Amber- my forever dog.

Have any of you ever had a "forever dog"?

This is the animal that rides in your car to do errands with you, the one who you confide in, tell your problems to, is your best friend, playmate and psychiatrist all in one.  This is the dog who turns a horrible day into a fabulous day merely by greeting you with love an affection.  No matter how your day was, the minute you walk in the door, you are the most loved and important thing in the world!

I have had the joy of having a forever dog.  Some people are lucky and have more than one in their lifetime.  I have not been blessed in that way.  Now don't get me wrong, those of you who know me are aware that I currently have two dogs, and I do love them.  But they are not like my Amber.  

Amber was a dog who found me.  In 1992 I was stationed at a Reserve Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas.  I was outside taking a smoke break.....don't judge....we were all young and dumb once...... , and this cute little puppy runs up to me trailing a rope around her neck and jumps on my white skirt with muddy paws.  There were 4 of us outside.  Why she chose me????  It was love at first sight.  I had never even owned a dog in my life, but I decided that if nobody came to claim her by the end of the day I was going to take her home to care for her until her "real" owner showed up.

This was rural Arkansas folks....no chips...no tags...no collar.  Just a rope.  So I took her home, and within a week I decided she was mine. I named her Amber, and thus became a 15 year love affair.  We did everything together.  Ran errands, watched tv, went for walks, etc.  I was young and single, and Amber totally filled my heart!

She thought she was a lap dog, even after she turned into a 40 pound lab/pitt mix.  You could never convince that dog she did not belong in my lap cuddling.  She slept in my bed, and I even had an armchair that was "hers".

During our time together I moved to 6 states with her, drove across the country with her, got married, had two kids, got divorced, and she was with me through it all.  I knew I could always count on Amber for unconditional love and support.  

She got out of the yard one day, and was struck by a car.  She was about 9 or 10 years old at that time.  The emergency vet was sure she was going to die that night, and gave her drugs to make her comfortable.  He was shocked when Amber was making a strong recovery the next morning. I wasn't.  I knew what she was made of.  She did recover from that head injury, although she lost her right eye, and had ruptured her ear drum (she was struck in her head by the car).  She also had a new bump on her skull that wasn't there before, but she was happy, and loving just as before the accident.  She ran a bit crooked after that, but her injury never slowed her down.

Looking back on it, I do think it was that injury that eventually took her life, although I will never truly know.  One day she started walking in circles and had nystagmus of her eyes. I called the vet, who promptly sedated her and thought maybe she had some vertigo going on that was a temporary thing.  Amber was 14.5 years old.  She recovered, but started walking in circles again within a couple of weeks.  The vet decided she had a brain tumor and there wasn't anything we could do except make her comfortable.  She was too old for surgery, so we made her comfortable, and did the most humane thing, which was to gently put her to sleep.  We were all with her loving on her when she died.  Her head was in my lap, being covered with kisses by myself, my partner K, and our children. She was covered in a blanket to be kept warm, and we all laid our hands on her to comfort her while she gently passed to the Rainbow Bridge.

Amber was the best dog EVER!!!  She was an amazing friend and confidante!  She was my best friend.  She is missed tremendously, and I will never be able to love a dog quite the same way.  I can only wish that everyone can have a love experience like mine.  It was amazing!  Amber was amazing!!

New blog

Hello all.

Thank you so much for following my blog.  I have collaborated with my friend Susan.  I have moved to her blog.  You can now find me at:

Please read my new blog

A baby is born.....it is beautiful.....sweet....innocent...cuddly...endless possibilities are in the future for this tiny bundle of joy.  Parents coo, and tickle, they love and hug and endure the crying and diapers because this is their progeny.....the future of their existence......they are in love with this sweet thing, and promise to do anything in their power to care for, protect, love and nurture their cherub......

Z one week old

                                                            
Have you looked at the faces of parents with a new baby?  Sure, they look tired, but they also look happy.  They have a glow.  They have a sweet baby they can pin their future hopes on.  That child can be anything...do anything...dream anything.  Those hopes show in the eyes a new parent

Z at age 5

                                                        

Fast forward 13 years................. you first need to look at the face of a parent with a teenager. Notice the gray hairs...the haggard look on their face.....the glassy stare of their eyes....the glow has been replaced by a dull ashen look.  The creases around their mouths show you they can frown as much as they smile.  This is the face I see when I look in the mirror..... I live with three teenagers and a preteen....shoot me now....please

Gone are the dreams of what my child could be, only to be replaced by fears of this child never moving out......  I can tell you that I often wonder how in the world my 13 year old son Z will ever graduate 8th grade.  He doesn't turn in his homework, and his grades suffer for it.  Now mind you, Z does his homework.  He completes it with beautiful penmanship even.  He completes his homework and it goes to school with him.  It gets placed in his locker, and there it sits.  I have threatened Z.  I have bribed him, cajoled him, and cried.....nothing works. Short of following the kid from his locker to every class, I fear I am doomed to the role of nagging mother.  All because of his inability to take the paper out of his locker and put it in the teacher's hand.

Z age 13

Maybe I should go back to the days of pinning his homework to his shirt.  Do you think that might work?  It might however, since having something pinned to his shirt would reduce his "cool points", I am SURE that would never happen!!

I like to look at baby pictures of my Z.  I like to look at pictures of me back then....yes I looked tired, but I also had a glow to my face.   I can only hope that as Z gets older he will begin to become the man I envisioned the day I first laid eyes on him....but ONLY if he turns in his homework......sheesh......

Pre Holiday shopping!

The stores were crazy today. The grocery stores I mean.

I tried to get all of my shopping done early, but inevitably there are always a few things we miss, so off to the grocery store we went. It was not too bad before noon, but man oh man, after 12:00 the roads and stores were getting wild. People not pay9ing attention while driving, in a hurry to get somewhere, etc. Road rage was rampant, and the grocery stores were packed.

I am very fortunate that I was able to stay home this afternoon, while my partner hunted for candy corn for our Turkeys to no avail. There was no candy corn to be found, so we will have to make featherless oreo turkeys tomorrow. I bet they all get eaten, even without feathers.

So it is bedtime for me, so I can get some rest before my 6 am wake up call to start baking yeast rolls and cinnamon rolls.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

Will I continue?

So we are winding down to the final days of NaBloPoMo. I have only missed two days of blogging this month. I have had lots of great feedback. AND I have really enjoyed blogging. It is "cheap therapy" as some of my friends put it.

The questions is, will I continue. They say if you do something continually for 30 days it becomes a habit. I don;t know if I will blog every day from now on, but I have noticed that during the day while doing my errands, or sitting at my computer or working when I have an interesting idea, the next thought is : "I should blog about that."

I guess we will have to wait and see if a habit was formed.

Turkey Day Treats!!

While the adults (some of us) are watching football, the other adults are going to help the kids make these yummy treats:

You will need the following:

Double Stuff Oreos (2 per turkey)
Small Reeses' Peanut Butter Cups (1)
Whoppers (1)
Candy Corn
White Frosting
Black Frosting

First place your peanut butter cups in the fridge. They will cut cleaner cold. Then take an Oreo and carefully separate one of the cookies from the frosting. Gently press the pointed tips of 6 candy corns around one half of the Oreo. Take some white frosting and cover the frosting and re-attach the cookie.

Now, take the second oreo and lay it flat on the table. Pick up your Oreo with the candy corn and put some icing on the bottom of the oreo opposite from the candy corn and attach the Oreo onto the flat oreo so that it is on the back half. Prop the stuck together Oreos against a book or a wall to hold it up while the icing dries. If it does not stand up well, add some more icing.

Now take a cold peanut butter cup and cut a small section off of it so that it will have a flat side. Place some frosting on the flat section and the top of the peanut butter cup and attach it to the Oreo with the candy corn so that it becomes the body of the turkey.

Take the Whopper and put icing on the back side of it. Attach it so that it is right on top of the peanut butter cup and iced to the Oreo and Whopper. Add two drops of white icing for the eyes and a smaller drop of the black for the pupil.

For the wings, I cut the very tip of a candy corn and glued a wing on both sides of the peanut butter cup. For the feet, you can use the same tip you cut off when making your wings. Let dry for about 20 minutes before handling.

These would be so cute to give to a friend, child or neighbor. They would also be really cute holding a name place card for your Thanksgiving Dinner. You could just put the name card behind the candy corn on the top of the turkey. So cute and easy!

Random

So I like blogging. It is a way to get random things out of my mind. To write about mundane, ordinary things that I think many of us experience. I started blogging in earnest last November during NaBloPoMo when my friend Patti told me about it. My brother had died just a few months prior to that (April 14, 2009), and I was still in deep grief. Blogging helped me have a safe place I could write about what I was feeling. If anyone read it, that was fine, but it was for me, not for anyone else.

I have blogged about Brian a few times, my friends a few times, but mostly my blogging is just random. I sit in front of my computer and try to think about something to write. My wise friend Patti says I could try taking a shower or going for a drive. Usually random thoughts will come to you during those moments of solitude, and give you something to write about.

I have an ADHD brain, so there are always lots of thoughts in there, but sometimes I cannot latch onto just one. Even as I am typing now, I keep thinking of random things that pop into my mind. Maybe one day I will just type the thoughts that pop into my head. My brain can be a scary place, and the random things that float around in there may surprise you. Then again, maybe other people's brains work like that too. I can only inhabit mine, so I don't know how other brains work.

Last night when K was coming home from picking her daughter up from work, she said there was a bad one car accident on Respass beach road. She said the ambulance on the scene had put down flares in the Northern Shores Elementary School parking lot to mark a helipad for a life flight. Sure enough within 5 minutes we heard the helicopter approaching and watched it land in the school parking lot. About 10 minutes later it took off, and headed in the direction of Norfolk, I assume to Sentara Hospital. We didn't see anything about it in the news today, so I wonder what happened. If anyone knows anything, please let me know.