49 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 8-31-16”

  1. Pretty rose. I used to grow roses in Annandale. They need to be cut at the right time because they don’t last long on the stem.
    I used to cut a rose and bring it in to my secretary. She liked getting a rose.
    Some would stare as I walked through the gate with a rose in my hand.
    A guy once asked, “What does your carpool think of that?”
    I said, “I don’t know. Nobody said anything and I didn’t think to ask.”

    Roses are a lot like women. They look good. They smell good.
    But they take a lot of care. You can’t neglect your rose bush. That’s one reason I didn’t grow them in Hendersonville.

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  6. Chas, when I was a kid, 10-year-olds played with Barbies. By the time I moved to Nashville, Barbies were for preschoolers (!) and kindergarten kids, and then school-age children played with Bratz. I was working with an inner-city ministry that tutored children, and at Christmas time we had people donate toys and we’d have parents come buy toys for their children’s Christmas (marked at 20% or so of retail on each toy, but they had the “dignity” of buying them themselves). We refused to accept Bratz dolls, which I thought wise. Bratz dolls and toy guns were the only restrictions, I think. In that context, inner-city kids, even the fake-gun restriction made sense, though ordinarily that would have bothered me. (Toy guns aren’t a bad toy for a boy. But in a context where people kill each other, and where boys get killed pointing toy guns at police, toy guns are a huge potential liability for a ministry, and it made sense that they didn’t want to go there.)

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  8. We never prohibited gun-type toys but never bought them ourselves. The only “toy” that we insisted be returned was a Ouija board that my in-laws gave the boys one Christmas. Being unbelievers, they never understood our reasoning and thought we were silly for denying the boys something that “would be fun.”

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  9. Follow up to yesterday’s comment about Bratz dolls. I never would let my daughter have them. I thought they were trashy and especially with spelling a beautiful name like Chloe the skanky way with a K. Chloe is a Biblical name from Corinthians. Khloe is a stripper name.

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  10. Cheryl,
    How are you this morning? Comfort yourself by knowing that in a way you made Misten real to all of us from WorldMagBlog to here and as much as we could, we loved her with you.

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  11. Misten (#1)

    My husband and I went out for breakfast this morning. Well, as Misten lost most of her hearing, she lost her ability to know when her people were coming home, and she was no longer standing on the rug in the kitchen waiting to greet us as we came home, and sometimes she would wake up with a startle of “oh, you came home!” as we walked into the living room, and sometimes she’d stay sleeping. (She was sleeping most of the time by this summer.) When we walked into the kitchen this morning, I lost it. I said, “I know she wasn’t coming out here to greet us anymore, but it seems as though she should be around the corner in the living room.” He said yes, he knew. This morning it was hard when he got up, because usually it was just him and her in the living room for a while, and when she was healthier at some point she’d stand up and look at him, telling him she wanted to go out.

    For almost 12 years, I’ve had to be aware of whether she’s in or out, whether it’s too rainy or too hot or too cold (not really the last one, but if it was wet snow and cold, that one too) for her to be out for lengthy periods, whether she had been out recently as bedtime approached (she held it for 24 hours or more all her adult life until the last year, but I felt better knowing she had been outside and had at least had a chance to go).

    That dog had amazing, amazing control of her body. I’m guessing it was a herding dog trait–border collies excel in agility trials. I remember the day in the dog park she looked at me from across the dog park and took off toward me at full speed (and she was a long dog and fast) and ran between my legs at full speed. I was really almost afraid she’d knock me down, but I chose to stay planted and she had enough room between my legs and she went through at a gallop. Another time, we stayed with my sister in the guest house of her previous house, and the bedrooms were upstairs but Misten wasn’t used to stairs. Going up I just encouraged her to follow me, but going down the next morning was trickier. I had to go ahead of her and coax her and she really wasn’t sure about it, but I couldn’t carry her so I coaxed some more. Well, she was so long that her front legs were two steps lower than her back legs, and she started running down . . . and I lost my balance and stepped in front of her. And that long dog, front end two steps lower, running, managed to stop her momentum and not run into her owner. The control was phenomenal.

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  12. Misten (#2 of 3)

    At the end, she still had her mind, but her body failed her. My husband said that when she walked it looked like she was walking on peg legs–she could move them, but they looked like foreign objects and not part of her. She fell down often. And the last day, she showed her amazing bladder control in being dry overnight, but outside she refused even to walk onto the grass, but lay on the concrete. And even having gone pee repeatedly during the day, every place she lay grew a puddle. The vet said it wasn’t a bladder infection, but a progression of the indignity her body was facing. And she turned her head away even from cheese yesterday morning, and that said there was nothing left for her.

    In Nashville we would go to the dog park, and it fascinated me to watch how different dogs reacted to things. For instance, if it had rained recently and there were puddles, the Labs and Lab mixes would seek out the puddles, leap through them joyously. Other dogs would run, hesitate at a puddle, and go through. Misten would run, see the puddle and slow down enough to calculate its size, and leap over it. I never saw another dog do that–but she kept her paws dry if she possibly could. By the time she was lying in her own puddles, it was enough. That happened quickly, just the last evening and last morning, and even then, she was housebroken enough she stayed dry inside overnight and then that last hour or two I held her in the kitchen yesterday.

    I offered her broth that last morning, and she turned her head away but turned and licked my fingers. She didn’t lick me often, but it was one last way to say “Thank you. You’re here, and you’re trying, and it’s enough.” I brought her back inside and sat and held her (my back hurts today from sitting on the floor). My husband said she had looked sad the last several days, but for the first time she looked content. I asked him to get a photo, just of her, of her lying contentedly in my arms as I held her and wept. Our daughter came and we told her, and she too petted her and cried. Misten had a very low growl of contentment that I called her doggie purr, and she uttered that softly. She hadn’t taken cheese or broth (or a couple of other favorites), but I wanted to offer her one last treat, so I gave her a Pringle. She was addicted to those things, would drool on the floor before you could hand it to her. (She got no more than one a day, most days none, but she loved them.) She turned her head away from that, too, and then her brain said, “No, wait–that’s a Pringle!” So she turned her head back and I broke it into pieces and gave them to her.

    The day before, when we took her to the vet to see if just possibly they could change up her medication and help her more, while I was at the counter paying she stood and smelled a small female next to us, and she started growling. She had little audible voice left, but I felt her growl through the leash. I tried to tell her no, but she wouldn’t stop, and so I turned her to face away and then she stopped. So she still had her spunk. (It was pretty rare she growled at another dog, but occasionally.) And when the vet left the room after examining her, she stood up, understanding it was time to go–she still had her mind. It was just her body that let her down.

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  13. Misten (#3)

    I stayed with her to the end, and my husband stayed with me. When I got her, I thought I’d probably never get another puppy, but for the collie I’d wanted since she was ten, I wanted to go through her whole life. From her breeder’s announcement of a litter of seven females and three males (and photos of the one-day old females since I was in line for a female) to choosing her in person at six weeks and driving her home five-and-a-half hours at eight weeks, to saying goodbye at 11 years and 10 months, we were together practically non-stop. Even that very first day, I was concerned about having her wet her crate and hurt her housebreaking, so I stopped every hour on the way home, and she never went–we’d been home an hour and a half before she went. Eight-week-old puppies don’t have seven-hour bladders, but she did.

    I told my husband yesterday that in my single days, when I was living alone, it was hard for me to walk away from church events, knowing I was going home to an empty house. She was “just” a dog, but once I got her, it was no longer hard to go home. She preferred a house with other people, too–she liked it when I had housemates, and she loved it when she gained a family. She also gained a large yard–she got to be the country dog every collie wants to be. She had her favorite people, the people she’d whine and all but jump out of her skin in joy until they petted her, and she’d writhe in ecstasy while they greeted each other. My favorite brother was one of those people, and my Nashville best friend another. (And the housemate I had when I got her as a puppy was the third.) She rarely ever showed me that level of enthusiasm, only when I got home from being away 10 hours or more. She quietly took me for granted; I wasn’t her overwhelming joy, just her daily presence. That was no insult, but a compliment–I was “home” to her. A couple of nights before our wedding, I took her to the home of the couple who were keeping her while we went on our honeymoon. We ended up with eight or ten people there, and Misten was absolutely delighted. (Her Nashville vet would say in wonder, “Collies are usually more reserved than this.”) That whole evening she walked from one person to another, happily greeting people (and the resident dogs) and being petted. But she kept looking over at me, and like a toddler checking in with her mom at the playground, periodically she would come over to me and lie at my feet. This party was fun, but I was her home.

    So I had to be there for her yesterday, and I was. The last and hardest comfort I could give her, I gave her.

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  14. That should have said “the collie I’d wanted since I was ten.”

    And you know, she loved my husband right away; he taught her to play in a way she’d never played before, and that at first left her hesitant, a little rougher and more teasing. One daughter was hesitant about accepting her, and I don’t think she touched her at all our first year of marriage, but she grew to love her deeply, and that was the daughter who sat and petted her and wept yesterday. Misten was philosophical about the fact that some people preferred not to touch her, and she would quietly ignore them, not ask them for attention. I told my husband once, a year or so ago, that Misten loved all of us, and he said, “Yes, but the way she looks at you is different. She’s still especially your dog.” I couldn’t really see it, but I believed him. But I’m glad she got to be a family dog, because I could tell a difference in her demeanor between the times when she lived with just me and the times when there were more people around. She was social enough that she was happier with more than one human in her care.

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  15. Nice stories Cheryl. And I know it’s helpful to you to tell them. I hope you saved them on your word processor.
    😦 An 86 years old man shouldn’t have to work over an hour. I was cutting down two small trees and cutting them up. Haven’t finished. Problem was:
    I couldn’t keep the chain saw running. I hate chain saws. Except when need them. As I said before, they are lots of trouble, hard to handle, but they are fast. I had to start mine half a dozen times. Real pain. But I have two down and one cut up.
    Resting a while is the course wisdom takes now.

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  16. Sweet memories, Cheryl.

    I had a restless night, in part because I drank so much water last night after that sweltering assignment on the ship that I was up and down a lot going to the bathroom all night long. I also went to bed feeling burdened for my friend Carol. Due to her mental illness, she doesn’t always react the way most people do, but I think this loss of what had been the only “boyfriend” ever in her life will be a deep loss for her even though she hadn’t talked to him for a few months (but she kept trying to call his cell, I told he probably didn’t have it with him anymore if he was still hospitalized). They apparently bought him home recently — but I think it’s been such a shock for Carol because it was never clear that he had such serious physical/medical issues, the hospitalization initially was for a mental breakdown of some kind which he also had throughout his life.

    The funeral is today but there’s no way for her to get to it (and I’m not sure she’d want to go for various reasons, maybe it would just be too hard — plus she’s not really close to his family at all, their connection was kind of an isolated one in that sense). But she did write a condolence note on the online obituary (which was in our paper) and I think that helped. She used to read the Bible to him, which he always enjoyed as he said he never heard those stories in the Catholic church growing up.

    Meanwhile, another guy at her current assisted living place in Hollywood last week let her know that he’s available to be her boyfriend. Sheesh. Who knew. Guess those are the places to go for romance these days.

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  17. She said she’s going to tell him no because he’s not “like Ben,” who was such a good conversationalist and could always bring her out of her shell. That was true, he seemed to really care for her and was always considerate.

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  20. Speaking of cutting wood: over the past year we have accumulated a large pile of sticks and branches by the driveway. Some was left after feeding the goats, others just various things that had been pruned. Anyway, my wood chipper got fixed so I was chipping a lot of it but wanted some for firewood so nine year old and I were out there with handsaws and pruners and hands breaking things down to manageable levels. Ten year old was supposed to be helping (it is totally outside fifteen year old girl’s comprehension, though she did try for several hours to saw through a piece of wood) but was mostly just sitting with a stick in his mouth. After we finished about eighty percent of it, I told him the rest was for him to do. He whined that he needed help and sat out there for three straight days. Just sitting with a stick in his mouth. He had a water bottle and I would bring him his food. Finally, on the fourth day, he decided it was not going to get done if he did not do it and got to work. In about thirty minutes, he was done. Three plus days of sitting to delay thirty minutes of moderate work.

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  22. Nice stories, Cheryl. I know Misten was loved and will be very missed.

    I have not caught up on the blog, so missed the discussions of the Bratz dolls. I would not allow them and fortunately my children won’t. The toy cat reminded me of them.

    I don’t want any toys that even hint of the occult, either.

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  23. One of the gifts that BG received for her first birthday was a little pink VW bus looking think. She could ride on top or push it from the back to learn to walk. (She was a late walker because there really was no reason for her to learn). It had buttons to push to make sounds and talk to you. Husband was working out of town, so she and I were alone at home. In the middle of the night I heard it talking and making noises. I don’t like horror movies, but I have seen enough trailers for them become convince the toy bus was possessed. I threw it outside and went back to bed.
    For her 5th birthday she received a Britney Spears doll. I threw it away too. I had made my opinions about “Bitney” known and one relative thought it would be funny to go against my wishes. I told her she could watch BG cry every time she gave her something I didn’t approve of. I didn’t allow Bratz either.
    For her 14th birthday she received a CD of some rapper I didn’t approve of. Rather than say anything I waited for her father to come pick her up to go somewhere. I gave it to him and told him to enjoy it. They hadn’t gotten out of the driveway until he had popped it out of the CD player, broken it in half, and thrown it it the garbage can.
    You would have thought she would have turned out differently having us as parents, but that is the power of the public school system and computers in the classroom.

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  25. The only evil toys I had were cap pistols that made noise.
    I got the other tree cut up. I couldn’t get the chain saw started so I used a hand saw..
    I may be finished for the day.
    Except for cleaning up and putting things away,
    Later.

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  27. “Possessed” toys made me think of this one, which wasn’t funny at the time but is hilarious now.

    I was living in Chicago and had two housemates, who shared the bedroom next to mine. I was also volunteering at a crisis pregnancy center. They took donations of baby stuff, mostly clothes but also bottles and toys and more. One day I saw two stuffed toys that were dirty, and I thought, “I’ll take them home and wash them, and if they survive, good; if not, no harm done, I’ll just throw them away.” So I washed them, dried them partway, and hung them to finish drying.

    During the night I woke to the sound of a music box. It turns out one of the toys had a music box in it, and once it was partly dry, that music box decided to start playing, and there was no way to turn it off. I heard a roommate stir in the next room and say “What on earth?”

    My options were limited. Renting, I think I owned a hammer, but it was in the trunk of my car, parked around the corner on a different street, and I wasn’t going out into Chicago streets in the middle of the night. I couldn’t think of any other way to destroy the thing, nor did I want to throw it outside and disturb the neighbors. I cut it out of the toy, and was pleased to find it was tiny . . . and so I flushed it.

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  29. Dear Lord,
    Will you PLEASE, please, pretty please, help English teachers to teach the proper usage of I in a sentence.

    (a professional young woman just called me to solicit business and her usage of I in a sentence was like a razor going up my backbone)

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  30. Believe me, English teachers try. But, when husbands have dropped the level of speech to the standards of who knows who, it is difficult. And, often, the student knows how it is but chooses to follow his peers. And so the battle continues….

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  32. On another note, I know you will be delighted to hear that nine year old did a fine job on the oven baked chicken today. She used a batter of eggs and sour cream and dredged with a nice seasoned flour.

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  34. That would be good but it would require husband to go to the city. With him truck driving, we are living on thin rations. The store is seriously depleted. I think we could only live two years off of what is in there and there are no cheese nips.

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  35. Had a good day at the school dedication yesterday. So glad it did not rain, as you cannot drive that road in the rain. The minister of education for that district was late so the program supposed to begin at 10:30 began at 12:30. They had a nice lunch for us, but we didn’t get it until 3:30. We were all so hungry.
    But… that food had been sitting out for hours. All served and in containers. Not a good idea and I suffered the consequences in the middle of the night.
    Feeling better now and time to get ready for school.

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  36. I have to share this because it made me laugh…

    A young Arkansan boy goes off to college. Half way through the
    semester, having foolishly squandered all of his money on his girlfriend, he calls home.

    “Dad,” he says, “You won’t believe what modern education is developing! They actually have a program here at Hendrix that will teach our dog, Ole’ Blue how to talk!”

    “That’s amazing,” his Dad says. “How do I get Ole’ Blue in that program?”

    “Just send him over here with $1,000” the young Arkie says “and I’ll get him in the course.”

    So, his Father sends the dog and $1,000.

    About two-thirds of the way through the semester, the money again runs out. The boy calls home.

    “So how’s Ole’ Blue doing son?” his Father asks.

    “Awesome, Dad, he’s talking up a storm,” he says, “but you just won’t
    >believe this — they’ve had such good results they have started to teach the animals how to read!”

    “Read!?” says his Father, “No kidding! How do we get Blue in that program?”

    “Just send $2,500, I’ll get him in the class.”

    The money promptly arrives. The Arkie and his girlfriend are able to buy enough marijuana to last the whole semester. But our hero has a problem. At the end of the year, his Father will find out the dog can neither talk, nor read. Even though he was always pretty much able to lie his way out of trouble, the Arkie asked his girlfriend to help him think of a
    really good lie to tell his Dad. She very quickly came up with a plan for him.

    So she has him shoot the dog.

    When he arrives home at the end of the year, his Father is all excited.

    “Where’s Ole’ Blue? I just can’t wait to see him read something and talk!”

    “Dad,” the boy says, “I have some grim news. Yesterday morning, just before we left to drive home, Ole’ Blue was in the living room, kicked back in the recliner, reading the Wall Street Journal, like he usually does”.

    “Then Ole’ Blue turned to me and asked, so, is your Daddy still messing around with that little redhead who lives down the street?”

    The Father went white and exclaimed, “I hope you shot that lying ^&%$ dog before he talks to your Mother!”

    “I sure did, Dad!”

    “That’s my boy!”

    The kid married his girlfriend, they both went on to law school in Fayetteville , he became Governor of Arkansas and President of the United States , and you already know what a lying %^$#@ his girlfriend turned out to be..

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  39. I like the red rose. Roses (and flowers in general) are harder to photograph than you’d think. The camera isn’t quite sure where to focus with all those different layers close together . . .

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  40. In the middle of all this, some wry humor. I looked out our library window at the deck, and said, “Where’s a dog when you need one?” My husband looked out his window, but he can’t see as much from his little window as I can from the picture window next to my chair, so he asked what I saw on the deck. “A cat.”

    He headed toward the back door, and I said, “It’s heading that way; open the door and bark.” So he did. (He was probably planning to do that anyway, but I confirmed the cat was in the right position.) So he started barking before he even opened the door, and he said the cat was off like a shot, under the fence and out, the moment he opened that door to “let the dog out.”

    He came back to the library laughing. “Misten would be so proud of me.”

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  42. Please excuse me if this is a dumb question: What happens with the umbilical cords of puppies & kittens? Do they have to be cut by someone, like with human babies, or do they separate somehow? (I can’t imagine mammals in the wild having scissors available.) Does the cord leave behind a little part that needs to be treated, similar to how babies have a little part that falls off after a few days, but has to be kept clean in the meantime?

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  43. Kizzie, generally mammal mothers eat the cord and the placenta. (Deer, for example, will eat any trace of the birth, including plants they’d normally avoid eating if any birth fluids splashed onto them. Otherwise they risk the area smelling like a nursery and attracting predators. The placenta also provides nourishment.) I’m assuming any part of the cord that remains will dry up and fall off soon.

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  44. haha, well, on that note … 🙂

    So the first of the people giving me bids for windows/bathroom work comes tomorrow morning, I need to get up early to be ready for them. Then 2 more come on Saturday (one of those will just be for the windows). That’s assuming they show up. Not all handymen do. And this is just to get ideas, some questions answered and bids, no commitments.

    Hate all this stuff, but because I hate it & it stresses me out so much, I’m feeling like rushing forward as fast as I can to get it all going and then behind me. The bathroom will be a mess.

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  45. I wonder sometimes if I’ll ever make it to the painting & fun part. Which is what I thought was next up after the roof & patio/porch were all done.

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  46. Oh the joys of home ownership. We need new windows on the house we just bought. The old ones are aluminum framed, thin glass jobs from the 1960s. They look like add-on storm windows. We got estimates and chose the one we liked, since he had done the windows at our old house. We’ve been waiting a few weeks and now find out the truck driver shifted the load and didn’t strap them down properly, so they all broke on the way up from St. Louis. We have to wait another week or two, now.

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