Snickerdoodle Says Goodbye
Snoopy Snickerdoodle left for Rainbow Bridge on February 28, 2012 around 10:15am to find his old buddy Anchor. It was a peaceful and fitting send-off. When Dr. Todd arrived, Snickerdoodle went outside on his own and settled down in one of his favorite sun-bathing spots. It was a pretty morning, and he knew it was time. He will be greatly missed, but he was able to leave with dignity and before the auto-immune and presumed cancer consumed him. Snoopy Snickerdoodle (aka, the Pouf-Man from when he got all poufy-boufy while on Prednisone) was 10 1/2 years old and leaves behind his brother (and littermate) Tic and his human parents, Rick and Laurie.
A slideshow of Snickerdoodle through the years is currently being put together and will be available from Laurie’s website.
Nine Eleven
It’s hard to believe it was 10 years ago that the World Trade Centers were destroyed, the Pentagon was hit, and a thwarted hijacked plane went down in a field in Pennsylvania. There are a lot of images and sounds that still stick with me to this day. Watching as a second plane hit the towers. Paper floating and fluttering everywhere. Seeing desperate people jump. Smoke billowing from the Pentagon. The towers collapsing: first one, then the other. A huge hole in the Pennsylvania countryside. People covered in dust emerging from the chaos on the streets. The eerie sound of hundreds of ADSUs. But the one thing that really struck me that day was the silence on my drive home from work that afternoon. I pulled to the side of the country road I was on, opened all the windows and shut off the car. Nothing. I got out and walked a little ways down the road. Still nothing. Not one streak in the blue, blue sky; not one bird tweeting or chirping; not one flying insect to be seen; not even a slight breeze stirred. Just absolute stillness.
Picking Your Battles
One of my friends forwarded me this. It was all I could do to keep from busting out laughing in the office while I was reading this. You may not think it’s as funny as I do, but, well, we have chickens. And at one time, we had a lot of chicken stuff. Chicken plates. Chicken cha-chis. Chicken towels. Chicken curtains. Stuffed bears in dresses made of material that had pretty chickens on them. Chicken crossing signs. If I had run across a chicken like this, I would have done the same thing. These ladies have a good sense of humor.
http://thebloggess.com/2011/06/and-thats-why-you-should-learn-to-pick-your-battles/
Empty Nest
What a treat tonight! The wrens that had nested in one of my fake ferns hanging on the front porch vacated their nest. I was sitting in the Doggie-TV room with a peripheral view of Doggie-TV (aka the Front Window), and I kept seeing things out of the corner of my eye. When Tic, my primary Doggie-TV watcher, finally got into a snit, I got up to look. Usually it’s a bicyclist, jogger, dog-walker, deer, squirrels, chipmunks or on a rare occasion, fox. None of those this time. It was baby wrens, taking to flight to leave their nest. I’m not sure how many there were. They flew from the table to the window ledge to the bricks to the fake plants to the decimated impatiens to the hostas to the table and around again. I sat there with Tic for about 20 minutes, just watching them. The parents would fly by and light for an instant or two with treats dangling from their mouth, then off to the trees or the shrubs they’d go. After a lot of false starts, and a lot of bouncing back and forth, they finally went into the bushes and then on to the trees. Another generation off to experience the world.
