Snap! Grackles hop! (Photographing moving birds)

Do you have grackles where you live?

Several times over the past three weeks, Tippi Hedren's worst nightmare has descended upon my backyard in the form of an enormous, cackling flock (several different flocks?) of  grackles. They seemed to come from nowhere, their dark shapes flickering past my windows as they settled en masse onto the grass. So many of them, stopping all at once. Did one bird signal the rest to stop here? They made so much noise (and they all looked so much alike), how did they keep up with which bird was the leader? Was this yard a spur-of-the-moment decision, or had they sent a scout out ahead of the flock to scope out dining areas?

The picture above shows just a small area of the yard, but the entire yard was blanketed with these iridescent black and blue and purple birds. And perhaps I used the wrong word when I wrote that they "settled" in the yard. They landed softly, then hopped and fluttered  from place to place, leaping over one another like winged Chinese checkers, searching out the tastiest morsels of . . . what?

The previous photo is blurry because the grackles were in constant motion. In fact, I took dozens of photographs, and nearly all of them are blurry. And the next one is one of the blurriest of all, because as suddenly as the birds had descended, they lifted off as one and flew over the fence to a neighbor's yard.

A few minutes after the grackles left, I let the dogs outside. They stopped short just past the edge of the patio. You can see by the tilt of Kadi's ear that the enclosed yard she's so familiar with had suddenly become rich with possibilities.

Until I saw the dogs' reaction, I hadn't considered that several hundred grackles were doing more than finding food at this particular rest stop.  

What I've been doing instead of blogging

Wow, it's been a month since my last post? Are you serious?

I knew it had been too long (my smirking, goody-two-shoes, inner faultfinder has been calling it to my attention regularly), but I didn't realize a whole month had passed.  I've been busy doing other, non-fascinating things:

Medical stuff.  Making an appointment,  going to the lab for blood work, and going to the doctor.  Because if I didn't, I couldn't refill my prescriptions again.    Standing in line at Walmart to get prescriptions filled, not checking the prescriptions until I got home, even though I realized they cost more than usual.  Discovering after I got home that one of the prescriptions was for twice the usual dosage -- which made it five times more expensive.  Calling Walmart and finding out that once I left the store with the wrong prescription, they wouldn't take it back.  And because the error wasn't the pharmacist's, there was no adjusting the price, either.  Learning lessons the hard way.

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Counting carbs.  Cutting sugars and starches out of my diet. Boiling eggs, scrambling eggs, frying eggs.  Realizing, once again, that I don't much like leafy, green vegetables. Scouring the Internet for low-carb recipes. Learning to love rotisserie chicken.

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Refinancing the house. Mortgage rates are so much lower now than they were when we bought the place 13 years ago that it seemed foolish not to try to refinance.  But, ohmigosh, the paperwork!

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Taking Kadi and Butch to the vet.  One at a time.  That's two trips into Baton Rouge.  Two hours of total driving time.  They needed their annual checkups and shots. Both of them are doing pretty well, "considering how old" they are.  Each of them is dealing with age-related issues, with which I completely identify.  Spoon-feeding them, still.  Who knew they'd take to this idea so eagerly?  They deign to take an occasional bite from their dog dish on the floor, but they get jump-up-and-down excited when it gets close to suppertime. Loving them, 24/7.

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Cutting my own hair.  It's getting harder and harder to get the back even, and the pile of clippings gets grayer with every cut.

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Genealogy.  I never get tired of snooping the trail to track down one more long-gone ancestor.

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Reading other people's blogs.  And checking out news sites, reality TV gossip sites, puzzle and game sites.

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Keeping up with family and friends on Facebook.  You think I'm bad about blogging? I almost never post anything on FB.  But I do enjoy reading what my daughters, grandkids, sister and nieces are doing.

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Reading new books and rereading old ones.  I spent a glorious few days living a horrible existence Under the Dome in a Maine town full of characters born of Stephen King's imagination.  Then I moved south to Mississippi (and back in time to the 1960s) to get acquainted with the patient ladies who were The Help.  Still time traveling, I lived in the Tennessee plantation-home-turned-Union-Army hospital with The Widow of the South. 

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Keeping up with my favorite TV shows. These days I check the television schedule days in advance and set up the DVR to record the shows I enjoy. Fast-forwarding through all those commercials saves me lots of time.

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Playing Sudoku and Mahjongg on the computer for way too many hours.

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Visiting all the houses I've lived in on Google Maps Street View.  I hope the people who live in this home now enjoy it as much as we did in the late '60s.

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Taking photos while Kim melted glass for the beadmaking tutorials she's been writing.  This has been a fun photography project.  

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Editing photos in Photoshop Elements.  I can easily pass a whole day playing with my pictures.  Or even just enlarging them and looking at them, really.  It isn't the photos that I love so much; it's the subjects of them.

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Making music.  If you can call it that.  I've never had a lesson, but I've learned to pick out a few songs on this old keyboard that was a gift in the mid-1980s.  I've also learned to ignore the many false notes I hit; they do not count.  The keyboard lives near my back door these days, and when the dogs go outside, I indulge my inner Liberace while I wait for them to come back in.

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Listening to music.  All those activities above that are done on the computer? They aren't done in silence.  I was given several iTunes gift cards last year, and I've put them to good use.  Music has always been an important memory trigger for me, so it's been fun to create playlists of songs I've loved through the years. As for new music, I find most of it on TV and movie soundtracks.  When I hear a song I like, I jot down a long string of lyrics, Google the lyrics to learn the song title, search for the song title on YouTube until I find out who sings the version I like, then order the song on iTunes.  That'll work until the gift cards run out.

Sometimes I like to pull up a list of all my iTunes songs, scroll up and down the list several times with my eyes closed, then stop scrolling and click the mouse to give myself a musical surprise.  Whoooeeee, there's a lot of spice in my life!

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So that's it.  That's where I've been.  Not very much to blog about, is it?

Bird's eye view

Earlier this week Kim came in carrying a package she'd found by my front door. It turned out to be a gift from my Aunt Shirley, youngest of my dad's siblings, and it was a book created by her son, my first-cousin, Jason.

I've never met Jason, who is half my age and lives more than 600 miles away. He's a helicopter pilot and a talented photographer, and his book of aerial photographs took me on a happy journey to places very near Springfield, Missouri, the town I still consider home.

This afternoon I've spent some time browsing beautiful photos on Jason's website, ozarksaerialphotography.com. Now I'm really homesick.

Another Brick in the Wall

Pink Floyd sang, "All in all you're just another brick in the wall." In the context of the song, that lyric seems intended to point out the lack of importance of a single individual to the grand scheme of things. That's one way to look at it, I suppose. On a bad day. Usually, I see bricks in a different light.

One brick alone may not be much more than a doorstop or a paperweight, a useful object, but one that won't garner much attention. A lot of bricks together, though, can become buildings: churches, schools, and very sturdy houses (remember the three little pigs). And each individual brick is important to the completion of the building.

It works the same way with us human "bricks." When we stand together, our combined strength can accomplish great social movement. Unfortunately, it's also true that a lot of brick-headed people working together can quickly throw up walls that prevent progress. That's happening a lot in our nation these days. It makes me sad.

I wonder when our leaders and our extremist mobs will recognize that when they build stand-alone walls, they don't have much. A wall that doesn't meet and join with other walls will never be a cathedral. It can only be an obstacle.

I worry sometimes because so many "bricks" in our society seem to be crumbling. And I wonder what kind of mortar it will take to put us back together again.

Swamped

In a recent phone conversation, my younger daughter, Kelli, casually asked, "So, have you seen "Swamp People"?  I hadn't seen it, so she told me about the people featured on the show, an assortment of Louisiana folks who make their living hunting alligators.  Because we both know a local attorney/State legislator who hunts gators as a hobby, I was kind of intrigued.

After we hung up, I checked it out on the Internet, watched some video clips, and learned that the first three episodes were going to be shown back-to-back on the History Channel last Sunday night.  This didn't seem like the kind of show I would normally find interesting, but I was curious enough to set the DVR to record all three episodes.

Late Sunday night, after I'd watched my regular Sunday TV lineup, I thought I'd just take a quick peek at "Swamp People" and then go to bed.  Oh. My. Gosh!  I was hooked every bit as tightly as the huge alligators shown thrashing about on these Cajun men's heavy-duty, chicken-baited hooks.

Midway through the second episode, my older daughter, Kim, came to pick up her pooches that had spent the weekend with me.  She sat down to watch with me for a minute and stayed all the way to the end of the last episode.  

I'm not sure what fascinates me most about this show. The scenery is certainly part of it, reminding me of the quiet, natural beauty that thrilled me on my own trip into a different but equally wild swamp (which I wrote about here, here, and here), and also my visit with Kim to a more tourist friendly swamp (which I shared with you here).

The show is worth watching for the scenery alone, but it's the people I find myself thinking about after the show is over. I'll admit that a couple of them initially gave me "Deliverance" flashbacks, but I quickly got past that and came to like them. I like some of them a lot. They seem to be honest, hard-working, and extremely family oriented.

If you're turned off by the antics of the "Jersey Shore" kids and the various sets of "Housewives," you might find "Swamp People" as refreshing as I did.   Full episodes are available on the "Swamp People" website in case your Sunday nights are otherwise occupied. If you decide to check it out, be sure to let me know what you think.

Photos in this post were taken at McElroy Swamp,

Sorrento, Louisiana, in March 2007,
the last one with a long zoom lens.

The joy of a gentle breeze

Yesterday morning I opened the back door to let the dogs out for the first time of the day.  When I opened the storm door, a stiff breeze caught it, whipped it out of my hand, and sent it swinging on its hinges to bang against the house.  A breeze!  A little gust of honest-to-goodness fresh air!  It seems like such a long time since I've wanted to hold my face up to the sky and inhale deeply.

This summer has been a brutal one, its harsh heat interrupted only by frequent afternoon showers.  And for each minute of cool rain, we paid a price in higher humidity.  On days like that, a deep breath felt like drowning.

I've stayed in the air conditioning as much as possible this summer, and so have Butch and Kadi.  They haven't even wanted to stay outside long enough to roll in the grass or patrol the fence line.  They'd run out, do their business, and race back to the house.  This morning, though, I saw them lying happily in the grass.  I envied them the freedom to do that without worrying about what the neighbors would think.

On days like this I wish I had a hammock.  I imagine the peacefulness of being cradled by canvas and rocked by a gentle breeze.  (I try not to imagine myself struggling to get into or out of the hammock; those mental images are why I don't have one.)  There'd be a book in my hand for a while, then it would lie on my chest while I napped.  The sun would be shining, but I would not be hot.

I know summer isn't over.  I know there are more steamy days ahead of us.  But the lower than usual temperatures yesterday and today have planted seeds of hope that relief is on the way.  Seeds of hope and seeds of joy.

Turtle empathy

After writing yesterday's post about the difficulty I've encountered in getting things accomplished recently, I spent a little while at one of my favorite pastimes: looking at my digital photo collection while listening to songs I love on iTunes. As I scrolled through photos in the folder entitled "Animals," I came across a few pictures of this guy (shown here at a safe distance from my left foot):

Now, there was a creature who would have understood the frustration I've been feeling.

We met this turtle last year when Kim backed her car out of my driveway and we discovered he'd been resting under there.  I didn't know where he came from or where he thought he was going, but I knew one thing for sure:  He'd made a big error in judgment and had no doubt realized it by the time we found him.  He had ended up here:

That's my garden shed in the background, on the other side of the fence.  I don't know how far the turtle had walked before he turned into my driveway, but once he made that turn, he had to walk more than 150 feet, much of it uphill, to get to where you see him now.  And this was as far as he could go.  Behind him there was nothing but fence.  On his left?  More fence, about 85 feet of it.  On his right?  My house, a doublewide carport, then another house.  You might think he could have taken a shortcut through the carport, but if he'd tried to do that, he'd only have encountered more fence.

I felt so sorry for this poor, tired turtle.  He'd expended so much effort to get here, and now he'd have to spend a lot more effort just to undo his mistake.

Except he didn't.  A neighbor came out about that time and saw us looking at the turtle.  The neighbor picked the turtle up, carried him to the front yard, and set him down to resume his travels.  Or to rest a while longer.  Or whatever else the turtle chose to do.

Thanks to my neighbor's kindness, this turtle got what I think we all need once in a while:  just a little break to help keep the faith.

Like slogging through molasses

Recently it seems as if everything I've tried to do has been more complicated than it ought to have been -- or taken longer than it should have taken.  In order to give you some examples of what I'm complaining about, I've been writing this post for more than an hour.  I've written long, detailed paragraphs about contradictory diagnoses and recommendations from a doctor, lengthy delays between communications with another business professional, and the general apathy of too many workers these days.  Oh, yes, and why there are dirty dishes in my sink.

After all that writing, I came to three conclusions:

1.  It's probably not a good idea to spread all my business out on the Internet;
2.  I could have unloaded the dishwasher and washed the dishes in the sink in less time than it took to write all those paragraphs which I will now delete; and
3.  I'm more pissed off now than I was before I started writing.

So, writing this post is the only example I'll give you today of something that turned out to be way more complicated than it should have been.

But that's just me and my bad attitude.

You have a nice day, hear?

Tea party talk -- not the political kind

I can't imagine why this popped into my head today, but how many of you remember the Jewel Tea Company? When my children were small and we lived in East Texas, the Jewel Tea man came around every couple of weeks to sell baking mixes, household cleaners, and any number of other items. If I placed an order on one visit, he'd bring the products on his next visit, and I'd pay him when he delivered -- usually.

The only pocket money I had in those days was the little bit I earned typing transcripts for a court reporter friend while my babies napped. My name wasn't on my husband's checking account. Even our groceries were charged and paid by him once a month. So if I'd placed a Jewel Tea order, I had to make sure to have the money ready on delivery day.

One day, when Kim was about two and a half, I was playing with her in the living room while Kelli, about six months old, napped at the other end of the house. I happened to glance out the window just in time to see the Jewel Tea man turn his car into our driveway. He was a couple of days early. I knew I didn't have any money. It flashed through my mind that he'd tried to make a delivery one day a few months earlier when I wasn't home. On that occasion he'd left the items at the back door and had come back the next day to be paid. I quickly decided that's what I wanted to happen this time.

I grabbed Kim around her waist and ran with her to the back bedroom, whispering to her all the way to be quiet. "We're playing a game," I told her. "In just a second someone is gonna knock on the door, and we're gonna pretend we aren't home, okay? Just be very, very, very quiet."

We waited for the knock, and it came. Kim looked at me expectantly, and I winked at her and smiled, putting my finger to my lips to remind her to be quiet. There was a second knock at the door, and that time Kim looked at me and grinned. She was getting into the game. Just when I thought the Jewel Tea man had given up and gone away, I heard the door open. I was shocked, and Kim's eyes got huge. I clapped one hand over my own mouth and one over hers as we waited to hear what would happen. We both listened intently as the man made his way to the kitchen, set our packages on the table, then opened the door again and left. We listened for his car to start, then waited a little while longer to be sure he had driven away.

I carried Kim back into the living room so we wouldn't wake the baby, then I set her down and gave a medium loud whoop.  "Wasn't that fun?" I asked. "We'll have to play that game again sometime."  The two of us had a good laugh together.  We didn't say one word about who had been at the door

So much drama, I thought, but it was worth it. The Jewel Tea man would come back tomorrow, I'd have the money and apologize for missing him, and everything would be back to normal.

A few hours later, while I was bending over Kelli's crib changing her diaper, there was another rap at the door.   I couldn't stop what I was doing, and before I could think what to do, Kim ran to the door and threw it open.  I heard her say in a loud, cheerful tone, her words articulated clearly and precisely, "We hided from you in the bedroom this morning."

"You did?" asked the Jewel Tea man.

"Uh-huh, we sure did."

I could have died.

I still don't know whether Kim saw the tea man's car out the window when I picked her up to run, or if she put two and two together when she saw the things he'd left on the kitchen table.  I'd always known she was a smart little cookie, but I'd apparently underestimated her that day.

There was nothing I could do but face the music.  Holding the freshly changed baby in my arms, I walked back into the living room and pretended I hadn't heard a thing. So did the Jewel Tea man, bless his heart. I smiled and told him I was sorry I'd missed him earlier in the day, that I appreciated his leaving the items I'd ordered, and that I hadn't expected him so soon and didn't have the money ready to pay him.

He was very nice about it. He said he'd come early because he was going out of town, and that if I wanted to place an order, I could pay him for that day's delivery when I paid for the next one.  He let me off the hook.

Would you be surprised to know I ordered lots of stuff that day?  Lots and lots and lots of stuff.

Little bridges in summer

The road I used to take to work follows the curves of New River Canal, a pretty little waterway that meanders across our parish as if it's in no particular hurry to get anywhere at all.  People who built homes on the other side of the canal found it difficult to get into town until a number of little bridges were built across the canal to provide access to the road.

I remember some controversy years ago about whether or not the taxpayers were funding the erection of those bridges for the benefit of so few citizens.  I don't remember how that battle turned out, and if I ever cared, I no longer do. Now I just enjoy looking at the pretty wooden bridges.

On days when I took my camera to work, I often took pictures of the bridges as I approached them.  Because I was shooting from a moving car (not safe, I know), most of the photos were at least a little blurry.

Once again, the "dry brush" filter in Photoshop Elements came to my rescue and turned the less-than-sharp images into pleasant landscapes.  I love the bridges, the shade trees, and even the unknown fishermen in these little scenes:

I hope you're having a beautiful day today, wherever you are.

Lovely Lucy's Luxury Lunch

Some of you already know that Kim caught Lucy scarfing up grapes this past Monday, grapes that had fallen into our yard from a neighbor's vine. And some of you know that grapes are usually toxic to dogs. (Raisins are even worse, by the way.)

We feel lucky on several counts: first, that Kim had actually followed the dogs into the yard, witnessed Lucy's feeding frenzy, and investigated; and second, that we had had recent experience in how to induce vomiting in a dog.

We spooned hydrogen peroxide into Lucy's mouth immediately. While we waited for the desired result, Kim went outside, cut off all the grapevines that hung over the fence, picked up all the grapes she could find in the grass, and set up a dog fence to keep the dogs away from that area of the yard. She came back inside just in time for us to give Lucy a second dose, after the first one didn't work.

By that time we were worried that my bottle of peroxide, which had failed to work with Oliver, had somehow lost its potency. Kim made a quick run to the drugstore for new peroxide, and just before she got back, Lucy threw up. Just foam, not grapes.

More or less as a precaution, Kim called the veterinarian. They told her that four or five grapes are enough to kill a dog Lucy's size and advised that she bring Lucy in immediately. Kim hung up the phone, and Lucy threw up again: one grape. Knowing Lucy's tendency to gobble her meal like a TV prison inmate, we were pretty sure she'd eaten more than one grape, so Kim packed her in the car and headed to the vet.

After Kim came home, she discovered another little puddle of vomit, tucked away beside the toy box, that contained four grapes. Apparently the first dose did work, and I missed it. Not that it's ever fun to come upon unexpected dog barf, but we were quite relieved to find those unchewed grapes.

Kim and I tried our best to figure out why the grapes have never been a problem before; the grapevine has been there for years. We thought maybe it had only recently grown long enough to hang over into my yard, but I have a photo from three years ago that shows grape leaves on my side of the fence. After giving it a lot of thought, I suspect the real reason this hasn't happened sooner is that Lucy never hung out on that side of the yard before. Every summer of her entire life, until this one, she'd leave the backdoor, race to the opposite side of the yard, and hang out under the fig tree, where she'd stuff herself with fresh, juicy figs. (We cut down the fig tree earlier this year, sadly, because the neighbor on that side was concerned that its roots might soon breach the lid of her septic tank.)

The animal hospital kept Lucy for two days. Her treatment included administration of activated charcoal to thoroughly clean out her stomach and IV fluids to clean any toxins out of the rest of her organs. She came home yesterday, slightly traumatized but with a clean bill of health.

Oliver had searched for Lucy for two days and seemed overjoyed to have her back. He, Butch, and Kadi surrounded her and sniffed her unusual, "doctor's office" scent for many long moments, while she tried her best to find a place where they couldn't get to her. I talked to Kim awhile ago, and she said Lucy is quiet this morning. She's sleeping a lot and hiding out under Kim's desk.

The ultimate cost of those five grapes? $575!!!

Oh, baby, baby!

My new great-grandson, Owen, turned five months old yesterday. In those five short months he has firmly secured his place in our hearts. He doesn't know it yet, but he is definitely the king of our world.

"My first ride in a buggy!!!"

Age 4 months

Photo and caption by Kalyn Hoover

"Nothing like driving a jeep with the top down and

 the wind in your hair on a Sunday afternoon!"

Age (almost) 5 months

Photo and caption by Kalyn Hoover

Owen's mama is doing a great job of providing the family with current photos. Her digital camera and her photographic skills have moved way up near the top of my gratitude list. (I cheerfully snagged the photos above from Facebook.)

This past Sunday Kim and I had the pleasure of spending an afternoon with Owen while his Nana, my daughter Kelli, babysat.  His mama sent his Jeep with him on this visit, and I remembered to take my camera, so I got the chance to take some pictures of my own:

How we hope he'll be in 16 years:
  driving safely, hands on the wheel, 
big baby-blues on the road ahead.

How he'll possibly be in 16 years,

given the genes he's inherited:

Rowdy hollering, hearty laughter,

"Look, Ma, no hands!"

TV Typo

Yesterday afternoon I was reading in the living room while CNN played in the background. At one point I raised my eyes to glance at the screen for a split second, then returned to my book. But wait. Something jarred my brain. Did I really see what I thought I saw? Surely I was mistaken.

Curiosity got the best of me, so I pressed the rewind button, then the pause button, and voila! My eyes did not deceive me, and I took a picture to prove it:

Old souls and giant spirits

Elephant with Sad Eyes - Photo by Kim Neely

I'm not sure when my fascination with elephants began, and I'm not sure what started it. My mother told me a few years before she died that my first-grade teacher once reported finding me crying despondently in the classroom. When she asked about the reason for my tears, I supposedly replied, "I don't know how to spell 'elephant.'"

Mother took us to the circus every year at the Shrine Mosque in Springfield, Missouri, so it's possible that I actually saw live elephants before first grade, but I don't remember seeing circus elephants until I was older.

In the mid-1950s, my family traveled to St. Louis, Missouri to visit my great-aunt Edith. We went to the St. Louis Zoo while we were there, and that's where I saw the first live elephant I remember. I couldn't get enough of her. She was so big, and I couldn't believe our good fortune that we could get so close to her. A chain around one leg was all that kept her in place. I felt sad that she was chained, but kind of relieved, also.

In 1965 my husband won a trip to Las Vegas in an automobile sales contest. The best moment of the trip, for me, was at a cocktail party for all the winners and their guests. The star attraction at the hotel that night was a magician, and he appeared at our cocktail party with a baby elephant he used in his act. People dressed up for Las Vegas shows in those days, and as I stood there in a borrowed cocktail dress and borrowed, sparkly-silver shoes, the baby elephant wandered over and checked out my shoes with its trunk. It stayed there for a magical minute or two, exploring gingerly.

In the 1970s I began collecting elephant figures, many of which I still have. My favorite is the mother with her baby, displayed in the center set of shelves in the photo below (among the Readers Digest Condensed Books, another 1970s collection I can't seem to part with).

I've written here before about paying for the privilege of spending a day "behind the scenes" at the Baton Rouge Zoo, during which adventure I helped to bathe an elephant. That was in the early '80s, and I'll never forget the texture of that elephant's skin. Her name was Judy (like my sister).

The reason I'm writing about elephants now is that I came across a video this morning that reminded me of both the strength and the gentleness of these massive, wonderful animals. If I'd been sitting in the jeep with the photographer who shot this video, I might have died, either from the fright or from the thrill of it. But if anyone was going to die that day, it wouldn't have been the baby elephants; watch how the adults kept them safe.

Oliver (the "Twist" is in his tail)

Last week flew by in a haze of muscle aches and sleeplessness. My muscles were sore because I finally broke down and thoroughly cleaned my messy house. The sleeplessness was partly due to the muscle aches but mostly due to the fact that my granddogs spent the week here, and Lucy wasn't necessarily tired when the rest of us were.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed their company. Oliver, the newest and youngest pack member, is a treat to be around. His joie de vivre is infectious, and he's definitely the most stable, grounded dog I've ever known. Nothing fazes him.

Kim brought Ollie home on New Year's Day, not too long after her beloved Winston died. Ollie was a rescue dog. He'd been found running wild, his long hair matted to the point that he had to be shaved, and his whole hind end was inflamed as a result of a flea infestation. A Shih Tzu rescue group found him in the pound, and a foster mom in New Orleans fixed him up and took care of him until Kim saw his picture on craigslist and fell in love.

Nobody knows how long Ollie was on the streets before he was picked up, but it's obvious he was on his own long enough to pick up some street smarts. He's very clever. When he wanted to jump up on Kim's lap but couldn't get to her because other dogs lying on the floor blocked his way, he jumped up on the other sofa, gauged the distance between the arm of that sofa and the arm of the one Kim was sitting on, and made the leap. His front and back legs were stretched out so far it looked like he was flying.

One day last week a violent thunderstorm gave us a little relief from the heat, but it made the other dogs nervous. After one particularly loud clap of thunder, I took inventory of the dogs: Butch buried himself in the tiniest nook he could find in my bedroom. Lucy burrowed between my hip and the arm of the sofa. Kadi stood at my feet and trembled. Then, here came Oliver, racing in from the den and tossing a stuffed hedgehog into the air. Being inside during a storm probably seemed like a great thing to him.

Oliver's Trail of Toys

Ollie lives for toys. He likes to pull all the toys out of the toy basket in the den, pick out four or five favorites, then carry those into the living room to enjoy them. To a dog that loves toys, everything looks like a toy. One night I walked into the kitchen and found poop -- little-dog poop. By Lucy's reaction I knew it was hers. Ollie stood beside me as I fussed at Lucy and pointed my finger at the one long piece of poop and the two little round balls beside it. I left the room for just an instant, and when I came back with a big handful of toilet paper, one of the little round balls was missing. So was Oliver. I turned around to see him on his way back into the kitchen, evidently going back to make a second pickup. The missing ball of poop, I noticed, was now sitting perkily in the midst of Ollie's other toys.

We did have one other scary incident. Just before bedtime one night, I gave Kadi her thyroid pill, folded into a mini-marshmallow, and she dropped it. As fast as I moved, Ollie beat me to it, grabbed it and swallowed.

The dosage of the pill was for a Kadi-sized dog, three times the size of Oliver, so I called the after-hours vet, explained the situation, and asked whether or not I needed to bring Ollie in. They said no, but I needed to make him vomit. They said to give him hydrogen peroxide, about a teaspoon and a half at a time, every 15 or 20 minutes until he vomited.

After talking to the vet, I felt like it was time to call Kim, who was in Baton Rouge taking care of her vacationing friends' three very large dogs. While she was on her way here, I gave Ollie his first dose of peroxide. Nothing happened.

When Kim arrived, Ollie was busily playing with his toys, leaping around and happy as the clown that he is. We gave him a second dose. He licked his lips a couple of times and got an odd expression on his face, but nothing else. We encouraged him to play. We picked him up and bounced him around and rubbed his tummy. Nothing.

We dosed him again. This time we could tell he didn't feel well. He lay down, looking confused and miserable, and we heard a burp or two. But he didn't vomit. We felt so bad about making him sick on purpose, and we were quite aware that the label on the peroxide bottle stressed that it shouldn't be taken internally.

Kim called the vet again. They couldn't believe he hadn't vomited and said to give him three more teaspoonfuls, all at once. Kim asked what we should do in case that didn't work, and they said getting him to vomit was just a precaution, that the pill probably wouldn't hurt him unless he had an allergic reaction to it. Same thing went for all the peroxide in his system.

The larger dose didn't work either. By the time we gave up it was almost one-thirty in the morning, and we didn't know what else to do. Kim finally decided to go back to her friends' house in Baton Rouge, where she'd left the lights on when she rushed to come here. I promised I'd call her if anything changed with Ollie, one way or the other. I must have stretched a hand out to check on him a dozen times during the night, and each time he looked at me as if to ask why I was bothering him in the middle of the night. He never did vomit, and he's been fine ever since.

We learned with Winston that it only takes an instant for things to go terribly wrong, so this was kind of scary. This little funny-faced dog already owns a big piece of my heart.

Down the garden path

Today marks the one-year anniversary of my retirement.

When I made the decision to retire, five months before the actual date, the only plan I'd made was a financial one. I'd given some thought to what I'd do with the rest of my life but hadn't reached any conclusions. All I knew for sure is that I wanted to spend more time at home with my dogs.

One year later I still have no plans.  Maybe that's the true beauty of retirement.

These days, instead of waking to an alarm, I wake up to the subtle flapping of floppy ears or a nudge from a cold nose. My mornings are so much better than they used to be.

My days are filled with . . . I don't know, really. They're a jumble of all the things I like to do and not enough of the things I should do. The things that need to be done get done eventually, and very few of them have deadlines.

At the end of the day I read as late as I want, chapters instead of pages, until my eyes won't stay open. I go to sleep without worrying about how I'll feel the next day.

Honestly, this year has been like a deep, deep breath of fresh air, and it's passed about that quickly. I know there'll be a time when I'll want more structure in my life, when I'll feel a need for accomplishment again or a need to contribute my time to something that matters. But not just yet.

I may be traipsing down the garden path, but I'm smelling the heck out of the roses.

To see or not to see: who decides and who cares?

This is not the type of post one would expect to find on an old lady's blog, but the topic is one I've considered from time to time in recent years. If you are easily embarrassed, perhaps you shouldn't read further. Or, perhaps you could read further while pretending you're watching one of the doctor shows on TV and letting your thirst for knowledge override your need to protect yourself from a discussion of things related to the human body.

I'm speaking out today about a sensitive topic because I feel that the male members of the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) have been scamming female television viewers and catering to male ones. (This will not be a discussion of "male members"; they can stand up for themselves.) I'm attempting to make a case that the FCC and network censors have perpetuated a fraud by insisting that any female nipple be covered or blurred on television, while allowing the entire rest of a big boob to bounce freely and while imposing no similar viewing restrictions on nearly identical male nipples. I think they're trying to make us believe that they're on the job by focusing our attention on the tip of the iceberg when, in fact, the giant mass that makes up the rest of the iceberg is where any prurient danger to society may lie.

Several years ago, the local board-of-something-or-other met to discuss what restrictions and ordinances should be applied to a couple of so-called "gentlemen's clubs" that had recently opened in the area. I still laugh when I remember reading the following item in the newspaper's report of the board's decision: "Dancers must remain at least three feet away from customers at all times and must wear pastries." Yes, it read "pastries," with an "r."

At the office we had so much fun discussing that typo. If the dancers themselves were tarts, would they meet the requirements? What if the dancers had cinnamon buns? Could they still be fined if they covered themselves with "bare" claws? Would doughnuts provide acceptable coverage, what with their dirty little peepholes? Thus began my mild curiosity about why female nipples are considered erotic when male nipples are not.

Do you remember the fuss when Janet Jackson had a nip-slip at the nationally televised Super Bowl? What a furor that caused! Since Janet was wearing the gold jewelry equivalent of a "pastry," I submit that it was not the nipple but the rest of the breast that censors and many viewers found too shocking for family television.

More recently -- and what set me on this current bandwagon -- I saw TV censorship carried to such an extreme that my eyes rolled more than once. The show was a documentary about a transgender man who would soon be undergoing surgery to make him a woman. The scene took place in a doctor's office as the doctor explained the upcoming surgical procedures. The patient had been living and dressing as a woman for about a year, but in this scene his body, naked except for a pair of white briefs (or panties maybe?) was clearly that of a very tall, rather skinny, flat-chested man. Get this: They blurred his nipples. Even though it was discussed at length that the patient was still a male in every physical way, the censors must have based their decision on the idea that he would someday in the future be a female. How big of a prude do they think I am?

Another point: If I stop to think about the last handsome, shirtless, well-built guy I saw on TV, I can conjure up a very pleasant image in an instant. I see broad shoulders and amazing abs. The nipples are there, too, but they're no more significant than shirt buttons. They play no role in my fantasy. Not being male, I can't say for sure, but I suspect men's minds work much the same way. My point is that, male or female, it's not the nipples but the shape of the flesh that surrounds the nipples that we find titillating, er, exciting.

I'm guessing most guys, given a choice between looking at a flat-chested woman with bare nipples or a woman with a set of well-rounded boobs under a patch of frilly fabric that conceals the tips, would grin and gape at the second woman. This is not to belittle the first woman, who might even gain a couple of points by covering up with a little frilly fabric of her own to distinguish her nipples from those of her male counterparts. And what about the sweater girls of the 1950s? Not a nip in sight, but they had everybody talking.

Think about the exposed cleavage you see on TV awards shows or red carpet interviews. Think about the barely-there costumes on "Dancing with the Stars." Think all the way back to "Baywatch." On TV, female nipples threaten to pop out all over the place, but they don't, quite. And as long as they don't, nobody raises a fuss. The TV censors go on taking care of their male viewer buddies by showing them plenty of the breast parts that really interest them.

In closing, I assure you that in writing about this topic, I am not making demands on network censors. My calling them out is not an instance of tit-for-tat. I just want the censors to know I see through them. And in no way am I expressing a desire to see more female nipples on television. I'm merely suggesting that if one occasionally does escape confinement, accidentally, it would be nice if we as a nation didn't get sucked into some great, collective, hypocritical gasp.

I can live with the fact that the female nipple doesn't get to breathe as freely as the male nipple does, so long as it gets the same amount of respect. After all, women's nipples serve a legitimate, honorable, and very respectable purpose.

If you have an opinion on this topic, I would be very interested in reading it. Further, I hope no one was offended by what I've posted here. I wrote this only because the perceived public fascination has resulted in a type of discrimination, and I needed to get these nipple issues off my chest.

Mexican food is on my mind

My mouth is watering for a chicken chimichanga, but the rest of me doesn't want to get dressed to go get one. Looks like I'll find something in the fridge and eat dinner right here in mi casa. And watch mi televisión.