Yep! We finally did it. We found our new family member and adopted her yesterday. She is a gorgeous 4 year old American Eskimo/Golden Retriever mix. We have barely had her for 24 hours and she is already showing us how amazingly smart she is.
Izzy's first full day home - 2009
She is very quickly learning to mind while she is on her leash. She is also being very good and learning to sit and wait when going outside or coming in. We even had a moment just after getting her home yesterday when she got to meet our neighbor’s dog and was barely even phased by her.
Izzy - 2009
The shelter we got her from had her named Liza but she hadn’t taken to it. We’ve opted for Izzy instead. Bright girl that she is, she has already started to respond to it. Not only is she being such a wonderful girl for me, but she just rolls on her back for a tummy rub whenever the kids come up to her. She hasn’t even done much more than look at the cat.
I’m not sure how it is we managed to get so lucky with her, but I’m not complaining one little tiny bit. I’m a very happy doggy mom.
I had an extremely rough morning today. I’d found out after waiting the last couple of days that the shelter that was fostering the dog we wanted to adopt wasn’t willing to let her go to a family that had a cat even though I was told in my first conversation with them that she’d be fine with cats.
The hardest part for me was the fact that I had grown really attached to the idea of this dog. It seems silly to say that it was the dog itself, because I never got the chance to even meet her (though we’d had a tentative meet set up for this evening before they emailed and decided against it), but I know it really was more than just the idea that I was attached to. It was hard having the last several days be about continuing on with the process, filling out the paperwork and setting up a time to meet, all things filled with hope and promise to have it all halted abruptly and pulled away.
My first reaction was to want to say,” screw it! I don’t want to do this if it is going to hurt this bad and be this disappointing”, but I’m not. I won’t allow this one experience sour me on adopting a dog. It is going to be very hard, though. Between looking for dogs for my FIL and looking, now, for us, I have seen so many things that just make me sick.
We have a lot of different shelters and rescue groups in our area. Many are true rescue groups that do what they can to rescue animals from the shelters that are willing to put down an animal just because it didn’t find a home fast enough, but there are too many of those kinds of shelters in the area and not enough people that are willing or able to care for the animals.
It makes it even harder when you have to find one to fit into a family with kids and a cat. So far, we haven’t told the kids. I’m really glad we decided on that route after this morning. Once we have found one that we think is the one, then we will bring them in. I don’t want to have them upset if it takes a while.
Most of the people I’ve talked to or exchanged emails with have been wonderful help and great about answering any questions. There have been a couple though that make me wonder about their desire to actually help these animals find good homes, especially when that really is the ultimate goal.
A wonderful friend of mine posted this on a forum the other day. He has graciously given me permission to share it.
For many people, forgiving yourself is much more difficult than forgiving others. The problem here is that we know ourselves too well- we know what we were really thinking when we said the right things aloud, what our real motivations were, how petty our emotions can be. We see the correct behavior around us, and we know how bad we can be at heart. How can we forgive ourselves, when we know how good it felt inside when we hurt that jerk?
It is said that no one who likes sausage should ever watch it being made- it’s not an appetizing process. People are like sausages… when we look at a person, we don’t see all the disturbing things that shaped their souls. We don’t see the moments of shame and triumph, the instructional pains layered one upon the other since childhood that forged the soul we see. We see the finished sausage, and somehow imagine they were born that way.
But when we look at ourselves, we don’t see the sausage; we see all the horrible things that went into it, never dreaming that the sausages around us contain equally unsavory bits of meat and filler. What a gift it would be, the Scottish poet Burns tells us, to see ourselves as others see us. Try it once if you can: Block out all the secret knowledge of self, and look only at what the world can see… a talented, valued member of society. Accept that judgment now and then.
Making cakes is one of my many creative passions. The last several years, though, I haven’t had much desire to do anything that pushed my creative abilities. This year is different.
I decided to go all out and try some new things when I made my daughter’s birthday cake. I bought some gum paste and played for the first time. I’ve done some work with fondant along the same lines, but after playing with the gum paste, I’ve decided that I like the versatility of the gum paste better.
The fondant work I have done has been more along the lines of sculpting and accessorizing an iced cake, never as the complete covering. I decided to try that for the first time on this project as well.
I was a little intimidated by my grand ideas and the plan I had in mind, but I was still pretty excited about the challenge. I have to say, even though I made a few mistakes and I can see the areas I need to work on, improve and do differently next time, I am extremely pleased by how this cake turned out.
This is the front of the cake. I have a lot to learn on getting the fondant smooth, but I think I did pretty well considering this was my first attempt.
Hat Cake by FoxChild 2009
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This is a side view of the cake. I had an arrangement of gum paste flowers that was just off center of the front of the cake and another arrangement on the center back.
Hat Cake by FoxChild 2009
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Not only did I play with the sculpting of the gum paste, but I did a little painting as well. This is the detail of the back of the cake.
Gum Paste Flower Detail by FoxChild 2009
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This is a close up of a couple of the gum paste flowers that were in the front side arrangement. I loved how the calla lilies came together. The roses I’d done before in fondant, but you can get the petals much thinner and more realistic in the gum paste.
I have a history of making some pretty poor choices in who I care about and who I place my trust in. It seems that anytime I fully allow someone in, they come with claws and knives and razors and anything else that is effective in shredding one’s heart. I have come to believe that this is one of my lessons for this life. I just never thought that the lesson would come in the form of my family.
Over the last several years, I have become extremely close to my teenage nephew. We’ve included him in so many of our family things, you’d think he was one of ours. That relationship had become even closer over the last several months. Out of the number of family members and friends he could have picked, he chose me to talk to and confide in about many things that he hadn’t been able to talk to others about.
He has spent a huge amount of time at our house, playing with the kids, talking, having fun and just hanging out. Not many teenagers would choose to hang out with an adult family member over friends. In many ways I was truly honored by his choice. I thoroughly enjoyed the company and the time he spent with me.
One of the things that seemed to be an important factor in our relationship was the fact that he could trust me and that he could talk to me without worry of being judged or criticized. It was really important to me that I was able to be that for him. To be that safe haven.
All of that didn’t change how he reacted after a huge blow up with his dad (my brother) the other day. He was upset enough that he ran away. He ended up going to a friend’s house and stayed there overnight, but no one knew that. Everyone expected to hear from him the next day, but he didn’t contact anyone.
We know where he is. We know that he is safe. We also know that his anger has been directed beyond his dad and has managed to flood out onto everyone else. Including me. He has refused contact with anyone. The only one who has been able to get him to talk at all has been his mother and I think even that is now gone.
I understand his anger and his frustration. In many ways I know that he is just in a place where he needs to be selfish right now and that this really isn’t about me. It is still breaking my heart. I miss him terribly and I’m saddened that he hasn’t felt that he could trust me, that he didn’t feel safe coming to me.
I have no regrets about allowing him that fragile space in my heart that is so easily bruised. You cannot possibly hope to experience the wonder and the joy that comes with the feelings of love without opening up that space to others, without giving them your trust. Knowing me, I will do so again and again for him because he is so precious to me.
I know that I cannot choose the course of his life for him. I know that the choices he is making right now will shape the man he will become. As always, I will not judge him for that even if I don’t like it. It is his life to do with what he will. I can only hope that he chooses well and will find his way back to us soon.
I never thought that when contemplating a post for Samhain/Halloween that it would be this one. I never thought that I would end up talking about family or death in such a specific or personal way. For a day that is common for Pagans to honor those that have passed and remember them, I never thought the person that would be at the forefront of those thoughts would be one that was so close or had passed so recently.
This is a subject that I have not talked about here before. Mostly because it is so personal and it involves other people so I didn’t feel very comfortable talking about it in such a public way. I have still felt the desire to write about it in some way, but I’ve always held back and not done so. The events over this past week have changed those feelings somewhat. This is after all my space to do with as I see fit, an outer expression of who I am, all that I am. With all that is swirling through and around me, I think that it is somehow wrong not to talk about it here.
My mother-in-law has battled breast cancer for nearly the entire time I have been married. In all that time she has undergone treatment after treatment, each one really only keeping the inevitable at bay. Earlier this year, she could no longer handle the treatments. It became a routine of taking it a day at a time and enjoying what moments you could. Up until the last couple of months or so, she had still been relatively healthy.
This is something that we have all lived with for a long time. It is something that we knew was coming some day. That didn’t lessen the blow of finding out that she wouldn’t be here this year to celebrate the holidays with us. It also didn’t ease the shock of her having to go to the hospital right after we found that out. We were still expecting a few more weeks.
Watching anyone change from a healthy, vibrant adult to someone so fragile is a long hard journey. It has been excruciatingly painful to watch loved ones cling to every last bit of life they can and know that there is nothing you can do to make things better for anyone. This past week has been one full of confusion, contradictions, pain, frustration, sadness, grief and so many more emotions that are so jumbled up that they are no longer recognizable.
When going through something like this, you have moments where you see the world around you and wonder why it hasn’t stopped. You wonder how anyone can continue to go about their daily routines when you have just had your world ripped apart. When you finally stop to see and to think about that, you learn that even though death is at your door, life hasn’t stopped no matter how much you think it should.
My mom had given me a couple of little books that talked about death and the dying process. In one, there was a sentence that started with… “God (Life)…” It was written just like that. When I read that, I stopped. I went back and read those two words, written as they were, over and over again. I don’t think I have ever seen the concept of the Divine expressed more accurately, more perfectly, more simply. Those two little words were more comfort to me than anything else that I’d read or heard or felt since this all began. It grounded me and gave me a perspective that I so desperately needed.
Each day we have gotten up and wondered if today will be the day. We have spent hours at a bedside listening and holding our own breath, wondering if it will be her last. All the while torn between the hope that she will take that next one and a hope that it is her last so all the pain and suffering could finally be over. It is an awful realization to know that you are in a way hoping that someone you care about would die.
Our goodbyes have been said and our love shared in a time before the sadness could take too strong a hold. We now wait and watch. She has slipped into a coma and it won’t be much longer now. By tomorrow other things will need our attention. For now, we are all standing on that border between life and death with a bit of a longing for both.
I finally managed to go through all of my photos from our Florida trip yesterday. I took way more than I realized and that is with me NOT carrying my camera around with me constantly. There are also so many that I’d like to share with you, I decided I probably need to break this into a couple of different posts.
One of the days we were there, we made a trip down to Sarasota to visit Selby Gardens. If it hadn’t be quite so hot, I would have been able to spend days there, as well as filling at least 2 or 3 memory cards for my camera. It was a beautiful place with so many unusual plants and flowers that I have never seen anywhere other than in a book or photo. Some of the orchids they had were just incredible. Read the rest of this entry ?
I’m sure at some point in time we have all heard that what we wanted was not possible. When we hear it it is a huge blow because essentially the person that said our dreams were impossible dropped a brick wall in your path to achieving that goal. I know I have heard it numerous times in my life.
One of those times was after my divorce from my first husband. I had gotten to the point where I was starting to think about wanting to date again and I made a lot of decisions of what I did and didn’t want in a future partner. When I expressed those desires to certain family and friends, I was informed that a man like that didn’t exist and that I was setting myself up for disappointment if I expected to find him.
After trying to find that ideal partner for a while and not succeeding, I began to think that maybe they were all right about him not existing. I also knew that I would rather be alone for the rest of my life than to make a compromise about what it was I needed so I didn’t give up. Guess what? I met him. He did exist and I have been living the impossible for nearly 8 years now.
Another thing that has been expressed as impossible is the ability for an online group to work. Everyone that I have ever talked to about the idea has said that it just can’t happen. That there is no way to be able to create the bonds online that you do in real life and face to face with a warm body instead of a cold computer screen. It has been said that you just cannot get the same closeness and energy from that medium.
Again, I am doing the impossible. In some ways, this amazes even me who believes in the impossible. It is still relatively new and there is no way to tell for sure that it will last. For now though, I am a part of something incredible. The ladies I have met and connected with never cease to amaze me with their ability to be such beautiful caring creatures no matter the issue or the people involved or even the vastly different backgrounds and personalities that have come together.
I may not be able to get close enough for an actual hug in the times when they are most needed, but that doesn’t lessen the meaning behind the desire. So to all my beautiful cyber sisters, thank you for helping me to realize a dream and to make the impossible possible.
