Why I shouldn't watch the news...

the beginning of this year has been rather hard on me. ON top of that, I've been suffering through a fibro blizzard unlike any I've ever experienced before. For god's sake my eyebrows hurt.

So I turned on the news to a report about something awful done to a puppy (I won't say what) and the reporter was apologising that he couldn't get a copy of the film to show us. Right, like I want to see it. Just hearing about it and seeing the dog before it died was enough to make me cry even while I was yelling at the screen.

Before I could dissolve int0 a lump of snot and used tissues there's a report about the world's largest polar bear plunge occurring at a beach on the chesapeake Bay. The money goes to the special olympics and the 'bears' run into the icy water once an hour for 24 hours. Ok so they're all nuts but it is for a good cause and everyone seemed up beat but then I spot a trio of men slowly making their way to the water. the ones on the end had their arms about the one in the water so I figured he was a reluctant bear. But I was wrong.

It wasn't until the men were making their slow way out of the water that I saw that the man in the middle had some kind of prostetic in place of his left lane. I burst into tears, not that the one legged man went into the water but that his two buddies went with him and while everyone else who left the water ran to heated tents, these men walked slow and sure while the one in the middle made his way carefully over the sand which tipped him here and there. His buddies steadied him and off they went slow and sure. It's one thing to run yourself into the cold water but how this guy must be loved to have two buddies go into the water with him and match their pace to his. I hope he realises how lucky he is. For he is, one leg and all.

Slogging through the Slough of Despond

Last night there was a knock on the bedroom door. When I answered Josh asked if I could have a friend. it was what he always said when Rocco wanted in and the door was closed. This time when he opened it, in came Bella. Josh and I only looked at each other, then he smiled and closed the door. I, however dissolved into tears but Had to shove my face into a pillow because the husband, when he walked into my craft room and found me in tears, told me that i had to stop, that it was ridiculous and I better go see a mental health professional.

Needless to say, the pillow got soaked and snotty and the poor little cat was beside herself purring and rubbing and trying to soothe. Eventually I pulled myself together and snuggled with the cat for a bit until she took up her post at the end of the bed where she promptly fell asleep, snoring like a lumberjack. Who thought such a sound could come out of such a little cat.

I've made a clear path in the craft room from door to desk and Ollie followed that path half a dozen times last night, I guess to see if the path worked, or he couldn't believe that there was a path, or he thought he had to use the path before it disappeared once more under an avalanche of stuff. He's also started working on the huge bone but I did go out today to get him more manageable chews. He looked so sad when I left that it nearly broke my heart. I certainly could not bring him into the office. He DOES NOT like going anywhere in the car and with the way Rocco reacted when I tried to get him down the office stairs, Ollie might have ended up with a heart attack. Maybe the chews will help.

One of the sons' friends came by the other day and I heard him call Ollie the lone ranger and how sad it was. This is the same guy that, once we knew the worst, would bring the dogs some jerky each time he visited. He also called Rocco, during the last presidental election, Rocco Bama and asked if he was running for president.

So there it is. Not much happening here in the Slough of Despond. Maybe we'll get snow tonight. Snow always makes me happy and I need a good dose of happy.

Stepping Up To the Plate

I am still having a hard time with losing Rocco but it is getting a bit easier. I think I'll miss him until the day I die but I have noticed that little dog, Ollie, and littlest cat, Isabella, are stepping in to cover the breach. It is rather endearing but it tends to make my heart hurt more.

Isabella, or Bella, has taken to sleeping on the end of the bed. If I'm up late reading or on the computer, she's right there curled up to me but she moves to the end of the bed when the lights go out. Josh said that I was awake the other night and the bedroom door was closed and Bella was giving him hell trying to get him to let her into the room. When I break down and start to cry she comes running to get into my lap and pat my face. Sort of a 'there there' kind of pat.

Ollie, on the other hand, followed me into the craft room, to stare at me while I ate my sandwich. Rocco always wanted what I was eating and I always left him a piece. Ollie never begged r followed me around but now he's my shadow. So there we are, in the craft room, with Ollie staring at me as if he had to have just a taste of that or he would die. It was cute and funny and distressing all at once and so I begged him to please let me eat first. Well, Ollie didn't leave the room. He did, however look away from me with that, I don't care what you're doing ploy except he kept looking at me out of the corner of his eye as if to make certain I didn't pull a fast one and eat the whole sandwich myself. He's now, also the designated barker and heaven help you if you dare to slam a car door or drive a UPS or Fed Ex truck up the street. Just because the big boy is gone, doesn't mean vigelance is at an end. There's little dog Ollie to contend with. And he's going to remind you of that fact.

But on the heart breaking side. Ollie is still hiding his chews and his toys as if someone else might get the toys and rip the squeaker out of it. Ollie always greets me with something in his mouth and, the other day, on a whim, I gave him the cardboard toilet paper roll that he has taken to carrying around with him as if it is a treasure beyond measure. But what hurt the most is the bone Josh brought home last night. A bone nearly the side of Ollie who only looked at it puzzled and then let it be. I couldn't help but think that Rocco would have fallen on it and not let up until he had chewed away a great hunk of it. I fear that this bone will become fossilized before Ollie is finished with it.

So Ollie and Bella are doing their best. Gotta love the little ones trying to fill awfully big shoes. I wonder when I will be able to see who is there and not looking for who is missing.

I Love IT!

Older son stuck his head in the crap room last night and wanted to know if I had any paint for his warhammer figures. These are itty bitty guys that all come as a single gray color and while, the son hasn't played a game of warhammer in quite sometime, he still likes painting the men.

Well all I have are watercolors and acrylics, neither of which would work and then I had a brain storm and pulled out my Lumin Arte polished pigments and the accompanying fluids that go with them and then handed over a fistful of the best fine brushes I ever found with big rubberized grips and costs a whole twenty five cents each!

I checked in with him before I came to work to see if the pigments with the fluid worked on his guys and before I could even ask, I saw them sitting there shining. He was using beer bottlecaps to hold the mixture and had the reading lamp I got him for Christmas clamped to the tray table giving him his own spotlight to work in.

He told me how great the stuff was, how little of the pigments he had to use to get great coverage and then told me a story....

Seems he liked his results so much that he went next door to show a friend who also plays warhammer. While he was there a second warhammer friend showed up and the second friend was gobsmacked to see the little guy thing shining. Then he protested that since the whatevers lived in caves, they shouldn't shine like that. Ah.... but he didn't reckon with the Graff imagination. Josh told the friend that since his whatevers lived in caves and raised spiders that their tunics were made of spider silk and since they all lived in darkness the spider's silk was bioluminescent and therefore the whatevers could see in the dark caves. The friend mulled it over for a bit and just as he was ready to accept the story Josh admitted that he had pulled the whole thing out of his ass and had made it up. It had all sounded plausible that I even bought it until I saw that grin on Josh's face. His shit eatin gtin we call it. I do so love having him living at home with us, bioluminescent whatevers and all.

Who Knew?

Saw a hand painted sign the other day that read, local grown, hand picked caramel apples. Uh What? I didn't know you could get a CARAMEL apple tree. I thought you just got a tree that gave you those naked, without the caramel, apples. The kind that taste so much better with caramel on them. Where do I get me one of those trees?Next hing you know there will be strawberry banana bushes and peaches and cream ponds.

Then today, while checking the Maryland Department of Assessments and taxation site for a homeowner's name, I look down below all of the stuff I normally need to a category that says NEAR: and there, bold as brass it read Scotland.DUH WHA? Scotland? Really. The bagpipes and what is really worn ounder those kilts Scotland. The Scotland that is oh... let's say... Across the freaking Atlantic Ocean! What happened? Did it break loose and float all the way here to Maryland. I'm pretty certain that America didn't move but what do I know? I've been sunk so low in the Slough of Despond, I;m lucky to remember to change my underwear... or wear underwear.

Hey! Maybe that's where the caramel apple trees came from. They floated on over with Scotland and jumped ship, digging their rootsies deep into Maryland soil. That's fine by me but let's hope the haggis stays where it belongs. I mean, how hungry must a person be to eat haggis? IK'd rather chew on a sock.

Once more - Rocco

I cannot believe how devastated I am over losing Rocco. I find myself crying at the oddest times. Not just tears but huge gulping sobs that make my chest hurt and my nose run and does nothing for my eyes. I cannot reconcile myself to his death and I really wonder if I am losing my mind. I walked into the living room after my bath last night, looked at the time on the cable box and saw that it read 11:11. I went into a tirade, a rant, shouting at the tv and the powers that be and telling them to shove their 11;11 because I had had enough of it already. What good is all this crap if I don't know what it means and while I was at it I told them to go screw this winged visitor thing as well. Josh had a hawk outside his basement window and the kid next door took a picture of another one. Oh and while they were at it they could cut out the three knocks on the door. I AM SICK OF IT ALL! I don't care any more. All I want it to have my dog back and since that can't happen why can't the Powers that Be just LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE AND GO PEDDLE YOUR SIGNS AND PORTENTS SOMEPLACE ELSE BECAUSE I HAVE HAD ENOUGH. What good is knowing something is going to happen only you don't know what or where or when? Screw this 'your special, the angels have picked you' stuff. My angels woudl never play with me this way.

My precious boy is gone. I keep expecting to see him in the hallway ourside of the craft room door, grinning at me and rolling over onto his back, or bouncing about the kitchen clacking his jaws and begging em to play the treat game, or yodeling to me through the front window when I pull into the driveway, grinning all the while as he races down the drive way to greet me, Tail wagging so furiously I often wondered why the power of that didn't lift his butt into the air much like the whirling blades that lifts a helicopter into the air. Or have him hide his chews in the oddest places aroudn the house so that Ollie can't get them. No more treats in the bed, my shoe or in my purse. His last night on earth he was laying at the foot of my bed as I read and went down to Josh once the lights were out. The next moringin I found a half chewed treat in my bed. Rocco's last gift to me.

I can;t stand it.