Really embarrassed and sorry...

I just read last night's post again and 'embarrassed' isn't a word to convey what I felt reading what I wrote about Bela.

I love him so. Have for almost 12 years. He's never been an easy dog so loving him has made me a better person. (Ever notice that? How loving someone who isn't terribly 'lovable' makes you a better person than you would have been?) And I'm so embarrassed I shared that with you. But, you might remember, I wrote a post back on August 3 (go look at it if you missed it) when I said 'grief' for me comes out as anger.

So when you die, I'll be mad. Just bear that in mind and don't die.

Death doesn't frighten me--it makes me angry.

I resent death more than I fear it. Funny, I always berate people who 'don't like change'. I tell them "that's the way life is, get used to it, embrace and rejoice in it...."

But Death, the ultimate 'change', makes me angry. (Just like Jonah when God sends a worm to kill the tree that gives him shade on the hillside above Ninevah: "I'm so angry I could die!" Jonah says.)

Got I hate it when things die. Or are diminished as Bela is. As my father was before his death. As so many of the people I have served as a priest have been before they died. It makes me crazy angry.

So, a new thing to make me a better person if I am courageous enough to embrace it--start loving the people who 'hate change'.

Because I do too--it's just for me the change I hate is death.

Pray for me as I hold you all in my heart though I'm not sure who all of you are....

wanting my life back

Ok, I'm already ashamed of what I'm about to write--but I need to write it, say it in print--just to let it go a little.

Our 12 year old Puli, Bela, is obviously growing senile and having aching joints. I get that, I really do. And I mourn it. But he is now running my life. He's decided, for reasons beyond my comprehension, that he likes his 'man' (me) more than his 'woman' (Bern), so he wants to be with me constantly--but he wants to be with me where he wants to be and not where I want to be.

Just this evening, for example--I was grilling dinner and he kept wanting me to go inside because, well, it was warm and he hates hot...always has. So, I let him in the kitchen door about half-a-dozen times and then he would bark for me to come in. It would take a minute or more to convince him I was on the deck before he'd come out. Then he'd go bark to go in, I'd let him in and he'd bark for me to come in and I'd have to plead with him for over a minute to come back out. Then, all that, all over again.

Bern took her dinner upstairs and somehow got him up--we have to hold his hips as he goes up the front stairs. He can go up the fully carpeted back stairs much easier...but won't. So he barked for me to come up until I got my dinner and did.

Then he barked at Bern to share her food, though he eats a ton everyday. When I went down to clean up, he came, after barking for me to come back up. Then he barked to go out and pee and I let him and wanted to sit on the porch in the dark and smoke a cigarette but he came back from the yard and barked until I got up and let him in.

Then we came upstairs again (big production) and he wanted to go into the bedroom where there is AC and I wanted to come to my office (AC as well) so he barked at the bedroom door until I went and forced him to the office. His office water bowl was empty so when I went to the bathroom next to the office to fill it, he went back down the hall to bark at the bedroom door until I went to force him back to my office.

My life is like that all day. When I'm out, he'll go upstairs and sleep on our bed (he has no trouble going up when I'm out) until I come home. Then he's constantly with me.

I love him so and don't want him to die but I want my life back the way it was until the last few months when he was much more independent.

Sorry to complain. I'm embarrassed about it but I just feel at his beck and call every moment I'm home.

Deep breath. I love him so. Let me be more patient with him, Lord....

Food, drink, ocean and Ellie

That was pretty much a summing up of our vacation on Oak Island with three friends, Tim and Mimi and Eleanor.

I went knee deep into the water a few times, but with my surgically repaired knee and quad muscle, I wasn't willing to be knocked around too much. I'm at the age that just staring at the ocean, remembering how small it makes me feel, glorying in that, is enough. There is great comfort, I find, in realizing how insignificant you are in the world, much less the Universe. As I read outside, tiny-tiny insects--so tiny I can't describe them--sometimes land on my book. I blow them away, hoping not to hurt them as I would if I turned the page on them--but never before realizing them on my book is how I feel by the ocean. And for reasons I'm not yet sure of, I like that feeling of being so tiny compared to something else.

Food--we all cooked. I did baked fish and sauteed shrimp and scallops (Tim is allergic to shrimp.) Jack did Shrimp and Grits and Scallops and Grits (for the same reason). Tim and Mimi did hamburgers and hotdogs one night with lots of sides. We went out to dinner the first night (minus T,M,E). Bern did the traditional 'big fish'--two Red Snapper stuffed and baked with incredible stuffing. Sherry did lots of vegetables. I cooked various kinds of pork with eggs and toast for whoever wanted them most mornings. Everyone was on their own for lunch. We all went to lunch one day in Southport at this great sort-of-outdoor place--a roof but no sides.

Drink--there was gin and tonic most days and always bourbon--but I only do beer and wine, mostly white--and left the rest to others. Only Bern doesn't drink alcohol at all, but we forgive her...or more likely, forget her.

And Eleanor. Oh, my Lord God, Eleanor!!! Such a wonder, so much joy and play.

Plus, I read three books and imagine most (except Tim who did a lot of LinkedIn work while there--phone calls and computer stuff) read almost that many.

The kind of salt air, paper page (though some use Kindle) wine and food and baby time that can't really be compared to anything...anything else to do for a week.

{My other three granddaughters--Emma, Morgan and Tegan Bradley--are now acolytes at the Cathedral of the Incarnation (Episcopal of course) in Baltimore. Cathy sent us photos of their training and their first Sunday. Emma and Morgan carried the candles and Tegan carried a banner that said, "Our Lord Lives". Good enough. It made me smile and laugh and feel great joy. I don't take 'church' too seriously, but I am glad they're having something in their youth to rebel against and either abandon or return to. Just joyful about that. I sent them an email with my joy and pride. They were so graceful and holy and beautiful. Wish I had them for acolytes....)

isn't North Korea enemy enough?

He who will not be named just can't leave well-enough alone.

His sabre rattling toward North Korea is insanely dangerous.

So now he's taking on pro athletes? Some of them have as much money at the President and they put their bodies on the line for it. They don't take kindly to some fat, red-faced, yellow haired guy criticizing them!

So, last Sunday a handful of NFL players knelt for the national anthem. This week, after the trumping up they took, scads of them did and those who didn't linked arms in solidarity with those who did. Even an owner or two knelt. The Pittsburgh Steelers stayed in the locker room until after the anthem. Even Stevie Wonder at a musical venue knelt and sang the national anthem!

A huge problem with what's his name going down this road is, if you haven't noticed, a lot of pro athletes are Black of Brown. No way they are going to see this as anything other than another racist jab.

General Kelly, can't you put this guy in solitary confinement? Please!

Good Night and Good Bye

I hope you read this on Friday night because David Mead, a "Christian researcher" who claims to have studied astronomy at the University of Louisville says the world is ending tomorrow, September 23, 1917.

A mysterious planet, Nibiru (aka Planet X) is, according to Mead, careering toward Earth and will obliterate us tomorrow. At least it won't be Trump and Kim Jong Un who destroy the planet.

Mead has made a careful study of Revelation--the book they should have left out of the Bible!!! for all the nonsense it has spawned--and says the recent earthquakes and Hurricanes were the first wave of the end of the earth.

However, if you want a glimmer of hope, a Canadian journalist named Robyn Flynn called Mead for an interview and was told he wouldn't be available until 'next week'.....Go figure.

Hope we're still here tomorrow. I still have stuff to write about vacation....

See  you if Nibiru misses us....

Eleanor again

Yesterday, at baby day care, Eleanor had a fever related seizure.

They took her to the hospital in an ambulance while Mimi and Tim were rushing from Manhattan in separate cabs.

She was released a couple of hours later and went to the pediatrician today.

Some children react that way to fevers that spike.

She seems fine but still has a fever so Bern is going on the train tomorrow to be with her for a couple of days. The doctor is being very aggressive about the fever. Mimi had a lung infection at the beach and Bern had tracheal bronchitis so it's little wonder Eleanor got some of all that. We kept Urgent Care busy at the beach! Bern said it was the best examination she'd ever had....

So, however it is that you pray, or hold someone in your heart, please do that for little Eleanor.

Thanks.

Eleanor

Mimi and Tim told us all they would call her 'Ellie' but no one does.

She is "Eleanor" pure and simple.

And she is wondrous.

Only one day last week was she anything but engaging, happy and humorous. And that day the cold she had all week was really bad. She didn't cry much, even then. She just couldn't consecrate and 'be present'. Nothing much satisfied her.

All the other days she was the baby from Mars, or somewhere other than here, where babies are wondrous, happy, engaging and humorous.

Two things she like best: 'marching' and 'open/close'.

Marching she did mostly with Bern. The house we were in ("Spoiled Rotten" was it's name!) was great. You could go from the dining room to the living room to the fifth bedroom (which became a nap room and play room since no one slept there) to the kitchen and back to the dining room. Bern would hold Eleanor's hand and they'd march, Bern singing, Eleanor waving 'hi' to each person they passed on their circuit, over and over, round and round, time after time.

Also, I played 'open/close' with the door of the nap/play room. Eleanor would shut the door, I'd knock and open it, she'd wave and close it. Over and over, time after time.

A variation was a drawer or a door on a bedside stand that she would open, put one thing in, then close and then open and put another thing in, then close, then open and put one thing in....you get the picture. One drawer was in a lamp table besides the stairs to the second floor. The house had a gate to keep babies from going up the stairs and lots of those foam covers for beer cans. I had about a dozen of the cozies for beer and I'd fold them up and put them in the strings of the gate and Eleanor would take them, one at a time, open the drawer and drop it in, close the drawer and get another, open the drawer and drop it in, close the drawer...on and on, over and over.

When she had 10 of them in the drawer I'd snatch them out and refold them and put them in the gate while she took the last two, opened the drawer, dropped them in, closed the drawer.

We did six rounds once--our record. She has amazing concentration and a stunning attention span. I got tired of the game long before she did.

And she laughed and kissed her mom and dad and herself in the mirror in the nap/play room.

She is such a joy. Such a gift. Such a wonder.

And she is 'Eleanor', not 'Ellie'....