June 7 2010

Peonies: Yes, it's that time of year again. While these make look remarkably like last year's peonies, I just can't resist taking more shots. They are so spectacular! And each flower is unique, especially the pinky-whites, with those random flecks of red here and there. Though to be fair to the reds, they are more prolific (we've already started a second terrace of them when we divided last fall) and smell better.

Party and Pups: .
We had a small gathering yesterday to celebrate Brian's 68th birthday (yes, we are indeed getting older faster). Here's Brian with one of his kindergarten friends, Jerry. The other, Sanford, came with his wife Maria. Also our Newburgh friends Ken and Carole came by. Old friends and new, all were welcome



And I waited till the party was over to share with you our new foster dog Missy, as I wanted to see how she did. In a word: wonderful!
Little Missy was abandoned at a dog park in Long Island a bit over a month ago, by a woman who had her only three weeks. Fortunately there were a couple of much kinder women who worked for a vet, taking a break there. Missy got out of a small hole in the fence, and the unkind woman told the vet techs that she had gotten out of her fenced yard, and she was done with her. How horrible! The vet techs took her back to the clinic, removed ticks, bathed her, and brought her up to date on her shots, then called American Brittany Rescue to find her a great home. As I was not available right away, another volunteer took her, and within the first 24 hours she got away from his place too! Though in Missy's defense, an open door/gate policy is not likely to work with foster dogs, at least not right away.

So here I was, expecting people, kids and dogs, with a dog that I'd been told was not only an escape artist, but also rather snappish at first with other dogs. I was a bit apprehensive... okay, more than a bit.


Lisa, Josh, Hyla and Ayro arrived first. As you can see, no problems there. Then Daniel and Tim came with Ruby, the perfect dog - she can be unleashed and actually stays right by their sides (unlike any of my dogs, including dear departed Saul who lived to run down the beach at Santa Barbara becoming a smaller and smaller dot on the horizon, completely oblivious to the repeated appeals to return).

Then in quick succession, Tracey and Lynn (the superwomen who have a permanent pack of eight and frequently foster bringing the total to a dozen) with my former foster Brittie and their (sadly) blind girl Chilly (shown here wearing her kerchief that boldly declares: "I'm Blind!" - Tracey and Lynn think of everything!). And more people, and food on the table, and much commotion.
Missy outdid herself, kissing everyone including the babies very carefully, laying down next to each dog, and wagging and smiling at everyone that came in. Snappish? Escape artist? She couldn't get close enough!

And Hyla, who loves dogs dearly, was not only happy with the pack of four, but decided to try out the alluring crate - as you can see, she kept herself (and me and Missy) quite amused!

So that's the news from here. Though it rained hard, off and on, all day, and we never did grill anything, everyone was fine inside and the food (potlucks are always so good) was delicious and abundant. We all had a wonderful time, and when Brian headed out to the train station with Lisa, Josh, Hyla and Ayro to take them back to NYC, I looked around at my dog-hair-covered house, the remains of gift wrapping and paper plates, and an exhausted dog, and realized there's a reason why people should have kids when they're young. Now, for more sleep!

April 26 2010

The garden is really changing daily now - daffs mostly just a fond memory,
bleeding hearts the most spectacular bloom this week, rhods and peonies and allium and so much else just waiting for these three days' rain to pass to burst into color. We are working on the triangle section mostly these days, as we had a tree right in the center removed last year, which of course changes everything. Too bad it had to go, but several ornamental trees, thought I guess to stay small forever, grew over twenty feet since we arrived and were just too close to the house for comfort. When the big winds come up (and they are really BIG WINDS) even the huge oaks get whipped around like grass, so we like a nice wide barrier between us and anything that might crash through the roof.



Aside from gardening, two other news items worth mentioning. First, the ongoing plumbing problems, which have been plaguing us for several months. We had pipes blown out, water softener system rerouted, septic tank cleaned (thankfully that was NOT the problem, insert your own joke here), and finally Brian pretty much dug up the dry well and we had all that reconfigured too. I am delighted to report that for the last two weeks, we've been able to run the dishwasher and the washing machine without any mopping up of floors (our laundry room got very clean in those months of overflow). Please note the charming pink duct tape (thank you, Maia) that helped these efforts.





Second, both Brian and I have finally gotten some classes to teach, both on Wednesday evenings. His is being funded by a grant, so the class is free to the students, and you can imagine how happy those students are to get Brian's level of expertise for free. Mine are through SUNY Orange in Middletown. I've got a rabidly enthusiastic group of 13 for Old English Beginning Calligraphy, so enthusiastic that they literally demanded a second 4-week course so we could get through the alphabet. They are lovely people, so nice to each other as well as to me, it's a delight to teach. I had forgotten how much fun it is to share calligraphy skills and stories with such a rapt audience. And I also did a one-time workshop teaching the hand-done Japanese bind for small books.
While only three women showed up for this one, I still enjoyed the time spent. I've been wanting to run these classes for the entire seven years we've been here - so at last I have two hours' gainful employment each week. Does this mean the economy is really picking up? As I've been in the sad category of "stopped looking for work" for quite a while now, my statistical improvement may not be the spike the economy needs.

That's it from here, what news out there?

April 4 2010

At last, the rains have stopped, the snows have melted, and we are able to take stock of what survived both, and what did not. The spate of warm weather right now has opened most of the narcissus, jonquils and crocus, along with the big forsythia bushes that are now bright yellow all around the property.
The photos here are of just a fraction of what we had to cut off after the Big Snow, to try to clean up the snapped branches inside the fence. Those on the other side of the fence, amazingly, apparently just laid on the fence itself under mounds of snow until the warm weather liberated them - and now they are waving their yellow plumes a good three feet above the six foot fence! Ah, the resiliency of plants, wish I had as much!

March 3 2010

February 2010: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, over and over again all month.

February trip to Illinois, Best: a visit to Mom, who while still not completely recovered physically from five months of various illness, still has her spirit, sanity, and beauty intact. She is and has been the most resilient and remarkable woman I have known personally, and even at ninety-plus, the rock of our family. Just being with her is calming, reassuring, and entertaining as well. Also "best", seeing my ever-accommodating nieces Abbey and Kim, along with their ever-entertaining children, Catcher, Dakota (Abbey and Eric's twins, now three, and Cameron, Kim and Brian's son who had his first birthday last November) and in Kim's case, my stalwart nephew-in-law, Brian the Younger. Dakota is so like her mother at that age, determined, very smart, with lots of opinions. Catcher speaks exclusively in exclamation marks, as in "I'm a BIG boy now!" or (my own favorite, told to me by Mom: "I took a HUMONGOUS poop!") Cameron is just starting to talk in English (he's been babbling in his own language for quite a while, we just couldn't get it), and amused us all by pointing to every photo in Mom's apartment and repeating "baby", no matter what was in the frame, and then pointing to the TV and saying "hockey" over and over. He also decided that Mom's cane, turned upside down, was in fact a hockey stick, and is surprisingly accurate at anything and everything that serves him as a puck - sometimes including his own mother (if she's on the floor and he's in the mood).

Worst: would have been getting delayed two extra days due to horrible weather, but the taxi to the airport won over the weather by the proverbial mile. Beginning with the driver not being able to work the walkie-talkie (or whatever device has superseded it these days) and spending the first ten minutes not looking at the road AT ALL, so that I had to rather forcibly remind him that the light was red and he really had to stop, and continuing as we careened onto the tollway, where I watched every single vehicle pass us as if we were standing still, while he informed me that there seemed to be a small problem with the motor, culminating with our running out of gas (due to the small problem, I assume, but maybe completely unrelated) and coasting at a snail's pace to the first safe spot anywhere near my terminal. Travel is always so interesting, in the Chinese sense.

The Westminster Dog Show at Madison Square Garden, Best: we went thanks to our generous ABR buddies Daniel and Tim. We drove out in (once again) terrible weather to the train station, ate our sandwiches aboard, then met up with the guys and Tracey and Lynn (Brittie's mommies and leaders of the pack of eight) and Sue, my ABR state coordinator, with whom I've exchanged hours of phone calls and emails but had never met face to face.

The dogs were just amazing! I've never seen a big formal dog show before, and I was in heaven! Of course the Brittanys were adorable, and we all noticed that these show pups were about half the size of our equally adorable but much less pampered rescue dogs. When I had the chance to go "backstage" to the benching area, I asked around to the various breeders and handlers, as to why that might be, and got some insight about it all. The most coherent answer seemed to be that show dogs have to conform to breed standards very rigidly to be shown at all, but the "backyard breeders" are just trying to get as many pups as possible as quickly as possible, so are often not aware, and almost always don't care, that the breed standard is something like 22 inches and 35 pounds. Even my smallest foster Bonnie was bigger than that - not that I love any of them any less, but it was interesting. Fickle heart that I am, I fell in love dozens of times, as dog after beautiful dog locked eyes with me across that crowded room and insisted I come over and chat. I must admit my most favorite of all the hundreds I saw was a spectacular English Setter - wish I had a photo to share, as words really can't do him justice. But as Brian and I couldn't find out whether or not we could bring digital cameras, just that unofficial videos were forbidden and those cameras would be confiscated, we decided to leave ours home. We were the only persons in attendance that made that decision! If we go again (I hope so) we will definitely bring a fully charged digital.

Even the breeds I normally don't care much about, like the Italian Mastiff (the Harry Potter three-headed dog was originally one, and I think they are just inherently ugly to my Brittany-loving eyes) looked adorable, and were so perfectly groomed even I had to admire their shiny coats and well-trimmed nails. And walking down an aisle of Great Danes and Bernese Mountain Dogs and Mastiffs is just incredible. There has to be another word than huge to describe these dogs that are WAY bigger than miniature horses (and in some cases bigger than regular ponies). Two of the Mastiffs were lying down in the aisle, already crowded with people and dogs more than LA freeways are with cars, stretched out to somewhere between seven or eight feet from head to tail, surrounded in both cases by a dozen little children petting them everywhere. They just smiled and wagged - which occasionally knocked down either a kid or a brush. No wonder they are considered such great family dogs!

Worst: the weather, which was non-stop sleet/snow from the time we left our house to the time we got back on the train. We left several hours earlier than planned because we were both getting anxious about the drive home from the train station. Fortunately by the time we got back to Middletown, the snow had stopped, but we (and all the other commuters) had to dig, sweep and shovel our cars out, all of which were now indistinguishable mounds of snow. Yikes!


The Big Storm: Worst - our power went out on Thursday February 25. We had the generator and our downstairs woodstove to help out, but by Friday, still without power, roads unplowed, and the generator rapidly running out of gas even though we shut it down completely at night, I was really getting worried. Brian called the road crews, to find out why even the bigger feeder road to our private road was untouched, and was told their crews couldn't get there because there was a tree down on the road entangled in wires, and that they, the road crews, had called the electric company to notify them their crews had to deal with it. We then called the electrical company and for the only time in five days, got a human being, who seemed surprised at that information, surprised we had no power, said they couldn't get crews in because the road wasn't plowed, and that he'd switch the call to the appropriate line and then hung up on us. Friday night as I was talking to Sue to find out what was going on in NYC, the phone line went dead as well. I was up most of the night anyway, stoking the fire and going to the window in hopes of seeing some sign of a plow.


Saturday morning a plow finally got through, and Brian went out in search of gasoline for our generator, and another five gallon container for even more gasoline. He'd been shovelling many many times a day, just paths to the car and the generator, but it was exhausting. The snow was wet and heavy and endless, the first two days I couldn't even see our own car out the window, just white blurry snow. When he made it back, he reported that one mile away the power was back on, and we were hopeful. Ha!

Late Saturday our phone line came back on partially. We have a phone jack that came with the house, like so much else that makes no sense, conveniently located against the wall next to the refrigerator in such a way as to make it almost invisible, and very hard to plug a phone into. It's always been the one line that worked even without power, though the feedback is impressively deafening. So I began to call the electric company emergency lines every two or three hours hoping to get some real information. Again, ha! By Sunday, one of the two "emergency" numbers was telling me when I dialed that it had been disconnected, no other explanation and no prompt to go anywhere else for information. That left just one annoying voicemail number to use. The electric company has cleverly figured out that there's no point in talking to any of us crazy, cold, frantic folks, and no longer allows access to humans, just voicemail and endless loops of how one can conserve energy.


When we drove out Monday afternoon, March 1, to pick up gas and Brian's pitifully small check for the school bus driving (he'd been snowed out of work along with everyone else for most of one week and part of another), the crews were already within blocks of our house. I had some faint hope that when we got back, we'd have power. But not. Then, later, when I staggered out to the mailbox, the crews and their two enormous trucks were directly across from our house - but we still had no power. When I saw them beginning to drive away, I flagged them down and told them that - they seemed really puzzled, as they'd cleared the line all the way down Roosa Gap, and we could all see that there were no trees or lines down around our house. I guess I must have looked pretty deranged, because they followed me on to our property to check the electric meter, to be sure it wasn't running. They were very nice young guys, from out of state (that's why they were so nice, I believe) but said they had no explanation as to why we weren't back on the grid. I pretty much pleaded with them to be sure and let the ever-unhelpful folks at O & R know that for sure, as I'd already gotten their annoying voicemail line telling me the restore times were hours after I was calling. That had been happening for days.

Why it went back on when it did, about four or five hours after we were able to speak in person to real human beings, I'll never know for sure. But it was a real delight to actually cook a meal Tuesday night at last, and to go to sleep Monday night with at least a reasonable hope that neither of us would have to get up every few hours to tend either the woodstove or generator.

These photos were all taken BEFORE the extra 30-plus inches of snow fell - the little shrub was completely covered when it was over, as were our forsythia, many of which were bent completely to the ground by the weight of the snow, and lots else. And, these were not supposed to be black and white, they were shot with color (theoretically) but these big storms just reduce everything to a very limited palette.

Best: It's over! I did get out Tuesday and carefully liberated our only surviving lilac bush, and was relieved to find it was only bent, not broken. But as for the snapped evergreens, the forsythia, and I'm not sure what else, we'll just have to wait until the snow melts at least a bit more to assess the damages and do some pruning.

January 13 2010

Hello Ayro Sara Dotson! Born on January 8th, 2010 at 11:45 (her sister Hyla's birthday as well!!), Ayro weighed in at 8 pounds 3.75 ounces and 21 1/4 inches long. Brian was called to NYC to babysit big sister Hyla overnight while Josh accompanied Lisa to the hospital, and he and Hyla had such a good time! While everyone had advice for Brian about what to do when the inevitable "meltdown" happened, it never did. They spent 24 hours together, eating (they both are grazers), drawing (of course!), reading books, and just enjoying each other's company. Though I must say that when Brian did arrive home the next evening, he went to bed pretty quickly!





I was home with our foster dog Sadie, on her last night with us. Ayro wasn't due till the 12th, so I thought having Chris, Sadie's new dad, come pick her up on the weekend might just work. Alas, Ayro couldn't wait, and I couldn't leave Sadie alone (how would she work the remote with no opposable thumb?), so we two senior ladies spent a last night bonding, and having phone conversations with Bri and Hy. Hyla has definitely mastered the art of "hi" and "bye", but other than that is not much for long phone chats - just like her grandma!

And goodbye Sadie girl! Saturday afternoon, hours before Brian got home, Chris and girlfriend Lee arrived to take Sadie home forever. Much to my delight, the formerly shaky Sadie just jumped right in his car when the time came, without a backward glance, and settled right in at her new home.
As you can see, her beloved new bed, bought for her by doting "aunties" Tracey and Lynn, made her feel right at home, right away.

While I'm always a bit conflicted seeing the foster dogs go, a brand new grandchild is a great focus for attention. And Hyla remains such a delightful girl! It will be interesting to see how the sisters relate as time goes by...


We shall see... and you can be sure I'll write about it here!

December 25 2009

Christmas morning, and what I get to unwrap is - Sadie's paw! Not sure if the decorative green wrap was in the spirit of the season, or just what they had on hand at Dr. Kate's.
This past Tuesday our girl had surgery on 50% of her paws, one front and one back, plus a tooth pulled. Shades of Brittie from last November, it is one of life's continuing ironies that I, the most phobic person about medical procedures that one can imagine, keep having to face my worst nightmares, which are always about medical stuff. Usually involving pets (but occasionally people too, like Brian's rare but scary ER trips, or learning to inject my Dad with insulin), life presents me over and over again with this particular challenge. Beginning decades ago with my very first dog Mutzie, who was attacked in a park in Santa Barbara by a Rottweiler who almost killed her, and was Frankenmutz for almost a month, through my bunny Dog, who needed subcutaneous water injections for 10 days but died anyway, there's been a series of slice and dice, inject and re inject, stuff, that to my credit (she modestly wrote) I accomplished without killing any patient, but mostly put me on the floor fighting nausea for several hours. Are you feeling the Christmas spirit yet? This makes the whole coal in the stocking thing look pretty mild to me.

On a much happier note, and almost anything would be, Thanksgiving this year was a true delight. Lisa and Josh decided to make the feast at the New York apartment, and Brian, Sadie and I drove in, Sadie of course shaking most of the two hours each way. I must say, traffic on Thanksgiving was pretty easy, and parking in the city a breeze. Also invited was a couple and their very new (seven weeks) infant. Much to my delight, Hyla, who loves all dogs, was particularly taken with Sadie. They had met a few weeks earlier here, where Hyla spent quite a while chasing Sadie in slow motion around the dining table, wanting very much to give her a hug. Sadie thought otherwise. But on Thanksgiving, thanks in great part to the big dead bird, Hyla and I both fed Sadie kibble and rice grain sized turkey pieces by hand. Could they be any cuter?

Hyla is still so small that she could only hold three or four pieces of kibble at a time, which made the dining process very slow and genteel, and provided a lot of bonding time. Hyla did eventually get to sneak a hug under the table (where both she and Sadie spent quite a bit of time), and when we left, managed to kiss Sadie on the nose. I was very thankful for the whole experience!

Lisa and Josh and their friends, who brought two pies and various vegetables, put together a wonderful meal even for those of us (me) who didn't eat the dead bird. And I realized that Lisa knows me better than I thought when after dinner, as everyone else was sampling both pies and praising them, she looked over at my empty dessert plate and asked if I'd like the single piece of very rich chocolate pastry they had in the refrigerator. It was my idea of a perfect meal, great salad (three helping for me, I love radicchio), great cooked veggies, followed by an equally great dessert.

It's nice to see Hyla's face light up in delighted recognition of Grandpa Brian. She may not know his name, but she knows he's HER person. And I see more and more of Margie (Brian's mother) in her as time goes by, not only physically, but in gestures and attitudes too. Like Marge, Hyla is a very social, welcoming little person. And of course I consider myself completely unprejudiced in admiring her adorableness, as she's not a blood grandchild, just a wonderfully cute one!

It was also pretty amusing that the less experienced parents came in with their new baby raising manual, and struggled mightily to stick to it, even as the baby, who clearly hadn't read it, didn't particularly want to eat, sleep or anything else on the book's schedule. At one point in the diaper changing, the new dad was holding the new naked baby, awaiting an assist from the new mom, when the baby started to pee - on him first, of course, and then on the floor. Only Hyla and I were amused, the others calling out to dad to use his tee shirt as an emergency diaper. It never occurred to me when we drove in that anyone other than Sadie might pee on the still newly resurfaced hardwood floors. Life is so unpredictable! Once the baby went in to full scream mode, the parents made a quick exit. Neither Hyla nor Sadie seemed particularly upset by the pee, screams, or much else, though Hyla was not happy when her mommy was holding the baby.

We weathered last weekend's Big Storm pretty easily (and thanks to those of you who thought to ask if we were okay). We only got a couple of inches of light powder here, have had much worse storms with no warnings whatsoever. But everywhere in all four directions around us got really pounded, and in our former stomping grounds in West Virginia, two hours into the storm over 5,000 households were already without power. As it's been bitterly cold here (at least we shared that with some of our neighbors), the snow that fell is still here, not deep, and fairly decorative as long as one doesn't have to do anything about it, or get anywhere. Fortunately for us, we don't have to either do or get. Brian brought in extra wood for the fireplace, we have ample food in the house, and our backup generator has a clear path shoveled from the back porch to it's access. We're as ready as we can be for whatever comes next - at least, weather-wise.


So - that's it from here. All is very quiet and gray right now,even the evergreen rhododendrons look grayish in this cloudy light. On a sunny day everything sparkles, but on days like today it seems as if almost all the color is leeched out of everything and there are only blacks, whites, and shades of gray. Tonight we are told to expect rain that will go on till tomorrow night (which also seems pretty strange for late December, but that's what we're told at the Weather Channel). If that's even close to correct, a few hours of rain should wash all the snow down. I'll just have to bag Sadie's paws when she needs to go out. None of us plan to go any further than the dog run anyway.

November 15 2009

Sitting here on a wet but warm day, with my new foster dog Sadie curled decoratively around her own tail, I am delighted with her company. She came to us about a month ago, very scared and disoriented after her family of eight years first boarded her at her vet's (while someone was hospitalized), then asked the vet to euthanize her because the person couldn't manage to care for her any more.

I am so grateful the caring vet wouldn't do that, and contacted American Brittany Rescue. She's a perfectly healthy, eight year old bundle of love with the BEST tail ever! The first two days were very hard on her, she was pretty much scared of everything and everyone, including us. But soon enough she decided life here is not so bad, and has made it clear that she has picked me as her person. I am honored! She is a very undemanding girl, just a joy to have around. And of course is giving me very good life lessons in living in the here and now, enjoying the moment, and all those great dog dissertations they share with us. She is the complete personification of "bright eyed and bushy tailed".

I am amazed that in just two days my youngest great-nephew Cameron will be a year old. Here he is in his first Halloween costume, an old-time fighter pilot - couldn't be any cuter!
Today is the actual party day, and over forty guests are expected, many, I assume, also just about a year old. I guess I ruminate more on this little one because he was given a Hebrew name to honor my father - and my niece Kim has warmed my heart more than once in lovely emails that make reference to his inheritance, as the following: "As for Cameron, he gets this devilish little grin, like he's up to something and it just reminds me of Grandpa. He also is quite strong-willed which leads me to believe that Grandpa is keeping a watchful eye on him and his spirit is just running through his veins. How lucky Cameron is, for he is named well!" and a week later: "he's really turning into a little jokester (a Grandpa Oscar trait no doubt)!" Last year when I got the birth announcement and photo, I thought I saw something of Dad in that newborn face, but the other family members just thought I was crazy. So nice to finally have some agreement there (and who doesn't love to be right?).


Of course Queen Hyla also trick or treated this year, as the world's cutest monkey - I'm sure you will agree.

As it's actually much warmer now, and lately, than last month, there is virtually no garden to report on. In the aftermath of the mid-October snow (yes, really!), pretty much everything but a few hardy mums just gave up and died back (I well understand the impulse, mine was the same - six months of actual winter is WAY too much). Most of the leaves are down now, and the countryside has that look I've grown used to, waiting for the first serious snowfall to cover everything up and declare the change of seasons. While I still very much miss my dear Santa Barbara friends, and the equally dear oceanside walks, when I'm not completely surrounded by too much cold and snow I find I do enjoy the seasonal changes. The garden, most prominently, but other things as well. There's a different smell to each season, and the first time I catch a whiff, it recalls all kinds of memories from way back to my Chicago childhood. This fall was particularly colorful, if brief, the flares of reds, oranges and yellows were spectacular for a couple of weeks, and then more quietly decorative laying on the ground. Now as we head towards real winter, Brian continues to split the large pile of wood left behind from the two giant trees we had taken down, and our woodpile looks already like we are set for next year (unless of course it is really cold, then it will all go up the chimney pretty quickly).

We were lucky enough to finally find real loggers, a guy in his 70's and his son, French Canadians, who found two oaks on our property big enough to mill, and paid us to take them down and haul off for lumber. They also picked up the two much smaller stems of the paper birch in the middle of our triangle planting. There were two of these when we moved here, that were fairly small ornamental trees six years ago, but especially in this last wet spring got way too big too close to the house. Brian was able to take the one in this shot down pretty easily,(it's the small white stick-looking thing in the front, but this shot was from 2006; by this year it had overgrown the rooftop)
but the triangle one was leaning the wrong way, and overshadowing lots of flowering plants as well. Bri had been strategizing for months about just how to get it down. As it turned out, the Canadians just used the giant claw on top of their truck to grab the top (son was manning this device) while the father did one quick cut on each stem. Then they were dropped over the side in the weeds, much like any of us would toss a toothpick! I haven't been that impressed with tree cutting since the West Virginia days, when a family of six or seven came by (with their own venison sandwiches and moonshine) and spent a day doing what looked like ballet with chain saws.

I hope all of you are well, and that your upcoming Thanksgiving will be full of all good things - with more to come before the year ends.