anderson Japanese Garden in Rockford, Illinois where I would like to do my yoga session someday.