Still Life with Camera

Gracie In the morning, Robert feeds the dogs and then takes them outside to do their business.  When they come back, usually through the garage door, they both run to me as fast as they can because the next part of the routine is for them to share a tartar-control soft rawhide chew.  That headlong scamper towards me makes me laugh every morning.  Even Weezie at 15+ is running and dancing toward me.  What joy these animals give us!

When I was trying to get rid of another blog account host that was costing $100's annually ( I was totally unaware - DOH), I reread the entries I made 10 years ago.  What I noticed is that it was a nice diary - nothing fancy - but a good record.  So in that spirit, that's what I'll do here. Sugar-frosted trees Yesterday, Gracie and I parked at the back lot of the Hasting Lake Forest Preserve and walked in the neighborhood adjoining Crooked Lake.  The neighborhood is gentrifying slowly so there are some beautiful houses along the lake and a nice little cluster of prairie-style houses up Woodland Trails - I love those houses!  And then, boom! Munn Road divides into a little circle with Miller Road and you hit the old ticky-tacky lake cabins, the Crooked Lake Resort (don't be fooled by the name)and Bar - Video Gaming available.   Across from the 'resort; is an old multi-doored place that was a probably a repair garage once long ago and is now pretty much a junk y

I see that my last post was in mid 2014, very shortly before my daughter was diagnosed with metastatic colon cancer.  My past three years have been spent as a caregiver, driver, companion, whatever was needed as she underwent the arduous process of trying to get well once again.  The good news is, she has now been cancer-free (that is to say, cancer that is detectable by all the tools modern medicine can bring to bear) for four months.  I say that with some trepidation and a lot of skepticism because of the pernicious nature of cancer.  All the tools - MRI, CT, PET scans, blood tests, etc., can only detect cancer at the macro level, an eye opening bombshell for us (naive as we were) when after her first "cancer-free" party she relapsed for the first time.  However, one thing we have learned is to live one day at a time, no matter how difficult that is, no matter how the mind wants to scurry down the what if path, and no matter how hard it is to get back to "normal life

Weezie has definite preferences about where and how far we walk. She also "sees" things I don't see. She takes specific detours on the paths. I suppose she smells something that needs to be avoided. It would be cool to have her set of sensors sometimes, like when Merlin transformed Arthur into a bird or a squirrel. So what would appear - a big coyote urine "Do Not Trespass" sign? And then maybe I would understand why dogs just have to roll in the rankest of all odors. Yesterday at Fourth Lake, we saw a bunch of small birds dive-bombing a red-tailed hawk. They weren't just harassing the hawk, they were making contact - hitting the hawk so hard that it juddered in flight. It was amazing. They were too high for me to be able to tell what the attackers were but they were about the size of robins or blackbirds. There were lots of thistles along the trail which made me think of Monarch butterflies and how their numbers are very low and all of a s

On Tuesday, Robert and I went to the Chicago Botanic Gardens. Of course, we went to the train exhibit. Robert went up to the ticket agent and sang, Has anyone said, "I need a ticket to ride. I need a ticket to Ri-hi-ide." And she let us in for free. Plus it was Senior Tuesday so admission for the car was only $10. There are advantages to getting older.

My good friend, Susan, is a psychologist and a horsewoman with a strong interest in Equine-assisted Therapy. (Here are a couple of links if you want more info about it. She uses her wonderful Andalusian gelding, Fiado, in this therapy. She's on her way to a Bettina Drummond clinic in Michigan right now and gave Fiado a beauty treatment yesterday as part of the prep. He's white after all and loves to roll in the dirt and whatever may be on the dirt (if you get my drift). Anyway, we thought it would be a great opportunity to take some new pictures of him and to update her website with them. He's a great horse with a lot of personality and the day was beautiful. We got some great pictures! Fiado and Susan Isn't he gorgeous? And photogenic.