The Truth and Nothing But

MR. ROGERS: Older Son was mesmerized by him, but Fio thought he was weird--until she saw his puppet opera and realized she too could write an opera, but her opera, of course, would be for the women in her choral group. And she did--The Three Little Pigs, which was performed at a couple of day-care centers and old-age homes. Fio, of course, not only wrote the music and the lyrics, but also made the scenery and the head-pieces. The three houses are long gone, but the porcine ears and tails are are still around here somewhere. Hopefully, the score is too. (PS: Fio played the wolf.)
*
Dogs exist to love and be loved. Every home should come equipped with one.
*
Fiorella has been assigned to this world so therefore she is responsible for it. She will do her best.
*
Undocumented immigrants are probably the safest drivers on the road. They don't want to be stopped and asked for their driver's licenses.
*
Some guys look just as ridiculous with beards as they did with mohawks. A combination is even worse,

Pre-Easter Scribblings

Fiorella was out tossing rocks across the driveway when one of her neighbors came walking down it with cookies in one hand and an Easter lily in the other, Fio was overwhelmed. Sure, she had delivered a small Easter basket to Neighbor a few days beforehand, but if this was tit for tat, Fio had been solidly out-tatted. Especially since Neighbor also promised Fio a big load of rocks.
*
Two of Austin son's dogs got bitten by a snake yesterday, and she prays they are doing well. Thank  you, God, for vets.
*
While Minnesota son is talking electronicsand other male mysteries over with Husband today, Fio plans to spirit his wife away to Papi's Pies for a treat.
*
Fiorella hasn't been as circumspect as she'd hoped, but her chocolate bunny consumption is way down from preceding years. She's also kept the Peeps in check. But come Easter morning, all bets are off,
*
Ah, Easters of the past. Dying eggs the day beforehand, wearing a new dress to church, Easter egg hunts. Will Baby experience these, or are they now out-dated?

A Good Evening Out

People invigorate Fiorella, even at a ladies' wine-tasting party at which Fiorella doesn't partake of the main course because she's never developed a taste for alcohol.

As Fio started out for vecina (neighbor) Kathy's casa (house) at  about four, her vecina up the street, Micky, joined her and they walked and talked the rest of the way together. At the party, Fio became acquainted or better acquainted with other vecinas. We talked about the vecindad (neighborhood)--the casa that is up for sale, current gentrification efforts, rattlesnake and coyote sightings--and we talked about our perros (dogs) and familias (families). Fio managed to get in a plug for Fernando's yardwork, and Kathy told everyone about the romances Fio writes, but the real thrill for Fio was when one of the vecinas, a native speaker of el espanol (Spanish), offered to help Fio with the language. Pobrecita (poor little one), she doesn't know how soon she's going to be called on.

Rounding out Heaven

Fiorella's heavenly addenda include finding everything of hers she has lost or that someone has taken from her or destroyed, like that autograph book her Brownie mates signed before she left Ohio, her painting of Grendal she took to school in the twelfth grade, her grandmother's and great-grandmother's engagement rings, the ceramic she molded of a beloved guinea pig.

And Fio wants to reunite with her parents (although her father will probably be playing golf with Gabriel and the guys) and to visit with friends and family who have preceded her.  And she wants to cuddle her first baby, the one who was never born, the one for whom she still mourns.  And she wants to see all her dogs--Tina, Freelove, Sandy, Blackie, Hugo, Bella, Wendy, and, when her time comes, sweet Sonia. Heaven wouldn't be heaven without dogs.

Totally Unrelated Snippets

Fio's been reading about the Islamist protesters being mowed down in Egypt and thinking that's the way they do it in Arab countries.  Life is cheap over there.
*
During a recent check-up at her plastic surgeon's office, Fiorella asked him what had happened to the skin cut off during facelifts.  He said it's put in a container and shipped off for disposal--incineration.  How interesting.  Part of Fiorella has already been cremated.
*
It must be hard to be a dog and not quite understand how everything works, but maybe God feels the same sympathy toward us.

*
Everywhere in the house Fio goes, she is picking up and throwing away.  She may have too much stuff, but there's  no way she's going to let herself end up on Hoarders.
*
Casey Anthony, George Zimmerman. . . .even back to OJ Simpson.  Enough said.

 

Don't Shoot Dogs!

What's with the cops showing up at mistaken addresses and ending up shooting people's dogs?  It's happened way too often in this neck of the woods.  Last year in Austin an officer went to a wrong address for a disturbance call and shot a beloved dog just as his owner came on the scene.  The same thing happened just this week in Leander, except it was a warrant server this time.  Again the address was wrong and the name on the warrant was wrong, but, despite children playing within thirty feet of him, the officer shot at two dogs as they came bounding around the side of the house to greet him, wounding one of them.

The downed dog will need expensive medical care, and the dog owner is raising bloody murder because those two dogs are good dogs, trained therapy dogs, and the one the warrant office winged is particularly good with children.

Fiorella hates to think about what might happen if a gun-toting "peace" officer came to her door on some mistaken mission.  Sweet Sonia would go nuts--first of all, because she'd want to meet him, and second, because, if Fio were threatened, she'd go all defensive. 

Don't kill a dog for being a dog.

Canine Factoids

Dogs are really good at catnaps.  In Fio's experience, a dog falls asleep in a second and awakens in half a second, ready to go.  In contrast, Fiorella takes her time doing both.  She'd rather fall asleep faster, but, as you know, values her long, slow awakenings.

And even though dogs spend most of their lives sleeping, they're rippling with muscles and loaded with stamina.  Fio wishes she could run full tilt up the driveway as fast as couch potato Sonia can.  (On the other hand, Fio is not interested in chasing cars--she already has one.)

And a dog, even a very large one, can fit itself into whatever space is left open on the couch or in the bed. It's important to Sonia to be close to Mommy and Daddy.  And that's the sweetest factoid of all about dogs.  

Species

How wonderful!  How fabulous!  How very human!  In Austin, individual volunteers are taking care of  baby red-tailed hawks that fall from their parents' window-ledge aeries.  In Africa, people dedicate their lives to caring for orphaned baby elephants.  Across the world, families take in the cubs of lions and tigers and bears.

Human beings are the caring species, the ones who turned wolves into pet dogs, the ones who now gather to push a beached whale back into the ocean, the ones who will spend millions trying to preserve every sight variation of newt, frog, and lizard.

So can't we then find it in ourselves to be kinder to each other?

Sweeping Clean

Fio, once the poster child for "How pretty/interesting/charming--I want it!" has turned utilitarian.  Anything in the house that isn't useful must go.

All that wedding silver is on its way out.  In the first place, Fio rarely uses any of it and has never used most of it.  In the second place, when Fio and Husband tried to shine up the whole kit and caboodle a couple of years ago, they got overenthusiastic and ruined some of it.  In the third place, it's plate and not worth much as far as our children's inheritances go.

Much of Fio's wardrobe, which goes back thirty years, also has to go. Then there are the books, the paperbacks which she now can't believe she ever read, much less adored.  And all the music books for which Fio would like to find a good home now that her voice can no longer handle Mozart.

Her collection of ceramic dogs and miniature elephants will remain, of course.  After all, dogs are faithful and elephants never forget.

 

The Wendy Book

Let me see if I can say this without weeping buckets like I did yesterday when I thought about it, that my vision of heaven involves being greeted at the gates by all the dogs we've ever owned: Tina and Freelove, Sandy, Blackie, Hugo, Crazy Bella, Wendy, and, ultimately, our sweet Sonya.

 I'm working on the Wendy Book now. It will be about forty pages of blog entries and photos. Wendy was our first post-children dog. Oops, Gotta go. I'm getting misty-eyed.

Equivalencies

Tail, mouth, and nose make up for dogs not having hands.

The wagging tail represents a waving hand, of course, and Sonya uses her mouth to carry around rawhide bones and grab my wrist to turn my attention to whatever she considers more important than revising Princess of Bosque Bend.  The nose is an all-purpose tool, used not only for nudging rawhide bones between couch cushions, into a trough she has dug outside in the yard, or under my leg while I am involved in said revising, but also for smearing up my computer screen when she is, again, trying to get my attention.

Even as I write this, Sonya is probably wondering why I have two utterly redundant upper body appendages while she has four sturdy limbs to take her anywhere she wants to go.

 Poor Mommy.  No tail, a useless mouth, and such a tiny nose.

Backyard Safari

We have a hunter in the house, a mighty hunter who stalks the night, seizes his prey, and carries it off to his lair.

No, it's not Sonya, the mastiff, who has the equipment to do some mighty seizing herself, but Bosco, the pug, who last night chased down an errant frog hopping hell for leather down the backyard toward the pond.

Froggie never made it.

When Fio and Husband called Sonya and Bosco in for the night, Bosco didn't appear.  Panicked, Fiorella ran outside into the darkness and checked the gate to the yard to be sure it was locked while  Husband grabbed two big flashlights.  Sonya started barking at the narrow area between the barbecue and the fence, Bosco's favorite hidey hole, so Husband shone the light down into the darkness.  Sure enough, there was Bosco, growling fiercely, with a dead frog hanging from his mouth. 

Oh, yuck.

Fiorella took over the flashlights while Husband began poking at Bosco with a metal leaf broom to get him to give up his prey.  Sonya, of course, barked the whole time--she wanted the frog.  

The story ended happily.  Husband pried Bosco out of his den and flipped Froggie out of the yard, and Fio herded both dogs back into the house for the night.

But Bosco strutted.

Snappy Snippets

Fiorella is the toilet paper fairy and the only one in the house who knows how to throw stuff in the waste basket, to close cabinet and pantry doors, or to empty the dishwasher.  If she didn't open the blinds every morning, they'd stay shut all day.  In short, she's female.
*
Re: dogs.  We take them in for shots and medical treatments, we feed them, we decide whether they should mate and with whom.  How did they ever get along without us?   
*
All Fio's good habits have come back to haunt her.  Coffee, tea, and wine, which she never or rarely drinks, are now good for you while milk, which she guzzles like a newborn calf, is now on the bad list.
*
Fio could title a book The Right Thing to Do and no one would buy it.  If she called the book The Wrong Thing to Do, it would be a best seller'
*
Matricide--is Fio a serial killer of motherboards?

Mastiff Mastery

When Fiorella and Husband started talking about a new dog, they knew it could not be another Weimeraner because Fio would weep for Wendy every time she saw it. So, after a fair amount of research, they decided on a Mastiff--big, amiable, and looking not at all like Wendy.

What Fio didn't know is that a Mastiff, or at least our Sonya, is smart as a whip. Puppy learned "sit" and "stay" as if she'd been practicing in the womb, has figured out how to let herself back inside by leaping up and pawing the lever on the patio door, and hauls poor Bosco out of his hidey holes by his leash. You've never lived till you've seen a dog walking a dog.

Update Snippets

Fiorella seems to have won the newspaper war. For the third straight day, the Statesman has been delivered onto her porch.
*
Fio has found a wonderful new orthopod who treats her like an individual and did not ask her, as the first one did, if she has any of her own teeth. (FYI, Fio's teeth are all home-grown.)
*
Fio wants to amend her theory that dogs and homo sapiens bonded over shelter in caves from the rain, sleet, snow, etc. She thinks there was also a concomitant factor: body heat. There's nothing as warm and comforting as a furry little body cuddled up next to you.

Running Late

Welcome to Christmas Eve. Fiorella is running late on her blog, late on her decorating, late on wrapping presents, and late on everything else in her life. Christmas is that way. 'Tis the season to go crazy.

There are three dogs in the house right now: Older Son's Staffordshire Terrior (aka pit bull), Younger Son's pug puppy, and our own reliable Weimeraner. And only two of the three seem to be able to co-exist at any one time, which means, in relays, one of them has to be caged or outside. But it's raining outside. We have never yet met a dog that appreciated rain. Fio is convinced that the dog-man relationship began when primitive human tribes sought shelter from the pelting rain in caves--and so did dogs. They love us not just for the food in their bowls, but the roofs over their heads.

And each one of the three has a stocking hanging from our fireplace mantel. With nothing in them yet, of course, but then, Fio has several hours before dawn.

Angel Grace

This is an obituary for a dog not yet dead.

Angel Grace is a sweet little Staffordshire Terrier, barely a year old. Her only sin as far as I know is that she teethed on the watch I shouldn't have left out on the coffee table when Husband and I visited Minnesota last fall.

Angel Grace was limping when we saw her in Texas at Christmas, and limped even more when Older Son and Wife got back home. The vet diagnosed her with terminal bone cancer. When I talked to Son yesterday, he told me she was deteriorating rapidly.

The only comfort I could give was the truth. Angel's life will be brief, but it has been full of love, something all too many dogs never experience.

And which they have so much to give.

Sic that Cell!

Dogs see telephones as their natural enemies because communication devices take our attention away from where it rightfully belongs--on them.

Wendy Dog nuzzles at me and drops rawhide bones on my lap while I am on the phone. Husband says she waits till he is on the phone to tell him she needs to go outside. Both of us have noted that she saves her most ferocious barking until we are using a phone.

Which is nothing compared to the cat I told you about who chose that time to pee in my purse.

God Bless Dogs

A student once told me one of the hardest things about living in the country was seeing the dogs people had dropped off waiting day after day near their drop-off point for their owners to return. A friend recently told me how her newly-adopted dog would whimper in anxiety every time she turned down the street to the shelter to which she had been twice-returned after fostering.

Tears prickle behind my lids at even recording these stories. Then I look over at our Wendy Dog sprawled across her brand-new dog pillow in happy slumber and my eyes overflow.

God bless dogs.