"Bambi" July 23, 1997 - June 22, 2010

Last Tuesday I had to do what was probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do or ever will have to do. I had to bring my little baby, Bambi, to the vet and have her put to sleep.

We've had Bambi since she was a tiny little round puppy.  We almost didn't even get her. I remember it very clearly, even though it happened nearly 13 years ago. I had called the breeder and they only had one girl in the litter, but she was already promised to someone else. I was so disappointed, because we were all ready to get the puppy, had saved the money and everything.  We were gonna surprise my mom. This particular breeder had been recommended by a couple of independent sources, so I just felt it was the right place to go. But she wouldn't have any more litters that year.

A couple of days after she told me she didn't have anything for me, I decided to call her back one more time. Just in case. Maybe she knew someone else who had puppies now. But then the best thing happened. Turns out the other person hadn't shown to pick up the puppy so she was available again. We were so excited, driving out to Olcott, NY, nearly an hour away, to see her.  We thought we were going to see the puppy, discuss it, put down a deposit, come back to get her the next week.  Then we saw this little tiny ball of fur, all round and cuddly and playful and we had to have her. That minute. I wrote the check and we drove home in the dark with her shivering, tucked into the front of my husband's jacket.

We came home and put the puppy in a large paper bag to bring her to my mom. We had to wake her up to tell her we'd brought home a doggy bag from dinner.  Surprise!!  From that Friday night in October of 1997 to the very end, Bambi was the sweetest, most beautiful, patient, loving companion we could have had.

In November 2007, we thought we were going to lose her. She became very ill and had to be taken to the emergency vet.  Her lungs had filled with fluid. They said she had an enlarged heart and liver. They wanted to put her down then, but I  insisted that as soon as she was breathing properly, we were taking her home. We took her to see our vet the next day and she was diagnosed with Cushings. Turns out a lot of the things we thought were part of old age were actually because of the disease. Once she was on the medication, she perked up again, became more active and lost a lot of weight. She had been very overweight, which was another sign of her illness and not just that she loved food. 

And she did love food. She would eat anything you were eating, right off your fork or spoon, if you let her. My mother has eaten most of her meals that way over the last few years. One bite for mom, one for Bambi. Sometimes she just made up a plate for Bambi. Noodles were Bambi's very favorite and if you even mentioned them, her ears would lift up and she would tilt her head, ready to eat any and all noodles that were forthcoming.

Once, she modeled for Tops Markets, making the cover of their pet flyer. They told me she was the best dog they ever photographed, cause she just sat where they put her and smiled at the camera. What they didn't realize is that Bambi was just a very polite and patient girl. She always just sat where ever you put her. Maybe it was just easier than trying to do something else. She instinctively learned to do things that good dogs did, like wait for you to go first and walk next to you when on a leash. Certainly it's nothing we ever taught her to do. She slept in our bed, usually taking over one (or more) of our pillows, so that we had to sleep further down on the bed. How one little tiny dog managed to lay her body out over several pillows at once is still a mystery to me.

I know that we were blessed to have had in our lives. I'm thankful that we had the additional time with her that was almost lost to us.  But even so, there's a hole in my heart and it aches.

I miss her.  I know I will for a very long time.

Guilt and Failure

I'm feeling very guilty.  I told myself at the beginning of this year (which was approximately 20 some weeks ago), that I was going to read more, blog more, write more in general, watch less TV, work out more and eat better. Um...I've been reading a bit. Does that count?

Then I had to go make myself feel even worse by reading this post on Zebra Sounds.  Sure, there are actually people out there who make a plan and stick with it. Then they brag about it. I hope Judy's happy now.

So now the guilt and failure are building up and I have to do what I do best: slap myself around because of it.  I go through all the stages: guilt, depression, anger, ice cream, hope and failure.

I want to be a better person. I want to post on my blogs every day. I want to spend time reading something interesting and informative (and not just re-reading Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8). I want to work on some of the writing projects I have started and abandoned when things got too hard (like those people who adopt puppies and then can't care for them).  I want to start that new eating plan I spent time researching (I even have two weeks of meal planning, a grocery list, recipes and everything all set). I want to get up just a half an hour earlier and work out every day (or, you know, like maybe 4 or 5 days a week, at least).

I just haven't done any of those things yet.

So, Judy, thanks for kicking me where it hurts.

Blogging Can Be Beautiful

This post is quite a bit overdue. One of my most ardent blog fans, herself an interesting, intelligent and most lovely blogger, Rachel in the OC, was kind enough to award some recognition to my ToniTV blog. I realize that this post is here and not there, but I just posted there and this blog needed someone to pay attention to it. So there you have it.

In any case, this award comes with some rules, as follows:
•Thank the person who gave you this award.
•Share 7 things about yourself.
•Pass the award along to 15 bloggers whom you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic…

First with the sharing:
1) I'm not that much of a chocolate person. That will probably get me blocked, I know it, but I just happen to like caramel better.

2) At work, I have to have everything arranged on my desk just so and I feel the need to put everything away at the end of the day. But at home, I'm willing to shove stuff in drawers and feel good about it if I can just get them closed.

3) I'm just slightly under 5 feet tall and yet I rarely if ever wear heels. I prefer ballerina type flats.

4) I really love working out and yet I rarely do it cause I'm just too lazy to get started.

5) If left to my own devices, I would basically sit on the couch all day re-watching eps of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

6) I have two Maltese dogs, Bambi and Bella.

7) My favorite color is green. All shades, lovely pale yellowy green, grassy green, emerald green, forest green, all greens.

Now that the hard part is over, it's time to nominate some great blogs:
1) First Pages

2) Zebra Sounds

3) You Had To Be There

4) Making Stuff Up For A Living

5) A Longer Letter Later

6) Lisa Adams on Life, Death, Cancer, and Family: “You’d Never Know”

7) Thoughts from Inman Square

8) MacLean Space

9) Pretty in the City

10) The Bloggess

11) PaigeWorthy.com

12) The Writer's Notebook

13) Allison Winn Scotch

14) Salgrunkshire

15) Words

So lots and lots of lovely places to visit and read and enjoy.

Have fun!

Reunited

Some good did come from the two days of wake and funeral for my cousin Judy, and that was getting to see my cousin Jeffrey again. Jeff and I are only a year apart in age and we grew up together. He is actually my first cousin once removed (the child of my first cousin) but our close age and the closeness of our families at that time meant that we were together a lot. We stood up together in my sister's wedding (I was 6 and he was 5), and spent many weekends at my aunt's cottage on the lake. Jeff and his parents moved to Connecticut when he was 11 and I hadn't seen him in over 30 years. In all that time, I had always remembered him and thought of all the fun we'd had as children. From the moment we saw each other across the room, there was that flash of recognition and we spent the time together, afraid to let each other out of sight. The amazing part was that he remembered me the same way I remembered him.

Back in the 70's, when they moved away, pre-teens didn't have a lot of options to staying in contact. You could write letters, sure, but who really did that? You could call on the phone, but the cost of long-distance calls was an issue. Now, we can communicate so much more easily, through calls, texting, email, skype, twitter, facebook. This time, I have all his contact info and I plan to use it.

Death and Memories

My cousin died and we buried her on Thursday. She's the first of my generation to die. There was a very nice write up about her in our local paper.

The funeral was sad, as most are, but made even sadder by the fact that her 87 year old mother was sitting in the front row. Instead of a standard service, the family chose to have certain songs played between prayers. Before one song her husband told a story. Judy had been suffering from dementia for some time. She didn't always remember who she was talking to or what she was talking about, but she remembered all the words to her favorite songs. He would put the songs on and she would sing along. The song he played then was "The Way We Were" and everyone was in tears. In the quiet moment after the song, I heard my little 2 year old great niece whimpering softly, upset by all the weeping around her.

When my sister told her husband to let us know if there was anything he needed, anything at all, he said, "Bring her back."

Creatively Depressive

I've been wondering lately if my husband and I have been together so long now that we just natually suck the energy from each other. Since he's been laid off, he's started painting, which is a great thing. He's feeling really good about the stuff he's creating and he should, because he's a very talented artist. But since I've been back to work, I'm feeling more and more depressed.

I felt so happy, hopeful, rested and calm while I was unemployed. Working every day makes me all stressed and angry. I never want to talk to anyone when I get home and mostly, I just want to sit around all evening, occassionally perusing my Twitter feed for anything interesting and watching TV. No, really. That's all I want to do.

More and more, I just don't feel like I have the mental energy to write any posts, or read any books, or do anything at all productive. If it involves thought on my part. I'm just not up to it.

So I'm just wondering if it's possible that there's only just so much creative energy to share between the two of us and, if that's true, is he using it all up right now?

They Say A Woman's Work Is Never Done

There is no such thing as unisex. Men and women are completely and utterly genetically different. Completely.

A conversation I had with a woman from work the other day really set me off on this. She was telling me how when her husband gets their daughter ready for school for her he leaves the child's other clothes laying around instead of putting them away or in the hamper. My issue was that she used the phrase "for me" as in, "he got our daughter ready for school for me." Why for her? Isn't that his daughter, too? Isn't he just as responsible for her welfare and schooling as her mother?

I really wonder at these old fashioned ideals that we continue to carry around with us, stereo-typing each role we perform in our day-to-day lives. For example, ask a man to empty the dishwasher and, I've found, he will do exactly that. Empty it. No where in his genetic make up does "empty the dishwasher" necessarily also mean that he should put away the clean dishes and and then deal with that pile of dirty dishes in the sink by putting them into the now empty machine.

Women tend to know, without being told, that a dishwasher full of clean dishes should be emptied, the clean dishes put away, and then the washer re-loaded with all the dirty dishes waiting to be made clean. This is not a task that is somehow exclusively feminine in any way that I can see. Men use dishes, too. Yet, they just don't seem to grasp the full concept of tasks that are traditionally considered woman's work.

And I'll be honest, I'd be a very happy homemaker. I'd June Cleaver my days through cooking, cleaning (maybe not too much cleaning), laundry, sewing, whatever housewifely chores need doing. I doubt I'd do it in a twinset and pearls, but still, I'd be happy. I have no need to hold down a job outside of the home. (Just think of all the time I'd have to read and write!!) But, unfortunately, our household budget requires that I work a full-time job that brings in a certain amount of cash every week. So, since we both work full-time jobs (well, we did until my husband was laid off last June), why is it that the cooking, the cleaning, the laundry and the dishes are still somehow woman's work?