one december. . .

Inner hell dog

Tammy called just before she left for work. I had been up for a while, what with being unable to sleep and prematurely worry at the same time. She asked if she could drop Cooper off on her way to work because he had gotten sick again and she was worried that it would continue like last time and require a trip to the vet. It's a testament to our friendship (and my love for Cooper) that I said sure, bring your sick pet to my home!

It was his first visit to my house. I closed doors and made a makeshift blockade between the kitchen and dining room to confine him to one big area. Tammy brought blankets to protect the couch, toys, leashes and his food and water dishes -- everything a puppy could need.

He didn't seem bothered by the new surroundings or by Tammy leaving. After a thorough sniffing, he settled down on his blanket on the couch and took a long nap, waking once for a belly rub interlude. I turned a chair toward the front window, and he spent quite a bit of time sitting there, looking out and sniffing the air. Once he tried to climb into the window like a cat might, but 18 pounds of puppy doesn't fit so well.

We went for a walk mid-morning, and in the afternoon when I was tied to the phone (the AC guy was to call before coming by), I put him on the retractable leash and let him chase rabbits and squirrels in the backyard.

Cooper isn't prone to barking. Once in a blue moon he'll bark at rabbits or at the dogs that live two yards down from him, but he has never barked at people. The AC guy? Serious barking and growling.

I had attached a short leash to his harness before I answered the door, and I had gone ahead and picked him up before opening the screen door because I expected him to rush the guy and do his dancing pet-me routine. Instead, he unleashed his inner hell dog. When he stopped barking, he started trembling. This happened every time the guy came into sight.

"Maybe he doesn't like people sneaking in through the back door," the guy tried. I had no answer because it's the first time Cooper has been there. He doesn't know to expect anything. I think he just didn't like the guy for whatever reason. He is drawn to most people, stays away from some, but this is the first time he has ever had such a strong, negative reaction. Tammy has had workmen in and out of her house a number of times, and he's always welcomed them.

Maybe he sensed the guy was bringing bad news and just wanted to drive him away. I'm sure that's it.

The coolant had leaked out of the AC. Given the age of the unit (32 years is the best guess possible without using carbon dating), replacing the leaking part would be cost prohibitive. He said there was no way to tell how bad the leak is without taking the whole unit apart and there's little point to spending the money to have that done if the repair isn't going to be made. So, I had him add coolant with the hope that it's a slow leak and will buy me a few weeks time to gather estimates and figure out how the hell to choose a new air conditioner and furnace.

Oh yeah, that was the other part. The furnace is older than the AC, and the new AC units are sized differently and won't work with a furnace that old. So, if I replace one, I have to replace both.

It isn't like I haven't known for a long time that both should be replaced, but it's a hefty expense and I preferred inefficiency to bleeding out my savings. On a couple of different occasions I had planned to replace them but then other expensive repairs loomed somewhere else, and I put it off. Can't put it off much longer now though.

The AC guy didn't get to my house until almost 5, and he was still there when Tammy arrived to pick up Cooper. She took Cooper for a walk so the guy could come and go without Cooper trying to take his head off. (Actually, Cooper sounded aggressive but he wasn't going after the guy; he just tried to keep the guy from coming closer to him.)

After having a chance to think out loud to Tammy and later on to Keith, I have been able to come to terms with it. My biggest worry is not having that extra cushion of savings available if I lose my job. But, I can't make it through summer without air conditioning. I know there a lot of people who have to, and I don't know how they manage. Until I was in high school, we didn't have any air conditioning in the bedrooms, and I guess I was used enough to the heat to sleep through it, but I don't think I could readjust now. So, job or no job I'm going to spend the money. If that's the case, there's no point in waiting until after I hear what's going to happen at work.

On the other hand, if it's a slow leak I might get through the summer OK. I don't expect that scenario to play out, but I think what I'll do is take a couple of weeks (providing the AC works that long) to learn something about choosing new units, research tax credits/rebates, and get a couple of estimates. Then I might hold off until the coolant is gone or the end of summer arrives, whichever happens first. Tammy has offered me her spare room if I need a cool place to stay while the units are being replaced.

Unless the basement walls decide to cave in suddenly, this should be the last major expense I'll have. Oh ho ho, of course it will be!

Hot

As it turns out, I wish this wasn't a three-day weekend because I need to schedule a service call.

The central air doesn't work -- when I turned it on Saturday evening warm air came out of the vents -- and it is HOT in here. It is pretty decent outside but I can't get the cooler air to enter the house. As hot as it is, I know it could be much worse this time of year, and I am thankful that the evenings cool off enough to make it possible, with the help of a huge fan, to sleep.

I did laundry and completed the normal chores around the house today, then I took a cool shower, melted down just a little bit over the bad timing of this, and went for a drive to help myself cool off. I called Tammy while I was out to see if she wanted to join me in my aimless ride. She was about to go out and grab Chinese, so I stopped and picked it up for her and went to her house. It was a good day for a dose of happy puppy.

Tammy leaves Cooper inside while she mows. When she went in to get a drink of water, he wanted out, and since she was almost finished she let him out to the backyard. She got distracted and was inside longer than planned. All of a sudden she noticed barking coming from the front yard. Curious about what dog was in her yard, she opened the front door and found Cooper on the steps barking to get let in.

She had forgotten she had left the gate open, and he wandered right out. It's luck that he didn't go further than the front yard, and that he started barking since he rarely barks.

Counting flowers

Tammy's brother forgot the tomato cages but I was able to snag one (the last one) from WalMart tonight. We planted the tomatoes and placed the container on another brick alter with the hope that it will keep Cooper out of them. I don't hold out much hope that anything will survive. Even if the plants survive the puppy, they may starve from lack of quality sunlight.

Sometime this weekend, Keith and I will make the cemetery rounds. Last year gas prices were so high, we only visited the nearby cemeteries, but this year we'll make it everywhere. We have been stocking up on artificial flowers (real flowers aren't an option because the Iris will be spent by then and the peonies won't be blooming yet), and I've just made a list to make sure we'll have enough.

Once when I was a little kid, I was at my aunt's and cousin's over the Memorial Day weekend. I remember helping my aunt bring up from the basement boxes of saved mayonnaise jars, and while I wrapped aluminum foil around each one, she filled jugs with water and then went out to the garden to cut flowers. She had several long rows of lavender and deep purple iris around the vegetable garden, and there was a long row of pink peonies growing along the curve of the drive. She cut every stem and placed them on a blanket in the trunk of her car. After that we were on a time sensitive mission to visit all the cemeteries before the flowers wilted and began to lose petals.

It was quite a process to locate either a natural divot or a level spot at each headstone for the jar, then cut the stems to length, arrive at a pleasing arrangement and top off each jar with water. She always took care to make things look nice.

The process I follow isn't nearly as personal as hers. I always think of her and the trunk of flowers at this time of year, though. Her example is a big part of the reason I try to make it out to the cemeteries, if not always on Memorial Day, at least at some point during the year. 

Mystery solved

I found the "German cemetery" I was looking for. It's a Lutheran church cemetery out in the country, quite a distance from my hometown. I imagine it took quite awhile to reach it in a horse and buggy.

I've started to devour Willa Cather's writing. Until I started all this research, I had no patience for anything having to do with Nebraska's past. I couldn't relate to uninterrupted prairie, busting sod, etc., and yet it was just familiar enough to be boring. In contrast, I spent about six years reading everything about Australia's history that I could get my hands on, and it isn't like I could relate to penal colonies, bush or red desert, but it was so different, I found it interesting. But now I have things -- people, events -- that make the early decades of Nebraska more specific, more relevant.

Plus, it isn't hype -- Cather is a terrific writer.

This morning I received a response to something I posted on one of ancestry.com's message boards. I'm trying to figure out what cousin or other family member my great uncle Fred might have known when he arrived in New York. Fred became a candy maker, and I found another candy maker with our last name who was in NYC and already in business when Fred arrived. The man -- Albert -- had a business partner named Henry Lussen. The person who replied has an ancestor named Henry Lussen, but it isn't the same man. Still, her Henry and Albert were from the same town in Germany. It seems likely that her Henry and "my" Henry are relatives of some sort. And it probably explains how Albert and Henry met and became business partners. None of it helps me connect dots, but it's interesting nevertheless.

Well, interesting to me; likly confusing and boring as hell to you.

Speaking of the family tree... it grew by one this weekend. My second cousin and his wife had their first child on Friday, a truly beautiful girl that they have named Ruby. Ruby was born on the 15th and is named after her great grandmother who died last year on May 16. I shouldn't wish for time to pass quickly, but I can't wait to see who she grows up to be.

On another topic, Tammy and I decided to try to grow a tomato, green bean and pepper plant in containters at her house. The bean and pepper went into one container, and they enjoyed about 14 hours of quiet growing time, and then a little white dog with a nose for trouble got his grubby little paws in the dirt and pretty well mutilated them. We decided to go ahead and replant them, just in case they can come out of it. And we built a stand out of bricks and set the container on it. So far Cooper has left it alone. Tammy's brother is supposed to bring a couple of plant cages in tomorrow. Once we have those, we'll try planting the tomatoes.

Cooper has been hearing "you're really lucky you're so cute" a lot lately.

Nagging mystery

Anymore, weekends are kind of tough because on Saturdays I have no energy to get up and get going. If I run errands, I have to do it in the morning while places are open, and for the last few months I can't get moving. So my oil didn't get changed, I didn't get to the bank or to Sears to return a Lands End order.

I did at least, over the course of the day, begin to upload the cemetery photos. Although I had set the camera to a low-resolution setting, the photos are still too large for the uploading program on the site to accept, so I resize and sometimes crop or adjust the lighting in Elements before I upload, and it takes quite a bit of time. I completed 50 out of around 300. There's no deadline but I should keep at it steadily.

The family came to Lincoln today to celebrate Mother's Day. We gathered at Olive Garden for lunch and then some of us gathered for a visit afterward.

Keith and I concluded the afternoon by going on wild goose chase. I had found a newspaper obituary from 1915 that said the deceased was to be buried at "the German cemetery" at my hometown. No such place exists at my hometown. I absolutely do not need to find this cemetery for any reason, but I also can't resist searching for it just to solve the mystery.

There's an online group of mostly genealogy folks who keep track of cemeteries so I queried them. Keith knows a couple of elderly men who are from the area and asked if they had ever heard of a German cemetery. Everyone suggested the same place, a small un-named family cemetery along a gravel road. The family was German, hence the connection.

Keith and I found it but the person mentioned in the obituary wasn't buried there, so it isn't the cemetery I'm looking for. I knew of another small one in the area but it took some canvasing of the section to find it. There are only eight stones, and they're so old they're unreadable. It can't be the right cemetery either. Next weekend, providing I can get myself moving, I'll go back and systematically drive the roads until I find it or run out of places to look.

I stopped by to see Cooper. He is back to being himself, so much so that he had been in endless trouble all day. His offenses included eating grass that had fallen off the bottom of the mower deck, pulling shoes out of Tammy's bedroom, participating in some team digging along the fence with the lab next door, and scratching at the hardwood floors in a need to try to bury a toy.

But in spite of all of that I think he is very cute, and I gave him several squooshy hugs and let him stick his nose in my ear.

Puppy bug

I had to change my lunch schedule around because of a meeting, and I didn't get over to let Cooper out until a few minutes after 2:00. On a typical day it wouldn't have been a big deal, but Cooper had an atypical morning.

Now that the weather is nice he spends the mornings inside his little room in the basement, and after I take him for a walk at noon, I leave him in the backyard. His basement room is closed off from the family room by a door, and he's kept out of the laundry area by a baby gate. Our routine is that I bound down the stairs and fling open the door, and he springs out and hops and licks and dances all around me. It's a nice routine. It's my favorite part of the day.

Today I swung the door open and. . .no dog. It's a little square room. No place to hide. Then I spotted him standing on the other side of the baby gate. The baby gate that was not only still standing, it was still locked in position. He isn't -- or at least hasn't been up to this point -- a jumper. He'll leap onto the couch where he is allowed as long as he stays on his blanket, but that's it. He doesn't try to get up to the table or onto other furniture.

I pulled the baby gate out of the way and moved the milk crate that reinforces it from behind, and Cooper trotted out at jumped up on my leg. He was happy but not excited. He didn't look guilty but he was behaving as if something was up, so I turned on the light and saw the situation. He had gotten two kinds of sick.

After a little extra comfort, I took him outside and we walked around the yard. He ate quite a bit of grass and sniffed around, did what still needed to be done, and drank a little water. He stayed close to me and even climbed into my lap when I sat down on the patio to pet him. He hasn't done that for several months so he must have needed some comfort.

After work I picked up a container of plain yogurt at the grocery store. I had read that the live cultures can help settle a dog's stomach and thought it was worth a try if he still wasn't feeling well. By the time I got to Tammy's, she had been home for an hour or so. Cooper was still having trouble, and she was dialing the vet to find out what, if anything, she should do for him. The fact that Cooper had been sick several times concerned him, so he asked Tammy to bring him in.

He gave Cooper an injection to help settle his stomach and make it possible for him to take and keep down a pill that Tammy was to give him 30 minutes later. He'll get half a pill twice a day for a week. Other than a small treat to help disguise the taste of the pill, he can't eat for 24 hours, and his water intake has to be monitored. He can have as much water as he likes but he can't gulp down too much at a time.

He perked up after taking the pill. He even wanted to play ball in the yard and be chased some. The vet thought his intestinal tract felt tight, so Tammy will have to monitor him closely for the next few days. Not much of a hardship considering how Cooper has become the center of the universe anyway, but a little worrisome.

On a day when he was feeling better.

Cemetery photographs

 This morning I drove out to the cemetery to photograph the headstones. It used to be a peaceful country cemetery on a hill. Now the road that passes in front is paved, and the area around it has become so developed there are cars passing in every direction every minute. The sound of birds and wind are gone. So is the windbreak across the back. It had to be bulldozed a number of years ago when the cemetery needed to expand.

What remains unchanged are the two huge pine trees on either side of the center drive. I looked, and found,  pinecones on a bed of brown needles beneath each one. As a kid, Mom and I used to walk the mile out to the cemetery and collect pinecones. She used them for craft projects. 

The battery in the camera died after 307 pictures. I only had one and a half rows left, so I called Keith to see if I could stop by for an hour and recharge the battery. He offered the use of his camera, so I drove out to pick it up and asked if he would go with me and hold back some flowers that were blocking a few of the stones.

I have just now viewed the photos and am not satisfied with a lot of of them. The standing stones are tough to photograph without getting glare, deep shadows or my reflection. The newer ones that are highly polished, smooth black granite might as well be mirrors.

 

Tammy called just as I was leaving Keith's and asked if I wanted to tag along to the dog park. I love the dog park!

There was a crazy, yippy pomeranian mix that chased Cooper around and probably damaged his hearing with all of her glass-shattering barks. There were a couple of beagle mixes, each one sweet and mellow. One Boston terrier was really friendly but his owner was a jerk about him going to other people. A few corgis ran in a squat little gang after balls. And there was a super tiny -- not even four pounds -- maltese that kept getting rolled every time a dog nose-nudged him to get a sniff. He didn't mind, just rolled onto his back and punched the bigger dogs with his paws. The owner was super cool about it. I like the owners who let their dogs work it out on their own.

There's one guy we see there a lot. He's got a great dog. No idea what the breed is. Its white with a long, wispy, coarse coat. The dog is friendly with other dogs and mostly ignores people. The owner, however, doesn't seem to like anyone but the lady with the corgis. I've said hello to him a couple of times, and he always just walks away and stays away, usually going to sit on the bench right inside the gate. I have him pegged as snooty and antisocial but he could just as easily be socially shy.

Cooper does great with the other dogs, especially the small ones. He stays in the area that is fenced off for small dogs, and sometimes he stands at the fence and looks longingly at the labs, great danes and whippets that parade past. He's pretty sure he was meant to be a big dog.

Clowns

Jack and I were talking earlier, and I told him that being in a holding pattern about my job is getting me down. He offered to sing me a song to cheer me up.

Let's pause there for a moment. That offer? Totally left field. But not as far left field as what would come next.

I said the song couldn't contain the phrases "cloud illusions" and "ice cream castles." Oh the shudder I get from typing those words. "Both Sides Now" was a song we had to endure in junior high choir. (We also sang "Morning Has Broken" that year. How none of us turned into serial killers or survivalists is a wonder.) "In fact," I said, "it can't be any Judy Collins song."

And he -- Jack, the scotch loving, cigar appreciating, Springsteen crazy guy's guy -- said, "I've always liked 'Send in the Clowns.'"

I didn't know what to do with that information. Was he serious? He sounded serious. He said it as if he was saying he liked...cheese or something. Who likes that song? I realize a lot of people must, but why?

"What's it even about?" I asked.

"It's from A Little Night Music."

I wasn't familiar with that either. "Hang on. I'm going to the computer. Must Google."

I went to YouTube and found this clip of an interview Judi Dench (love her!) gave when she was appearing in a London production of A Little Night Music. She performs the song too. Understanding the context, and hearing it sung in context? Well, now I rather like the song too.

I just never know what I'll get with Jack. I like that about him.

(This other performance is really good.)