My New Greenhouse

For the last couple of days I have been with my SO at deer camp. We took the RV out there, so the accommodations are better than at your normal deer camp. And this week the food is better because I've been doing a lot of the cooking. We've had some actual vegetables, which the SO's son commented on last night, with appreciation. But today I had to get back home to be here for FedEx to deliver my greenhouse. I can't wait to put it up.

The people who lived here before us raised dogs. Our neighbor told us they were bulldogs. So there is a dog pen and exercise yard out on the north side of the house, against the high game fence that surrounds the next door ranch. We've been keeping the riding lawn mower out there, and using part of it as a storage building. My SO took down the wire fence around the exercise yard and plans to expand his garden this spring. On the other side of the tin shed is a concrete pad that also had a wire fence around it, and the SO has removed that fence as well. The greenhouse will go on the concrete pad.

Last week, when it rained so hard, we went out there several times to make sure that concrete pad drained well, and it does. Within a few minutes, all the water was gone off the concrete, so I think water from the greenhouse will also drain. And out here in the country, I would much rather have a greenhouse on concrete than attached to the ground where snakes and other creepies can find their way inside. I'm sure we'll have some of that even with the concrete foundation, but maybe it will be less. And I know it won't be as muddy. Now, I want a composter so we can make our own soil. We have a compost pile, but a real composter does a much better job.

It's going to be nice to have a place to put up all the hanging baskets and small foilage plants for winter, and also it will be good to be able to take cuttings and start seeds. Daddy is probably more excited about the greenhouse than I am -- a good excuse for him to come over, and he does love to grow vegetables from seeds.

This greenhouse comes complete with shelving, a heater, and an exhaust fan, plus it has hard sides so you don't have to change out the plastic every couple of years. The concrete pad has a good cover of shade trees, and we may not even need shade cloth in summer, although I have a big piece of it in case we do. There are also some T-posts that are already embedded in the concrete, I suppose for the former owners to cross fence little dog runs, but we'll use them as tie downs, to help secure the greenhouse so it doesn't blow away in our high winter winds. But it's made of aluminum framing, so I think it will be sturdier than the PVC greenhouses I've had before.

Anyway, it will be a big day-long project putting it together. Might try it on Thanksgiving, or the day after. The weather is getting colder so I'm in a kind of hurry to get it done. I have a lot of money and time invested in potted plants and foliage basket. Some of these plants are 15 or more years old, and have flourished out under this motte of oak trees we live beneath.

Of course, the next thing I'm going to want, although I haven't mentioned this to my SO yet, is a walkway from the house to the greenhouse. But I've been known to built a stone walk all by myself, and can do it again if he balks too much. I'll have to sink it low enough so the lawn mower can go right over it. But that's not impossible either. I love it so much here, and have so many ideas for making it even more magical than it already is. In so many ways, it's the home I've always wanted.

Feathering my nest, I guess.

Onward ....

Sunday Morning

Foggy morning -- and still -- as I walk to get the paper. A crystalline spider web trembles on the gate. Dewdrops glisten on the delicate strands as the gate opens on its automatic hinge. The dog is in heaven, bounding through the wet grass. It’s cool for us. Forty-eight degrees. Deer apparitions move in the fog down the road. By the well house, the cat slurps from the ground birdbath. Have to keep that clean now that he’s decided it’s his watering trough. Everything is damp from the recent rains.

Another huge spider web hangs attached to the electric wire leading to the barn. The spider is a black dot in the center. Mysterious creatures. In a while the web will be gone, once the wind picks up. Spiders consume their own silk and spin it out again in the night. A cow across the fence bellows and the cat runs in through the open sliding door. Scaredy cat. He meows at me to come in, too. He must think I’m in danger.

The mustang grape I thought was a casualty of the long summer’s drought has a few green leaves appearing. Wrong time of year but the vine must not know that yet The other grape vine flourishes on the inside fence. Freesia shoots are starting to push through the earth in the south-facing bed. Wrong time again, but I hope they’ll make it through the winter. I take down the hummingbird feeders. Birds are long gone, leaving the remains of nectar for the yellow jackets. The SO’s mother says the wasps are beneficial. They eat aphids and web worms. She’s probably right but I don’t like seeing the greedy things feasting on the red juice that was meant for the tiny birds.

I call my SO outside to see the huge web on the high wire. He’s as interested as I am in such things. The black dog darts past us, pretending she’s a real shepherd. She ducks her head and charges at the cows across the fence. A comedian. Back inside, she gets her Sunday bone. The cat finds a Christmas catalog on the floor and settles himself down for his first nap. My SO takes the newspaper to his easy chair, and I turn on the computer to write this down, sipping my coffee.

Ah Sunday morning, home .... nothing like it.

Onward ......

"Buy a Ticket"

Been thinking today about my continuing good luck in life, and with a little bit of awe and a little bit of realism. I had a happy childhood, was reasonably good in school, had lots of friends, gave birth to two healthy children, finally met my soulmate when I was 54, and have succeeded in almost everything I tried, except I never could learn to play the guitar well and have always envied people with a musical talent. I get along with most people I meet; I'm adaptable. I never won any big important awards, or hit a gambling jackpot, but I never have shied from sticking my neck out. There have even been times when I've been a little audacious.

When I started seriously writing I had no idea what I was charging headlong into. My 8 to 5 job had nearly ground to a halt. My kids needed less but they liked for me to be home. I liked being at home. We were thinking of moving. So I quit my job. I wanted to write. All my life I'd been a heavy reader, and I had grown disgruntled with fiction I selected. I remember clearly thinking one day at the end of an atrocious paperback novel, "I know I can write better than this." And so I decided to try it.

What I quickly found out was this -- it was hard! Everything I put down on paper sounded like a third grade creative exercise. It was not easy to say what I wanted to say, to say it clearly, to make sense of anything. I wasn't even sure what the hell it was I was trying to say, or meant to say. But it challenged me. I wrote my first novel, from start to finish, in four weeks. I gave it to my brother. He'd come to stay a weekend with us. He had a degree in screenwriting. He was the perfect first reader. He made it through about 10 pages, and said, "Well, it's not ready for publication."

I was crushed. I threw out that manuscript and started a new one. This time I took a whole three months, start to finish, and gave it to my best friend to read. She was so patient, sat there reading with me staring at her, waiting to see her reactions, and they disappointed me. She didn't laugh when I thought she would, and she didn't cry at the end like she was supposed to. She smiled at me as she turned over the last page. "It's good," she said.

What?! Good! That's it? Just good? Well, that was not enough, hardly the words I was longing to hear. I chunked that novel in the back of the closet with the other one, and decided to write short stories. I wrote. And wrote. I sent them off with SASE's inside manila envelopes. I got back form rejection letters. I pasted up corkboard squares in my office, and thumbtacked the rejections up there as they came in. I nearly covered the whole room with rejection letters. And then, one day, a little handwritten note was at the bottom of one of the rejections. It said, "Try us again."

Wow! I stared at the words. A thrill went through me. Somebody had actually read the story. I could even sort of tell that the corners of the pages were bent. And they liked it enough to tell me to try again. This was real progress!

One thing that was happening as I created this storm of stories and their accompanying rejection letters is that I was beginning to reread each one as it came back, imagining myself as the first reader. And each time I did that, I changed a little something, tweeked a word or two, moved a paragraph around, cut a sentence. Slowly, so so slowly, I was learning to rewrite. And what began also to happen was more and more of those rejection letters started coming back with little handwritten notes: "Too slow to develop." "Character lacks motivation." "The ending is too abrupt." All of these little bits of feedback helped me find my way to the story that finally, after I had already almost forgotten about it, convinced an editor to publish it, and to pay for the privilege. A whole $40. For days I walked on air.

After that first story acceptance, things began to happen a little faster. I was still awash in rejection letters, but every now and then, just often enough to keep my level of encouragement high, an editor would find something of merit in a story I had sent, and it would be published. These were obscure publications, with names like "High Plains Literary Review," "The Gettysburg Review," "Crosscurrents Magazine," what is called, grouping them all in a category, Quarterlies.

When I finally wrote a novel worthy of publication, it was these Quarterly publications listed in my cover letter that got my manuscript out of the slush pile. My editor was familiar with some of them through her work editing the Best American Short Story series for Norton. She told me this later, after she had offered me a contract for the novel that would eventually be called LILY.

So is that luck? In some ways, I think yes. But I also do believe that we make our own luck. I believe if a person sits on a chair out in the middle of a field wishing for luck to strike them they will go through life disappointed. It's like the old joke about the man who prays for God to let him win the lottery, week after week, prays again and again to win the lottery until finally God speaks from on high and says, "Buy a ticket."

You've got to buy that ticket. And you've got to keep on buying.

Onward ....

Boots & Shoes

How many pairs of shoes does it take to make a woman happy? That’s the question on my mind today. I’ve been on a spree this week, ordering online, mall shopping, and now am down in the Valley with my SO buying boots. Well, he’s working. I’m the one buying.

He’s a manufacturer’s rep for a boot company that’s located in the Rio Grand Valley, and we’re down here because he needs to stop in at the factory once or twice a year to visit, see what’s in production, what’s in store in the way of advertisement, and because their big trade show in on the horizon in Denver.

While he was working, I went into the retail outlet store at the front of the factory, and found two pairs of boots I couldn’t live without. Then while we were walking through the factory, found another pair I couldn’t live without. The manager measured my foot, and put in the order for me. These are the nicest people you could ever want to meet, always make me feel welcome. In fact, the manager and his wife are actually fans of my LILY novels, so he always asks about what I’m working on.

Truthfully, he seemed less than enthusiastic about my children’s book when I mentioned it, but then the average person doesn’t understand how much time and work a whole big novel takes, and it’s only right that they shouldn’t know or care. It’s the writer’s job to make it look effortless.

I’ve brought the laptop along on this trip, just to see if I can work and play at the same time. Doesn’t seem to be going too well. Last night we had dinner with my aunt and uncle who live down here. I haven’t seen them in a year and the two hours we spent with them flew by in a welter of conversation and laughter. They seemed to have the grandest time telling my SO all about me as a child, which I secretly liked but sort of felt sorry for him, too. But he sat there smiling, looking handsome, and making little comments now and then.

We’re going to spend tonight at the Coast on our way home, sort of break up the trip a little. He’ll get up tomorrow morning and call on some more customers, and I will stay with the dog and try to work some more on the children’s book.

I really wanted to have it done by now, and there’s no reason in the world that I shouldn’t have except that I’ve just been too busy having fun, visiting friends, seeing plays, going to dinner, etc. I am ready to be home for a few days, though. I do better at home, although my office situation is less than optimum. I probably need to figure out some other arrangement. I’ve thought about a small desk for the guest room. I’m not sure yet, and can’t bring myself to completely convert it to a working space, but it’s actually the perfect solution, separated as it is from the rest of the house.

It’s just so hard to retreat into self-imposed exile. But that is absolutely what has to happen if a writer actually hopes to write. Or anyway, it’s what a writer like me, who is so easily distracted, has to do if I want to be productive again. And yet, I think there’s this part of me that feels I have to chose between living a REAL life and writing a PRETEND one, and I balk at that. I don’t want to sequester myself away from the world right now. Do I really have to? I just don’t know the answer to that yet.

Onward....

The Gamble of Life

Life is unpredictable. And at my age, it's also a gamble. I find myself at a stage where I'm having to make decisions now about my future security. It can be something as simple as deciding whether to take a weekend trip. Or whether to stick away the money a trip would cost for later years. I have one decade to save for retirement, and I haven't done much in that direction so far. I waffle back and forth between having it all now, taking trips while I'm still young enough to enjoy them, or pinching my pennies and socking it away for my elderly years.

Here's the rub: What if my elderly years don't come? Who knows what will happen between now and then? My mother socked it away, she took trips, too, but she invested her money and had all the retirement programs that came with her job. She did all the essentials financial advisers tell you to do, and what happened? She died at 64. I think about Mother a lot when I start thinking about financial security. She was disappointed that she had worked so many years and would never even collect on her Social Security. She mentioned it to me, in her last weeks before lung cancer finally took her. She said it was the thing that made her the angriest about dying, all that careful planning, basically for nothing.

My SO also has a sort of laissez-faire philosophy about retirement, and he's closer to it than I am. But he has also had his cancer-death scare, and feels reluctant to deny himself anything because of it. He says when you're lying there, the radiation mask over your face, you make all sorts of resolutions about things you're going to do, if you can just make it through one more week of treatment, if you can just beat the disease. And I do see the senselessness of saving for the future if that future never comes.

We had friends over last night. This is the friend who went into a coma after knee surgery. He's so much improved, but his ordeal is clearly marked on his face. And he still has moments of confusion. He's not ready to resume life as it was, not quite yet. He, to me, is the poster child for the slender thread we walk in life.

I bought a greenhouse kit. It's supposed to arrived via FedEx the middle of next week. My sweetheart is dreading the prospect, but he's so patient with me and my tangents. He seems to always want to make me happy. I can't believe how I lucked out finding such an affectionate and caring man. The gamble of life again, I guess. Anyway, I need someplace to put all my established foliage plants, and it will be fun to start seeds there, maybe take cuttings again. I enjoy growing things from cuttings, and you need a greenhouse to do it properly. Daddy's excited about it. I think the greenhouse will give him an excuse to come over more, and that will be a good thing, too.

Think I've finished the children's book. A friend whose an elementary school teacher read it and really bragged on how much she loved the character, said she would definitely read it to her class when it's published. She seemed so certain it would be. She made a suggestion for the ending, said it was a little too abrupt, and so I have worked on it and think I've made it better. I might be ready to submit it to a publisher now. Don't know why that's scaring me a little. Got to man up, as they say. Be brave. I've been down this road before, after all. It's just been awhile.

Onward ....

Writing for Children

My SO read the children's book yesterday, after I had -- I thought -- polished it as much as I could. Everybody needs a first reader and he was interested in what I had done. He knew the story, I've talked about it enough. In fact, I got the idea for it on a trip we took to West Texas back at the beginning of the year. So he read it, I felt, with care. He must've gone through it twice, said it was cute, but he had some problems with the ending. I could tell he didn't "get" some of the things I had tried to make clear, which is always an indication that I haven't done my job well enough. He also raised some questions I assumed a reader would understand from context. So it was a productive read and discussion, and I will incorporate some of the ideas we threw around. Also, I'll see if I can find an effective and succinct way to fix some of the problems, but I have decided to let it sit awhile yet. We're going to the Coast tomorrow, and so it feels like a good time to put the manuscript back in the cooker. When we return in a couple of days, I'll pick it back up and work on it once again.

This is a book for young (preschool) readers, a picture book, and I have so many ideas for illustrations. I wish I could draw. I understand that the publisher most generally choses the illustrator, so I probably won't get much input. But I wonder if the writer is ever consulted for ideas. If the thing is accepted for publication, it will be so much fun to see what an illustrator might do with the story.

One of the things I have read over and over is that a children's picture book should be 32 pages, and that every page should lend itself to an illustration. So yesterday I broke the paragraphs down into logical pages. It easily came to 32, and I think there are tons of illustration opportunities. I'm not usually so enthusiastic about things I've written, but I have really enjoyed this writing project much more than anything I've done in a long while. I'm anxious to finish it and send it off, just to see what might happen. I don't think I'll be crushed if it doesn't find a publisher quickly. I feel like I'm learning something new and I'm liking that a whole lot. After all, I wrote dozens of short stories before I had one accepted, and four novels before LILY found a home.

Meanwhile, the weather has warmed way up again. We're in the upper 70s today and it's muggy. There's a hurricane in the Gulf -- on November 9th! I think that's what has made our weather screwy. I am really ready for winter.

We met the man who owns the high-fence ranch behind us today. He was over at the only other (empty) house around here. The SO saw his pickup and thought we should go check to see who was over there. Turns out the man who owns the high fenced ranch, named Miller, also owns the land that house sits on, and the acerage adjoining our place on the south side as well. We talked to Mrs Miller for most of an hour, found out a lot about the history of ownership on this place, which also was at one time a part of the larger ranch surrounding us. It was surveyed out in the 1990s for the ranch foreman and his family. That man raised dogs on the side, and also shortly after moving in, divorced his wife. Apparently, he got custody of his two sons, and they lived here, the three of them, for a few years, then moved to another ranch, leaving this place to sit vacant. So it's no wonder the place was in such a terrible mess when we took possession. We still have lots of things to do.

The SO planted a new tree this afternoon -- like we need another tree -- but this is a Golden Rain Tree, a sapling from a large tree that he dug up over at his land a few miles from here. I like these trees, too, and we have plenty of oaks. Don't need another. Hopefully, we can keep the lunch bunch from devouring it before it can get a good start.

Onward ....

Opening Weekend - Deer Season

Opening weekend of Whitetail Deer Season in Texas: there are hunters in this state who live the rest of the year for this one weekend. I'm not a hunter but happen to be in love with one, and so this is my second year of inclusion in this rite of passage of a segment of Texas men. Or maybe a certain segment of men period. Maybe it's this big of a deal in other state's as well. I am decidedly un-enamored.

It really begins on the Friday before the actual shooting can start. On my SO's deer lease the rule is "if you shoot it you have to mount it." In other words, if it is not a trophy deer, let it live. The idea, I guess, is to keep trigger-happy hunters from shooting anything that walks out of the woods and into their gunsights. While I was there the only thing shot was a large feral hog. There is no season on these creatures. They have become such a nuisance, and so overpopulated, that the season on them is year-round. I have come to believe that every hunter in Texas could shoot a hog every day of the year and still not put much of a dent in the population, they are that pervasive. And they are destructive, as well as dangerous. So my soft heart did not bleed over the humongous hog in the back of one of the hunter's pickup.

But back to the rituals. Friday evening, after everyone who is going to participate in the opening weekend festivities has arrived, each hunter goes to his designated blind to sit with binoculars and see what comes out in front of them. Each blind is accompanied by a feeder, usually set with a timer to go off and scatter corn at a certain time. If the hunter has been rigorous through the year with keeping his feeder full, the deer are used to the noise of the timer as it performs it's job, and in fact, they often stand nearby waiting to eat the corn. They seem to have some sort of internal clock and begin to congregate around the feeders within twenty minutes of the mechanism throwing out corn. While I was with my SO in his blind, there was once a large buck standing directly under the feeder when the timer threw corn, and the buck simply sidestepped a couple of feet and let the feeder do its job. Within three or four minutes all the other deer who have been standing around waiting, came in to gobble corn, and others appeared from other pastures, either having heard the spinning wheel that flings the corn, or from prompting by their own internal clocks.

The hunters dutifully watch the deer as they eat the provided corn, and some, like my SO, take notes on the deer they observe. The SO leaves his notebook in his blind, and so we were able to compare opening weekend 2009 to opening weekend 2008, and found that weather conditions were similar and numbers of deer had slightly increased. By the way, any conversation that takes place inside a deer blind is done in a whisper, even though I accidentally dropped my binoculars, they made a loud bang, and none of the feasting deer even so much as flinched at the sound.

After the sun goes down, all the hunters come into camp, which is a collection of motley buildings, campers, etc. Deer camp is the place where the dead or worn out accoutrement of life end up -- things like ragged towels, bent chairs, crapped out bedding, etc. It's part of the spirit of "roughing it" that reigns at deer camp. There is also a lot of cooking that goes on, and a required camp fire, even if the temperature outside is in the 80s. Everyone stands around discussing in great detail the deer they witnessed that evening, paying particular note to the male deer and their antlers, using technical terms like beam length, spread, the presence or absence of brow tines, symmetry, and of course, number of points. The points are all important, as is body mass. Guns are also discussed, the best options, the age of the guns they are each using, the older the better it seems, and scopes are also all important.

Then the eating begins. Meat is the main dish. Meat of all kinds, pork ribs, spare ribs, roasts, steaks, brisket, fajita meat. Vegetables are not part of the menu, except for the odd jalapeno pepper or bag of potato chips. There is also dip, manly dip like bean dip or cheese dip, with tortilla chips or possibly even jalapeno chips. Desert is a storebought pecan pie or nutty brownies, if there are deserts at all. I made the mistake of taking an orange cake. Only one piece was eaten. Cake requires the use of plates and forks, which is also out when it comes to camp food. Unless it happens to be chili. There are always chili bowls available. The single piece of my cake that was consumed was eaten out of a chili bowl with a spoon. Ahh mee.....

On opening day, the hunters are up at 4:30. The smell of coffee is strong in the air. Nobody speaks much. They climb into their vehicles and drive slowly to their blinds. After daybreak, gunfire can be heard and you speculate on who did the shooting and what they might have shot. Most of the gunfire at our camp came from too far away to be any of our gang. The only nearby shot opening morning came from one of our group firing at a coyote, which he apparently missed.

At about 9:30, everyone heads back to camp to eat breakfast. Bacon and sausage, eggs mixed with onion and potatoes. There is euphoria even though nobody shot anything. Tales of antler points abound. If anyone needs to go to town, now is when they make their trips. Others take naps. Someone keeps the camp fire going, and all the jobs just fall in place without assignment.

That evening was when the large hog was shot. And it was also when I decided to go home. I was tired of just meat meals. And tired of the radio broadcasting one football game after another. Our group were not drinkers, but there were also no cards or dominos played like at some deer camps. I enjoyed sitting in the blind and watching the deer. I even got to see a fight between two bucks with larger racks. But I was a little worried somebody might kill a deer, and I didn't want to stick around camp for that.

The SO just came home. It's Sunday morning, and he reports that no deer were killed. Thank goodness for that. Maybe those gorgeous creatures we watched through our binoculars will go on to live through the season. My fingers are crossed for that.

Onward ....

The Healing Power of Pets

My mother died in 1995. She was not an easy woman, to put it mildly. She had her moments of sweetness but she was troubled by self-doubt and feelings of inferiority as well as a mistrust of people and a negative outlook on life in general. Daddy endured 49 years with her, and when she died he was liberated. This may sound like a degradation of my mother, and I don't mean for it to. The liberation line came from Daddy himself.

Other than a couple of obligatory dogs for my brother and me, along with the odd turtle or two, for most of their married life, my parents were petless. Mother liked it that way. She was afraid of most animals, and didn't understand the ones she knew well. Daddy, on the other hand, was raised on a farm and craved the connection to animals that he had lost when he married Mother. So when she died, practically the first thing he did was get two puppies.

On a trip to K-Mart, he saw a sign on a telephone pole advertising "free puppies" along with an address, and he came home with Buddy and Sister. Like all puppies, they were adorable, and almost instantly, he became obsessed with them. They provided laughter and companionship, both things he needed after losing his spouse to lung cancer. Even though she was difficult, she was his partner and they had weathered a lot together. The sudden aloneness was awkward for Daddy at first. And losing a loved one to cancer is not only appalling, but also exhausting to those left behind. Two cute, frolicking puppies were just the ticket to bring Daddy out of the funk of becoming a new widower. Those two pups grew up and gave Daddy fourteen years of purpose. When they died, within four weeks of each other last December, I worried that Daddy might die, too.

Sister was the first to go. Her decline was rapid and unexpected. Buddy had been the one in bad health for a while. And it seemed unfortunate that she would also die of cancer, like Mother had. Sister's cancer was in her stomach. Daddy needed a lot of help coping through her quick death. Me and my SO were the ones who took her to the vet her final time. We knew Daddy was suffering. What we didn't expect was how Buddy would grieve for his littermate. He become ill almost immediately, and after four hard weeks, the SO and I made a second final trip to the vet on Daddy's behalf. He was just too overcome with depression to be the one to put his beloved Buddy out of his misery.

This sad story has a happy ending, so don't stop reading now.

About the same time as he was losing his pets, Daddy was also losing his eyesight. I had noticed how erratic his driving had become. Daddy was always was a careful, steady driver, who to my knowledge, has never had so much as a fender-bender, but suddenly he was running stoplights he didn't see, and swerving towards curbs, running over obstacles in the road. In addition, he spent way too much time sleeping. When I went to check on him, I almost always woke him and at all times of the day. I have a key so I could let myself in when he didn't answer the door, and twice this happened. Both times he was wadded up in his bed, so still and quiet I felt compelled to shake him awake. He was obviously deeply depressed and I felt powerless to do anything about it. I prepared myself for the inevitable.

One of the reasons I chose to move into this house in the country is because it lies just outside the small town where Dad resides. Now in his 80s, I could see the time when he would need me nearby and I was only three miles from him here, rather than the twenty-six miles away I had been before the move. I had made a deathbed promise to Mother that I would take care of Daddy. Not that I needed that promise to make me see to Daddy's welfare, but still, I had told her I would look after him, and I intend to make good on my word. This house has an extra room across the garage, with its own bathroom and sort of modified kitchen area. It seemed like a place where Daddy could live with us and still have a kind of autonomy. During his depression, just after the dogs died, I broached the subject of him moving in with us. He flatly refused. I can't lie and say that I was disappointed; I was relieved. If he still wanted to live alone, then he still had some of his old spirit left.

We got through his eye surgeries, and they worked miracles. He no longer even needs his glasses on most days. Just last week I was thinking about how I haven't known him without glasses for at least forty years, and he looks a little funny to me still, a little naked without them. Now he needs only cheap reading glasses, and uses them sparingly.

So it was time, I thought after he had recovered from his surgeries, to approach him about a new dog. He was instantly receptive to the idea. Four months had gone by since Buddy's death. Daddy was ready to think about having a dog again but he had stipulations. He only wanted one dog this time, and it must be a female. She had to be grown, already housebroken. He couldn't see himself starting over with a puppy. He would be 85 on his next birthday. A calm, older, smallish dog would suit him best. We started looking online at the shelters in our area. We found a few prospects and made a date with each other to go around and meet our online choices in person.

The first pet adoption was a disappointment. They'd had one dog we had liked online, but once we were there, the people told us she had behavior problems, would often snap and bite for no apparent reason. Still, I could see the light coming on in Daddy's eyes. I think he would have liked to have given her a try. It was me who nixed that idea. The truth was, Daddy would have taken the whole roomful of dogs home if he could have. We drove to the next place.

Right away I had a better feeling. It was clean and neat, the dogs had roomy kennels and an outside play area. The dogs looked happy and cared-for. Information about each dog was posted clearly on the outside of their kennel. The border collie-cross we had seen online was bigger than I'd expected, and she growled when Daddy approached her door. However, there was one dog with unusual brindle markings that caught Daddy's attention. I'm not sure what it was about her really, who understands love at first sight? Her name was Heidi, and I saw right away that she was only 8 months old. And she was already big, so she would end up much bigger than our small Dutch shephard. They said Heidi was a Labrador cross, but I said then and still say now, she has next to no Lab in her at all. She looked like a small greyhound to me. The attendant asked if we would like to see her in a private room. Daddy's face lit and he nodded without taking his eyes off her.

Once we were in the private room, with Daddy holding a bowl full of milkbones, I asked, almost hesitantly if he realized she was not even a year old yet. He was laughing so hard at the dog's antics and her enjoyment of the bones that he barely nodded. He said, "She has charisma, don't you think?" Well, what do you do? Yes, she seemed sweet-natured, and she took right to Daddy, but she was only 8 months old, a really REALLY large puppy. The attendant said she was house-broken, and that seemed like enough for Daddy. I hadn't seen him smile so big in such a long time. I was not going to nix this dog for anything. We signed all the papers, paid the adoption fee, and they brought her out to us cleaned up like a new bride.

That was last Spring. Heidi is firmly ensconced in Daddy's heart and home now. She has destroyed every pair of houseshoes and flipflops he owned. She has dug holes in his yard and shredded papers in his office. She has chewed his couch. She has unloaded his closet several times over, strewing his things across, not only the house, but all over the backyard as well, because he leaves the sliding door open for her to come and go as she pleases. She has the run of the place, but ... she has also saved him.

When I talk to Daddy on the phone now the conversation is all about Heidi and her latest pranks. Sometimes when we're talking, he begins to talk to her midway through, and laughs. He laughs and laughs. A lot. He's full of wonderment about her intelligence, about her ability to remember and respond, about her affection. He tells me that when she wants him to get up she stands by his bed and stares him awake. I love her for this. She motivates him to stay out of that bed. She has given him a purpose and new enthusiasm for living.

I've read all the reports about how petting a dog or cat can lower your blood pressure. I believe in it. I've seen the healing power of pets with my own eyes, and felt it within myself, too. My cat has mustered me through many a hard time. Now, I have both a cat and a dog to lift me and give my life a little added joy. When the SO goes out of town to work, I have their company and their attention. We have our morning rituals and habits. Neither the dog or the cat care for much variation, and our routine gives me focus as well. I advocate for pets. What a kickstart they give us!

Onward ....

The Lunch Bunch

The lunch bunch has been arriving every morning just after daybreak. So far we've counted nine does. There are a couple of bucks lurking, too, one slick spike and one mature male with a nice set of antlers. With the binoculars I counted 10 points on his rack. We have noticed pickup trucks out on the road slowing down or stopping whenever he shows himself. The SO says he probably won't last long.

It's opening weekend of whitetail season this Saturday, and all the local hunters have itchy fingers. Personally, I don't see how anyone could shoot such a beautiful creature, but I've been around it so much that I suppose I'm sort of immune. I will go with my SO to his lease this weekend. I went with him quite a bit last year, but all we did was take binoculars to the stand. We also took books, and read in tandem, with one or the other of us keeping half an eye out for deer to come out into the oat field so we could view them through the binoculars. I got tickled thinking of us both deep into our books, and the deer coming out to dance while we weren't looking, maybe sticking out their tongues and laughing at us. A nice thought anyway.

Started editing the children's book today. Now, I'm second-guessing myself, wondering if I should do away with the Christmas theme. That would certainly change the whole thing if I do. But I don't want to limit the appeal. Just don't know. I always read Christmas books to my kids year round. They loved Christmas and wanted to hear about it even in summer. Just so uncertain working in this new format. Oh these doubts, they always haunt me.

Onward ....