We Lost Him

Rags
April 15, 2004 -- October 30,2007

Dog Days and Halloween

My doggie has a blockage and several bladder stones. The vet just called and said they will have to perform surgery this morning. They hoped to be able to dislodge the blockage with a catheter but were unable to after several attempts. They were able to get a fine catheter by the blockage and at least give him some comfort. He said when the dog has a blockage, the kidneys stop functioning correctly and the dog gets uremic. He hoped to get that under control before surgery but doesn't feel he can wait and wanted me to know he's not in an optimal position health-wise to do surgery on. They began the surgery at 9:30AM this morning. So now we wait. I've thought of going down to the vets office and sit there but their waiting room is tiny and I'd be in the way. There's nothing I can do there I can't do here. I'll be worried either way. He said Rags will be in the hospital for at least several days.

Halloween is tomorrow night, and since I was thinking about my doggie, Rags, I happened to run across this picture and thought it would be cute to include. We bought one huge bag of mixed candy in case some children come by. We had quite a few last year. I'm surprised people still let their kids go to the doors of people they don't know, but they do.

I'm glad my kids grew up when Halloween in one's neighborhood was not something you had to worry about too much. We were always warned to look through their candy and not give them anything unsealed, but other than that, they had nice Halloweens. Many of the churches in our area have trunk Halloweens, where different church members park in the parking lot and open their trunk and the kids go from car to car with their parents collecting candy from each car. I guess when my granddaughter gets older, my daughter will have to just have Halloween parties and invite all her friends.

Tonight we begin our classes at the Reform temple, one night each week for six weeks. My husband works in that city, so I'm going to meet him over there and we can have a quick dinner before the class begins.

Well, I can't keep my mind on this writing since I'm so worried about my dog, so I'll end this post here, but I hope all of you have a nice Halloween.

Update: At noon I called and was told Rags is still in surgery. I hope that means they didn't get started right after the vet called and not that he's been in surgery all this time. I'm still waiting.

Update on Rags

My dog, Rags, is really sick. I took him back to the vet and he was just lying there, limp, whining, and shaking. They made me leave him and told me they would call me in an hour. I waited an hour and fifteen minutes and called back. They did an x-ray and he has a robin-egg sized bladder stone that they can see. His bladder is also not emptying, so they suspect there are others. They were getting ready to do a radioactive dye x-ray to see what others they could detect, and also try to catheterize him to relieve the full bladder. They said he is probably going to need surgery.

I'm sitting here waiting for them to call me back and let me know what is going on.
We had a dog before this one named Sam. I got Sam from the animal shelter for my kids right after their dad and I divorced. They had wanted a dog for a long time, school was out, we had just moved to the country, etc. Poor Sam had been found wandering in a neighborhood and had been at the dog pound for ten days, so he was getting close to his "expiration date." We brought him home and loved him for twelve years. Then he got a heart condition and the meds for the heart condition caused kidney damage, so we had to put him down. It was hard on all of us.

I had to work that day after they put him down. I went in the door crying and cried all day. My office workers felt sorry for me. One co-worker said her daughter had a little puppy she had gotten for her kids, but he wasn't housebroken, she had a new baby, etc. and couldn't keep him. She wanted to know if I wanted him. I just couldn't imagine loving another dog like I did Sam. I was still hurting and the thought of another dog just seemed too much.

At lunch she went home and got the puppy and brought him back to work. It was love at first sight. She told me her daughter's family had financial issues so this little puppy had none of his shots. I felt like I couldn't do anything for Sam, but at least I could help this little guy out by taking him to another vet near my office and getting his shots. I called my husband and asked him to meet me at that vet's office. He told me in no uncertain terms that he didn't think we needed another dog so soon, but I assured him if he didn't want this puppy for us, I had another man at work who was interested in adopting him. He agreed to meet me, took one look at Rags, and made him a part of our family. That was almost 3 1/2 years ago. I got him housebroken, crate trained, and he's been a good healthy little guy.

I'm really worried about him, and I'm worried because they aren't calling me.

One Sick Puppy

Our little doggie got sick yesterday, so I ended up going with my husband to take him to the vet. They thought it was a UTI, so they gave him a shot and ten days worth of antibiotic pills to take. He's felt really bad all day. He's not eating anything but is drinking water. He thinks he needs to pee constantly, but very seldom produces anything. He's been going in the house and since he's been totally housebroken I know this is as upsetting for him as for me.

My son brought his dog by and our dog didn't want to mess up his own bed, so he kept running over to the other dog's bed and peeing when he wasn't looking. After the third time of washing his bed, I just put it up.

The vet gave us pills to give him and we have always put them in a piece of cheese or lunchmeat and he'd take them that way in the past. Well, now he doesn't have any appetite, so we've had to hold open his mouth and put the pill way back at the back of his throat, and even though he's little (6 pounds) he clamps down and refuses to open his mouth at all, so it's quite a struggle.

That's about how our weekend has gone.

We're doing well with our sugar busters/ low carb diet. We planned out some meals for the next two weeks and bought groceries tonight. Lots of chicken, salmon, lean beef, and veggies. LOTS of veggies. We also bought whole wheat bread and whole wheat pasta. We spent a long time of our shopping trip reading labels, and sugar is in EVERYTHING. It's no wonder so many people are diabetic.

Tomorrow night's meal is grilled salmon with lemon pepper, brown rice, and baked sweet potato. The next night it's grilled hamburgers on whole wheat buns with tomato, onion, and pickles. We bought some Hebrew national hot dogs and those are the best hot dogs I've ever tasted. YUM. They are also sugar free, so we plan to have them one night this week. We decided we'd have them with sauerkraut, got home and figured out they put SUGAR in the kraut!

I see now why old people don't have babies, because just taking care of a sick dog and taking care of regular household chores has worn me out. I hope the dog feels better tomorrow.

Life Before Computers

When I was a little girl, all the neighborhood children went down to the corner store every week. We bought Kraft caramels for a penny each, a Tab soft drink to take home to my grandmother who babysat my sister and me while my parents worked. We also begged the man to open the soft drink machine and empty out the caps bin (this is when they came in a bottle and you had a slot on the machine to use to open them with, for you really young ones out there) and let us go through them.



We were looking for Royal Crown caps. For six caps from RC Cola, each kid got into the movie free in the summer. When we had our sufficient caps, we all walked about a mile to the theater. On the way, we stopped at a feed store, because they have live baby chicks and let us play with them, and because they had one of those water coolers with the little pointy cups. Then we would go to the Lyric Theater, sit in a seat that had ashtrays with flip-up covers on the armrests.



All movies began with cartoons. You could see at least three or four cartoons before the movie started. And then we watched a Disney movie, usually, not just once, but over and over for most of the day. We'd make sure we walked back to Granny's before time for our parents to pick us up to go home.

On Saturday, when I was eight or nine, my mom would drop me and my friends off at the theater sometimes, and we'd call her from the theater phone (not a pay phone) when we wanted her to come pick us up.

If I hadn't spent my whole dollar weekly allowance at the dime store, I'd have some left to buy a coke, maybe popcorn, or candy, or all three. I was a really skinny kid then, so it was probably not all three.

When we weren't going to the movies (which is still my absolute favorite thing to do, sitting in the theater, watching the big screen) we would climb trees, swing in a tire, watch ants, ride our bikes, and do anything else that kept us outside. Back then, parents ran the kids out the door right after breakfast in the summer, and we were allowed back in to get a drink or have lunch.




So there were all the neighborhood kids standing outside, and we all got together and used our imagination to make up games that gave us a lot of physical activity, like tag, or "mother may I" or hopscotch. We also played a game where we sewed together the ends of a long piece of elastic and did like jump rope tricks with it. If anyone remembers what this was called, let me know.
We didn't have cell phones, or microwaves, or game boys. Morning tv was Captain Kangaroo and Romper Room, then we were sent outside. The only tv shows that came on during the day were Queen for a Day and soaps, and my grandmother dominated day time television so we couldn't have watched it even if we were inside.


At night was when tv was exciting. We watched the wonderful world of Disney, Topo Gigio on Ed Sullivan, Bonanza, The Rifleman, and Red Skelton. I didn't care much for the westerns but my dad did. I loved Red Skelton. I also loved Art Linkletter. But I planned to marry Captain Kangaroo when I grew up. I don't think I ever heard a cuss word until I was nine, when my step-dad said a lot of them. My dad has never said a "bad word" in front of me in my life, or allowed anyone else to without being harshly reprimanded.

I didn't worry about child molesters or other bad guys. In fact, I learned the "facts of life" from a girl friend at a bowling alley when I was eleven. I didn't believe her. Then after I asked a few other friends, I remember being so disappointed. All of a sudden it was like we weren't just put here on earth to have fun. We were suppose to do THAT and have KIDS and there's a purpose to all this. That really disappointed me. Believe it or not, my only question after she told me about the facts of life, was "Well, if men do that to women, then why don't they also do that to men?" She assured me that was ridiculous, that it wouldn't work. I guess that was before Larry Craig and foot tapping was in fashion.

Children were innocent. We didn't see feminine hygiene commercials, or ads about erectile dysfuction, or contraceptives. There were no naked people or nearly naked people on television or billboards. And there was no internet. If you really wanted to know something you had to ask someone else, or look it up in the World Books in the library at school.

Daddies and Little Girls

After falling out of the bed this morning, I figured my day was off to an interesting start. Then the phone started ringing and it was my mom, with my weekly dose of guilt.
"Your sister went out to see your daddy yesterday and he asked her when she had seen you."
"He did?"
"Yeah, and then later she heard him ask his wife what your sister had said about whether or not she had seen you."

He has Alzheimer's. Sometimes he knows me. Sometimes he doesn't. The last time I went, he had no idea who I was. But since I flaked out on the birthday party, I decided mom had made me sufficiently guilty to go out there.

I had a million excuses not to go. Sore throat. Need to straighten up the house. Laundry. Etc.
Cathy would be proud. I left all that and got into the car. I drove an hour or so and pulled into the driveway. He was standing in the doorway, and I think he knew who I was.

We sat at the table. I told him about my kids and their lives. Several times he asked, "Who?"
I told him about my husband and how he was. He had no idea who he was. (He's only met him once.) So then I ran out of things to say.

He began. He told me stories of when he was a boy, and how he helped to pay off his parent's house by growing cotton. It was a very interesting story. He told me how much he planted, how much he paid the "n" word people to pick it. (He uses that word regularly as part of his normal conversation.) He told me how if they didn't pick 300 pounds a day, he didn't bring them back, he'd get other "n's" to pick it. Then he told me how much money he made. How he helped pay off his parent's house. (They had bought 142 acres and a huge two story white house with a wraparound porch for $6000) He told me how much money he made at his first job, and how he invested it. He told me how much interest he was earning and how he always saved. He told me about his brother who he had no respect for because he never wanted to work hard enough to make money. He then asked how my kids were with money. (Fine, Daddy. We're all fine.) We talked money for six hours. Money is his passion in life. Always was. Came before anyone or anything.

I listened, and I was actually interested in some of the historical stuff. It is amazing how much he can recall once he gets the story going. It's just drawing up the memory that is the hard part.

He looked very thin. He didn't look very old. Not to me. He just looked like Daddy.
Then he went outside for a minute and my step-mother said that he thinks I don't love him because I never come out there. I tried to explain to her why, and she said I must have inherited that, because he never wants to leave the house to go anywhere either, and hates crowds, or groups of people at get-togethers. In fact, she said, she tricked him into coming to that reunion thing I missed, because if she had told him where they were going, he would have refused to go. Guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

I told them my husband is having surgery Thursday, but when he gets better, I'll come back. He said, "Who is having surgery? Who is she talking about?"

I said, "Give me a hug. I have to go home. I do love you. I'll come back soon."

He stood there in the driveway and I looked back at him before I drove away. He looks pitiful. He looks lonely. He looked empty. He looks like I feel.

I am going to try to go back. I wondered as I pulled away today if this would be the last time I'd see him. I wonder that every time I go. I even choose my words carefully.
We even talked about dying. I told him I wasn't afraid to die. He said he was.

My step-mom says he never goes to church with me anymore. I said, "I never knew he ever had." She said that yes, for a time he had gone with her. That was news to me. He never went when I was growing up.

I didn't tell them anything about my life or about me. I don't know of anything I could say at this point that would help him to KNOW me. It was very strange today. On one hand he is so familiar. On the other hand, he seems like a complete stranger. But somehow, I think today was good for both of us.

A Kept Woman

I met my husband a little over a year after the death of his wife. She was thirty-seven when she died of breast cancer. She was his high school sweetheart and the love of his life. As with most new couples, in trying to find their niche in life, they had moved many times. He did a stint in the military before ending up working for the Army as a civilian. They were both avid collectors. Of what? Everything. She never learned to drive, but he took her everywhere, and one of her favorite places was flea markets.
When I met him, as I said, she had been been gone from his life for a year, and evidently he never quite got the hang of housekeeping. Or ever throwing anything away. I figured she had gone through this long illness and housekeeping, of course, was low on the list of priorities. I knew their hospice nurse, and she said the house was always very crowded with stuff and difficult to move around in when she was there taking care of his wife in her hospital bed.
So when we began dating, he would take me by his house occasionally, when he forgot something, but he'd always say, "If you want to just wait in the car, I'll run in and be right back." This went on for a year. I began to wonder why he never let me see the inside of his house.
Then one Christmas after we became engaged, his mother came to see him. While we were out to a restaurant with her, she coyly looked at me over her coffee cup and said, "Have you seen his house yet?"
"No."
"Well, maybe you should do that before you two make any decisions."
So he didn't make any dates with me for about a week, and declared the house clean enough to show to me. He invited me in. I stayed one minute and ran screaming in terror. Just kidding. It was junky, messy, piled high with stuff, and messy. Yes, I know I said messy twice, but it was double messy. And this was all after cleaning for a week.
So we had a talk. I said, "Look. I'm a freak. I hate my house to be cluttered. I'm a tosser. If you lay it down and I don't see you pick it up and use it for several months, it's likely to be gone. I clean my house every week and the first step in my cleaning process is to walk around the house with garbage bags. I throw away a lot of what you would call "good stuff." Like if my entertainment center looks too "filled," I will just cull down the books or whatever until it looks right to me. I drove my ex-husband crazy. His last words to me as he walked out the door were, "Well, now you have your little Tara and you can keep it arranged just like you want her and won't have to have my stuff in your way."
I thought, Yes, that's good. But even better, I won't have your sorry ass in the way.....
Ok, I regress.
I wanted him to know how I was. So his mom came back again that summer, and she asked again, "Have you seen his house yet?"
"Yes."
"And I've seen yours. Do you still think you could live with him?"
I said, "Yes, but he has to be willing to live a different way."
She then explained to me that she never raised him to live like that, but his late wife (his mom doesn't mind speaking ill of the dead) never cared if they lived in filth or not, so they did.

So, he had his house. I had my townhouse. Mine was paid for, his was not, so we moved here.
At first, he came with his clothes. He left everything else at the house. His daughter had moved in with her boyfriend several months before we married, so she would go by his house now and then and remove a few things. He just had his clothes here.

A year passes like this. Then another year. He is continuing to pay a house payment on that house and it sits there protecting his stuff from the elements. Now and then he mentioned that he needed to go over there and clean out the house and sell it. Into the third year, I asked him one day, "Are you holding onto the house in case this doesn't work out with us?"

I guess that got him moving. So he declared he was ready to do it. I told him, no problem, I'd help, we'd get this done in no time. So that weekend, I grab a couple of boxes of garbage bags, some boxes and boxing tape, and off we go. I've moved a lot. I always have a garbage bag and a box. Ten things in the bag, one in the box. (I travel light.) It took me about thirty seconds to realize that he was fishing things right back out of the garbage bag. Wrappers, empty candy boxes, things I would consider junk. So I sat back and watched him packing for awhile.

He was taking down each item, and carefully looking at it, through each pile of stuff piece by piece. Very slowly. Very methodically. And then it hit me. This is his life. These are his memories. Every piece of paper, every empty shopping bag, every empty shoe box. His life.

So I told him I wouldn't go back. We'd had the house payment for almost three years now. He'd just take his time and go through it and decide what he wanted to keep. I had attic space for some things. For months, he went by there a couple of times a week and worked at it. I'd go by now and then and see one bag out for the trash. It took him months and months. Finally, one day he told me, "I never thought it would be this hard making these decisions of what to keep and what to let go of."

So we made a deal. He could rent a large storage unit, and put everything in there that was left. Sell the house. A storage rental is much less than a house payment. He heaved a sigh of relief and did that. He said, "Once I get it into the storage unit, I'll go through the rest of it and get rid of it there." Sure.

When the house was emptied, I went in there like a tornado with my playtex rubber gloves, Pine-sol, rags, mop, broom and he went at hiring the carpet replaced, the house repainted inside and out (light beige of course). The house sold three days after it went on the market.

So then we had this storage building. I'm happy to report last weekend (we've been married almost five years now) he finished cleaning out the storage unit and turned in the key. Right now, I can barely fit my car into my garage but he assures me that is temporary, because he's going to take a lot of that to the thrift store to donate, some to the attic, some to his daughter, etc.

My heart aches for him when I think what he's gone through losing his wife and then having to sort through his life possessions like that. He's a glass half full kind of guy and I'm a "let's just throw out the glass, we don't use it anyway" kind of girl. But we have somehow blended.
His mom looks over the situation when she comes. My home is a little fuller, but neat and happy.
I'm glad I'm one of the things he decided to keep.

I'll Translate for You

This is baby for: "I want to go to my Granny's house!"

It's Growing On Me

Don't you just love those Dove commercials. I mean look at that woman. She exudes confidence. She's the kind of woman you hope moves in next door to you and comes by for a glass of wine now and then and tells you her life story.

I'm at that age, when very many women have to make a decision. It's called going gray--to be or not to be. At forty-five, my mom's hair turned silver. You know, like Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. At fifty, my granny had white hair. I'm now fifty-one, and after going through hair colors in my life time, ranging from blonde to brown to red, dark to light and light to dark, I had to start asking some of those questions...Is it true men look distinguished with graying hair, while women just look old? Will I look older with gray hair? Do I care if I look older? What's the big deal anyway?

I've been giving this a lot of thought. There are some people who look fantastic gray. I think Paula Deen looks fantastic with her snow-topped hair. Of course, Meryl Streep did in Prada, but Meryl Streep always looks good. Both of those women have makeup artists and hair stylists to make sure their silver locks look healthy and shiny and perfect. Real women like me, who buy Suave Shampoo because it's cheap, and go get haircuts when my hair has that 24 hour wind-blown look....what about us? How does gray hair look on real women?

We all will gray if we live long enough, and we all hope we live long enough. We all will get wrinkles and saggy jaws and saggy other things we don't need to mention. We can battle aging to the death (how's that for a pun) but in the end, we'll lose.
Why fight it?

I came to some realizations. One, even with Suave, my hair looks pretty thick and healthy. It has a little bounce, some shine, and my cut is still working for now. I realized if I was DATING, I would not go out with this hair but would go back to something that didn't quite scream, "How old is she???" when I walked into a room. But I'm not dating.

I found the only man I know for a fact I can get along with and love for the rest of my life without having to argue over stupid, petty stuff. He GETS me. He knows me and he GETS me. We are at that stage in our relationship where if I have to go to the restroom when we first are seated at a restaurant, he can order my drink, my food, and he will pick exactly what would have looked best to me on the menu.

He knows when to talk to me. He knows when to leave me alone. He knows when I am joking around and when I'm dead serious. He thinks I'm funny. He takes my side ALWAYS. (He's even learned some "Alabama speech" from being with me, even though he is from AZ. If some woman says something catty to me, he immediately follows it with, "Well that heifer!")

And he likes my hair. He likes it red, or brown, or blonde or gray or bald. He doesn't care. He's just as proud to be with me at McDonald's when I'm in sweats and no makeup as he is when I actually do dress up and put some on (although no example of my having done that in a LONGGGG time come to me now.) So why care if I look older if he likes it anyway?

I must admit being handed a senior menu in a restaurant sort of threw me the first time it happened, but hey, I got over it quickly. So gray is growing on me, literally.

I got out of my car at the library this morning, and I caught a glimpse of myself in the sun's reflection as I walked by the van parked next to me. My first thought was, "Who's that old lady? Oh, that's me. Well, not too bad!"

Now I'm researching all the old ladies who go gray and grow their hair long. THOSE are the role models I want to find next. I've never been much of a trail blazer but I follow blazed trails effortlessly, most of the time. So what is your opinion? My hair dye has gone the way of the acrylic nails, nail polish, pantyhose, high heeled shoes, and perfume. I guess it's true that women get more comfortable in their own skin the older they get, and in their own hair, too.