Salsa killed the Easter Bunny

We found the Easter Bunny (or perhaps one of his offspring) on our back patio this morning. Dead. There was no basket of brightly colored eggs, marshmallow Peeps or other evidence of tomorrow’s happy holiday. Just a dead baby rabbit, lying there with its eyes open. So maybe it wasn’t the real Easter Bunny. But the timing is awfully suspicious.

Bruce doesn’t think Salsa did it – this time (remind me to tell you about the other time). I’m not so sure. She was the one who had been out running around like a demon before Bruce got up. And she has killed before.

It doesn’t matter who did it. The important thing is that we discovered it before it started to smell like a dead bunny. I don’t know if I would have been able to scoop it up if it had been stinky. I am known to gag at such atrocities.

But it was fresh yard-kill – so fresh that I was half expecting it to move when I touched it with the shovel. Its eyes were wide open, after all. Thank the Lord, it didn’t move.

I triple bagged it (hey, there really is an appropriate use for plastic bags!), knotted the bags tightly, placed Little Bunny in the car and took him to the local animal shelter. The woman there didn’t bat an eye when she came to the door. I said, “My dog killed the Easter Bunny,” and she simply replied, “I’ll take care of it for you.” She took the bag, I expressed my appreciation, and she closed the door.

Thank you, North Little Rock Animal Shelter Lady. You spared me a lot of unpleasantness.

So was it the Easter Bunny, or one of his family members, in that plastic bag?

Report back to me if your colored eggs don’t show up tomorrow morning as expected. Then we’ll know for sure.

Random thoughts

My fans (all three of you people who read my blog) have been admonishing me to publish something. I haven’t posted in a while, but not for lack of wanting to. I’ve just been extremely laz — err, busy.

So, while I wait for my mom’s tax return to finish printing, I’ll grace you with some of the fascinating things I have been doing, thinking or saying lately:

• After two weeks of working on it in spurts, I have finally finished Mom’s tax return. No, you cannot borrow money from her. Because she helped her children so much last year, there is nothing left to loan. Thanks, Mom. We owe you.
• I chopped off my fingernails the other day to get better at the little game on my new cell phone that I am obsessed with (the game, not the phone), and it didn’t make one bit of difference. Even with nails cut to the nub, I am still pitiful at batting a little ball with a paddle at a bunch of electronic bricks.
• I make up little songs, sometimes to amuse Bruce, sometimes to amuse myself. Frequently these little ditties are about the dogs. Almost all of them are about what I happen to be doing at the time I sing them. If Bruce isn’t amused, he doesn’t let me know it. He makes up random funny songs, too. We’re weird together.
• I would love to be in a musical. Like South Pacific, The Music Man, Oklahoma! or my favorite, Camelot. Or how about The Sound of Music II: Suzl, the Forgotten von Trapp? I would be great in that! Not that I can sing.
• Although Saturday night was an exception (I went to bed at 7:30), I have been staying up until nearly 10:30 lately! (I don’t think I’ve adjusted to daylight saving time yet.) Still, unless you’re my mother, my brother or my husband, or you’re bleeding from both eyes, don’t call me after 9 p.m., even on weekends. I will be mad at you.
• It’s spring! And I pulled weeds this weekend (both days). And when I got tired of pulling the little suckers, there were still a BUNCH of them left. Today after I got tired and decided not to pull any more weeds, two neighbor boys rode their bikes up to my driveway and asked me if I had any work for them. Now I’m $10 poorer, but my rose bed looks a lot better. They want to come and mow the lawn in a few days. I think I’ll let them. (Note to self: Restock the Popsicle stash.)
• I LOVE seeing kids take some initiative and get out and earn some money instead of sitting on their bee-hinds in front of the TV or a computer.
• The dogs finally got baths today. This hadn’t happened since (don’t tell anyone) November. Salsa didn’t like it, but she didn’t bite me once!
• My friend Lynn, whom I wrote about a few weeks ago (yikes, it’s been nearly three months!), is going to share the Basket-A-Month with me this year. Next weekend is the pickup. SPRING VEGETABLES! FARM-FRESH EGGS, HOMEMADE PASTA! SOURDOUGH BREAD! I’M YELLING BECAUSE I’M DELIRIOUSLY HAPPY!!!!! And Lynn said she’d bring me some of her asparagus and a couple of good recipes. Double happiness!
• Baseball season is almost upon us, and I’m thinking of Travelers and sunshine. And hot dogs, which absolutely must be consumed at baseball games, no matter what.
• I’m reading Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, which I started reading in college but never finished. My favorite journalism professor recommended it, although it was not required reading. I didn’t do a lot of extracurricular reading in college. I was too busy with the school newspaper and reading for classes. But I’m enjoying this book once again, and I’m determined to finish it this time.
• I have new flip-flops. They’re black. Well, they’re sort of brown now, because of the weed-pulling.
• I’m supposed to be making a blackberry-jam cake for my neighbor, who’s going to pay me for it, but she didn’t give me a deadline and I keep putting it off. It’s the pressure. She had one at a friend’s out of town, and it was to-die-for delicious, and I’ve had to Google to find a recipe that seems to approximate what she had. So, pressure. Which makes me procrastinate.
• More pressure: My church is doing a 25th-anniversary cookbook, and I’m supposed to provide a recipe for my “signature” dish, and I can’t decide whether to share my recipe for carrot cake, which I make money from, or be selfish and keep it to myself. My other cake recipe that gets rave reviews is from Paula Deen, and I want to make sure we won’t be violating any copyrights before I share it. It’s called White Chocolate Cake with Strawberry Filling. It’s lick-the-bottom-of-the-pan good. I don’t think I’ve shared photos of it that I took when I was making business cards year before last. So let’s end this on a happy foodnote:

Click the comment button to share some of your own random thoughts.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, world!

I’m sitting at my mom’s back window, looking out at the beautiful, crisp, clear morning. The sky is blue, the trees are green and there’s still frost on the ground. It’s a beautiful winter morning.

Last night I got sleepy at 8:15, and Mom said I couldn’t go to bed yet (she’s mean). She said if I stayed up with her, she’d get up early with me. I told her there was no need for that because I love having the quiet morning to myself before everyone (except Salsa) gets up. I take the girls outside for their morning potty break, lift Pepper back onto the bed (where she crawls under the covers with Bruce), and then come back in and savor my cup of coffee, all before the sun comes up. (Mom finally let me go to bed last night at 9:45, when she saw me lying on the floor half-asleep). This morning, Salsa and I did a quieter-than-usual version of our morning wrestling match. We played tug of war with a toy — no running around like fools before everyone gets up.

Routines are different here at Mom’s. She doesn’t have a fence, so we can’t let the girls go outside and potty by themselves. We have to leash them and walk them until they decide to do their business. It’s usually pretty quick with Salsa — when she needs to go, she goes. With Pepper, we have to let her walk around a little, then turn her circles and find the exact right spot — all the while saying, “Go potty … go potty … go potty.” It’s not as fun when it’s cold outside.

So, while I wait for my family to get up (my brother’s house is within hollerin’ distance, and I can see from Mom’s window that they’re still not stirring), Salsa and I will go sit and watch the Star Trek: The Next Generation marathon. (Oh, and someone may have already cut into the chocolate pie for breakfast, but I’m not saying.)

Yes, this Christmas is much more relaxed and wonderful than last, even if last year, in my somewhat-depressed state, I still tried to remember the reason we have Christmas in the first place.

Please, as you go about your day, remember the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who was born simply to die for us and give us a better way to live.

I love you, Jesus.

Tuesday hospital update

The anticipated CT scan hasn’t happened yet. In fact, the doc hasn’t been in yet to order it (it’s nearly 11:30 a.m.).

With the big bag of “food” on his IV pole, Bruce’s blood sugar shot up last night and they had to give him insulin. The second time they checked it, it was OK, but the pharmacist was in a few minutes ago and said that if it shoots up again, they can inject the insulin directly into the bag. Oy.

What’s worse (in my opinion) is the pain when he goes to the bathroom. With all the undescribable things going on down there, he said that when waste tunnels through the fistula (yes, he has another fistula), it feels like acid being poured on his skin. Down there. The nurse was telling us about her hemorrhoid surgery several years ago and commented, “Can you imagine how painful it is to have a shot in your rectum?” And Bruce replied, “As a matter of fact, I can.” (Several times a day, he can.)

Yes, it is extremely painful. And it’s really scary. He also thinks another abscess has formed, and that’s not the same as a fistula. Different problems, both difficult to treat. And he has ulcers in his mouth, not to mention a yeast infection (also in his mouth — thick, furry coating on his tongue, causing him to eat less) brought on by antibiotics used to treat infections. Some of the medicines he takes are ones that counteract other ones. All a big fat hairy scary mess.

So please keeping lifting him up in prayer. We thank you for all the prayers you’ve already said for us.

On a side note, Bruce wanted me to say something we’ve been wanting to tell people for several months. We have thanked you face to face or by proxy at times when you’ve given us food, money, visits, lawn mowing, TLC to our dogs (Mike Tyler especially loved on our furbabies during his visits), etc. And we’ve e-mailed you in groups or individually to say thanks. But we haven’t done what Miss Manners would have us do, and that’s send actual thank-you notes — through the mail, not electronically.

It took us a long time just to get most of the notes written, but we still haven’t gotten to the next step and addressed the envelopes. They’re sitting on the table downstairs. It’s not just a matter of having the time to do it, it’s that anything nowadays is an emotional (and physical) drain. Both of us have fought low-grade depression, mental and physical exhaustion and the accompanying inertia, and have put off way too many things in the past several months, although I suppose that’s a subject for a post on another day.

But to those of you who have helped, in ways big and small, know that your thank-you has been expressed in our hearts — even written on a card — and someday we might actually mail it.

Suzy and Bruce.

Happy birthday, Dad

Bennie Lee Taylor was born July 11, 1938, in Izard County, Arkansas, the second of four children born to Joseph Benjamin and Tressie Lee Hinson Taylor. He died Dec. 23, 1997.

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He would have been 70 years old today.

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I had in mind to write a long, glowing tribute to my dad, but time (and my eyesight) has gotten away from me today. So I’m going to try to capture some of his life in pictures and not write all the things that are in my heart (it would take too long this evening).

First up, some photos from when he was a boy. (Descriptions below.)

Dad as a boy with family, 1930s and 1940s.

In the photo at top left, he’s the baby, with his mother and his brother Tom. Top right, he’s the boy on the left. That’s his mom behind him; the other woman is one of Grandma’s three sisters, Retha. In the middle is dad’s sister Joan (pronounced JoAnn), and on the right is brother Tom. In this photo, it seems Grandma is pregnant with Uncle Carlos. Below left is Tom, Joan and Dad. In the last photo, below right, is Grandma, Aunt Ednora (another sister), Uncle Tom, Aunt Joan and Dad. (And, gosh, after staring at this picture for hours, I just noticed two babies in the arms of their mothers. I was so focused on Dad and his siblings! Grandma is probably holding Uncle Carlos, and Aunt Ednora — or “Aunt Gobb” — is probably holding her first born, Janice.) I assume all of these photos were taken in Izard County.

The next phase of his life shown here is high school. Here’s his senior portrait. Wasn’t he handsome?

Dad senior portrait

In this photo of the Class of 1957, Cave City, Arkansas, he’s in the bottom row, third from the left (he was class vice president). My mother (with the same last name, coincidentally — they weren’t married yet) is the first person in the second row (Dorothy Taylor). They got married on Nov. 7, 1958, and she didn’t even have to change her name.

Dad loved his family, and here are a couple of photos of us with him.

First is Mom and Dad with J.T. on my big brother’s first Christmas, 1960. J.T. would have been just under 3 months old. And the next one is quite possibly my all-time-favorite picture, because …

Dad and me in his favorite chair

… it reminds me of one of my favorite memories of Dad. I inherited my chocoholism from him, and when I was little (OK, even when I was big), Mom would serve us chocolate ice cream. I would hurry and gobble up mine out of my little blue plastic bowl, then climb into Dad’s chair with him and, ever the little helper, join him in finishing his ice cream. We don’t have photo evidence of this nightly ritual, but this is the place where it all happened.

A big part of Dad’s life was cars. He was a mechanic but also knew how to restore classic cars inside and out.

The photo above is dated June 1963 (when I was 6 to 7 months old), but we have lots of photos with dad and cars. I simply didn’t have time to go through all of them last weekend when we were at Mom’s. This photo was probably taken in Coalinga, California, where we lived then.

As for the two photos above, Dad built this car from a kit just a few months before he died. I’m going out on a limb here, because it’s a little too late too call my mom tonight (and even too late to call Uncle Carlos in California), but I think it’s a 1929 Mercedes Gazelle. I had it in my head that it was a 1937, but I found a 1929 one online that looks just like this one, and 1929 now rings a certain bell in my head. I typically wouldn’t publish something until I was sure, but I want to post this on his birthday. I will straighten out the details as soon as I can. (You would think that after watching Dad and Uncle Carlos work on so many cars in my lifetime I would be better at identifying them.)

I probably should have showed you the shop first. He built it (with the help of older brother Tom — and me, on one of my trips home from California) specifically for working on cars and puttering on his many projects. He had “retired” in his 50s because of a 30-year-old injury and heart problems, but he certainly couldn’t sit idle inside the house. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, he loved to be outdoors when he could. The shop was out back behind our house in Batesville. Dad could fix anything — from a broken record player to an old lamp. Besides mechanical stuff, he could do carpentry and electrical. A Renaissance man. His mind never seemed to stop, and he could answer almost any question I had for him, whether it pertained to politics, the economy, agriculture, the Bible, sports, physics or just about any subject you could name (except maybe pop culture). Most of it was self-taught.

These three pictures show three phases of construction of Dad’s shop:

Barely started …

… well under way …

.. and complete.

I mentioned in a previous post all the work Dad put into the piece of land where we lived. Below is a segment of it. This was the best picture I could come up with in a short time.

I can’t close this without mentioning Dad and our dogs.

In the photo above is Dad with my dog Mesa (a mix of four breeds) and his dog Chance, a miniature Pinscher (a larger version of our Pepper). Chance, named by my nieces after some cartoon character in 1994, was Dad’s little buddy (mine, too). That photo was taken by Barney Sellers in Barney’s yard across from my parents’ house in Batesville. The bottom photo is of Dad and Chance on the deck that he built in the 1970s. My sweet Mesa and little buddy Chance have been gone from us for years now, but you know you will be reading more about them whenever I write my dog tribute post.

This last picture was taken on the deck of my Uncle Tom and Aunt Willa’s house in Batesville when Uncle Carlos and Aunt Judy were visiting from California. (I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it, but Uncle Tom was a carpenter. Of course he built the deck).

Front row: Ben Taylor, Bruce Oakley, Suzy Taylor. Back: Tom Taylor, Dorothy Taylor, Carlos Taylor, Debbie (?), Willa Taylor and Pam Taylor. Not pictured: Photographer Judy Taylor.

The photo was taken on Oct. 4, 1997, the day Bruce and I put our wedding rings on layaway, and less than three months before Dad died.

For now, this is all I can share in pictures, although the memories of my dad are still fresh. For those of you who didn’t know him, I know you would have liked him, and he probably would have liked you.

He was my hero.

Random things I say to my dogs

In any given week, you might hear one or all of these things uttered at my house, either to or about the furchildren.

“Poop!” (After finding a deposit on the carpet, five minutes after they’ve been outside to potty. This is our most frequent exclamation.)

“Who peed in the office?”

“Time to rassle!”

“Pepper, move over.” (In the middle of the night.)

“Salsa, calm down!!”

“Go potty. Go potty. Go potty. Go potty. Go potty, and I’ll give you a treat. … Pepper, please go potty. Go potty. Go potty. Go potty. Go potty. Please potty. Go potty. Go potty. Go potty. Go potty. Hurry up. It’s cold [or hot] out here. Go potty. Go potty. Go potty. … Good potty!”

“Don’t lick me on the mouth!”

“But we like the mailman!”

“Who turned over the trash can?”

“Poop!”

“Who peed on the bathroom rug?”

“Don’t snatch! Be gentle.” (To Pepper, who likes to snatch her treats out of your hand.)

“That’s not very ladylike.” (To Salsa, when she flops onto her back to ask for a belly rub.)

“Dry your feet.” (Salsa’s signal to stop and wait for me when she comes in from the rain. They do have a little training.)

“Don’t bite me.” (To Salsa, who always bites my right index finger after I dry her feet.)

“Who peed in the laundry room?”

“Salsa, down!” (When someone arrives.)

“Who peed in the guest bedroom?”

“Salsa, chillax!”

“Pepper, you’re tiny.”

“Salsa, you’re pretty.”

(Whispering to Bruce) “Where’s the camera?”

“Salsa, you’re going to put my eye out with your tail.”

“Don’t bite me! I’m gonna bite you!” (During a rasslin’ match.)

“You have bad breath.”

“Don’t lick the window!”

“You stink!”

“Who needs a bath?”

“Anybody hungry?” (Just to see their joy as they race to the kitchen.)

(To both) “I love you.”

A fragrance or a stench?

Bruce had warned me that Salsa would need a bath when I got home from work tonight. The recent rains have made her path in our back yard muddy, and she romps through it with joyful abandon.

Today she smelled like she had rolled around in a cow pasture, he said.

The second I walked in the door, I thought of a different word for it: stench.

She stank like a person who hadn’t bathed in several days, had sweated and the sweat had dried, and then had sweated some more, developing what my colorful friend Helaine would call “a funk.”

Salsa always bites me when I try to pick her up for a bath. Then she bites me while I’m bathing her. Bites me, her “Mama,” the one who has nurtured her, fed her and given her refuge since the day I brought her home from the shelter. But I still love her.

Later this evening, as I was writing tomorrow’s post for my church’s daily Shaped by Scripture blog, my mind went back to Salsa and bath time. And me and my attitude toward my Creator.

I’ve been treating Him as though He doesn’t know what’s best for me. Him, the Creator of the universe, the One who has nurtured me, fed me (physically, spiritually, emotionally and in all other ways) and given me refuge since the day he pulled me out of the mud pit of my sin, where I have chosen to return and have been wallowing lately.

Acting like I deserve better than where he is allowing me to be right now. Biting His hand every time He reaches down to cleanse me. But He still loves me.

Just as it was time for Salsa to come in out of the mud and have a bath, it’s time for me to stop wallowing in self-pity and let Him cleanse me.

I want to be a fragrance, not a stench.

A book for Suzy

Sometimes you love something just because you love it, and trying to explain why just diminishes it.

Those of you who read my blog know my name, you know I love dogs (especially pound puppies) and you know I love to read. A book called A Dog for Susie is just perfect for me. Do I really need to explain why?

I won’t explain why I still love this book nearly four decades after receiving it, but I will show you.

I really thought this book was long gone. In the great purge of my dad’s stuff just before Mom downsized to a smaller house a few years ago, we got rid of a TON of his things — along with a lot of my books, board games and other childhood paraphernalia.

You see, Dad was a packrat, I am a reformed packrat, and Mom and big brother J.T. are tossers. Therefore, lots of stuff plus the need to downsize, combined with two tossers, a reformed packrat and a river of emotion equals stuff getting thrown out or sold that the reformed packrat will later regret having let go.

And for the past few years I had assumed A Dog for Susie had fallen victim to the great purge.

Fast forward to 2008. Bruce and I are trying to downsize, too. Since he was disabled last year and lost gainful employment (you can’t really count his writing computer programs for me as gainful — I pay him in raspberry sherbet and cups of green tea), we have decided to sell our house. And, friends, we have a LOT of books. Even after filling a “to donate” box, we still won’t have room for all of them in a smaller house. Because we have three rooms with built-in bookcases (in the market for a house? we’ll show you!) and the donation box contains a pitifully small number of donations.

So the other day I was lamenting that I wished we hadn’t tossed A Dog for Susie and how could I have let that book go anyway and how could anyone love it as much as I did, and Bruce — who has nearly recovered from his medical complications and has been busy as a bee, packing our books — said, “No, that book is downstairs on the shelf.” I was skeptical. Thought he must think I was talking about a different book. But he took me straight to the shelf. And there it was: a book for Suzy.

If I didn’t kiss him — on the lips — I should have.

Sometimes a book is meaningful only to the one it belongs to. And sometimes a book is meaningful to that someone’s husband just because he loves books, too, and knows that sometimes you can’t explain why a worn-out children’s book means so much to a 45-year-old woman who edits newspapers for a living.

“I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.” ~ Anna Quindlen

How now brown blog

I told you I would have trouble with brown. I struggled to find pictures I had already taken. I didn’t want to go around my house looking for something to take pictures of (I thought of photographing something I deal with daily — dog poo on the carpet — but Bruce didn’t think that was such a good idea), so the file photos I scrounged up will have to do.

I made this pumpkin cheesecake on Thanksgiving Day for a family from church when I was making money baking for people. The pecan praline topping was a little runnier than I would have liked but so good I wanted to drink it all up!

Click to see the apple pie I referred to in Crust-ophobic no more.

And saving the best for last: Below is Pepper in her sunny spot in the office. She appears mostly “black,” but if you look at her closely in the sunshine (in real life, not in this photo), you realize she’s really just very dark brown. And then there’s the obvious brown, which is the reason I chose her for Brown day.

Want to know why I post more pics of Pepper than Salsa? Salsa is in perpetual motion. I told Bruce she is self-winding. In most of the pictures I try to take of her, she’s just a big blur. I still want Whitney to take family pictures of all of us for Christmas cards; we’re going to need someone professional to take the pictures while we try to corral the furbabies.

Whitney and I tried year before last to schedule a photo shoot but could never work it out. And last year Bruce was sick, and we didn’t really want to take Christmas card pics of him in his bathrobe on the couch. However, he used just such a picture for his blog.

Tomorrow is pick your own color. I’m going to surprise you.

Blue day, blue dog

Again, I let it get close to bedtime before remembering the Week of Color. (To be fair, I haven’t been home from work that long.)

Today’s color is blue.

After Salsa and Pepper frolicked on the bed for a while, Pepper suddenly scurried under her bed, where she usually sleeps (yes, in the winter, she sleeps under her bed). The bed is blue (you’ll have to take my word for it), and our cheap, dog-proof, ugly comforter has lots of blue in it, so I grabbed the camera. Weird dog to the rescue again!