A Dog and a Daughter

Oscar is heading to a new and wonderful home soon. I will miss him. But I realized that I can't give him what he needs. Every time I have had to leave him, especially for an extended time, he becomes stressed and anxious and all kinds of bad behaviors ensue. But I'm past feeling sorry for him now. He's been staying with Chantel and getting all kinds of loving and consistent attention, even sleeping in Owen's bed every night. Chantel has been managing Oscar, along with her already busy life as a wife and mother and the owner of a 7 month-old lab. She's taken numerous calls about Oscar and thinks she's found the perfect home for him. I'm waiting to hear.

Chantel has been and continues to be a mother's dream of a daughter. She treats me with nothing but love and compassion no matter how stressed her life is, and she always agrees cheerfully to run any errands, bring me anything I need, visit with me at the hospital, or talk with me on the phone. She radiates love and beauty to a depth that never ceases to amaze me. I'm in awe that Heavenly Father sent her, and she agreed, to come to earth and be my girl.

He Forgot the Poop Sac

Sinai hospital. 4 am. Thanks for the Lasix (sp?) doc. I'm peeing every 1/2 hour. And starving--having eaten practically nothing but liquids for two weeks. Surgery soon. Looking forward to it. Blog surfing. Find one about a year's worth of crock pot cooking. Reminds me of my own crockpot story. I'm about to incriminate myself. Promise you'll still love me.

About 1980. Larry brings home a cottontail and drops it, skinned and all, into the kitchen sink. The kids are little. Clayton hasn't been born yet. We gardened. We canned. We hunted. He shot it, I cooked it, and we ate it. Grass fed beef. Goat milk. Home grown corn, potatoes and tomatoes. A different life. But I digress. So I rinse the little bunny's body, drop it in the crock pot, cover it with potatoes, carrots and onions, add water, salt and pepper. Put on the lid. Turn on the heat.

The next night:
What's for dinner? (Now how did you know that was asked by a man?).
Rabbit and potatoes.
You mean...the rabbit I brought home last night?
Yeah.
But I didn't finish cleaning it.
What do you mean you didn't finish cleaning it? You always clean in the carport and bring me the finished--parts.
Well, I forgot the poop sac.

The poop sac. Little brown pebbly rabbit poop. Hmm. The crock pot is full! There's so much food in there! Good, healthy organic-before-we-knew-what-organic-meant food that we planted and nurtured and harvested. And luckily, the poop sac is on the very bottom. Once I turned on the heat, I never touched the food until the next night.

Fast forward 25 years. I'm telling my younger sister, Rachel, the story. She's laughing. She and Mike did the mountain-man-and-his-little-woman stint too, in Oregon. So she gets the self-sufficiency at all costs mentally. In fact, we used to talk about collaborating on a cookbook: How to Make Two Hot Dogs Feed a Family of Five. But I digress again. Back to the story:

Rachel: So did you throw it out?
No.
Did you eat it? Now she's laughing harder.
No.
Well if you didn't throw it out and you didn't eat it, what did you do with it?
I'm laughing now too, and barely able to squeak out the truth:
We fed it to the kids!
We laugh so hard that tears run down our faces.

Oh the things we confess as we age!! But in my defense--I scooped off the top just that one time--and the rest wasn't totally wasted. It went to the dogs.