Several years ago on a cruise ship, Janet and I met a hard-working young lady named Lenora.
She was cleaning tables and carrying away dirty dishes when we sat down for breakfast.
Lenora was from Ukraine. Janet’s been to Ukraine before, so someone who knew exactly where her country was, much less having been there before, seemed a genuine treat for Lenora.
Quick observation — most people vacationing on cruises don’t really see the people working on the ship. It’s like the workers are simply working movable fixtures, walking robots, not real people at all, as if invisible.
Janet talked about getting a dog for a good while. She wanted a little one, a lap dog, about 5 pounds full grown.
Fine with me.
If I had another dog, I want an outside dog, a Golden Retriever, maybe a Rottweiler.
Sometimes wants aren’t practical. We have plenty of room for a big dog to roam, but our neighbors have 17 or 18 horses. The fence keeps horses in, but I have no way to keep a big dog out. I’m content with that.
So, when Janet started finding pomapoo puppies on line (half Pomeranian, half miniature poodle), I was que sera sera.
She settled on looking at one in a nearby town. They texted pictures of two puppies left, along with a video of a little monkey they have as a pet playing with the puppies.
The Pomeranian dad was supposedly 3 pounds with the mama allegedly an 8-pound miniature poodle.
The smaller, calmer one was the one Janet picked. It was December 13, before Christmas, so she named it Joy for the season, and for the fruit of the spirit.
I’ve since wondered if Satan, or maybe Little Lucifer, for thorn in the flesh, would’ve been a better name.
Anyway, life at our house changed, a lot.
Janet and Joy, December 13, 2022
Joy only weighed 2 pounds when we got her, but was “expected” to be about 5 or 6 pounds, at the most. She’s 10.2 pounds now and growing.
Janet keeps asking the vet how big Joy will get. The vet just shrugs and kindly smiles, “We’ll see”.
It started as a little quiver, a passing thought that somehow nose dived into an idea, then exploded on the runway into all kind of notions.
I don’t mean for them to, but some ideas just keep growing. A simple idea takes on the persona of a cute, tiny green yard lizard, which promptly blows up into a huge heap of ideas that look like an angry T-Rex on a Jurassic Park rampage.
It’s happened before.
Happened again.
I was just going to make a few plain bluebird houses to go with the standard design half dozen already out on trees.
Then there was the little lizard idea to make a birdhouse like the church where Janet I got married.
That’s when Jurassic Park started. The little green lizard metamorphosed into big, cumbersome dinosaurs.
Before I knew it, I’d sketched twelve different birdhouse ideas! Soon I was adding cutouts, individualized painting, and attaching unique perches.
It ended up being the one for Janet, plus eleven more, one for each of our eleven kids and their respective family units.
It’s the day I’ll be the exact same age as my dad when he died.
I figured out the date 10 years ago. It’s been on my work bulletin board ever since.
Now it’s less than a year away, 47 weeks to be exact.
It’s not a day to worry about, just be aware of.
Maybe I’ll take off.
Maybe I’ll go fishing at a nearby lake at the dam, a place where the turmoil of the released water churns up choppy white waters until finally slowing to a gentle roll farther downstream.
Maybe the day itself will feel like that. I don’t know.
Is it any coincidence my thyroid is acting up now? Possibly the beginning of a hypothyroid with a plausible diagnosis of Hashimoto Thyroiditis.
That’s what’s on my dad’s death certificate. The doctors tell me Hashimoto’s doesn’t cause death.
I sorted the large stack of mail on the counter: Jeff. Janet. Janet. Junk mail. Jeff. Junk.
My eyebrow raised involuntarily on the last piece. Janet, or junk mail?
Janet.
I was wrong. Junk.
She opened it, shook her head, and laughed while tearing it in two.
It was an invitation for a free Italian meal at a local restaurant! Of course at first, I thought cheap date.
The catch though, and there’s always a catch, was you had to listen to a pre-pay your own cremation sales spiel!
No joke!
Cremation is both a legit, and best option, for many. Recent studies show 50% of Americans and 70% of Canadians opt for cremation. In fact, it’s usually one-quarter to a third of the costs compared to a traditional funeral. I’ve had family members cremated. You probably have too.
But selling cremation over a free meal, well that burns me up!
They even included the menu of “free” Italian entrees!
To keep in step with the delightful cremation dinner conversation, 6 of the 8 meals were“sauteed”, and a 7th was fried. Kind of figures, huh!?
If an animal can have a kind soul, it’s Sadie. She just has a sensitive spirit!
She’s a Porky, half Pomeranian, half Yorky. Even as an adult dog, she’s permanent puppy size. If she’s ever weighed more than 4 pounds, it’s only because her hair was wet!
Her little fox face and big, dark eyes give her the appearance of a harmless, nocturnal creature.
She quickly picks up on feelings, and well knows the regulars to our house. She also knows children love to hold her like a baby doll, so she’s developed an adept ability to hide.
Yet when someone new comes over, she studies them a while before jumping in the chair beside them just to make the acquaintance. After a time or two of visiting though, she’s content to just sit on her blanket and watch from a distance.
Sadie’s 15 years old now, and it may sound strange to say, but when she was 6 years old she was traumatized. My wife, Janet, let Sadie and her sister out early one morning. A minute later, Janet heard an odd, chilling scream, one that sounded like a woman screaming just outside her back door.
Janet ran outside. On the other side of the driveway, a black panther was running away toward the woods with Sadie’s sister in its mouth. Continue reading Sadie→
It started as a wild hair. I moved a swarm of bees at work to keep them away from some employees who are deathly allergic.
Besides, bees are important to the environment, so you don’t want to kill them. I learned along the way how to get a swarm to relocate them. At first, it was a fiasco, but after moving a few over a couple of years, I got better.
Not to be a braggart, although it’s bragging, but not a prideful bragging, just an accomplishment bragging….OK, so I’m tooting my horn with a fog horn beecause I did it beeuatifully!
And, (brag, brag) I’ve only been stung once a couple of years ago when one got under my hard hat. That bee kamikazed its stinger right in the bald spot! Yeah. It hurt! Big red lump on the bald spot for a week!
The wild hair (no pun intended) has turned into an interest. I bought a bee box from a feed store and waited. Patiently. Continue reading Welcome to the Bee Box→
It takes all kinds to make the world go round, but some make the trip around more entertaining.
At the gym during lunch time, there was a new guy working out, kinda. Most folks just work out to be healthy and go their own way. Not the new guy. No siree. Not at all!
He was in the locker room when I got there talking to someone in the next section over. He acted as if he was the right hand mercenary for a mafia Godfather, but I’m not sure he’d be over 5’2” even with a pair of stiletto high heels on! (OK, so I know what stiletto high heels are — I have four daughters.) Continue reading Totally Jealous→
Sometimes it’s just enough to trod through the day to day issues and simply make it through. The award for those days is to simply collapse in bed at day’s end. Everyone has them. It’s part of being human, I guess.
But to stay there doesn’t work. To stay in those days is like digging a tunnel through the darkness of an underground cavern with no escape hatch. To remain in those days is to remain in the tunnel gliding through life like a bat in the dark because we’re too worried, too busy or too tired to see light outside the underground cavern. Sure, life moves along, but it’s not the same as soaring in the light of clouds. Continue reading Abiding Sunrise→
Stories about family, faith, friends and funnies. Pull up a chair. Grab a cup of coffee and laugh, cry, ponder and inspire about ordinary events of this wonderful, ever changing, bubbling pot that we call "every day life".
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