Tag Archive | family

Flirting with Death–Growing Up Boomer

May7

imagesRT5WAQE7If you grew up in the 50s, 60s, or 70s, it’s a miracle you’re alive. There’s a reason for the saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” In other words, raising your children with danger and bad medicine didn’t end with the discovery of seatbelts and penicillin.

I can hear my mother now: “If a little does a little good, a lot will do a lot of good.” This was her rationale for ignoring dosing instructions on over-the-counter medications. To her, a tablespoon was a serving spoon from the table. A teaspoon was the soup spoon. She cheerfully ladled out Pepto-Bismol to reverse my problem, then ladled out mineral oil to reverse the cure. I was almost grown before I knew medicine doses measured like salt and baking powder, not mashed potatoes.

My mother was a helicopter parent long before helicopters were invented. Maybe she was a spiro-gyro or hot air balloon parent. Worrying was a way of life for her, and we were first on her list. A sneeze or cough was enough to make her drag us off to the doctor, where we were guaranteed a penicillin shot. The miracle drug was dispensed for complaints big and small. After all, what’s the use of having a miracle drug, if you aren’t going to use it for everything? And if we were really sick, too sick to go downtown to the Medical Arts building to his office, the doctor would stop by our house on his way home, and he always had a supply of penicillin in his bag.

The bathroom medicine cabinet was full of over-the-counter remedies, too. Pepto-Bismol, iodine, mercurochrome, Little Black Pills, and Carter’s Little Liver Pills all played a role in keeping the family healthy. Bayer aspirin, and later Excedrin, were the cure-alls for headaches. Aspirin, hot tea, and dry toast was the treatment for cramps. Little Black Pills were for constipation, with Pepto for diarrhea. Cuts and abrasions called for iodine. Always. Period.

My parents would have fit right into the Stoics’ society. If there were no bones sticking out and no blood, you were fine. Suck it up and walk it off. Of course, first we had to annihilate the enemy of the Free World–germs. These little critters were a relatively new discovery when my parents were little, and their parents attacked them as if they were going after “Kaiser Bill.”

For a good part of my childhood, iodine was the poison du jour for medical germicide. Unfortunately, iodine felt like having lava poured into an open wound, probably because it had an alcohol base. Screaming because of the injury redoubled when I felt the cure.

There was a kinder, gentler antiseptic–mercurochrome. It didn’t burn nearly as badly, and much of the discomfort it caused could be eliminated by blowing on the wound until it dried. No one considered the fact that blowing germ-laden breath on an open wound was counter-productive. In addition, it didn’t seem to impress anyone negatively that the active ingredient was mercury. Yes, as in “permanent brain damage” mercury. Mercurochrome wasn’t banned as an over-the-counter product until 1998.

And speaking of mercury, we loved it when Mama dropped the thermometer while “shaking it down,”  shattering it on the tile bathroom floor. That provided a really cool, new toy to play with: mercury. We were fascinated by the way it “crawled” when it moved, and even more awed by how well it cleaned tarnish off dimes and nickels when we smeared it over the coins with our bare fingers.

Dental care was high on the list for “better living through chemistry.” When an Air Force dentist looked at my husband’s teeth and exclaimed, “Good grief, boy! You’ve got Cadillac teeth!” there was a brief moment of alarm, before Bryan realized this was a good thing. His hometown, Pasadena, Texas, was one of the first cities in the state to put fluoride in their drinking water. Consequently, cavities were rare, but their smiles looked like a “before” picture in a whitening gel commercial. The recipe needed a little fine tuning.

imagesQ4VRVBCKDDT trucks driving up and down the streets, spraying for mosquitoes, were also part of growing up in Pasadena. Bryan and his friends rode their bikes in the fog behind the trucks for fun.

If being endangered by your parents and health care professionals wasn’t enough, toymakers and Madison Avenue joined in, too. No cool kid would have dreamed of wearing a helmet when riding a bike. I remember my father saying, “Aw, she doesn’t have to wear one of those. Nothing’s going to happen. Besides, she can hardly see out from under it. That thing’s dangerous.” And why on earth would you need child-proof packaging on medications and drain cleaner? “Kids know better than to get into those.”

My brother had a chemistry set. He managed to make his room smell like dead fish for a month, but at least no one was killed. Early Gilbert Chemistry Sets included 56 chemicals, such as ammonium nitrate (a key ingredient in homemade bombs) and the poisonous and flammable potassium permanganate. The “Atomic” chemistry sets of the ’50s came with radioactive uranium ore. They got a little safer in the ’60s but weren’t really reined in until the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976.

imagesHT8EWSF6As if the sexy men and women puffing away in movies weren’t convincing enough, we were encouraged to smoke by actors dressed like doctors on television. No one had even heard of secondhand smoke. And remember candy cigarettes? I used to get them in my Christmas stocking.

Car seats and seatbelts were optional. imagesZYTDNG9FAnd lead-based paint, which causes brain and kidney damage, wasn’t outlawed until 1978. It was routinely used on cribs, among other things.

I don’t blame my parents. They only knew what they saw on TV and in the newspaper. I do blame the scientists and advertisers who knew these things were dangerous, even if they didn’t know the full extent. They ignored the fact that people were buying and using their poisons, and it really hasn’t changed much over the years. It seems like every day something is recalled or declared unsafe, something we did to our newborns is now considered deadly, and some medicine our parents gave us is now used to kill roaches.

There are seven billion people on the earth, and the population is growing. How can that be when we are doing our best to kill ourselves off? Maybe it’s the underdeveloped countries, whose people don’t have access to our medicines, cleaning products, and chemical-infused food, who are overpopulating. They better hope the don’t catch up to us. That could be a real health hazard.

You Don’t Have to Be Patsy Cline to Do Crazy

Mar15
Squirrel 2

Invitation to My Last Family Reunion

Squirrel 1

Don’t talk to me…I’m Isadora Duncan!

I like squirrels. I relate to them. Maybe I was a squirrel in a previous life.

Admittedly they have a reputation for being, well, squirrelly, but they’ve always
seemed perfectly normal to me. That should have been a red flag.

Crazy doesn’t run through my family; it saunters slowly and deliberately. My daughter hates going to a new doctor and filling out the medical history sheets. When she gets to the question, “Is there mental illness in your family?” she has to ask for extra paper.

And I’m not talking about eccentricity. None of my people were rich enough to be eccentric. The kindest term I heard applied to one ancestor was, “He was notional.” Right. This was the guy who fought for the Confederacy for three years and switched sides the last year of the war. That might sound pretty smart and not crazy at all to some people, namely those from north of the Mason-Dixon Line, but context is everything. He was removed from the family Bible and never spoken of again.

My mother’s aunt, another example, was a complete loon. Her given name was Willie Polk Morgan, which she hated. The first chance she got, she had it legally changed to Pocahantas P. Morgan, which she considered a major improvement. I remember her well, because she used to remove her dentures at the table after eating, wrap them in her napkin, and then surreptitiously make the bundle move slightly, as if those choppers were alive. She would scare small children (mainly me) by grabbing the bundle, shoving it into their throats, and making Cujo growling noises. I had a stressful childhood.

Polk’s brother’s name was Robert Edwin, but he went by Pete. No one bothered to tell me he and his wife were dropping by from Tennessee one day, so when a strange man got out of his car and growled, “Come here, girl!” I screamed bloody murder and ran for the front door. Everyone laughed at me and acted like I  was crazy. That’s when I learned about “the eye of the beholder.” For the first time I realized I was the only sane one in my house.

My father approached normalcy, at least compared to my mother’s side of the family. But he carried a spool of tamale string in the trunk of his car in case he needed to effect repairs on something. He believed if it couldn’t be fixed with tamale string, it was broken beyond repair.

My mother was superstitious to the point of paranoia. It was bad luck to kill crickets, lay a hat on a bed, return to a starting point by a route different from the one by which you sallied forth, or walk around an obstruction on the opposite side from someone else without dispelling the bad luck by saying, “Bread and butter!” I remember many childhood hours spent in deep guilt because I had stepped on a crack in the sidewalk; my mother’s paraplegia was imminent. She used to make up superstitions if she didn’t have one ready-made to fit any occasion.  “You put those rocks back! Don’t you dare put them in the car. I had a cousin who came down with diphtheria right after putting rocks in the car!” It was years before I realized she just didn’t want my dirty rock collection in her Caddie.

I am not superstitious. I simply don’t believe in pressing my luck. And I can’t see letting those near and dear to me tempt fate, either. For example, my husband has a tendency to put hats on the bed. This is a community property state. That means half of his bad luck is mine! I have enough trouble forestalling my own doom without having to worry about a paranormal loose cannon.

We recently attended a party on a cold day, where everyone piled hats and coats on a bed. He motioned at me through the open door and asked, “Is it okay to put my hat on the bed if my coat is in between?” I made an executive decision. And I must have been right, because both of us survived the party and made it home safely.

I’ve heard that sane people are boring. I can’t confirm that because I’ve yet to meet one. I don’t even know where they are kept. If you find one, please let me know so I can judge for myself. In the meantime, I’ll just continue to relate to squirrels and my family as equals.

Hark the Herald Angels and Demons

Dec14

The holidays sneaked up on me again this year. When do I have to start getting ready for the holidays to have a handle on things when they arrive? The reality is, I could start putting up decorations in early January and still feel like the holidays were sprung on me the following November.

Christmas is a time of reflection for me. I guess everyone gets nostalgic this time of year, missing times long-passed or even ones that never actually existed. The holidays started for me every fall, when my mother set up a Ping-Pong table in the master bedroom.  That table was ground zero for wrapping Christmas presents. It went up before Thanksgiving and was my signal to start getting excited.

In the days before ready-made bows,  Mama made them herself, twisting flat ribbon into a figure-eight, notching the middle, and tying it off tightly. Then, one at a time, she pulled a loop out, bringing it down and across, until she had a gorgeous, perfect bow. Mama was wonderfully good at this, but I got the impression she hated doing it. She was extra-edgy and short-tempered from the time that Ping-Pong table came out until it went back in the closet under the stairs.

My father was philosophical about Christmas, usually just waiting for it to be over. He enjoyed the once-a-year foods–Mama’s fruit cake, boiled custard, and angel food cake. But no matter how hard we tried, he never seemed to get a gift he really wanted.

“Socks with feet in them,” or “Drawers with seats in them,” followed by, “Just what I wanted,” were his standard comments. Admittedly, buying a gift for him was a nightmare. The man had two of everything he’d ever wanted. Plus, he had an annoying habit of going shopping for himself just before Christmas. It was the only time of the year he did this, and it drove my mother nuts.

Only a couple of times did I please him with my gift. When I was in high school, I managed to find a blacksmith in North San Antonio, no mean feat in the late 1960s, and had him make a wrought-iron sign, “T. W. Wheeler.”  Daddy didn’t say much on Christmas morning, but he did hang it on the ranch gate, an indication of approval. Years later, when he had to sell the ranch, he retrieved the sign and kept it in his home office. Later, as an adult, I gave him a Care Package one Christmas. It contained all his favorites: Marshmallow Circus Peanuts, Saltines to crumble into a glass of cold milk and eat with a spoon, Penguins–chocolate-covered marshmallow cookies– rat cheese (Longhorn style), and chocolate-covered cherries. That gift actually made him grin as he unpacked it.

At least shopping has gotten a lot easier over the years. Bryan is easy to buy for. He likes just about anything I get him. My grown kids want money or gift cards, and my grandchildren cheerfully provide me with detailed lists of EXACTLY what they want and where to get it. And the Internet, bless its little silicon heart, brings everything to my door. No more fighting crowds or doing psycho checks in dark parking lots before getting into my car.

Doing some heavy remembering, letting myself float back through the years, is my way of honoring the season. Instead of turning up at church on the high holy days because I feel I ought to, I use the time to reflect on my behavior on the other 364 days a year. Have I done enough for others? Did I manage to curb my wicked tongue at all this year? Did I hurt someone intentionally or un-? Do I deserve another year of walking this earth? We all have demons to wrestle; mine come decked out in jingle bells and mistletoe.

I hope your holidays are everything you want them to be; I wish for you the ability to determine what that is.

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and Happy Holidays, y’all!

 

A Busy Summer Gets Busier

Jul6

Eddie Izzard

Every year I look forward to summer like a castaway watches for a ship on the horizon. I fantasize about all the rest I’ll get and all the writing I’ll get done. Not happening.

Instead of lazy days in a hammock, my schedule shifts into overdrive. I have more to do than at any other time of the year, and this summer is no exception.

On June 27 we continued the Kilgore family tradition of going to see Eddie Izzard as a family whenever he makes it to Texas. A few years ago we took our grown children to Dallas to see his performance. This year we lucked out because he came to Austin on his Force Majeure Tour. I’d had tickets for Bryan and me and our son and daughter for about three months. Unfortunately, our son had to cancel, so I was able to introduce Eddie to a friend who had never seen him before. She was suitably impressed, and a new Izzardette was born.

We happen to think he is the best stand-up comedian on the planet. His humor is educated and smart, much of it based on ancient history. Eddie Izzard maintains the Roman Empire fell because Latin was a silly language. By the time they conveyed how many barbarians were upon them (MCMXXXIVCCCCCXXIV), they were overrun.

Sometimes he talks about Bible stories. Eddie provides crackerjack impressions of James Mason as the Voice of God and Sean Connery as Noah. This year he added Liam Neeson, as Zeus, to his repertoire. We also had the distinction of witnessing his first sneeze during a routine. He seemed surprised, but no one in the audience was. Welcome to Austin, Eddie.

The very next day, first thing in the morning, I got ready and headed for photo (13)the Hyatt on Ladybird Lake for the Writers League of Texas Agents Conference. I got to introduce and assist Karleen Koen, one of my favorite writers and speakers. This year’s conference was sold out for the first time ever! Jeff Collins, the keynote speaker, was funny and fascinating, and, as always, I met some really interesting people.

If you’re a writer and have wondered if it is worth attending, I can tell you it is. This is my fourth conference, and I’m always impressed by the level of talented speakers and professional organization that goes into it.

While I was at the conference, my husband Bryan filled in for me in Georgetown. The San Gabriel Writers League had a booth at Hilltop Market, and Bryan delivered the canopy and fixings to the writers manning it. I love the way he steps in when I’m overbooked, never complaining and always efficient.

The Georgetown Animal Shelter was in attendance, as well. Between workshops I got a text from Bryan asking how I would feel about another dog. We already have three, but he attached a picture and a sad story about no one wanting this one because she’s eleven years old. Her 86-year-old daddy went into a nursing home, and Lexi had been at the Georgetown shelter for four weeks. I think he was already on his way home with her when he got my text, “Sure, I’m always up for another dog!” The man knows me.

So now we have four small dogs. I comfort myself with the thought that ifLexi you add all their weights together, you get one border collie. Lexi is totally at home, and the other dogs can’t even find anything about her worth a growl.

I’ve got a full dance card, and the cotillion ain’t over yet. Next in line will be the Writers League of Texas Writers Retreat in Alpine in August. I can’t wait: a week in one of my favorite places concentrating on writing. The part of heaven where they stash the writers probably looks a lot like this retreat; at least I hope so.

I can only hope all of you are as busy and having as much fun as I am this summer. If not, watch Eddie Izzard on YouTube and adopt a dog. That’s a start.

 

 

 

Five Christmases, a Birthday, a Broken Finger, and a Virus

Jan27

The title of this post is the answer to the questions:

1) How were your holidays?

2) Why haven’t you posted to your blog in such a long time?

We had five separate Christmas get-togethers. The evening after the first one, I fell in a parking lot and broke my pinky finger. Going with my upbringing (If there is no blood and no bones sticking out, you’re fine!) I continued the holidays wondering vaguely why my finger hurt so much.

The day after actual Christmas, I hosted a 65th birthday party/roast for a friend who has had a rough year. You can’t go wrong with 20 old friends and Threadgill’s comfort food. Then it was off to Longview for the last Christmas and to see our family there.

Every bit of all this was a blast. We had wonderful holidays and I wouldn’t have changed a thing. The first day back from the trip it was time, however, to get the finger checked out. Eight days after the fall I found out it had a hairline fracture. No wonder it hurt.

New Years came and went, and two days later I was wrestled to the ground by a virus. It had the earmarks of flu but no fever, so I just had to tough it out for two weeks with over the counter medicine. It ended the day the cedar pollen went through the roof, which landed me back in bed.

Okay, enough already. I am finally well and anxious to get back to my life. And back to my writing. My pinky finger can finally hit Enter without too much pain, and I’m ready to go forward.

One benefit of the illness, I was able to restart my diet. I had turned into an eating machine over the holidays, but that all changed with two weeks in bed. I’m pleased to report my stomach has adjusted to Small Bird Diet II, and I’m on my way to whipping my figure back into shape.

I’ve been fighting the battle of the bulge my whole life. I was a fat baby, child, and teenager. As an adult, my weight roller coastered so much, I collected enough different sizes of clothes to start my own thrift shop. But one of my New Year’s resolutions is to declare war on my body, get control of my weight this year and keep it under control. My other resolution is to cut back to three or four Christmases next year.

So if you haven’t seen or heard from me in a while, now you know why. But I’M BACK! Pull up your socks and tune in for adventures in 2014.

“President Kennedy has been shot…”

Nov21

 

Fifty years ago today, I came home from ninth grade, and my mother intoned her usual, “What did you learn In school today?” For once my answer came easily.  I had to come up with  an answer to that question every day. Sometimes I couldn’t think of anything special I’d learned, so I’d make something up. It didn’t seem to matter to them.

“I saw President Kennedy today. His motorcade went right by our school on Broadway, and they had us all stand on the curb and wave. He looked orange.”

“Was Jackie with him,” she asked, mildly interested for once.

“Yes. She didn’t look orange. She looked normal.”

I never found out why the President of the United States looked orange that day, or if he always looked orange. Maybe it was make-up, maybe it was a bad artificial tan—they tended to turn you orange back then—but I remember that very clearly, my main impression of the two-second look I got of John Kennedy on his way to the Alamo to make a speech.

When my father came home later, he asked me the same question, “What did you learn in school today?”

“She saw Kennedy today,” my mother interrupted before I could get it out.

My father made a sound somewhere between a growl and a spit. He hated John Kennedy for his liberalism, his privileged background, and apparently most of all for his accent. Daddy thought  Kennedy had to be talking like that on purpose, putting on airs or something, because nobody talked like that naturally.

During the campaign three years before, my father pointed out to me a poem that appeared in the local newspaper:

Since Kennedy says “hawf,” then Johnson must agree,

That a Texas calf is now a “cawf,” as any fool can see.

So when  you go to the butcher’s, do not snicker and “lawf,”

Just go up and say, to be quite genteel,

“Please give me hawf a cawf.”

We all got a good “lawf” about that. My father’s politics, which were slightly to the right of Attila the Hun, meant he hated Kennedy as he had hated Franklin Roosevelt before him. Only 2/3 into his first term, Kennedy had had less time to incur his wrath, but he couldn’t stand him, end of conversation. I was still quite young, fourteen in 1963, and generally parroted my parents’ political opinions. It would be several years before I began to think for myself. From that time on, our conversations were limited to old times, and, like a Jane Austen novel, the weather and the condition of the roads.

The next day started off like any other, but after lunch our principal came on over the public address system. He announced that apparently someone had shot the president in Dallas. Using the cutting edge of 1963 technology, he held his transistor radio up to the microphone on his desk to let us hear the radio broadcasts and updates. It was no time at all before we knew for sure he was dead.

Even today I can’t describe what I felt. I wasn’t devastated like the kids who had actually liked him. I didn’t cry. But I definitely felt weird. It was the first time in my life when someone I had seen one day was dead the next. Things like that didn’t happen in my little world. Maybe during war or if you saw someone off on the Titanic, but people in my world didn’t just up and die. Not yet, anyway.

That night, as we watched the aftermath playing out on all three channels, my father expressed his sympathy. “Well, I hated the sonofabitch, but I didn’t necessarily  want him to die.” All things considered, it was a real gush of emotion.

Like everyone else my age, I can’t believe it’s been fifty years since the assassination. That is the watershed event for my generation. Everyone remembers where they were when they found out about it, as my parents’ generation remembered hearing about Pearl Harbor, and my children will remember finding out about 911.The girl who was barely a teenager in 1963 has five grandchildren now. I wonder what their watershed event will be, whether there will be a place deep inside them that is permanently chilled by it, and whether they will write about it fifty years later.

A Childhood Memory

Aug14

childhoodLast month I attended the Writers League of Texas annual writer’s retreat in
Alpine, Texas. This was the third year in a row I have participated, and it is
fast becoming a tradition both my husband and I look forward to.

I attended the memoir class taught by Donna Johnson and Christine Wicker. This
class dug up a lot of my past, some sweet, some not-so-much. If you want to get
in touch with yourself, try a memoir-writing clinic. Be prepared, though.
There’s no such thing as free therapy, as the old saying almost goes. Ours was
the only class that came with Kleenex.

I want to share a piece I wrote as one of the class writing exercises. It is one
of my fondest childhood memories, and I’m grateful for the chance to bring it
forward again.

***

My older brother dug holes in our backyard. They were large and deep enough to
sit in undetected by casual passersby. I loved those magnificent holes Tom
shared with me.

Mama allowed him to have only one hole going at a time, lest the backyard become
an unusable No Man’s Land. He always filled one hole in before starting another
one.

I watched for signs Tom was about to start another hole. I tagged along to watch
him choose a site. He was limited to a four-foot radius around the mulberry
tree. Grass wouldn’t grow there anyway, and Mama had given up trying. He walked
around and around, kicking a rock here, prodding a dirt clod there. Finally he
would sink his shovel into the ground, and I’d know he’d found his spot.

And Tom’s holes were always clean. I never got my play clothes dirty sitting in
them, and you could take books and magazines down there without fear of ruining
them. I would run my fingers across the hard-packed walls or floor without
soiling my hands. I always suspected Mama cleaned our holes when we weren’t
looking.

When the hole was finished, we observed a brief dedication ceremony, culminating
in both of us climbing in and sitting down. I was protected, circumscribed, and
unassailable, totally safe. Sitting in that hole with Tom felt like a hug.

Six Birthdays and a Mental Meltdown

Jul5

 

June birthdays 2

June birthdays 3 June birthdays 1  June Birthdays: Chris, Katie, Taylor, Ofelia, Derek, and Brandon!

 

My bad! I know it’s been a long time since I posted to my blog, but sometimes living my life gets in the way of writing about my life. With six family birthdays and Fathers’ Day in June, I am now officially OD ‘d on cake and small cups of ice cream. At any rate, I’m back!

I’ve been unusually busy lately, but not too busy to catch a few scraps of news or notice sea a change in the smaller world I inhabit simultaneously with the larger one. My little world takes in all of Northwest Austin, with frontiers extending to Leander, Georgetown, and Curra’s on Oltorf south of downtown Austin. Traveling outside this area requires the mental equivalent to a passport, a mindset I call, “Fixing to Travel.” That might mean New Braunfels, Longview, San Antonio, West Texas, or even, rarely, across the state line.

I like my familiar little world. There’s usually no need to fire up the Garmin to get where I need to go. As a matter of fact, most of my errands can be run on autopilot, or at least they could until recently.  I have entered the Season of the Loon. Lately it’s been the Mickey Mouse Club’s “Anything Can Happen Day” every day.

Apparently, while I was out buying birthday cards by the gross, a few traffic laws were changed. It seems it’s now legal to make left turns from the far right lane as long as there is a car length space available in front of me.  A related law allows people to exit highways and immediately cross all lanes of the access road. Any cars in the way must yield to the interloper. Also, I’ve noticed the “California Stop” has been legalized. That’s when you approach a stop sign, consider stopping, and continue on your way. Red lights were always considered more of a suggestion than a fiat, but now it is legal to run them if you are moving more than five mph over the speed limit.

Maybe I missed the passage of the new traffic laws, but I sat transfixed by the goings on at the Capitol. Wendy Davis–filibustering in pink running shoes–took me back to my youthful protests and demonstrations. The sea of orange shirts was a stirring sight. It was a joy to see people care about something enough to get out and make a scene about it. Maybe the apathy of the Me Generation is coming to an end–finally.

Now I have time to reconnect with friends on a deeper-than-Facebook level. July is here, and that means the writer’s retreat in Alpine, while Bryan gets his annual Jeremiah Johnson fix, camping at the state park. We’re both looking forward to our separate pursuits and getting together to talk about our adventures. Even after 35 years, we still can’t wait to talk at the end of the day.

I’m ready to get back to posting regularly, so thanks for your patience, and I’ll update my blog soon so stay tuned, and thanks for your patience.

 

 

 

Cry Havoc! The Wars of Dog

Mar21

Taco collarNo doubt about it. We love our dogs. They are all rescues, co-opted mainly from various relatives who couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of them, and there’s not a pedigree in the bunch. They are all mixed breeds, although one, Angie, may be the product of inter-species dating.

Angie, the oldest at 16, has congestive heart disease and is going downhill. In less than a year she has gone from 3 out of 6 to 5 out of 6 on the Congestive Heart Failure scale, according to the vet, and this is one time when higher scores are not better.

Annie, at 15, seems to be doing well, except for missing a few teeth and several marbles. Her personal credo is: “I lick, therefore I am.”

Taco, who is supposed to be 4, is starting to show the wear and tear of a much older dog. His age is based on the unreliable memory of someone who inherited him from a tenant who didn’t want him anymore. His muzzle is beginning to show white, and he recently underwent dental surgery and removal of a growth on his paw. That screams, “Old Man!” to me.

So we’re running a nursing home for geriatric dogs once again. Bryan was handling the medications, a single pill for Angie along with the morning treats. He came down with his semi-annual, near-fatal allergy attack about the time everything changed and is just starting to get the hang of the new routine.

Here’s the schedule:

6:30 a.m. Pick up food, because one of Angie’s meds needs to be taken an hour before eating.  Tear Pill Pocket in half, putting half in a small container for later. Press small, white pill and 1/2 of diuretic into 1/2 Pill Pocket. (The diuretic is roughly the size of a newborn baby’s fingernail clipping.) Break large, new heart pill in half, saving half for later in the small Later container. Give meds to Angie and morning treats to all.

6:45 a.m. Take large dollop of bland chicken and rice soft dog food from fridge and microwave for 10 seconds. Add 1 dropper of foul-tasting antibiotic liquid and 1 tsp. of sugar free maple syrup. Mix well. Hold while Taco manages to lick up every crumb. He is blissfully unaware that this will end when he takes all of the medicine.

Late afternoon – Repeat.

Taco lost his bottom four front teeth due to decay, which is another reason I don’t think he’s the spring chicken he’s supposed to be. The lady at the vet’s cheerily told me it was a good thing he didn’t lose his front teeth, too, because then his tongue would hang out. A blessing, indeed.

On top of everything else, Taco has a hard plastic cone (sometimes known as a Renaissance collar) encircling his head to keep him from licking the stitches on his paw. He looks like an ice cream cone from “The Island of Dr. Moreau.” What’s more, he absolutely hates it and spends his time lying on his side, doing an excellent redition of the death act from “Camille.” He has mastered the art of the guilt trip and lays it on thick. This will go on until he gets his stitches out, sometime next week. I’m counting the days.

All of these visits to the vet and meds cost about the same as a down payment on a Volkswagen. It’s not that I really mind. As Bryan reminded me, “They are our children now.” I just wish we could claim them as dependents on our 1040.

I will never be without a dog. They are such good company, they love without agenda, and I apparently need something I can make neurotic without recriminations. Even if I have to live in a nursing home someday, I plan to bring my dogs along, in my mind–all of them–from Dixie and Penny, my childhood dogs, to Smokey, Tasha, and Tawny, our big dogs, to Angie and Annie, and Taco who lies about his age.

I hope I get a big room.

For as Long as Ye Both Can Stand It

Feb21

Bryan and I just celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. As veterans of divorce wars, we never take these milestones for granted. Sometime around our wedding date we enjoy a getaway, usually to the Gulf Coast. It’s my chance to see things you don’t find in Central Texas, and it’s Bryan’s chance to indulge his omnipresent craving for seafood. Since I don’t eat it, I never learned to cook it. His only chance to take the fishy edge off is an occasional dinner with our daughter, who learned to like seafood in spite of my genes.

Right after Christmas, Bryan starts asking what I want for our anniversary. Coming so soon after that gift-giving bacchanale, I seldom have any ideas left, and the situation is complicated by the fact our anniversary, Valentine’s Day, and my birthday fall uncomfortably close together. This year I decided to consult the experts. I checked the Hallmark website to find out what the official gift is for a 30th anniversary, like consulting Hoyle before shooting someone over a game of Texas Hold ‘Em gone bad.

First I learned we are dangerously close to the end of the list. After the 15th anniversary, the list no longer has individual years, rather they count by fives. I also discovered there are TWO lists, one traditional and one modern. For example, the traditional 30th anniversary gift is pearls; the modern gift is diamonds. That’s inflation for you.

I already have  enough jewelry, so I decided to make my own list, starting with the 30th anniversary just to cut to the chase. Based on my own personal experience and considering I had two knee surgeries in the past six weeks, I assigned Ace bandages as the traditional gift; for the modern gift, anesthetic. I got both earlier this month, and they fit perfectly.

So what will be appropriate five years from now, on our 35th anniversary? And if (not likely but possible) we’re still milling about on our 50th? Five years from now, I don’t see any drastic changes in our lives, except Bryan will be really old. For a traditional gift, maybe a monogrammed magnifying glass; from the modern list, an Acorn Chairlift that attaches to the car door.

On our 50th anniversary, Bryan will be pushing 90; I’ll be pulling 80. I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest we completely ignore the future technology and go traditional. I think Bryan and I should get matching tattoos, a little Shar Pei dog (a good choice at that age) inside a heart—with a pacemaker. I can hardly wait. Vive la amour!