• Bluebelle,  Church Life,  Daily Life,  I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation,  Jinx,  Mrs. Orr,  Photographs,  Reflections

    Paths of Freeze

    Upon our second awakening this morning, the sun showed the crushed glass rug of frost all over everything, and my bones felt as if someone had injected crushed glass into the joints. Second awakening? Oh, yes. Our first awakening of the day was at about, ohhhhhh, 0230, when the dogs began snorting around outside our bedroom and demanding some attention. We got up to let ’em out and and see what might be yanking their emotional chains. They ran straight to the maple tree in the back yard and started leaping up on it like trained coon dogs. I shined the flashlight up into the bare branches and expected to…

  • Bluebelle,  Daily Life,  Dixee,  Jinx,  Photographs,  Reflections

    Puddles

    Bluebelle stayed in my office with me all day today, sleeping in the doggie bed at my feet, next to the heating vent, while Jinx snored beneath his blanket on the living room couch. The raw, damp weather made perfect sleeping for them, helped along by the fact that Dixee wasn’t here with us to whine and to yap. My wife took her to the vet’s office to be checked out after her recent tussle with the spotted twins, and to be groomed while there. One can work quite peacefully under the soft sighs of sleeping dogs with cold rain pattering just outside the door and Hovhaness playing at a…

  • Daily Life,  I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation,  Reflections

    It’s The Usual Question, Regina

    It’s always a mistake when I think to myself, “I’ll just duck in here and pick up a few things. It’ll only take a few minutes.” So there we were, meee-eee-eee-eee and Mrs. — Mrs. Orr. (Mrs. Orr, Mrs. Orr, Mrs. Orr, Mrs. Orr, Mrs. Orr…) There we were, fresh out of a grocery store where we’d stocked up, and on the other side of the parking lot I noticed the Dollar Tree…those places where, yes, everything’s a dollar. They’re great for things like notepads, generic anti-inflammatory drugs and pain relievers like Ibuprofen and acetaminophen, for cheap kitchen matches and implements that can be used in gardening (like colanders for…