Month: May 2010

Not that I know what that means, but I heard my Mom say that’s why she gets up every morning at the crack of dawn and goes to work. Every now and again, though, we get a long weekend and we beat feet to the cabin. And every now and again, the stars align, and it all comes together and makes for a perfect get away.

Last weekend, it was barrel tasting at the wineries. I don’t actually get to drink the wine, but I always get to hang out at the winery, so it’s pretty cool. Mix that in with a LOT of swimming, a LOT of sunshine, and a LOT of friends, and it just doesn’t get much better. Below you’ll see what I did pretty much all weekend 1) swam, 2) hung out in man camp and tried to get them to give me a Manny’s Pale Ale (no dice…evidently dogs don’t get beer even when they are super hot and super tired), and 3) supervised the other dogs while they played.

                                 

So, this is pretty much how it went all weekend.  Swimming, sleeping, and supervising. These are the days we all wait for, humans and canines alike. These bright and beautiful days are the ones that make us forget about the dark times. These are the moments which dim the memory of the tears and the trauma, the surgeries and the sutures, and the days when the future looked bleak. These are the days for which we all live. It sort of reminds me of this saying my Mom told me once, “Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.”  ~Erich Fromm

Who could ever know if that one, tiny, moment in time is why we’re here? I’m just going to make sure that when my moment comes, I’m ready for it. Over and over and over.

As it turns out, today is actually a pretty big day for me. It seems crazy to celebrate the anniversary of the day they cut off my leg, but we are. My Mom has been accused of being crazy (mainly by my Dad who makes a circling motion with his index finger at the side of his head and says “cuckoo, cuckoo”. My Mom says technically, that motion means she has a screw loose, and is not the motion for crazy, but that seems like a silly argument to me.) I think the whole thing is pretty funny, because when you get right down to it, my Dad really is a crack up. Plus, my Mom knows we only tease her because we love her.
 
Anyway, the way my Mom sells this whole party thing, is that we aren’t celebrating the day my leg got cut off, we are actually celebrating the day we may have saved my life. When she puts it that way, it really makes a whole bunch more sense.  Some anniversaries aren’t good ones…even I know that. Like the anniversary of the day somebody died. Those for sure are not events we celebrate AT ALL. In fact, those can be pretty sad days for my Mom.
 
That’s what makes it even more special that we are not turning March 11, 2010, into a bad day. None of us need any more sad anniversaries, but EVERYONE can use a reason to be merry. And the way I see it, if we are celebrating something (anything, really, doesn’t matter what it is), us dogs are bound to get special treatment. More treats, ice cream, bigger dinner, longer walks…the possibilities are endless.  In fact, below there is a super funny picture of me running to my Mom today. Running. Today. Isn’t it awesome, amazing and hysterical all at the same time?!  Just two months ago, I could hardly walk. For the humans, the possibilites seem to include a bottle of wine from our favorite winery (which, by the way, we can walk to from our cabin). Dogs are welcome, for anybody who decides to come and visit us at the lake…http://www.tildio.com/.
 
The short story, however, is that I’m still feeling great. I can run like the wind (well, maybe a stiff breeze is more accurate, I’d hate to exaggerate); I can swim like Michael Phelps (this one is true); I can love like I have nothing to lose (which I don’t); and, I can live like there is heaven on Earth (because there is). 

 
It’s like this saying my Mom has in one of her books, “My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure.” Alfred Lord Tennyson
 
And it is. As pure and true as was ever possible.

Well, for the second weekend in a row, we didn’t go to the cabin. Totally bogus, if you ask me. My Mom has been out of town at some conference. I’m not crazy about her not being around, but she tells me that her job is what keeps me in the lifestyle to which I’ve become accustomed. I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt, and assume she means us having the cabin, and not the lifestyle that includes me having four major surgeries within two years, and now chemotherapy as the cherry on top.

After my Mom finally got home, we had to do some cleaning (that is the royal we, since I didn’t really do anything except contribute to the need to clean). She pulled out that super loud sucking machine (is it Comet who hates it?), and got down to business. Check out what she found…

So, the mystery of the missing tennis balls seems to be solved, as you can see. For once I was happy for the spring cleaning and the super loud, scary, sucking machine. Lots of tennis balls means lots of fun, even though I can’t run so great any more.

So, we didn’t get to do too much this weekend. My Dad worked outside, and my Mom cleaned inside. It seems silly really, because it just gets dirty so fast. It’s like this one saying, “Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition; the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day” – Simone de Beauvoir.

Next weekend, though, it looks like we’re going to get a three day weekend, and on top of that it’s supposed to be almost 80 degrees at the cabin. Hopefully my Mom remembers to bring some of those found tennis balls. I’m sure you all know why I’m going to need them…I’ll be spending lots of time down at the water, and I’ll be SWIMMING!! I. Can’t. Wait.