How to Train Your Dragon

The wee one is coming along fine these days. She has been with us about three months now. She came to us at two years old, having already had a litter of pups, and unspayed. And untrained. She was a kennel dog, but had been well socialized with other dogs, people, and, thankfully, small children. This last was very important to me because of having my grand-children around. She is a natural with them and lets them hold her, squeeze her gently, and sit with them if they watch cartoons. She did not know how to climb stairs (up or down). She did not know what toys were, how to sit in a lap, or how to jump on a couch. All this, and she was not house-broken.

She's come along famously. Now she is the beloved dog of two people with nothing better to do (at least in her mind) than to play with her and love her. She has learned everything, including some regular doggie stuff like "sit" and "stay." Her goofy, troll-dolly face makes everyone smile and even my husband is not immune. Her name is Cricket, which I like, and I think it suits her. My husband calls her "Pickles" which is his special pet name for her.

If you have not seen this movie, "How to Train Your Dragon" I highly recommend it. I am categorically not an animated movie lover, so for me to recommend an animated film is really a stretch. But now that we have Cricket (aka Pickles) she really does look like the dragon in this film, albeit a much smaller version. Especially when she is playing like in this photo.

She never bites hard, so this is just play. With wild eyes.

How to Train my Dragon? The same as in the movie. With love, respect, occasional treats, repetition, and fun. She is one smart little cookie and she seems to like learning new skills.

I think it was Will Rogers who said, "If dogs don't go to heaven when they die, then when I die, I want to go where the dogs go."

Me, too.

Hair Cuts

Okay, remember this girl? Here she is in all her late fall glory, covered with apples. Don ate some of them while he was mowing the lawn, but most were wormy so we let the deer have them.
Now check her out.

Here she is, post hair cut. A tree trimmer, experienced in fruit tree trimming (or so we hoped) came out and chopped away. He cut most of the water spout growth from the top, thinned out the middle, and more or less gave her a Dorothy Hammil cut. Like a human, there were lots of trimmings on the floor afterwards. I thought he was going to clean this up like they do at the beauty parlor. But no.
I myself got a haircut this week. Not a Dorothy Hammil, though I've had one in my life. Don got a picture of a movie star and said, "You'd look cute in this hair cut." I showed it to the girl who cuts my hair and she said "sure, no problem" and off she went. A huge pile on the floor later, I have much shorter hair, too many layers, and my hair only looks okay if I spend half an hour styling it. Fortunately, like apple trees, my hair grows fast. By spring, she will be in full flower, and my hair will be back down to grazing my shoulders.
We are leaving to drive to Boston this week. I am so thrilled. February in Michigan is cold and wet and gloomy. Boston may be no better, but seeing the smiles on my grand-daughter's face will lighten my heart. Cricket must go to the kennel for the week. Having managed to completely spoil her in the two months we've had her, I was so worried about leaving her. But this morning we stopped by the vet for a kennel cough vaccination and flea control and the women at the vet ooh-ed and aah-ed over her and picked her up and cuddled her and said, "We can't WAIT until Cricket comes next week." So. Worry over.
My mind is jumping all over the place this morning. Hard to keep thoughts in order. I had Don bring up hamburger, tomatoes, onions and peppers from the basement and I need to get the chili started. Cricket is snoring on the couch. I just finished reading "Profiles in Courage" by John F. Kennedy. At first I thought it was mis-titled. I would have called it "Profiles of Early American Politicians." But of course then no one would have read it. None of the profiles fit my definition of courage. But then later, thinking it over, I realized it's precisely what's lacking in politicians today. None of them have the courage to stand up and say what they believe in. None of them have the courage of their convictions. They just say, "Elect me. Things will get better." Uh huh. But how? What will you do? What will you not do? These are the questions that plague me because I got up at 4:30 this morning.

Groundhog Day

I thought it would never be February. And yet here it is. Somewhere in this country, many places in fact, crabby, anxious little biting furry animals are being dragged from their warm holes to see if they cast a shadow. This happens most notably in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania where Punxsutawney Phil is hauled unceremoniously from his den while being filmed for everyone to watch. Of course the original Punxsutawney Phil perished many years ago and we are, I believe, on our 31st groundhog with that same name. Males and females.

I don't know if they cast a shadow it means 6 more weeks of winter, or if they don't cast a shadow it means 6 more weeks of winter. But either way, I can tell you from experience, at the first week in February, we will certainly have at least six more weeks of winter. This is not rocket science. This is calendar reading.  Similar to what doctors do when they give you a "due date" for a baby. They say, "When do you think you think you last had sex?" Then they get out a calendar and count to 40 and hey, presto, you have a due date. This part does not take four years of medical school.

We do not have a ground hog. We have Phil. Here he is. Isn't he glorious?

Phil the Pheasant comes every day to our bird feeders now. Here he is by the rocks near the driveway, cautiously picking his way to the feeders. He stays for an hour or more and gorges his way to health and happiness. The one day I didn't realize he was there, I let Cricket out and she ran faster than I believed possible for a girl of her size. Phil can't take off suddenly like smaller birds, so he ran like  Roadrunner for a few wild steps, leaving a beautiful tail feather-shaped pattern in the snow before he got airborne.

Have I put in a picture of our house yet? I don't think so. Here is what it looks like this time of year. In the front you can see the small tree close to the house. This is where all the bird feeders are. Where Phil eats every day.

Ah, my 140 year old house. It looks so innocent here, doesn't it? All dusted with powdered sugar snow, the flag floating in a light wind, surrounded by maple trees hundreds of years old. Trust me, the house is not so innocent. She harbors all manner of tricks. Critters such as Phil are wonderful outside. But when they come inside it's different. I still won't go down in the basement. Two months ago, Don shot a snake down there. With a BB gun of all things! (Don had the BB gun, not the snake, but these days you never know.) Afterwards he had to DEAL with the thing. Dear God. So can you blame me? If spring ever comes, we are going to go all around outside the house plugging holes where the mice get in. Because this is how it starts. First the mice, then.... 

But as I say, spring is at least six weeks off.  No matter if you have a ground hog or a pheasant.

January 24, 2012

January 24th already. Can it be that we've been here for almost a year already? Hard to imagine. It is gray, gray, gray and cloudy, alternating between rain and snow every other day. The worst. The gray weather doesn't do much for my mid-January mood. I have been reflecting today on loss. It's not in my basic nature to be moody, but today seems the perfect day for it. 2011 alone brought a lot of loss in my life. Starting with these two.

These were our babies. Boomer, my big black lab. A perfect prince of a dog. I suppose everyone says that, but he in fact was a prince. The little one is Poppy, a little girl who never did a thing wrong in her entire short life. (Boomer did lots of unruly stuff early on in his life, but we always forgave him for it.) A freak series of unrelated events happened. Poppy got very sick with an apparently incurable wasting disease. She also had a torn cruciate ligament which we were going to have fixed, but she was too ill to withstand the surgery. At the same time, in a romp with another dog, Boomer tore his ACL and his meniscus ligaments in the same knee. Born with OCD (osteo-chondroitin dessicans) he never had good joints to begin with and had had a lifetime of pain relievers and laser treatments and discomfort in his joints. So one day, one terrible day, they left us together. They had been together since they were puppies, so perhaps it was meant to be. At least I had the comfort of knowing they were together. Boomer was only 8, Poppy only 7.

Then my daughter and her husband moved away to Boston and took their daughter, my grand-daughter, with them. I was there when she was born. We had taken care of her since she was born and we were used to seeing her at least twice a week. And I often saw my daughter despite her busy schedule. I missed them in an ache that didn't go away.

Want to know a hard part about growing older? You have to completely readjust how you interact, even how you love, your grown children. In their thirties now, my children are married and each have a child of their own. For me, grand-mother-hood is this completely bi-polar experience of utter joy and then lonliness. And loss. They come, they smile, they hold your hand, you giggle together, plan fairy gardens for summer, and then just when you are at your happiest -- they go back home. It takes your breath away. At least it takes my breath away.

Want to know another hard thing about growing older? When you put make-up on in the mirror, you tend to put it on in sections. Just a left eye. Just an upper lip. "Not so bad for 60," you think, glancing at yourself in sections. But then when you see yourself in photographs, and there is the whole face, you think, "My God, who IS that wrinkly, old woman?" Loss of skin suppleness.

Some other losses in the past year as well. But I won't dwell on them here. As I write, Cricket is asleep on the back of the couch where she can keep close watch on me. She brings smiles on this otherwise gray day.

Winter begins in earnest...

Well here we are, Christmas is over, New Year's Eve passed without any comment, and it is January 4th already. My son and his wife and child arrived for Christmas. It was wonderful having them here. They are already gone now that I am writing this and it seems like a whirlwind. The one fairly nice day, we drove over to the bird sanctuary and fed the swans.

They are domesticated, not tame, but they come quickly waddling up for bread or crackers. I was glad I had gloves on because they sort of clap their bill shut over the bread and if your finger is in there that gets clapped, too. But it was magical having these great creatures be so close and take food from your hand. Two days before this, I was outside with Cricket. We heard this strange, rhythmic noise coming closer and closer. As it came overhead we looked up and saw two Whistling Swans flying over the farm, beating their great wings in complete synchronization and making this strange, wonderful noise. I don't think the swans at the bird sanctuary are the whistling type but they were fun to look at and feed.

The next day a neighbor came by and Don, Matt, our neighbor Bob and I stacked three cords of wood by the wood stove. Here I was missing the garden and thinking the work at the farm was over until next Spring. Not. The wood had been delivered a week or so ago and sat in huge, ugly piles on the lawn. Turns out, stacking three cords of wood can get you pretty warmed up, even on a cold winter's day. It was wonderful having my son home to help. See the wood stove on the left hand side of the picture? That small, green thing? It sits behind the summer house and we keep it going 24 hours a day, stoking it every 12 hours. We figure it will cost us about $700 to heat the house for the entire winter with wood. And this is far less than using propane in the tank. Besides, it is "good work" as my husband says, and he enjoys heading out there twice a day to feed the beast.

It's comin' on Christmas...

It is the Sunday before Christmas. The house is decorated. My 2-year-old grand-daughter is coming all the way from Los Angeles to visit us and I want the place to look like Macy's. I want to see that Christmas magic in her eyes. Even if only for a minute or two when she first gets here.
We don't have much snow. I'm still hoping for a White Christmas this year for my Los Angelinos. But we've had little cold weather here. Hardly any snow. I think it will be a short winter. My husband is anxious to rev up his 54" snow blower on the front of his John Deere. But so far it's only been a few inches here and there. Not enough to bring out the great Green and Yellow Beast.

Here is a picture of our big red barn. It was built in 1870. The siding is new, as is the roof, but inside there are hand-hewn timbers and very old floors. The lower level is where dairy cows were once kept. The previous owners had cats and when we bought the place the lower level smelled like cat pee. But a summer with fresh breezes the the doors open have dispelled the odors. I think of black and white Holsteins down there getting milked. Once this was a thriving farm with dairy cows, cattle, chickens and even pigs. There is a huge cement pad over in the corner of the property and it has an odd circle in the middle of it. I finally found a woman, my age now, but who grew up here. She said it was the pig barn and the circle in the middle was a corn crib that all the pigs from the four different pens could reach it. But now it is just our vegetable farm. And, I hope, in the Spring, a flower farm.
Meantime, I have put a wish into the universe. Two wishes actually. Don and I were sitting around the other night having a glass of wine. I got to wishing out loud and wished for "one more adventure" and "one more baby." This is because all my children and grand-children live far away and I miss them. My friend Pagyn would say you must be very careful about the wishes you cast adrift in the Universe.

Here I am with my new baby. Her name is Cricket. She is a two-year-old pug. She is zany, crazy love. We are thrilled to have her. After two years as a kennel dog and one litter of pups, she is more than thrilled to be the small darling of two people with nothing better to do than to pet her and coddle her. She has kennel manners and will need to be spayed, but all in good time.
And the adventure? Well the adventure is yet to come. Often nervous about the future, I have decided to embrace it sight unseen this time. Sometimes I get glimpses of the future but at the moment it is merely the man behind the Green Curtain. So with Christmas only a week away, I'll just click my red sequined shoes together and say, "There's no place like home."

November 26, 2011

It is the week after Thanksgiving. My older sister came for Thanksgiving day. She brought her dogs with her, two Corgi's, which were well-behaved and made me want a dog. I am trying to hold off until Spring, but I am still checking both Rottweiler rescue and Pug rescue. Because I am pretty much insane.

This is a picture of me that my husband Don took about a week ago. No make-up, still recovering from a 3-week bout of some pulmonary something-or-other, and I see I have many wrinkles these days. It is because I try to laugh a lot and because I am 60.

This is a week of contemplation and quiet. Most everyone else is standing in line somewhere in front of Wal-Mart or Target or Best Buy. But I don't like shopping and can't stand crowds. So I'm staying home, finishing up the last of the Christmas decorating. Frankly just the thought of shopping in pushing or shoving crowds makes my eyes roll back up in my head. I saw all of that on the news this morning. No thanks.

Don and I are planning a round of trips to keep us busy over the winter. California, Texas, Florida -- all good places to visit in February and March.

It is supposed to snow again tomorrow and our weather man said this morning, that this morning would be our last nice day of the year. Nice being a relative term for most people. But it's in the high 40's and cloudy. The two small lakes you can see from the house are quiet and gray today. But when the sun is out, you can see them sparkle and dance from the living room windows. Am I falling in love with this property? Yes. Some. It grows on you. All the beautiful maples trees and the gentle roll of the land here is wonderful to look at. The birds are frantically at work at the feeders and a black squirrel, who grows larger and fatter every day, comes once a day to jam his jowls with black sunflower seeds. Wildlife abounds here. We have even read newspaper accounts of black bear in this county.

I am hoping to see a red fox one day soon. I imagine him loping across the white snow, black-tipped ears, on the hunt or perhaps just heading over to the lake to catch a large frog for a quick meal.