Jacob with June Bug and Cricket the day they brought them home.
There is something strange
about the period before a storm. In Texas we get frequent forecasts of severe
thunderstorms, possible hail or tornadoes, flooding, etc. Half the time, it
doesn’t happen. But you never now, and so there’s that period of anticipation.
Not nail-biting, nervous anticipation but a wary caution. I can always tell a
storm is coming when Sophie turns into a Velcro dog and won’t leave my side.
Tonight she is staying nearby but right on top of me. She does not, however,
want to go outside. So I do think there’s a storm coming.
We’re in a dog crisis at our
little compound. The Burton’s King Charles Cavalier Spaniel, Cricket, is in
doggie ICU. Cricket is fifteen years old and has been frail for quite a while.
She even went with us to Santa Fe because Jordan felt better—and thought
Cricket would—being with us than being home alone between pet sitter visits. Jordan,
Christian, and Jacob got Cricket and her younger sister, June Bug, ten or
eleven years ago. June Bug, who was two years younger, had a heart attack
several years ago. At the time, they were told she might live anywhere from six
to eighteen months. She outlasted that by a long time, but by the time she died
she was deaf, blind, and incontinent.. Now we’re in limbo about Cricket. Hope
for a vet recommendation tomorrow.
I ache for Jordan who is
taking this hard, because I know how I felt a year ago when I thought Sophie
was dying. She however, younger than Cricket and perhaps hardier, has bounced
back in a remarkable way. The vet sees her regularly to check on her diabetic
status, and says she’s being effectively maintained on insulin. I don’t think she
sees much, perhaps shapes but no detail. She does need her teeth cleaned, and I
am always more than a bit terrified by that prospect.
On a more cheerful note,
Christian and I had a good dinner with Subie and Phil last night at a new and
very popular Chinese restaurant (Jordan was too upset about Cricket to join us).
I am always reminded of the time, when my Jamie was an infant, that my ex- and
late-mother-in-law said to us over the phone from New York, “Wo we ate at the
chink’s.” I asked her son if he could please teach her a better word since she
now had a grandson who is half Chinese. I don’t think the lesson ever took. The
restaurant where we went last night has made a big splash for its dumplings. I
don’t think I had ever had Chinese dumplings, so I was particularly interested
in them. I had the combo—pork, chicken, and vegetable, and liked them a lot. In
fact, they would probably have been almost enough for me for dinner, but
everyone else ordered an entrée, so I asked for beef and broccoli. Everyone loved
their meal—but I honestly think Christian does beef and broccoli better at
home. The meat was tender but not as flavorful.
Tonight, a lovely happy hour
with close friends who will move to South Carolina at the end of this month.
They are excited, but there’s a tinge of sadness. She calls herself my Canadian
daughter because her mom is in Ottawa, Canada, and when she moved next door to
me, almost twenty years ago, she was a young divorcee wth two young kids. Now
those kids are grown and gone, and she’s remarried to a really terrific guy. I’ll
miss them, but tonight we had a lively discussion about the wonders of the
Carolinas. They will be less than twenty miles from where my parents retired, a
part of the country where I enjoyed many vacations and thought I was in God’s
country.
No storm yet. About bedtime,
they say. Meantime, Sophie is calm enough to lie on the patio with her bare
stomach on that hard, cold, wet cement. Sure doesn’t look comfortable to me.
Batten down the hatches, just in case.
