Next weekend is the anniversary of that phone call which a parent dreads.
I have given myself a 5 day w/e then.
I will be meeting at the gravesite with my Katie's 3 teenagers, and then we will go to lunch. I will listen to their latest adventures and give them more hugs. They have no father - but a big family so they are as well looked after as possible.
Like me, they do not remember any of their mother's faults - for example they leave messages in the flower container on the headstone, visit it regularly as they live in walking distance (the reason we purchased a plot in Dayton's most expensive cemetery) - and opened their Xmas gifts there, with their mother.
They are amazingly loving kids. I am proud of Katie.
Last spring my youngest daughter (age 15) began making a point of putting me in the presence of various puppies.
I did finally see one little gal of interest. I told my daughter that if the pup was still available after we returned from Florida (you can't buy a puppie only to put her into a kennel for 2 weeks) we would get serious.
I watched this little gal in her box in the pet store for a long time the day before flying to Fla.
When the plane returned us to Ohio, I called the store and placed a hold on her. We collected her the next morning as soon as they opened. My daughter carried her to the car - where the pup threw up on the ride home and firmly attached herself to my daughter - and then me while I was off work for 2 1/2 months healing from a work injury.
She follows me everywhere. Sits against me. Bites me. Licks me. Rides in my truck for long walks. Hates the sweeper and is afraid of shadows, porch flags & other dangers. She can hear my daughter's schoolbus a mile away, and then stands on her back legs waiting for her to cross the street. If I seem to be thinking too much she comes and stands with her paws on my knee and looks at me. Most of the time it means one of us needs to go to the bathroom.
My daughter named her Lilly.
I took this pix of her, in her box at the store, with me to Florida last summer. She weighs 9 pounds.
Lilly came along at a good time.
Stig
