“Every man looks at his woodpile with a kind of affection.”
– Henry David Thoreau
Ralph L. delivered a couple of cords last week. He dumped the wood on the far side of the house where I couldn’t see it, but plenty of people around town have been commenting to me that we have some work to do. This morning I woke up with just one goal in mind: stack wood. Fortunately, Dave was also motivated so we plugged the iPod into some speakers, stuck them on the back porch and got to work.
Thank you for kind comments from people who have noticed I haven’t been writing lately (hi Jeff). Really I’m only abstaining to spare you from my constant whining. Business is still tough and it consumes so much of my energy that at the end of the day, I just turn off the computer and stare blankly into space.
No, I’m just kidding about the staring into space. I have been reading great quantities of books.
Business aside, it has been a lovely summer. We didn’t take our usual week of vacation, but did get away to New York City for a weekend.
We ate a lot of good food, saw a show, and checked up on the construction work at ground zero, which was the principal view from our hotel room.
As I usually do when in an urban environment, I tried to make Dave walk absolutely everywhere, but he hailed a cab after the first 80 blocks or so. Something about a stabbing pain shooting up one leg and down the other.
The other way I’ve been torturing Dave lately is with the soundtrack from the movie “Mamma Mia.” He is trying to find out if a fondness for ABBA’s music is grounds for divorce.
There has been one cloud on the horizon this summer. In June my 13 year old Lab Retriever laid down and refused to get back up. For some time prior she had been having trouble walking, particularly going up and down stairs, but outright refusal to move was new. We took her to the vet, whom she loves with a passion normally reserved for raw steak. Once she realized where she was, she immediately got up and limped across the room to greet Chris.
Chris listened to our report, observed her stance and gait and told us she likely has Lumbar Spinal Stenosis or Degenerative Myelopathy. Or both. The former responds well to steroids and can be treated with surgery (though not necessarily recommended for a dog Cammy’s age). The latter is generally just a downhill slide.
She has been on steroids ever since and although stairs are still a challenge, she is very nearly her old self. We’re told she isn’t suffering because the nature of the problem is that she has lost sensation in her feet and legs, but we’ve also been warned that this isn’t going to go away, it will get worse, and we will have to decide at some point when to end her life.
I can’t begin to deal with that diagnosis. She is so much a part of my day that she will haunt me forever when she is gone. But for now, I will enjoy her calm presence and do my best to stay in this moment with her. Right here. Right now.
