A happy evening

Trouble

Sometimes I wake into the middle of the night to all that darkness, quiet and mystery.  Sometimes, I reach for the covers and pull them just under my chin because even at my age the feeling of being tucked in is a safe one. 

Sometimes I sense it in my bones, what's next.  I don't breathe and I don't dare be so smitten with it all as to knock on wood. No, I know. Trouble is just around the corner.

She can be charming, that one, a crooked smile, a slow and direct wink. Trouble could be what I believe, or it could be my hopes, his explanations, her laugh, a missed heart beat. Trouble loves to be wrapped in words.  Doesn't matter what form it takes, trouble is coming. 

Trouble is that I saw it coming when I woke up.  I could smell it, through the windows. I sensed the way my hair felt flat and sticky on my neck. I sensed it in the air that someone else was breathing.

I can do nothing to stop it. Trouble is here. Maybe not for you, but for me. Trouble is flirting with my focus and tickling my wounds. She wants out, this one. She wants to play.

I sit here at my kitchen table and I wrap myself in my own arms.  Hold on, honey, looks like a storm is coming.

The silence ever after

I imagine she must have made the decision weeks ago. Probably, she'd had it in her mind for a long time. It must have swirled there, melting into sorrow, curling alongside desperation, connecting to a decision.  It swam through her mind as an option, an action.  It would take some planning, she apparently thought.  Confessions, phone calls, apologies. A certain amount of scheduling and mapping out.

She chose a location.

She left a note.

At some point after her parents left the ranch that day, she walked to the stock tank, gun in hand.  I don't know if she dipped her toe in and shivered at the cold, momentarily stalling her from her mission, or if she walked straight in, not bothering to register the temperature or the wild muck of the water saturating her clothes.  I do know that she kept going.  She wanted to disappear, she wanted to be sure. 

I imagine that when she put the gun beneath her chin and pulled the trigger, the sound cracked through the weeping sky. A blue heron was startled, leapt from a tree branch, perhaps screeched before taking high and broad wing. A flock of birds fluttered in confusion across the sky. Somewhere, someone wondered What was that? The cattle jolted to attention, surprised, perhaps turned their heads in the direction.  But the sound had sliced across the horizon by then. Seeing nothing, they returned to their grazing.  A warm breeze blew across the grass, a few low hanging leaves were lifted.  The sun reflected golden on the ripples circling outward across the water. Silence flooded the land again. The clouds moved, the earth sighed. 

The facts are these:  A woman took her life yesterday.  Her body was found today.  A family is broken, parents' lives shattered.  Depression is a dark place and suicide a desperate option.  I've heard it said that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. For those left behind, suicide is a permanent heartache.  There is help, there is always help.  1-800-273-8255 (National Suicide Prevention Lifeline)

Instinct

The two birds built their nest in an empty breaker box on the exterior of the office building. The box's metal door was stuck open, creating a slanted roof that provided  protection from the rain and shade in the afternoon sun. They chose well. I first noticed the pair busily building their nest, flying from here to there with twigs, fibers, bits of grass.  One, the other, both... swooping beneath the metal door and weaving the home for her eggs.  Soon enough, only one bird flitted out, in, out. Sometimes a piece of straw or grass was in its beak, sometimes a wiggling worm.  I stood there for a few minutes each day, watching, smiling. 

Soon enough, the young ones arrived. I never saw them but I did hear them. I heard their hunger and I heard their appreciation. I learned to hear the difference between desperation and appreciation. The parents were attentive. He or she at times arriving at the breaker box at the same time, seeming arguing for space, one giving the food to another, beak to beak, and then flying off in search of more food. A few times, the late arriver would swoop in, see the other there, and fly to the roof just above and wait for the other to fly off and chance to drop down and feed the chicks. I could see the unfortunate worm wiggling in its beak.

Weeks of this, weeks of walking outside on my breaks to watch these two parents care for their family.

Today, they were gone. I noticed the silence first, then I focused on the lack of movement. I had wondered how the parents would teach the chicks to fly.  How could they fly from breaker box to building roof? I wondered if the first flight would be tragic, would a chick fall to the heat of the parking lot below? Had they taken safe flights at night, perhaps to a nearby tree?

I suppose I will never know.  But I do know that they have moved somewhere.  I do know that even in the parking lot of an office building, nature figures her way.

I love that about her.

If you build it, they will tag

Every morning, Monday through Friday, I weave my way through some messed up city construction.  Seems the powers that be want to work on a main road and the freeway that intersects it.  Fine, I know my way around closed entrance ramps and three-lane roads narrowed to two lanes during the busiest times of day. Part of the construction is very high along the feeder, or side roads, along the freeway.  Newly erected walls, wonderful beige blank surfaces on which to paint whatever it is you want to paint in order to make your mark. I have to wonder what the city was thinking by inviting it all.  It's been about a week since the walls were erected, still the frustrating road blocks are there because the road paving has not been completed, and yet those walls are already colored, tagged, designed, customized. I don't have a problem with street art, I actually like it.  But I do have a problem with gang marks and I have to wonder why a city as sophisticated and aware as Houston is would erect a canvas for what my taxes will surely pay, year after year, to be covered.  Along another freeway in this city, metal grids were erected and climbing ivy planted. Those walls?  Green with nature.  Seems that someone missed the lesson.

Being dragged kicking and screaming

Blogger has some new features, a whole lot of them on the back end.  I hate new features.  It's bad enough that the site I used to edit photos was purchased and shut down by Google, but coupled with Blogger, I'm feeling overwhelmed with the unfamiliar ground that change has me standing on.  I still have a Blackberry because I don't want to learn how to use an iPhone. Truth.  It has taken me several hours on Sunday and then a whole lot of hours tonight just to figure out how to change my template.  It's like learning the alphabet all over again.  I used to speak this language, but now? Not at all. That red font of the post title and comments? It's going to have to stay that way until I can figure out how to change the color.  The photo in the masthead? Over an hour to figure out how to crop it and add the text.  I'm not afraid of change, not at all, but I like my tools to work how I'm used to them working.  Darn progress is getting in my way.

Oops

I guess I only thought that I had let you know I was taking April off, including the lack of a current masthead.  There's no reason beyond the pull of nature in the springtime.  See you in May.

XOXO

Versailles

Versailles is a suburb of Paris.  That's the first thing I did not know.  The gardens and palace span just under a thousand acres.  I think I walked each and every one of those acres.  The pamphlet I had in my hand told me that walking from the palace to the end of the lake that divides the gardens would take one hour.  I didn't know that either before we set out that day but I was so happy that I wore comfortable shoes.  Those shoes may have shouted tourist but then again so too did my camera and my language.







The palace and gardens at Versailles are beyond opulent by any standards.  It's really no wonder why the people stormed the palace.  They couldn't even afford to buy bread.

Dixie

I had definite plans for Saturday. After my morning coffee, I was going to put the dogs in the car and take them to the dog park for a long stretch of outdoor exploring and running around. I was going to do take Cheyenne to the vet to get her nails clipped, do some laundry and run some necessary errands. I was going to have dinner with a dear friend who I haven't seen in a while. 

But as soon as I walked downstairs and opened Dixie's crate, all those plans evaporated. She hobbled out of her crate on three legs, not letting her back left leg touch the ground. I gently rubbed my hands on her leg to see where the problem was and she flinched and whimpered.

I made a cup of coffee and dialed her vet. They said to bring her in as soon as possible.  I set the cup of coffee on the kitchen counter, changed out of my pajamas, brushed my teeth, collared Dixie and off we went.  Dixie was in such discomfort that she whimpered much of the drive.

When the vet examined her, she felt around her leg and toes, specifically looking for a broken bone, and Dix seemed uncomfortable but for the most part was okay.  But when the vet rubbed on her hips, Dixie yelped. When she pulled her right leg back, she yelped again. The vet looked at me and said, that's not even the leg that's hurting her. I need to take some xrays to see what is going on.

Poor Dixie was so uncomfortable and stressed. The vet said they were going to sedate her for the xrays and also get some pain medicine in her. They sent me on my way and told me to come back later that afternoon.

I didn't expect what the vet reported to me.  At ten and a half months old, Dixie has severe hip dysplasia. The vet said it was the worst case she's seen in ten years.  She had to pop Dixie's femoral head back into the socket but the socket is extremely degraded, as you can see in the xray image. That top socket should be shaped like a "C" and not an opening parentheses (. 


I have a referral to the Surgery and Orthopedics department at Gulf Coast Veterinary Specialists, which is a wonderful veterinary medical center here in Houston. They worked their magic on Cheyenne's throat earlier this year and I cannot say enough good things about the veterinarians and surgeons there.  However, they are very expensive.  Where Cheyenne's laryngeal paralysis was covered by her insurance, the insurance company won't cover Dixie's diagnosis or treatement because the issue is hereditary. (Yes, I have written her breeders to let them know about the issue.)  There are several surgical options and I'm not sure which will be best for Dixie or how much that will cost.  I'll soon learn though.

Right now, Dixie is on anti-inflammatories and pain medicine. She is acting completely normal and it is difficult to keep her from running around as usual because with her femoral head popped back in place, and the pain pills, she feels no pain or physical impairment at all. 

Keep her in your thoughts, please.

Le Musee du Louvre

Last week, when we arrived in Paris, we checked in at the hotel, dumped our bags in the room and went straight to The Louvre. Have you ever known someone who was so beautiful inside and out that you were never quite sure where to put your focus? The Louvre is like that.  I didn't expect to be as in awe of the buildings as I was the paintings and sculptures. The largest museum in the world, its beginning was as a fortress built to defend the Seine against the Normans and English in the 13th century. It is humbling just to walk its floors, and it is tempting to get lost in the beauty of the curves and lines of the stone walls and elegant stairways and archways leading you from one room to another. But then, then you glance around at the paintings hanging there and the statues and you see how perfect it all is, how history embraces history and sometimes stands back to allow the grace and glory of the partnership.



Venus de Milo



Psyche and Cupid



Needs no introduction



A portion of The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon I



The Winged Victory of Samothrace



We spent six hours there. Six hours that went by in a flash.  Not enough to make any real familiarity with the Louvre, but it was a darn good start.