"And in my heart doth keep his presence...."

 
I'm going to plant some spring bulbs at the grave. Jonquils maybe? Daffodils?

A bouquet of wild flowers (weeds), fossils, driftwood, a toy, and a stick will have to mark the site for now.

If you click on the photo, you can see the flowers better.

Scout: 3/15/05 to 9/27/12

Heartbroken...

My Scout died this afternoon at about 2:25 p.m. It was a stubborn upper respiratory infection, possibly along with something else. All efforts to save him were in vain, but we tried.


Scout chose me as his own when he was just a baby. He attached himself to me with no uncertainty about it. My lap belonged to him ONLY. If I were going to give any of the other dogs any particular attention, I had to give him his attention first. 

He was smart and obedient, and a creature of habit. Once a routine was set, it was set in stone. We did not alter any daily routine if we could help it. And if we had to alter a routine, he would look at me with a slightly disappointed expression. I could almost see him shaking his head and hear him "tsk-tsk"-ing. But he always forgave me.

He was usually up for a game of tug of war with a stick. All it took was for me to say, "Gimme that thing!", (with nothing in my hand) and he'd start looking around for something to run and get before I could. That's how the game started. So I'd make sure there was a stick or toy handy; he'd run to get it, and then he'd tease me with it. I'd tug, and he'd tug. Finally he'd let go; I'd throw it, and say, "Gimme that thing!" And we'd do the whole thing over again.

He was born with a naturally cropped tail. But he was also born with a hip and/or spine deformity. He was a very fast runner (almost as fast as his mother and sister) until he was about 4 years old. Then he started slowing down a bit. He was still pretty fast, though. And as long as he didn't get cold, his hip/back didn't seem to bother him. As long as he got regular exercise, he didn't seem stiff. But if the weather was bad, and he hadn't been for a good walk or run for a day or two, then he'd be a bit stiff for a while.  Since I was also born with a bad spine and hips, I always thought it was appropriate that he was my dog. He started getting a lot of gray hair a year or two ago. It happened very quickly; something else the two of us had in common.

I'll miss him. It's been a hard, tear-filled evening. Tomorrow I'm going to buy some bulbs of some kind -- maybe daffodils -- to plant beside his grave.

Miss Little Bit will miss her big brother. I have a feeling she's going to be extremely spoiled for a while. 

Eler Beth has been my right hand the past few days -- as she usually is. She helped me give him medicine, coax him to eat and drink, and watched out for him when I had to sleep or do something else. Thomas has shown that he's just a big softy when it comes to the pets; he was as concerned as the rest of us.  Scout died right before Thomas had to leave for work, so Andrew came home early from a friends' house to dig the grave for me.

It helps to write this and to look at his pictures. These are the three that I had handy on the computer. I'll try to find a few more to post.

It's going to be hard to sleep tonight. 

More Than You Ever Wanted To Know About My Coffee Drinking Habits

This morning I made my coffee much stronger than I usually do (not on purpose), and I have been bouncing around my house doing housework for over four hours now!!! I chattered like a squirrel to Thomas when he got up too. NOT like me, first thing in the morning, I can assure you. I'm wondering how the crash will be -- and this is only one cup of coffee...not even a mug...a cup!!

I am not a coffee drinker; I mean to say I do not have to have coffee every day. That makes me a bit alien in my family. I grew up with parents and siblings who did, and still do, have to have multiple cups of coffee throughout the day. I started drinking coffee early, as young as 8 or 9 years old. It used to be the standard thing for children in America to drink coffee, sugared and with lots of milk or cream, probably, on a regular basis; and I believe that during my parents' childhoods in the 20s and 30s, it was still a common thing. So it must not have seemed a bad or strange thing to my parents for their kids to drink coffee early. I never thought about it until I was older and realized that not all kids drank coffee at 8 or 9 years old.

But I never drank it every day, and I never had to drink multiple cups of it. I've never had a "caffeine headache", although at times coffee has helped me with my migraines. I have at different times preferred it black, with sugar only, or with cream and sugar, and currently I prefer it sweet and with real cream. I do not use artificial sweeteners or flavored creamer. I do not like it extremely strong. I don't mind if it's scalding hot, lukewarm, or cold. I will not let a bit go to waste just because it isn't hot, and I won't bother to warm it up either. I drink it when I want it because I like the taste, not to be sociable, out of habit, or because I need a caffeine boost. I prefer to drink from a dainty coffee cup with a thin rim, not a mug or thick cup.

Thomas hasn't had coffee for at least 15 years now, since it started hurting his stomach. He never liked coffee but drank it because he would get a headache if he didn't have a cup every day. Since he discovered that a cold can of Pepsi would take care of his headache, that is what he has each morning to get him going. Neither of my kids drank coffee until just a few months ago when Eler Beth started drinking it. She had discovered cappuccino a few years ago, and had it once in a while, always very sweet and usually with a lot of flavored syrups added to it. She always said she liked the smell of coffee, but not the taste. Sometimes if I made bacon in the morning and it happened to be a day when I wanted coffee, she'd get up, sniff the air and say, "It smells like Mamaw's house!" (That's my Mom.) And she was right. That's the way my Mom's house smells of a morning, like coffee and bacon. I remember when I'd visit my grandfather (Mom's dad), his house always smelled like coffee too. And I would always have a cup when I was there because his water made such really good coffee. He always used Maxwell House. When I was growing up Mom and Dad always preferred Folgers. With their water Folger's tasted better, but at my house, having experimented with several name and generic brands, I have discovered that Maxwell House works best with our city water, even when filtered.

So a few months ago Eler Beth started drinking coffee a few times a week. Now quite often she's the one who makes the coffee in the morning. When she visited my Mom and the girls recently for a few days, she really enjoyed sitting and having a sociable cup of coffee with her Mamaw.

Lately I've been thinking of things I'd like to write about in my blog, and, as one does, I've been composing posts in my head. These have mostly been memories from my childhood, and it seems like almost every one has had something to do with food, or drink, or eating. So I've had an idea for a series of posts, and I might just get around to writing them one of these days. Perhaps this post will be the first of that series. Until then, hope you have a good day, with or without coffee!

25 Years!

Today Thomas and I have been married for 25 years!!

We don't have anything big planned for today, but will be doing something special for ourselves a little later on in the year.

Together we have come through some really tough times, shared lots of joys, faced some ugly hatred, learned from one another, laughed with each other, matured --whether we wanted to or not, taught each other to look at things from a different perspective, and raised two rather amazing children. I love my husband very much, and I know he loves me. Guess there's not really much else to say, is there?

Happy Anniversary Thomas!

Character

I just recently passed the 10th anniversary of my father's death. He died on May 19, 2002 and was buried May 23. In many ways it doesn't seem like that much time could have passed, but it has.

I still miss Daddy, especially when certain milestones are reached. Certain activities can trigger memories or make me think of how he would have felt if he were here. Eler Beth spent four days at Mom's this past week, and the night we dropped her off there two of my sisters and I had a little impromptu song session. It was so much fun, something we haven't done in a long time, and something we used to do a lot. At one point, after we'd done a song in which we did a pretty good tight harmony, my mother turned to me and said, "Jeff would have loved this!" And I said, "Yes, and he'd be getting out his tape recorder and saying, 'Do that one one more time!'"

I wasn't sure what I wanted to write to commemorate this anniversary, or if I wanted to write anything at all, and then it hit me today: I wrote something about my Dad back in 2005, the year I started this blog (journal, as it was known then, on AOL), and I'd like to share it again with anyone who'd care to read it. It's on my Dusty Pages Archives blog, but I'll just copy it here to make it simple. It was written as an essay, a Weekend Assignment that I think John Scalzi, AOL Journals Editor at the time, used to give us on AOL. Here it is, from:

Sunday, June 19, 2005

Letting Go of Prejudices

Weekend Assignment #64: Tell about a moment with your dad that serves as an example of one of his best qualities.

I have been wrestling with this assignment. I knew what I wanted to write, but not how to go about doing it. Today I know....

I am white and my husband is black. When I met, became friends with, fell in love with and knew I would marry my future husband I knew that my father would have a hard time with it. I had never dated anyone of another race, never even been interested in anyone of another race, although I had had friends of color. When I met Thomas what attracted me to him was him, and it had nothing to do with color or features. I knew in my heart -- no, in my soul -- that if my dad gave Thomas a chance he would see what I saw. And I knew them both well enough to know that they had so much in common that they would become friends. But how to convince my Dad of that? I knew I couldn't. He would have to find that out for himself.

The moment I would describe in answer to the above question was a Sunday night, several months before my wedding, when I sat on the floor at my father's feet and he and I talked together about me, about Thomas, about my beliefs and my father's beliefs, about love and friendship and so many other things.

I told my dad that when he decided to give Thomas a chance he would have a son-in-law who would show him the respect in word and in action that my father deserved to have from him. He would have a friend with whom he could fish and hunt and talk about things that had a place in my father's heart and about which his other sons-in-law could not converse with him. I knew this. In return my father told me about how he was raised, the culture and environment that had taught him that it was wrong and immoral to marry outside of your race. He told me about how his mother had been raised to be scared of black people and why. And he told me that if he was left alone to come to terms with it on his own that in his own time he would probably come to feel the way I predicted he would. But he didn't want anyone to push him.

I watched my father progress from listening to other people's good opinions about Thomas..., to deciding to give him a chance..., to becoming best friends with him! They talked and laughed together. My husband listened respectfully while my dad gave him advice on something or showed him how to do something (usually something Thomas already knew, but he listened anyway). They went fishing together, shared hunting stories, worked on family vehicles, did home repairs. Thomas listened to stories about being in the Navy during World War II, about growing up in Kentucky during the Great Depression. I listened with pride as my father called Thomas his "other son", his "favorite son-in-law", his "friend". When our son was born two years after we were married, the 10th of my parents' grandchildren, I saw my father with the grandson of his old age, and saw how much they loved one another. When our daughter was born six years later I saw the granddaughter of his heart. I heard with my own ears my father say to my husband, "I love you, Thomas. You're like a son to me." And he thanked me and my husband for giving him those two grandchildren. And two weeks before he died, when he knew the end was near but could still somewhat enjoy the time he had left, he took Thomas into his confidence and told him things that he probably wouldn't have been comfortable telling me, my mother or my sisters or brother. Thomas has said that my father was more of a father to him than his own father, and that he loved him more.

The moment that I shared with my dad that described one of his best qualities happened on that Sunday night in 1986. It was the moment he told me to give him time, that he'd come around. It was a moment that stretched throughout my marriage until his death in 2002 at the age of 80. I don't know if the quality has a name. Perhaps you would call it depth of character. His was deeper than even he knew. He had the depth of character to realize that perhaps the way he'd been taught and raised wasn't the way he really felt about things; the depth of character to get to know a man on the inside, to know that secret person of the heart. And in return for displaying that depth of character he gained a best friend in Thomas and two adoring, loving, smart grandchildren that helped to fill his last years on Earth with happiness and completeness.

My father has been gone for three years now, {at time of writing} but he is still with us. My husband and I will celebrate our 18th wedding anniversary tomorrow, June 20. You can bet that my father will be in our thoughts as we wish each other a happy anniversary.

Me with my Dad, Jeff Dowell, around 1972.

Truth From Tasting

Martha at Never Seconds has posted that some people from their local Council and a reporter from the local paper came to her school today. They looked things over at lunch and did an interview with her and her father.

If you have iTunes or a BBC iPlayer, you can hear her interview here. Her interview starts at about 26 seconds. She sounds very smart and sweet. The interviewer does a good job, and gives equal time to the local Council member.

She also shared a picture of a lunch that a student in Spain sent her. I really like this girl's writing. I see journalism in her future.

Never Seconds

I haven't done this for a long time -- given a shout-out to a new blogger. I got the link to this blog from The Laughing Housewife. This is Martha, a.k.a. Veg, blogging about her school lunches on her blog, NeverSeconds. Veg lives in Scotland and got permission from her father and her school to take pictures of and blog about her school lunches.

I am shocked at how small the portions are for this fifth grader. She only started blogging in April and has only done a handful of posts so far, but I think she'll continue. She has had over 325,000 visits to her blog since she started and has been interviewed on the radio. Lovefood.com has also featured her, and apparently newspapers and news web sites all over the world have heard of her blog and written about it. One of her goals was to hear from Jamie Oliver, and she did. He tweeted her Dad, calling the blog "shocking but inspirational." She commented on one of her posts that at least now her dad understands why she's so hungry when she gets home.

Check out her blog and be sure to leave her a comment. I have been reading through the other comments on her posts, five or six at a time, just skimming down and grabbing one here or there, and some of the comments are as interesting as her blog. She has gotten comments from many different countries, and a lot of the commenters share their own school lunch stories, or those of their children.

Please check out her blog and then read the article on LoveFood.com.

Thanks!