Can I Keep It?

May 14

Happy birthday, Daddy.  I've missed you all these fifteen years.  I've missed taking you out for lunch by myself on your special day and talking.  I miss your funny face.

And Carmen.  It's been a year today since you had to leave us.  I miss your funny face, too.

And Happy Birthday, Aida Velveeta!  Today you are sixteen, my fuzzy bag of bones.  Twice as long as the vet said you would live.

I love you, my little sous chef.  I hope we have many more years with your funny face.

May fourteenth is an auspicious day at Schyterbolle. So many comings and goings on this day.

 

Darling LuLu!

Okay, in the latest bit of spakling since Zoe's departure from the planet, I must introduce the incredible Miss LuLu!  Ta da!

Sorry for the blurry images. I'm having to use my phone, which is a rather unintelligent phone and not at all clever, to take pictures because I have misplaced my camera cord.  

LuLu's a Sun Conure, hatched on January 30, 2013.  A baby!  Her colors are just starting to come in. And Oh!  I love her so!  

We happened to be in the pet store a couple of weeks ago and I stopped by to smell the hamsters and birds, (as you do) and there she was.  Flirting with me.  Playing peek-a-boo from behind a sign advertising her hatch date and name which they thought was Kiwi, but they were wrong.  She was LuLu.  I asked to get her out, but the people who worked there tried to no avail.  She was just beginning to be curious they explained and said they would work with her and to come back in a couple of weeks.  Soooooo, in the insuing fortnight, guess who couldn't stop thinking about funny little LuLu?

Hud and I were out running errands Saturday.  We were passing the pet store when I wondered aloud if that cute birdie was still there.  Hud made the block and turned back.  "You know that's your bird, don't you?" he asked as we went through the doors.

I knew she was.  The employees had lived up to their promise. After a game of peep-eye waiting for assistance, out she came and sat calmy on my shoulder.   She never made it back to her cage.  LuLu patiently perched on Hud's finger while the young man put together her new home.  Off we drove to Schyterbolle.

Where we will live happily ever after.

 

 

Boudreaux Gardens

Dis whut Bou fink of fowlers.

Bou rain on dem for yew.  Help grow.  Make preety.

Yewr welcome.

Gratuitous Shot of Simone

Mommy's little helper...

Sprung

A few days ago, I headed out to the garden to do some weeding with the kids.  As I left the door and waited for them to follow, I realized that the wisteria arbor above my head was issuing a low huuuuuummmm.

Spring had errupted in my yard.  The kids set about to chasing drunken bees.

 

Over night, the arbors over the patio and at the end of the pool, look as if they are cover by a thick lavendar chenille spread.

My favorite time of the year snuck up on me.

NotMe,Mommee.IHeardDemPrickleeJerksFromInsideTheHowse!

Mon Petit Chou

Today was lovely.  A soft warm breeze, slightly overcast, quiet. Finally spring-like!

Hud and I started planting the garden yesterday, so today, the kids and I soldiered on without him.

We weeded the bed in front of the Shicken.  Simone was of great assisstance. 

You could probably tell from the dirt in her ruff that she is quite handy at hole digging.  In fact, she majored in it as a undergrad.

Boudreaux was...Boudreaux.  He splashed across the pool cover, leapt over brick walls and fencing, around the backyard, under the azaleas, over the pool deck and into the garden with a crashing stop at my hunched over body. 

Bou hab eggsellent adbenture. Gardening pffun.

It was all going very well until I turned to ask Zali how he was getting along with the weeding and discovered that he had dug up one of my newly planted cabbages!  He had chomped it down to the roots.

Whut? Eet wuz zee qualitee cuntroll, Muhzer!

Now, I knew he and Simone could not be trusted with broccoli, but cabbages?!?! Le sigh. He looks remorseful, but I had to stop him from murdering the rest of the crop, the little buggar.  That's the look of a guilty man, not a sorry one.  No wait. Guilty and sorry. That's more like it.

Time of death - 10:39.  Farewell, mon petit chou.  I hardly knew ye. 

Bou and Simone took the death seriously and decided to be on their best behavior for the remainder of the outing. Zali went up to the house, pouting.  He stayed by the back door yipping to go in.  Seems I had spoiled all his fun.  

I finished planting cucumbers, beets, bush beans and Thai eggplant.  The three of us joined him at the door when it was time to start making lunch.

A very fine spring morning, inspite of the carnage.

 

 

Fiddy-one

Yesterday was my birthday!  

I turned the page on fifty and became fifty-one at six thirty-two in the morning.  I'm one of those people who rejoices in their birthday, always happy to be older.  I'm quite sure that at some point in the coming year, I will start referring to myself as fifty-two.  Yes, I round up.  It started on my thirty-ninth birthday.  As my age came up and I told it, the person asking would respond with a wink, "How many years will that be?"  BAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  You' re a laugh riot.  So I started saying that I was forty.  The reply was always swift and always the same, "OH!  You really don't look it!"

Le sigh.

So I round.  I round up.  It's my thing. Pretty soon, I'm going to start saying that I'm sixty.  'Cause I look unbelievable for sixty! Hey!  I look awful for twenty-eight.  But sixty?  Hawt.

I like to do new things on my birthday and this year, at the Memphis Zoo, they have a new temporary exhibit, Sting Ray Bay.  Why would I go to the zoo when I live in one you ask?  They have animals there.  Duh. As one of the few animals I have never touched, we went to feed the sting rays!

Scary right?  Okay.  True confessions?  I have a fear of large fish.  And some of these were three feet in diameter.  Because they are trained for this, these animals loved to be touched. They fly around the edges of the tank, gliding under your outstretched hand.  Surprisingly, the sting rays weren't sand paper-like as I expected.  You know, like a shark's skin.  They felt soft and fleshy.  A baby's butt.  Very unusual.  The luck of my birthday had us arrive at feeding time!  (11:00-12:00 and 2:00-3:00, I believe)

I screwed my courage to the sticking place and bought a cup of sardines and shrimp.  You place the fish between your fingers in the middle of your palm and hold the palm flat.  Stick your hand into the water and they swarm you as they smell it. The one who wins the prize is the one that reaches you first, slides up your palm and sucks the fish out of your hand!  It's thrilling and frightening and ohhhh! I can't wait to do it again!

As a bonus, the bears were all very active and enjoying the weather.  The pandas were in the outdoor enclosure for a change. Instead of snoozing indoors, reared up on a pile of bamboo, looking like they need a beer and a remote in either paw.

I know.  He was walking around and everything.  Exciting.  You just don't understand.

And the grizzlies were catching trout in their river, play fighting and eating.

He was ginormous.

We went to one of my favorite places, Dejavu and had the boudin, Big Easy Pasta and Bananas Foster  Cheesecake.  Let that sink in.  Bananas. Foster. Cheesecake. To die for.  Then we headed on over to the movie theatre in midtown and saw Silver Linings Playbook.

And Hud gave me a little diamond Eiffel Tower to waer around my neck to remind me that we'll always have Paris.

Fifty-one may not be so bad.  I might call it for the whole year. 

You Shoulda' Been in Pictures...

The Zali Lama should have been in pictures.  Several times a day, I look over at him and he is situated perfectly on the soft edge of a beam of light.  Professional models dream of having his ability.

Ze Zali, he conteemplates ze meening uf lyef.

Several years ago, when we went to do the Licensing Show at the Javett's Center in New York, other exhibitors would come by the booth and tell us that he should have a show of his own.  I'd tell them to sign us up!  He loves to travel, wear expensive clothes and jewelry and has about eleventy hundred expressions and vocalizations. He got to go to the shows because of my anxiety issues.  But oh!  The others loved to see him, too!  He played out in the aisles during slow times and greeted guests.  One exhibitor even came by and took him for a while to help with the pain of having to leave his own dogs at home.

Le Sigh.

Ahhhh, talent wasted. The world has suffered such a loss. 

So sad for ze world, Muzher! Ah wouldn't want to share zhem weet yew!

A Funny Thing Happened...

...On the way to Zoe's passing.

*Photo by the talented Hud Andrews on the day Zoe came to be our baby.

Sorry I upset so many people yesterday.  I thought I'd tell you a few funny stories about Zoe today to make up for it.  She was quite the rodeo clown.

We started to rename her, "Bonk".  She would tumble out of the van, down the stairs, off the couch.  It all ended the same way.  Flat on her head.  She'd hop up, shake it off and be on to the next adventure.  Zoe was one tough puppy.  Just  a rub-some-dirt-on-it-and-go girl. 

 

Zoe was HARD to train.  I think it was all that little girl on the playground squealing that went on in her head.  She just couldn't hear me over it.  So you can imagine what a joy it was for her to greet people at the door.  The little girls in her head would scream, "COMPANY!!!" and Zoe would fly at the door, bonking people in the crotch.  Sigh.  I swear I wanted to put a basket filled with football players protective cups by the  front door with a sign that read, "Put one on and ring bell at your own risk."

Our neighbor, Maryann, loves labs, but Zoe was always knocking her around.   One day, Maryann popped over.  I restrained the exuberant Zoe and she said for me to let her go.  We were going to ignor her and chat so that Zoe could get used to being around her. So there we were, talking about nothing in particular, when Maryann's eyes popped open wide and she exclaimed, "OOOOpps!" We looked down.  Maryann had on t-shirt knit shorts.  Zoe had cramed her head into the left side and out the right leg.  Her body was wriggling and her face beamed.  The two of us burst into peals of laughter!  Everytime we tried to extract the dog's mug from her pants, the pants came down and the harder we laughed.  Oh, that dog.  Marley was an obedience school five star cadet compared to Zoe.  

One Summer, when Zoe was young, we all went out to the pool on a sunny Summer afternoon.  Hud and I got in to swim.  Zoe wouldn't go unless you forced her.  Despite the fact that she swam like a paddlewheeler, she hated to get in.  She loved to be splashed in the face like a ten year old boy, but no way were you putting her all the way in there.  Needless to say, Hud and I weren't paying attention and as we went back to get our bourbon and cokes, saw that they were completely empty!  Barely an ice cube left in the glasses.  Yes, Zoe had drained them both.  We were more careful after that.  

But that didn't stop Zoe's call to alcohol.  

Hud's habit was to take Carmen and Zoe to the park for a run every morning. (She did it on the Friday before her death even.) So on this particular day, a bum was walking through the woods, drinking a forty.  Zoe raced to his side, jumping and barking.  The frightened man yelled to Hud, "Please don't let your dog eat me, Mister!" Hud sighed and said, She doesn't want you.  She wants your beer."  "Oh!" replied the man, "She's a booze hound!"  And he laughed.

After a bad storm of straight line winds, we needed help cleaning up and making repairs.  Hud hired a man.  I didn't know he was in the back yard, and had let the dogs out. "COMPANY!" the girls in her head screamed and off Zoe went.  "MISTER! CALL OFF YOUR DOG! MISTER! PLEASE! MISTER!" as he ran for the back fence.  Hud yelled for him to stop.  And calmed him enough to get him to pet her.  I mean, she was mistaken more than once for a horse.  You see, Zoe loved a good workman with a tool belt.  I always had to warn people working in the house that she would steal their tools.  If they missed something, it was always stashed under the dining room table. One time, she robbed a man of his hammer, tapemeasure, a wrench and a screwdriver.  Over the years that Mike worked here, he and Zoe became fast friends.  He made a point of hanging gloves out of his back pocket so she would have something to steal.  Mike loved to make a big game out of getting them back, fussing at her the whole time.

There is so much more.  My Funny Face was a real commedian. I'm gonna' miss that.  She was a big presence in this house. Physically and spiritually.

 

 

 

Little Dog

For something that was so long in coming, it all went down very fast.  

Zoe had been doing great.  A stellar patient. When originally diagnosed, she was given thirty days.  That was almost nine months ago.  Performing way beyond the challenges facing her.  She chased the ball every morning.  Ate her meals with vigor.  When she was given new foods, she always gave a satisfying moan, "Mmmmmmmm!"

She was happy.

Then, on Saturday, for the first time since she was diagnosed with cancer, she acted like she didn't feel well.  On Sunday, she did what she was asked.  We took her for ice cream, a habit we began as "Make-A-Wish-For-Zoe".  But it was clear, she did it for us.  She had given up.

On Monday morning, we already had an appointment with Dr. Michener, her oncologist.  I asked her get up one last time.  I begged her.  And dutiful dog that she was, struggled to her feet.  I helped her get as far as the side door.  She collapsed.  It was the last time Zoe ever got up.

We got to the office and had to carry her in on a liter. And Kathy came into the room.  She had told me when we started this journey that she never knew how long they had to live, but they would let us know.  Zoe was making it plainly clear.  She was done.

Hud's tears rained down on Zoe's sweet head as we said goodbye.  It was the kindest passing that I have ever had the privledge of witnessing.  Even Dr. Michener was in tears.  We had all done our best, but no one more than Zoe.

We got Zoe at the agricenter, eleven years ago as we went out to get beans on a Saturday morning.  She was bred to be a goose hunter.  Her litter was large with robust eight week old puppies of fifteen and sixteen pounds. She weighed eight.  The runt of the litter.  And a red head to boot.  I had fallen in love. The breeder asked Hud what he hunted.  He said that the dog was for me.  He asked me what I hunted.  I told him, "Designer shoes at fabulous prices!"  I thought he would snatch the dog from my arms.

But oh, was she a bad puppy.  A terrible chewer, she removed the dashboard from my car, ate the hard knob of the gearshift, demolished a couch and could crack a golf ball in half.  Hud said that if she ever caught a cold, he was going to put her down. 

At four years old, a switch flipped.  Suddenly, she was the gentlest, sweet, well behaved spirit in the whole house.  Hud trained her to catch the ball.  She began running with him in the mornings.  Finally, Hud fell in love.

She always thought she was a little dog.  Smaller than Simone even.  There was a chihuahua in the park that could flip her onto her back. Zali dominated her. She never knew what a great big beast she was.  At one of the Rhodes College games, a small boy asked me if he could pet my horse.

Farewell, my sweet tiny girl.  Safe trip and so much love to guide your way.  We miss you.