Goodbye, Sweet Kayla

Today is a very sad day for our family. The matriarch of our canines, Kayla, crossed over this morning. What a beautiful soul . . . she would have been 16 years old in May. Robert got her when he was living in British Columbia, and she's been through a lot with him over the years. Always faithful, always loving. I've never seen a dog as crazy about food. She did this happy dance every time we would feed her . . . . bouncing back and forth between the 2 back legs and the 2 front legs, then twisting, and, if you weren't fast enough with the food bowl, barking at you to speed things up. And she had an amazing internal clock that, if we happened to be home, exactly at 5:00 p.m., she would come find you so that you could fill that food bowl. The Boxers, who previous to our family merger had been "pick at the bowl all day long" eaters, learned quickly to eat their food or it would be gone.

Over the holidays, we knew something was up because she stopped doing the happy dance. She stopped eating her food at one point, but we bought her a different food which she seemed to love, so we hoped she had just tired of the old food. However, a few days ago, she stopped showing interest in that food . . . then we found some soiled spots on the carpet . . . something was definitely not right. Friday night, when Mattie and I came home, Robert was on the floor with her . . . he said she had stumbled coming down the stairs and just stayed where she fell. She wouldn't eat or drink. Later that night, though, Robert's daughter came over . . . we were going to go skiing the next day, so she was going to spend the night with us. Kayla perked up a little when she arrived. The next morning, she even ate her breakfast and went outside with the other dogs . . . we thought maybe the previous evening had just been a sore muscle or hip. We had neighbors check on her throughout the day, and she seemed okay Saturday night when we returned from skiing. However, on Sunday, she barely moved the entire day. Wouldn't eat . . . even when I cooked her chicken, which she loved. Wouldn't eat her cookies. Wouldn't play. At one point, I tried to take her out to use the bathroom, and she collapsed at the edge of the patio. I got a blanket and put on the floor and carried her back inside. She didn't move all night and only drank a little water, no food. So, this morning, we called the vet first thing. No appointments available, but they said they could work us in on a walk-in basis. At 10:30, they called us back. The vet took her history from us, checked her heart and her kidneys and told us it was time. Her kidneys were hard and very small . . . and with the lack of output over the course of the weekend, signaled failure. Her heart was very slow and breathing labored. . . . She was suffering, which a grand lady like her should not have to do.

I've never had to do anything like that before.

My first dog, Bugle, went without my knowledge . . . my dad took him to the vet without me even knowing . . . and came home without him. I still struggle with that today . . . the never-getting-to-say-goodbye to my first best friend. My second dog, Bud, was living with my parents when I was at college . . . I came home for the weekend, and my dad told me that Bud was ready to die and that he had just let him out of the pen to go do it on his terms. I was dumbfounded and furious. My brother and I spent the entire day . . . until nightfall . . . looking for his body . . . never found it. My third dog, Murphy, my beloved Basset Hound, was staying with my first husband at the time he crosssed over because I had suspected my second husband, who I was married to at the time, was being abusive to him when I was not around --- this same husband is the one who beat me to a pulp one night for turning down the volume on our TV after putting Bug to bed. So I was not with Murphy either . . . he was 14 though and had lived a great life. My first husband very sweetly took him back to his parents' property in Mena and buried him there. The night my second husband beat me, he also kicked our Great Dane, Sadie, in the mouth as he crossed the room to take me out. So, when I left home to live on the road with Bug (my ex was threatening to kill me), we sheltered Sadie with a vet friend of mine so she wouldn't be hurt by him. Devastated and trying to live as a single parent with a 4-year-old, paying all the bills without any support, I found a couple in Northwest Arkansas who had Sadie's sibling and some other Great Danes . . . I gave her to them to raise while I picked up the pieces of a broken life. They loved her dearly, and I could never bring myself to ask for her back after I got back on my feet a couple of years later. She, too, crossed over before I moved to Colorado, but I wasn't there.

Long story to say that I was not prepared for today. But the vet was incredible. He's the same one who diagnosed Cooper with Addison's Disease, and he was compassionate, competent, and answered all of our questions before we could even ask. He shaved a little area of her beautiful golden leg and inserted the IV. Robert and I held her the entire time . . . . looking into those beautiful, loving brown eyes . . . telling her what a good dog she had been . . . how she had always done everything right . . . how much love and joy she had brought to everyone . . . how we were so thankful she wouldn't have to hurt or struggle anymore. We held her until the very end . . . one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do . . . watch the life go out of a living creature . . . one of our cherished family members.

Goodby, sweet Kayla . . . . we miss you so . . . .

Future You or Past You . . . which one would you rather talk to?

Robert’s daughter gave me a book for Christmas entitled “What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self”. It is a collection of letters written by prominent, successful women and edited by Ellyn Spragins. The writers include Maya Angelou, Cokie Roberts, Olympia Dukakis, Madeleine Albright, Picabo Street, and other wonderful women, and with each letter, the author writes to herself at a younger age . . . giving her younger self a piece of information or advice that she wishes she had known “then” or the encouragement to get through a coming hurdle. The book stuck with me long after I had finished reading it because of the concept. . . . I have had numerous turning points in my life where I would have liked to have had the wisdom of my future. Times when I could have used the older, wiser me to let me know things were going to be okay. The proverbial “this, too, shall pass” might have meant more coming from “future me” as opposed to well-meaning friends. I loved the idea of the letter . . . it seems therapeutic. I loved the idea so much that I sent the idea to my dear friend who is chairing the literary festival in my former state. What if . . . you got women who are successful role models in the state and community to write those letters and read them at a public forum with teen-aged and college-aged women in attendance? . . . could it provide encouragement? . . . could it give them a tool in their war chests to use when life comes at them full force? When I was younger, I never had an ounce of appreciation for the real lives of the women I viewed as successful. To me, their lives seemed charmed. They, obviously, did not wear their trials and tribulations on their sleeves for the rest of us to see, so I assumed the absence of difficulties. So many times, when I was struggling over the years, I considered myself such a “failure” because I was dealing with real-life problems instead of having the carefree life I assumed came with success. As I’ve grown older and seen the challenges me and my friends have overcome, I know now that behind EVERY successful woman is a trail of difficulties she’s encountered and overcome . . . life’s little tests that have made her stronger and brought her to the success that everyone admires.

Shortly after finishing the book, I came across another concept. A local radio DJ found a website at www.futureme.org. With this website, you pick a date in the future to have an email delivered to you . . . it can be one week, one year, twenty years . . . it’s your decision . . . and then you write an email to yourself and have it delivered on that date. (Of course, if you’re picking a date far out in the future, you need to make sure you are going to have the same email address . . . and, of course, hopefully, you’ll still be on planet Earth at your chosen time. ) In any event, I think it has the potential to offer a similar benefit. . . . .

So, who would you rather write to? Your former self or your future self? Try it!

I'm Baaaaaack . . . . .

One year and one month later, I'm finally making this blog a priority once again. I've missed it . . . not sure if anyone else has . . . but, as I looked back at it recently, I realized what a wonderful history of my time in Colorado it provided when I was writing. With my mother having died from an Alzheimer's-related complication, and having shown symptoms in her early sixties, my memories have become increasingly precious to me. Last year has to have been one of the best of my life, and I was so busy living that I didn't really record . . . well . . . anything. I have pictures from our travels, but outside of documenting in a journal one trip to Nanaimo for Robert's dad's funeral, I have nothing. So, while I originally started this blog so that my beloved friends and family in Arkansas would have a window into my life out west, the driving force behind my re-entry into the blogging world is to capture my own life in a format I can return to should the memories begin to fade.

It was a growth year, that's for sure. Robert and I moved in together on December 17, 2008, and started our journey as a family with Bug, 2 Boxers (Cooper and Chloe), and a Golden Retriever (Kayla). In that short time, an awful lot happened. We lost Robert's father to colon cancer in January. In February, Robert started a new job, and we bought a new car (one which I'm still trying to learn to like). Bug finished elementary school and started middle school. Robert suffered a torn plantaris tendon in his men's soccer championship game, two days before we were to leave for California for him to play in a long-anticipated hockey tournament with his former Canadian hockey buddies -- so our summer plans of tennis, hiking the mountains, and biking were over with a nasty slide tackle. In August, we started a soccer team - - - Robert became the coach of Bug's team, while continuing to coach a boys' premier competitive team out of Westminster. I (naively) took on the roles of team manager and fitness trainer. In September and October, Robert patiently nursed me through surgery and the yucky recovery thereafter. Over the course of the year, we traveled to Canada four times, Seattle once, and made lots of weekend jaunts to the ski resorts. We've had to deal with immigration issues, an "ex", and agonizing decisions over where, in the metro area, we want to live.

I'm exhausted just thinking about it all . . . but, it was an incredible year. I have the life partner and relationship I've dreamed about since I was a little girl . . . the one I could never find until I learned some really hard . . . life lessons. Bug. . . . . . finally . . . . . has the father and male role model that has never existed in her life. She has a smart, beautiful, and wonderfully talented "older sister" in Robert's 25-year-old daughter. She has a loving, athletic, fun "older brother" in Robert's 28-year-old son, who has a beautiful, sweet wife, from China, and the most adorable daughter, who just turned 2. We are a twenty-first century, multi-cultural, multi-national family. Robert and I successfully merged dogs, dishes, and lots of furniture. We triumphed over those inevitable first-year challenges . . . and there were some challenges considering our collective baggage of failed marriages . . . two each . . . (and, for each of us, our "second spouses" were real doozies). Yet, I've never felt so incredibly blessed in my life. I feel like I've found the yin to my yang (or is he the yang to my yin . . .?), anyway, it's the best. I have a peace about me that I'm not sure I've ever felt. Robert has said the exact same thing to me. My daughter has blossomed in ways I could not have imagined. So . . . a resolution for 2010 was to not let it get by me without recording some of these terrific life events . . . the triumphs and the tragedies. :) Make no mistake . . . I'm still in search of that "high altitude attitude" . . . I hope you enjoy the journey with me to find it.