Sepia Saturday: Packy May Have Been Kidding about Rita Hayworth

The photo that is the prompt for this week's Sepia Saturday challenge features a handsome man who is sitting in a chair and pointing a finger. That man happened to be an actor, and the theme for this week's post is FILM. As I looked through my image archives, I first thought I wouldn't be able to participate this week, but soon, by stretching the theme of the photo prompt as far as I possibly could, I made a couple of tenuous connections.

First, I came across a photo of my own in which a man was sitting in a chair. This was my grandfather, Lewis (known to all his grandchildren as Packy), whistling as he bounced my little sister and our cousin on his knee about 1950:

As for the "film" connection, I remember at least two occasions when Packy told us with a straight face that he used to pull Rita Hayworth in her little red wagon. I've spent a ridiculous amount of time researching online, trying to prove his story by putting them in the same place at the same time,  but haven't been able to do so. It's a shame, really. I think Rita would have  liked Packy.

And then I found a photo of a man who was pointing.  Pointing guns, actually. The man in the photo below was my children's paternal grandfather, Charles. This photo was taken in 1920 when he had just turned 21 years old and was working in North Africa. After  studying his pose in this photo, I can make still another film connection: I think he may have seen too many movies.

Another photo of Charles, this one from about 1933, shows his undeniable, film-star good looks.

As is customary here, I am also posting a Saturday song selection. This time I've chosen a movie theme, and, in honor of Charles, it's from a classic gunfighter movie.  Coincidentally, it is rumored that the star of this movie, Gary Cooper, may also have a connection to our family. I haven't been able to prove that one, either.

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The song is "High Noon" as sung by Frankie Laine.

Thanks to RikkyHeeHa for posting this video on YouTube.
(Click here to read the lyrics.) 

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To see other people's photos and posts related to this week's theme, click the image below and visit the participants listed on the Sepia Saturday site.

What I'm Reading Today: Chasing the Dime

I've read just enough of this book to tell you that the main character is a genius who sets out on an incredibly stupid course of action. I hope the rest of the story will help me understand why.

Click on the image for a

description and reviews of this book.

Buh-bye, word verification!

Blogger has now made word verification for comments so complicated that I can no longer justify asking any of you to deal with it:

They have also neglected to provide a way on the new interface to disable that feature, so I'll say a hearty thank you to the techies who told me how to do it here. 

I know some of you will be happy to be rid of it, and the fact that you're happy makes me happy, too. I'll stay happy as long as Blogger's spam filter does a good job.

Hugs I've Had Lately

Hugs, I've discovered, come in many forms, not just in encircling arms, though those traditional hugs are among the best. A hug can reach you when you don't even see it coming, and only when it has wrapped itself around you do you realize how much you needed it. Let me give you some examples:

Expressions of caring:
Phone calls, cards, messages and blog comments arrive from family, friends and even strangers. They offer support at a difficult time. They offer comfort.

A package in the mail:
A new bathrobe I had ordered arrives in the mail on the day of Butch's death. When I find it and open it, it is warm from the sun that had shone through its dark plastic packaging inside the black mailbox. A warm bathrobe always feels like a hug.

Fresh bedding:
While I am on the telephone at the end of that same day, my daughter hears the dryer buzz. She takes my bedding out of it so it won't wrinkle and goes on to make up my bed. I sleep that night in the caress of thoughtfulness and smooth, clean sheets.

A dog's trust:
Levi is a good watchdog. He's not yet convinced that the neighbors aren't up to no good, and he barks an alert when he hears their cars, their voices, or their footsteps. But when I come home, he's quiet. There is no barking. I know he can hear my car. He can hear me shut the car door, and he can hear the "beep" when I set the car alarm, and yet, when I open the door and come inside, he sits quietly on the sofa, his head tilted slightly to one side, alert and waiting. I am home, and Levi knows I belong there.

Books:
I leave the library with a stack of books tucked into the crook of my elbow, and my steps feel lighter than they did before. It's as if a sense of well-being has been handed across the counter with those books.

Nature:
After days of cold weather, followed by days of rain, the sun breaks through for a short while. I sit outside, my face turned upwards to receive a full allotment of the sun's warm kisses, and listen  to the rustling of tree branches and the trill of a single bird.

Bringing Butchie home:
A call from the vet's office lets me know that Butch's remains have been returned to them by the crematorium. I want to go get him immediately, but the tears begin to flow, and so I wait. I wait several hours, until I'm relatively sure I can remain composed, and then I go. In less than twenty minutes, he is home with me again. His essence lives on in my heart and my memory, but all that's left of his physical self is contained in one small, simple, cherry-wood box, exactly like the one that now holds Kadi. The cycle is complete, and it gives me peace. Butch is home. Nothing else can harm him.

Valentines of Days Gone By

Earlier today Janet posted charming images of valentines she received in first grade, and they brought back all kinds of memories. One of her commenters wrote about the anxiety-filled process of deciding which card to give to which classmate, a dilemma that plagued me every year until I was old enough that it was no longer cool to give out valentines at school.

One of my favorite parts of those early Valentine Days was working with my mother to create a special "valentine box" to take to school. There was always a slot cut into the top to make it function like a mailbox, and most of mine were covered in ruffles of red and white crepe paper, with paper doilies and hearts stuck on the top. That red crepe paper bled like an accident victim when it got a little water on it, which it always seemed to do somehow.

While I was thinking about valentines, I suddenly remembered a little boy I hadn't thought of in decades. He had a crush on my little sister when they were both in first or second grade. His name was Charlie (Charley?) Hart, and he once sent her a love note on which he had carefully printed, "You are my weethart." I thought that was hilarious, and I'm sure I must have called her "weethart" for weeks after that. Do you remember him, Sis?

Love feels sweet and warm on this day or any day, don't you think?

What I'm Reading Today: Sweetwater Creek

Emily, the main character of this book, is a young girl who desperately needs a hug. I know how that feels, and I'm hoping that somewhere in the pages of this beautifully written book, someone will step up and give her what she needs. I'll stay right there with her until that happens.

Click on the image for a 
description and reviews of this book.

Sepia Saturday: Shining a Light on Books

A NOTE TO MY READERS: The following post was written early in the week and scheduled to publish on Saturday. It was written before I knew it would be necessary to euthanize my beloved dog, Butch, which happened on Thursday. In light of that event, the tone of this Sepia Saturday post now seems flippant, inappropriate, or, at the very least, insensitive. Let me assure you that I am not feeling flippant at the moment. Nevertheless, I have decided to let this post publish as scheduled. I was satisfied with it before the loss of Butch, I don't feel like writing something else to replace it, and, as it was written in response to a theme-based challenge, saving it for later won't work. I hope you understand.

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As luck would have it, the first two themes of Sepia Saturday after I discovered it were dogs (last week) and books (this week). Dogs and books, two things I love so much that both are mentioned in the "About Me" item in the sidebar of this blog. In fact, I probably have more posts about dogs and books than about any other topics.

This week, however, it didn't take long to determine that none of the oldest photos in my files featured books. The first photo I could find of a person reading anything was a 1949 one of my grandfather, lying on the very couch (with the very doilies) pictured below. Technically, though, Packy was reading a magazine, not a book, while the publication I was reading in the following photo from 1950 was at least called a book--a comic book. I've posted this photo before, along with the one of my grandfather, when I wrote about my earliest reading adventures here.

I do have a number of more recent photos of books, and one thing I noticed is that light, especially light streaming through a window, figures in many of those images. I like thinking about the metaphorical relationship between light and books: the way books shed light on so many different subjects, the way a good book lights a fire inside the reader, and, well, you get where I'm going with that.  If you're only half as corny as I am, I'm sure you can come up with other examples. (And if you're thinking about the Itty Bitty Book Light®, don't even go there).

The next photo looks sort of like sepia but isn't really. These are the colors I got by thinking there was enough natural light in my bedroom that I wouldn't need to use the flash. I was wrong, but I like the image anyway in its shades of beige and brown.

Disappointed at not seeing books in any of my genuine sepia photos, I made the following modern photo of books look sepia by tinting it in Photoshop Elements: 

Now, before you say, "Why, that isn't fair," let me explain my reasoning: The world is full of fakery, and most of the time it doesn't bother us at all. The wood finish on some of my furniture is fake, a partial denture fills out the corners of my smile, and every  sugary-tasting treat that's touched my tongue in the past year has been made with artificial sweetener. Watch any of this season's award shows, with their streams of starlets on the red carpet, and you'll see plenty of fakery pointing right at you. So what's the big deal about a little false sepia?

Never mind. I get your point.  But to add a historical perspective to this post, please know that I got that kind of crooked thinking from my father. Please know, also, that I inherited enough honest genes from other ancestors that I can't perpetuate such a fraud without admitting it. (Although it occurs to me that there was a time when I faked something and didn't confess it, but that was only because I really wanted to go to sleep and I did not want to bruise a certain male ego.)

The next photo is a full-color version of the same corner of my den that's pictured above. Books, in addition to lighting up my life (watch: here comes yet another cliché, right on the heels of that one), add color to my world. I go places, see things, meet people, and have adventures that would never happen any other way than through the pages of books. What a gift they are.

I keep a few special books in the living room in my grandmother's old secretary hutch, pictured below. In there, among other things, are a handwritten volume of my older daughter's poetry, a published volume of poetry that includes one of hers, and a copy of a book she wrote when she lived in New York and writing was her day job.

The boxes of books shown in the collection of thumbnails below are about half of the ones I gave away last summer. I took photos of them with the intention of creating some kind of book database so I wouldn't accidentally order the same titles again, which has happened before on half a dozen occasions. Applying a different definition of "light" keeps the metaphor alive, in that winnowing out enough books to have shelf space for the remaining ones "lightened" my load and left some uncluttered breathing room in my home. And affirmed in my own mind that I really am not hastening down the path to the city of Hoarderville.

So, those are my meager book photo offerings. In thinking about all those books, in realizing that Valentine's Day is right around the corner, and in recognition of the fact that Saturdays here have been traditionally about music, I'll wrap up this post with a video of a song that fits our theme perfectly: Peter Gabriel's version of "The Book of Love." The song is beautiful, but if you don't feel like listening to music, turn off the sound and watch the video anyway. You'll love the photos in it!

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Thanks to sakuramlyu777 for posting this video on YouTube.
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If you'd like to see what other folks have posted about books, click the image below and check out the list of participants in this week's Sepia Saturday challenge:

Going for the Gusto

I'm recording the following story here both to share it with you and to make sure it's written down so I'll never forget it.

As Kim and I sat with Butch in the vet's office yesterday, knowing those moments with him would be our last, he did one thing so typical of him, one fleeting, triumphant action that made me want to stand up, raise my hands in the air, and sing the theme song from the first "Rocky" movie.

Euthanasia is a two-part process. First, the doctor gives the animal an injection of a sedative meant to calm its fears and put it into a state of semi-consciousness in which it is supposedly able to hear what its family members are saying and feel their love. Later, when the family is ready, the drug that ends life peacefully is administered through an IV apparatus.

Before the first injection was administered, Butch was lying on a soft blanket on the floor. He was on his stomach, propped up on his elbows with his head between his paws. The  doctor gave him the sedative and quickly popped one treat in his mouth and a second one right in front of his nose. He spat out the first one and ignored them both. The doctor left us alone with him to say our goodbyes, telling us she'd check on him again in about five minutes.

Butch's breathing relaxed immediately after receiving that shot, but he didn't lose consciousness right away. As we sat and stroked him, telling him what a good boy he was and how much we loved him--all the things we felt deeply and thought might be reassuring to him--we could tell by the occasional twitch of an ear or a paw that he was still with us. In fact, after nearly five minutes' worth of such twitches, we became concerned that the sedative wasn't going to work. Suddenly, in a motion so quick it startled us, Butch raised his head and stretched his neck, grabbed both treats and gulped them down, then promptly dropped his head and fell over onto his side.

He was out, but by golly he didn't leave anything undone. I loved that big heart of his.

And God Gets One More Furry Angel

At approximately 8:15 this morning we said goodbye to our beloved Butch. My heart aches to know that I can no longer reach out and touch his soft fur, but I feel a sense of relief that his beautiful spirit has been released from his tired, old body.

Butch's condition deteriorated rapidly in the hours following yesterday's post. By late afternoon he could no longer get up without assistance. When we helped him up, his back legs didn't work properly and sometimes his feet landed on the tops of his paws instead of on the pads. He fell a few times. Last night he could not get comfortable and slept no more than an hour and a half all night long. His breathing was distressed, but he didn't cry, and I am hoping that means he wasn't in a lot of pain.

By dawn today he was disoriented. I've posted before about not wanting to put him through the trauma of a car ride on what might be his last trip to the vet, but this morning we needed to get him there fast. As I sat beside him in the backseat of the car, he did not seem to be stressed, and I can say in all honesty that I don't think he even realized where he was.

For months I have dreaded having to make the decision to end Butch's life. This morning that decision was an easy one. This time, I knew, Butch's brave spirit wasn't going to pull him through.

I know that some of you have grown to love Butch after getting to know him on these pages, so I will offer condolences to you and know that you understand the magnitude of my own loss. Wherever Butch's spirit is as I write these words, I hope he can run fast and see for miles and miles and miles.

Butchifer Patrick

March 19, 1998 - February 9, 2012

My Old Man

Butch is sleeping. Finally. He had a hard night last night, waking me up and asking to go outside no fewer than four times between bedtime and dawn. Yes, it was a hard night for me, too.

His legs seem stiffer than usual today, but not as stiff as I've seen them on his worst days. I think the unusually warm temperatures we've had have given him some relief and that his arthritis has flared up because the weather has turned colder in the last day or two. He's been panting all morning, too. I just gave him some food, a small, extra meal he doesn't normally have at this time of the day, and that seems to have done the trick. He has passed out and is breathing quietly now.

The melanoma tumor I can see in the roof of his mouth continues to grow. He has begun to sneeze frequently and to blow air out through his nose as if he's trying to clear it. That makes me think the tumor is enlarging in the other direction, as well, into his sinus area, although he doesn't seem to have any difficulty breathing. (As I said above, I think the panting today was caused by arthritic pain, and he isn't panting while he sleeps.)

Butch's appetite is strong. He gets excited about suppertime and eats his puréed meals and soft treats enthusiastically. He's eating every bit as much as he did before we discovered the tumor. Last night, not long after I had fed him and Levi, I discovered Butch  standing next to the kitchen garbage can, the lid knocked off on the floor beside it. I'd put the carcass of a rotisserie chicken in there earlier. I think his arthritic joints are all that prevented him from standing up tall enough to reach that chicken. Since his time with us is short, I'd like to indulge him with as much food as he seems to want, but I know the extra weight would put strain on those already painful joints.

He is friendly, outgoing, and social, the way he was for most of his life until the dark, whiny  period that started near the end of 2010 and lasted all the way into this past summer. He still asks to go outside multiple times in a row in hopes of scoring a treat each time he comes back in (a reward I should never have started). Sometimes he doesn't even bother with the pretense,  just steps out, turns around, and scratches to come back in. And, sadly, sometimes he waits too long to ask to go outside and doesn't quite make it to the door.

His nap is already over. And he's panting again. I'll go now and offer him long strokes and scritches. He's had all the food and medicine he can have until tonight, and I can't think of anything else to do for him right now but show him I love him.

What I'm Reading Today: Buried Secrets

I simply adore Joseph Finder's books and am so glad to finally have his most recent one in my hands:

Click on the image for a 

description and reviews of this book.

If you like mysteries and haven't discovered this author, give him a try. You won't be disappointed.

"The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out..."

"...the worms play pinochle on your snout."

Remember that old song from your childhood?

Somehow I never imagined myself writing about worms, but heavy rains have washed a few my way recently, and I, camera at the ready, thought to myself, "You never know when you'll need a worm picture." Now that I have three of them, enough to be considered a collection, they have wiggled their way into a blog post.

This first guy (who is probably a caterpillar instead of a worm if you want to get technical about it) had the audacity to march himself across my living room while I watched TV and four dogs dozed nearby. I assume he crawled in under the front door, though I don't presume to know where the heck he thought he was going. I also don't know, despite looking at hundreds of Google images in an attempt to figure it out, what he is or will grow up to be. He was slightly over two inches long. If you know what he is, please tell us.

This one's only offense was breaking and entering.

After he crawled willingly onto the paper towel I placed in his path,

I picked it up by the corners and gently carried him back outside.

It isn't at all unusual to find earthworms on the patio after a hard rain. As much as I used to love fishing, I always felt squeamish about baiting my hook with these wriggly pink things.

Earthworms are creepy, but they remind me of good times

and they're good for the earth, so I always let them be.

On the same day that I shot the earthworm photo, I was horrified to find this next creature on my patio. I'd never seen anything like it. Just as I spotted it turning and twisting its more-than-a-foot-long body on the concrete, Levi stepped on it. He picked up his paw and the thing clung there, holding onto his fur and dancing in the air like some kind of freakishly skinny Cirque du Soleil performer. I grabbed hold of it with my bare hands and tried to pull it off, which wasn't easy to do. That sucker was strong. I thought it would break apart in my hands, but it didn't. It didn't even stop wiggling.

This is how it looked after I'd stomped its a$$

several times with my big, heavy shoes.

Finally, after I had managed to disentangle it from Levi, I learned on the internet that this is a horsehair worm and that it is "harmless to people, pets, and plants" and "should be considered beneficial."

Harmless to people? Hah! It nearly gave me a heart attack.

What I'm Reading Today: Down the Darkest Road

I started reading this book at four o'clock this morning, after Butch asked to go outside and then decided to mosey around the perimeter of the yard for what turned out to be half an hour. He's done that the last four nights, so I knew I might as well get up and make the  sleep interruption as pleasurable as possible.

Click on the image for a 

description and reviews of this book.

I'm not very far into the book yet, but so far, so good.

UPDATED TO ADD:  I just read this snippet of dialogue and had to post it:

"I'll never get the sentencing for attempted murder," Tanner said, shaking her head. "Why should they get off light because they were incompetent? The idea was for the victim to die, right?"

I've voiced that question so many times. (Just goes to show you why I wasn't completely comfortable in my job at the Public Defenders' Office.)

Sepia Saturday: Old Dogs and Children and...

Yesterday Vicki Lane posted about a wonderful box of family photos and letters that her husband received from his cousin. One of Vicki's commenters, Martin, provided a link to another blog, Sepia Saturday, that I think most of you will enjoy as much as I did. Sepia Saturday sets a different theme each week and challenges readers to post old photos related to that theme. As luck would have it, the theme for this Saturday is DOGS. Now, you know I can't leave that one alone, don't you?

I'll start with the oldest of my old dog photos and apologize for its poor quality. It's actually a photocopy of the original image. The lady at the left of this photo is my great-great-grandmother, Amy Lucinda Smith, née Hagadorn, and the man is her son, Arba. It's my understanding that Amy was a serious participant in séances in her later years and that Arba was at least a little bit dimwitted. Amy passed away at the age of 80 in 1923, so we know this photo is older than that.

Amy and Arba Smith and man's best friend.

There are two spotted pups in the next photo (also scanned from a photocopy). The family group at the right is headed by my paternal grandparents, Erna and Audrey Barclay. The small blond boy with his thumb in his mouth is my dad. The other family is known to me only as "the Pinkertons." I don't know if they were friends, neighbors, or distant relatives, but I know from this picture that I would have liked them.

The Pinkertons, the Barclays, and the pretty, speckled pups.

Next we have my maternal grandparents, Lewis and Lola Saunders, with my mother, her older brother, and someone's dog. I'm guessing this photo was taken about 1928. It's interesting to me that these stern-looking grandparents are the ones I remember as the fun ones, while the other grandparents, shown smiling in the photo above, were stricter. (I thought Grandma Barclay would either have a stroke or kill me one time when I helped myself to a piece of salt pork before grace was said.)  

The Saunders family with a dog who may or may not have been theirs

but recognized a photo-op when it saw one.

I love the photo below of my mother's first cousins, the Gaylor kids, sitting on a hill with their dog. This photo probably dates back to the early 1930s. The boy on the right was written up in the local newspaper a few years later in an article that begins as follows: "With his 2-ton Flying Fortress so badly damaged by anti-aircraft fire that it could not reach a speed equal to that of a fast automobile, Second Lt. William R. Gaylor, 19, Springfield bombadier, rode his bomber back to a night-time landing in England after an Eighth AAF daylight attack on oil refineries at Merseburg, Germany." Quite a change from this peaceful scene, don't you think?

Bob, Pat and Bill Gaylor with faithful companion.

The girl snuggling the terrier in the photo below is my mother. She was probably about 10 or 12 in this picture, which would date it in the early-to-mid '30s. I never thought about it until this very minute, but there weren't very many years in my mother's life when she didn't have a dog. Maybe that's where I get it.

Wanda and the furry object of her affection.

My plan was to end this post after the preceding pre-1940 pictures, but then I came across a "recent" one (from 1957) and couldn't resist adding it to the mix. In the summer of that year my family traveled from our home in Missouri to visit with Mother's older brother's family in East Texas. The photo below shows my sister and me (I'm the one in the doorway) with our boy cousins. Does it strike you as odd (and more than a little creepy) that three of the five of us are scratching our heads? What the heck? Other photos from that trip show us all at the beach, so I'm choosing to think that our heads were itching from sunburns. Yeah, that's it, sunburns.

Saunders boys, Barclay girls, and, yes, a dog.

After all that, I'm reminded that the theme for this post is supposed to be dogs. Regrettably, I can't tell you a darn thing about any of these dogs. I wish I could. Maybe, if you check out the Sepia Saturday site, you'll find it will lead you to some blogs that feature dogs the writers knew well enough to tell stories about. Click the image below to go there:

BUT WAIT!  DON'T GO YET...THERE'S MORE!

Usually, if I post on a Saturday, I post a music video. I 'd planned not to do that this time, but then I remembered the perfect song to go along with these photos: Tom T. Hall's "Old Dogs and Children and Watermelon Wine." (I can personally testify as to the blessings of old dogs and children, but I don't know nothin' 'bout no watermelon wine.) Enjoy!

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Thanks to consman22 for posting this video on YouTube.

Lyrics are posted here.

What I'm Reading Today: Unbroken

This book by Lauren Hillenbrand is a non-fictional account of the life of Louis Zamperini, an Olympics-class athlete and World War II prisoner of war.

Click on the image for a 

description and reviews of this book.

It's well written and well worth a read; however, if you're looking for a page-turner, this isn't it. There's just too much information to absorb without taking a break now and then to think about it.

Why don't you come on up and see me sometime?

Somewhere along the way, photography (including photo editing) has become my favorite hobby, edging out reading by the slightest of margins and writing by a bit more. Nothing else even comes close. Even when I haven't found time to post a new entry here, there'll be a fresh new image on my photo blog every single day. I simply love playing with all those little digital snippets of my life.

I started that blog exactly four months ago, October 2, 2011, with this picture of a played-out Levi:

Let me tell you it's been lonely over there. My stat-counter shows that the photo blog gets roughly, oh, one or two hits a day. Not exactly setting the world on fire, huh?

Now, I know the blogosphere is full of photographers whose skills and images far surpass mine, but mine are better than they used to be, and they're improving over time. And if you've come to know me through my words, you'll know me even better after seeing the images that have moved me enough to record them. I don't do much writing there, but if you have a question about a particular photo, I'll be glad to answer it in the "comments" section.

So...how can I get you to take a look? I've fixed the tab at the top of this blog so you can get to the photo blog with one click instead of two, and I've added a clickable icon on the sidebar, hoping it will catch your eye. May I offer you a cup of coffee or a glass of wine? Some hors d'oeuvres perhaps?

Please stop by now and then to support my latest obsession.

Seeing Louisiana through a paper doll's eyes

Flat Stanley is headed home. I dropped him off at the post office a couple hours ago, and he should be on the road or in the air by the time I go to bed tonight. I can't wait for him to get back to Texas and show Keaton all of his photos and souvenirs.

We had a great time! Not just Stanley and I, but my daughters and my great-grandson, all of whom shared in one or more of Stanley's adventures. It's amazing how a project like this one can get one out of a routine and off to explore someplace interesting. It's also amazing that not one single person we asked declined to be photographed with Stanley. His story and his friendly smile brought out the best in all of us.

Stanley is traveling home with several dozen photos, but I'll share a few samples now. (I'll keep these images small so I can post more of them. Please be sure to click on them to enlarge them.)

Here are a couple from home:

Butch and Levi wanted to go outside.

Stanley tried to help but couldn't reach the doorknob.

What better place for a flat boy to sleep

than on a flatbed scanner?

Stanley's first adventure occurred when my daughter Kim went with friends to New Orleans and took Stanley along.

Stanley inside the National World War II Museum.

About to enjoy his first world-famous New Orleans muffuletta.

One day Stanley went to work at the courthouse with my daughter Kelli.

Stanley, about to take a ride through the scanner/metal detector.

Later in the week, Kim and I accompanied Stanley to the Bluebonnet Swamp Nature Center in Baton Rouge.

Inside the Nature Center, this snake

seemed very interested in Stanley.

Outside, on one of the swamp trails,

Stanley couldn't resist climbing the tangled vines.

The alligators we saw at the Nature Center were baby ones, so before we went home that day we took Stanley to the Cajun Village in Sorrento, Louisiana.

There's a good-sized, live alligator on the other side of that fence...

...but it was safer for Stanley to pose with this fake one.

The next day Kelli, Owen, Stanley and I went back to Baton Rouge, this time to the downtown area.

Here's Stanley in front of the Louisiana State Capitol Building...

...and here he is with a protest sign on the front steps of the capitol.

(He was the only one protesting there that day.)

We left the capitol and walked a few short blocks south.

The castle-like structure in the background is the Old State Capitol.

It's a museum now.

I hated to say goodbye to Stanley. I hope he had as much fun as we did.

What I've Been Reading: Two Books by Nevada Barr

The last week and a half have been busy ones, what with making special meals for a sick dog (Butch), cleaning up after him (he had diarrhea), and entertaining a houseguest (Flat Stanley). At times like that, the best way I know to relax is to bury myself in a book for a little while, and I happened to have two books by a favorite author, Nevada Barr.  She never lets me down.

  

Borderline is part of her very popular Anna Pigeon series.  The other one, 13½, is a  stand-alone thriller. They both kept me reading late into the night.

For a description and reviews of either book,

click on its image above.

What I'm Reading Today: V is for Vengeance

This book was one of two book club featured selections I got in the mail after I procrastinated too long to decline them either by mail or online. Actually, both books turned out to be pretty good. This one makes me wish I'd checked out the series before it got so near the end of the alphabet.

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description and reviews of this book.

My new flat friend

A special houseguest arrived this past Tuesday afternoon. His name is Flat Stanley, and he was sent here by my eight-year-old grandnephew, Keaton, as part of a school project. It will be my pleasure for the next couple of weeks to show Stanley around the Greater Baton Rouge area, taking photos as we go, so he can go back to Keaton's East Texas classroom and share what he did and what he learned while he was here.

Stanley seems to be a nice boy. I like him a lot and I think we're going to have a good time together. Our weather has been either rainy or very windy since Stanley got here, neither of which condition is good for his health, so we've stayed close to home so far. It's warmer today than it has been, and the sun has come out from time to time, so we took the opportunity to do a little reading outside on the patio. I think Flat Stanley likes good books as much as I do.

I have to say Stanley has been patient and good about finding things to do here at the house, but I'm sure he's looking forward to some of the outdoor adventures we have planned in the next week or so. I know I am.

OCD at the Grocery Store

I'll admit to being a little anal retentive about the way I place my groceries on the check-out counter. I put heavy things up first (so they'll go back into the bottom of the cart after they've been bagged), cold things together (so they can be found easily and put away first at home), and toiletry items together (so I can carry them all in one bag to the bathroom). But if the cashier doesn't follow my system, I don't make a fuss about it.

Yesterday's cashier was well past anal retentive and clearly somewhere on the scale of obsessive compulsive disorder. I loved her!

She was adjusting her latex gloves as my items rolled toward her on the belt. She smiled and said, "It isn't that I don't want to touch your groceries; I don't want to touch anybody's." I smiled but didn't comment, and she continued: "People ask me all the time why I wear gloves, and I tell them the real question should be, 'Why doesn't everybody?'"

She looked over my items and began scanning them, one by one, but instead of placing the items in a bag, she set the first half dozen on top of the bag carousel. "Don't worry," she smiled. "I have a plan here." She set a couple more things up there, then picked up the next item, a rectangular-shaped one, larger than the first few, and put it in the bottom of a bag. Only then did she gather up the earlier items and place them strategically around the larger one in the bag. "We don't want those corners poking through the plastic," she explained, placing the now full plastic bag inside another one before handing it to me.

The rest of the process went much the same. Each package of raw meat was wrapped tightly in its own plastic bag to keep it separate from the pre-packaged sausage and lunchmeat that would go with it into another bag. As the cashier carefully placed my low-carb ice cream bars between two bags of pepperjack cheese cubes, she explained that she was separating the cheese bags to insulate the ice cream. The cashier held a small bag of dog treats in her hand for a few seconds while she visually scanned the remaining items for something similar, then, finding nothing, she shrugged her shoulders, smiled ruefully, and put it in the bag with the protein bars.

All my items were double-bagged except for some of the meats, which were triple-bagged, and everything was so organized that it took me only minutes to put it all away at home. Part of me understands that all these plastic bags aren't good for Mother Earth, but if that part is the least bit timid, the rest of me will try to get in this woman's check-out line the next time I go.

What I'm Reading Today: The Affair

This is the latest in the Jack Reacher series, and I love me some Jack Reacher. I'd love to see these thrillers turned into movies, but which of today's stars could play Reacher? A young Clint Eastwood would have been perfect.

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and reviews of this book.

One Tough Cookie

It's been a hard week.

I took this photo of Butch on Thursday, thinking it might be his last one. I am overjoyed to tell you it won't be.

The tumors on Butch's gums that I wrote about here and here continued to grow, and about 10 days ago they began to bleed. A lot. The vet had told me Butch might chew off the tumors if they grew long enough to catch between his teeth, but I had expected that to be a one-time event. I did not expect the bleeding to be a continual occurrence.

I was laundering his bedding (and mine that he touched and imprinted with his muzzle) once or twice a day, continually cleaning blood droplets and saucer-sized bloody drool stains from the carpet (hats off to Stainmaster® for performing as advertised), and washing Butch himself several times daily because he frequently wiped his mouth on his forelegs. Because of his blindness, Butch navigates through the house by touching his muzzle against familiar landmarks, such as walls and furniture.  With his bleeding mouth, he had become a walking ink stamp.

The only good news during that time was that those tumors must have contained no nerves, because Butch appeared to be feeling fine. He was enthusiastic about meals and snacks (his that he ate and mine that he begged for) and went about his business--as much business as a nearly 14-year-old dog can manage--in good spirits.

In fact, he seemed to be feeling well enough that I thought he wouldn't fall apart during a short car ride, so on Thursday I enlisted Kim's help in getting him in the car so the vet could take a firsthand look at what was going on with his mouth. She found more than we had expected. In addition to the tumors on his gums, there was a large, black mass on the roof of his mouth. The vet suspected melanoma.

We discussed options.

Doing nothing was not an option because Butch's continual bleeding was weighing more heavily on me than I like to admit. I've cleaned up my share of urine, feces, and vomit in the years I've owned dogs, and even some blood on more than one occasion, but this constant dripping from a roving source was beginning to feel like Chinese water torture. As much as I love Butch, I was starting to find the situation intolerable. I'm being as honest as I can here, even though I'm ashamed of those feelings and believe that Butch deserves better than that from me.

A second option was surgery to remove as much of the tumors as possible and cauterize the remaining blood vessels to stem the bleeding. I didn't think Butch was a good candidate for surgery. He's so old now, and he has a history of problems with anesthesia. Would it be fair to him to put him through the pain of another surgery this close to the end of his natural life span?

That brings us to the third option: euthanasia. A number of people told me after Butch's eye-removal surgery in 2005 that it would have been kinder to "put him to sleep," but he's had six and a half pretty good years since then, so I've never regretted that choice. At the age he is now, it's a different story, and I gave it serious consideration. My daughter Kelli summed up my ambivalence about this option when she said I was struggling with this decision because I wanted to be sure I was doing it for the right reasons and not as a matter of convenience. That was exactly it. And the truth was that all that bleeding was bothering me; Butch didn't seem to be the least bit concerned about it.

The vet assured me that the surgery would be fast and easy. It would quell most, if not all, of the bleeding. I asked about cost, and she quoted a price that was exceptionally fair and reasonable. She couldn't, of course, guarantee that Butch would survive the surgery, but she laid out her plan to give him the best chance possible.

The next day, Friday, we gave him that chance. I dropped him off tearfully, knowing the odds were against him.

The vet called after the surgery to tell me that Butch was awake, sitting up, and was trying, not successfully yet, to wag his tail. They had removed the epulis (tumors on his gums), which had also involved removing two teeth. That was the good news. The bad news, she told me, was that the mass in his palate was melanoma, and they couldn't get it all. She said the melanoma was quite invasive and there is a danger that it will grow into his sinus cavities. "That," she said, "will be it." She estimated that Butch might live as long as three to six months, though his time could be shorter than that. She said to give him a week to recover from the surgery; after that, we should have a better idea of the quality of life he'll have for the remainder of his days. If Butch does well, there are inexpensive medications that have been shown to slow the growth of melanoma, and they should also keep Butch comfortable. On the other hand, if Butch seems to be suffering at the end of the week, we can stop it then. She said they'd keep Butch under observation for a few more hours, then I could pick him up and bring him home.

I couldn't believe how good Butch looked. He seemed strong and tugged at his leash, ready to get out of there.  He came home without much fanfare except for enthusiastic greetings and all-over sniffs from Levi, Lucy, and Oliver, then made his way to the backdoor to go outside and relieve himself. By the time he came back in the house, he had reoriented himself, knew exactly where he was (well, as exactly as he ever knows), and began nosing around in the kitchen. It was suppertime by then, and he was obviously hungry.

Butch's first few post-surgery meals were limited to chicken broth and small amounts of rice. He ate every bite and was clearly unhappy about the meager quantity, so as soon as we knew for sure that one meal had settled nicely in his stomach, we fed him again. He cried a little that first night, but I was never sure whether he cried from pain or from hunger. His mouth bled a little that first night, too, but not nearly as much as it did before. I was encouraged.

By yesterday Butch showed no signs of pain and could eat a full quota of his new regular diet. He will never again in his lifetime be able to eat anything of a harder consistency than oatmeal. The tumor in his palate is fragile, and any slight pressure on it will cause it to bleed. That means the spoon-feeding has to stop, because the hard metal edges of the spoon can cause damage. Fortunately, Butch has been hungry enough that he hasn't hesitated to push his muzzle into the bowl and gobble for all he's worth.

Butch is what he can never have again: one tough cookie.

Today he is eating well, sleeping well, showing affection, and asking to go outside when he needs to. When he comes back in the house, he waits patiently for a treat, and he doesn't seem to mind that the treat is soupy or soggy. The bleeding hasn't yet stopped entirely (a certain amount is to be expected after oral surgery), but it has diminished to manageable, non-repulsive proportions. A short time ago, as he slept, I pulled out a tube of braunschweiger (liver sausage), which is what I'm using as both a disguise and a soft coating for his pills. As soon as I opened the wrapper, I heard his toenails hit the floor, and in seconds he was standing beside me, sniffing expectantly. If he's doing this well two days post-surgery, I think there are more good days than bad ones in his future.

As my daughter Kim pointed out to me, the prognosis of a three-to-six-month life expectancy for a dog Butch's age, especially if those months are likely to be comfortable ones, is not too bad.