Otis

This is the most difficult post I've ever had to write.

Because the unthinkable has happened.

Nineteen days after we had to say goodbye to Milo we were forced to let his brother Otis go also.

On December 14, 2013, we drove up into Kentucky horse country to adopt two miniature long-haired black dachshund brothers who were nine years old and had been surrendered six months earlier.

It had been one year exactly to the day that our dear 15 year old dachshund Penelope had died. 

We walked into the shelter and saw dachshunds running around. Which were the twin brothers Otis and Milo who we had come to see? As soon as I sat down on the couch Otis jumped in my lap and growled at any other dog that tried to come near. My heart was his from that second on.

RH claimed tiny Milo and before long we were on our way back to Nashville, our son driving while we each held a dachshund in the back seat.

Otis reached up a little later after we bought burgers at a drive-through and in the blink of an eye bit off half of the hamburger I held in my hand. 

From the moment they ran into our house and headed straight for the kitchen and looked up at me as if to ask, Where's din-din?, they made themselves right at home. There didn't seem to be any adjustment period ever.

They were home and we were their mama and daddy. They loved our 24-acre yard and explored it happily with us, on a leash the first six months there and then were able to run leash free with us when they weren't playing in their big pen in the front garden.

Whatever the weather they were always glad to put on their collars and go for a walk with us, sometimes a hen or two along for company.

While little Milo gladly wore his sweater in cold weather, Otis preferred not to wear his. And he loved the snow.

When we moved to a beach town in Florida two and a half years later, they handled the whole experience just fine. Even the large house we lived in didn't seem to faze them. Otis just got a lot more exercise following me from room to room.

Our evacuation to Destin six months later during a hurricane? That was a piece of cake, no problem, no worry.

As long as Mama was there with them 24/7 and Daddy came home every night after work, Otis and Milo were happy.

But we were all thrilled to come home to Tennessee last January 6 where the big fenced pen in our new house gave them more room to play outside, and the house was small enough that it was a cinch for Otis to trail Mama from room to room all day long.

During the days after Milo's death, Otis became even more my shadow. 

Which was fine with me as I could hardly bear to have him out of my sight.

None of us wanted to be away from each other and he would snuggle between me and his daddy on the sofa where we would rub his tummy and silky ears and watch HGTV with the sound off.

There were lots of walks outside to his brother's little grave in the butterfly garden. And we went out on the front porch to watch daddy work in the yard, each wanting to be close to where the others were. Because our family had shrunk.

Every day when RH would come home, if it wasn't raining, we would take Otis out in the yard for a good walk.

We would walk down near our neighbor's pond, letting Otis have time to stop and sniff as much as he wanted to. We were in no hurry.

And then 15 days after his brother left us, Otis would hardly eat his breakfast.

We took him to his doctor where they said his abdomen was uncomfortable and he was guarding it. But he also seemed to have a spot on his back that hurt so they did x-rays and found that he had one slipped disc.

We thought we had a plan. We brought him home with meds and Otis and I would rest as much as possible, not moving from room to room unless necessary. No more walks outside for a while, pee pads in the laundry room were good enough for a boy to do his business.

Three days later after trips to the vet every day and changes of medication and IV fluids and more blood work, Otis, just like Milo, had sky high kidney values and was in complete kidney failure. 

That last day, last Saturday, we brought him to his doctor so hopeful because he seemed so alert after the IV the day before. His eyes just seemed to say that he would be okay. I never dreamed we wouldn't be leaving with him alive and on his way to recovery. 

Over the decades we have of course had to make that hardest of decisions for beloved dogs. Making it for Milo just 19 days before was heartbreaking but saying, Yes, go ahead and sedate Otis, was almost impossible to do. I wanted to take him home and squeeze out a couple more days of just holding him but it didn't seem right to put him through more days of pain.

These days without Otis and Milo have been agonizing. We've never not had a dog except for the first couple of years of marriage. 

If you've been through this before then you know how empty your house is, how lonely you are for the sound of little toenails clicking behind you, how hard a meal is without those little eyes below you hoping a crumb will fall to the floor. 

You know how it hits you within seconds of waking up in the morning and there's no one to want to go potty, no breakfast to fix before you fix your own, no one to tuck in bed at night.

And no one to tell "You stay, I love you, I'll be back soon" when you have to go to the store.

I wish I could end this here and just leave a final photograph of our handsome Otis, but I have one more thing to tell you, just in case you have dogs of your own.

Four days after Otis died the doctor called with the results of final blood testing that was sent off. Otis, and most likely Milo, had died of a bacterial disease called leptospirosis grippotyphosa.

I'm telling you this so that if you have dogs and don't know about this disease that you'll be sure to inform yourself and question your veterinarian.

Our doctor who we'd seen for decades and love apologized for not having run the test earlier but he hadn't seen a case in a very long time. 

Evidently the marshy areas around ponds are breeding grounds for it from infected wildlife. All it takes is for a dog to sniff or lick the urine of an infected animal, in our case it was probably a raccoon. 

After questioning the doctor about risks to people--watch for fever or chills and at the first sign see your doctor--I asked him if this meant we could never again have dogs here.

He said not at all, that it just meant that at least three weeks before coming to us they would need to have the lepto vaccine and that we should have boosters given every 4 to 6 months. He told us that more and more dog groomers are requiring that their customers' dogs have this vaccine before bring theirs to them.

This is what we hope to do because we are dog people. If you've ever read a book or article that tells you to list your defining words then you know what I'm saying when I tell you that dachshunds are one of my top defining words.

Life just seems empty without a couple of dachshunds in my life. I envy my friend Josh who has three, or maybe it's four.

But most of all I envy, long for, those almost four years when we had Otis and his brother Milo in ours. 

I'm turning off comments on this post. I know that each of you would as lovingly express your sorrow for us as you did in the previous post when we lost little Milo, so please know that I know that and it means the world to me. But I just don't have the heart for any more blogging this soon. Thank you for understanding and I wish a bountiful and blessed Thanksgiving Day for each of my dear friends who visit me and RH here. 

Milo

It's been over a month since I've written here. For almost the first three of those weeks there was no reason other than that life was just too wonderful to spend sitting holding a laptop, October too magnificent not to enjoy with my full attention.

Then October 19th came and Milo began shivering. The next day his doctor ran blood work and said his kidney values were high. The plan was for three days of fluids under the skin, meds and a special diet and then to run blood work again. 

On the 24th we carried Milo in for the fourth time knowing that something was very wrong. And it was, his kidney failure was off the charts. And so once again we went through the heartbreaking time of holding a beloved fur baby until the light went out of his eyes. 

RH and I have spent the time since that day remembering our little Milo and consoling his twin brother Otis.

We've thanked God so many times for the gift of these two brothers who were nine years old when we adopted them from a wonderful rescue organization on December 14, 2013, exactly one year to the date from when we'd said goodbye to our 15 year old dachshund Penelope.

Milo and Otis were twins but different. Milo was so much smaller. He got cold easily. He always had to be coaxed to eat. I played many foolish games with Milo to get him to eat. 

He was so attached to his brother.

He would often climb into one of the many nests scattered throughout our house that was already occupied by his twin.

But there were times when he could be a loner, too.

Often when Otis would run back inside, Milo would stay outside and just sit in the sun and watch the birds, chipmunks and squirrels.

Both Milo and Otis handled well our move to Florida last year and back to Tennessee after nine months. 

They even handled an evacuation to the Gulf coast last year during a hurricane. Honestly, they were always fine if their Mama and Daddy were near.

Milo was my talking dachshund, my singing dachshund. He and I would give concerts for the neighbors while Otis was so embarrassed, Really? Must you, Mama?

Milo always loved for me to hold him in my arms and would lay his head on my shoulder.

We did a lot of that.

We all miss Milo so much.

Otis spent the first few days just watching, waiting. And the next few with his head on his front paws, looking sunk in sadness. 

He's just wanted to be in the same room all the time with us, as close as he could get next to us.

We've developed new routines, routines for three, not four.

Three go on walks now, three come home.

And I spend a lot of time looking out my kitchen window over to a small resting place for our Milo in the corner of the butterfly garden. 

"What Monsieur Béliveau needed was to feel bad.

And then he'd feel better."

Louise Penny, from The Cruelest Month

Dear friends,

It is with a heavy heart that I publish this post about Milo because I just turned on the television and learned of the horrific news of another church shooting, this time in Texas. I would not ever want to compare our sadness to those families who will now be going through the worst heartbreak possible.

As RH and his family have had bad news about dear ones this last week, I know others are facing their own challenges. 

I pray we will all be a compassionate and loving community to those who are hurting in ways we can't even imagine.

Sending love to each of you,

Dewena

I'll tell you mine if you'll tell me yours...

Those of you who have visited me here and at my other blog for almost five years now might think I'm slightly obsessed with the 1950s and earlier, and you wouldn't be far wrong.

There is one subject I cannot get enough of, am besotted with, and that is:

The Life of the American Family

in the 1950s and earlier,

as portrayed in vintage women's magazines

A sure cure for the blues for me is pulling out a few of the old magazines from my collection and sitting down to lose myself in the pages.

These old magazines inspire me and I get up a better and happier woman after my time with them, more cheerful, more optimistic, more motivated.

I know that sounds crazy but Jane Davison and Lesley Davison understood the popularity of the early women's magazines in their book How to Make A House A Home:

And all of us who were turning the pages were receiving parts of the same message: we can make ourselves, our homes, our lives better by working and buying, by caring enough."

I get up from reading a vintage issue of Woman's Home Companion or Ladies' Home Journal or McCall's or more obscure magazines feeling that I've taken a magical antidepressant--without any bad side effects!

And sometimes I am inspired to cook a meal or even bake a cake.

This Brown-eyed Susan Cake from the September 1937 issue of McCall's magazine was fun to make and decorate.

Guess who made the brown-eyed Susans on it? RH did! He used almonds for the petals and chocolate covered raisins for the eyes.

But I'm not going to give you the recipe here because it was not that great. After all, it is a recipe from The Depression years, and recipes from those years are often very skimpy on sugar and other ingredients. So this is what I'll do when I make another one.

I'll take my best Devil's Food Cake recipe, which happens to be a fabulous one from RH's mother and has buttermilk and twice the sugar, and bake that.

The banana cream filling was okay but nothing to write home about so nix that. The coffee icing that I boiled to a soft ball stage was not sweet enough or intensely flavored enough so next time I will find a richer recipe for that online and use it for both filling and icing.

Because we can keep the good things of the old days and discard the bad. It's just deciding what is good and what is bad that's sometimes difficult, isn't it?

I made this cake and shared it with a brother-in-law and sister-in-law, along with a dish my mother often used to make when I was a child, Swiss Steak. As good as my mother's Swiss Steak was, 

                           I used Alton Brown's recipe instead.

I've never had an Alton Brown recipe to fail and his Swiss Steak is fork tender and full of flavor. 

RH helped me make it because we doubled the recipe so we could share it, and it required trimming the fat from two large bottom round roasts and then slicing them in 1/2 inch slices, dredging them with flour and seasonings and browning them for a few minutes on each side. That took some time, and knife skills.

Then we had two pan loads of thin sliced onions to sauté, next celery and garlic.

(And yes, I'm a messy chef.) Then we cooked the sauce, tripling it because the leftovers from this dish make the base for a wonderful vegetable-beef soup.

The day after I made the cake and Swiss Steak, I found a recipe for Swiss Steak in the October 1951 issue of Ladies' Home Journal. It was identical to Mama's, good but not as fabulous as Alton B's.

What was fabulous though was the pretty presentation of the dish, of the entire meal. The picture sure makes my Swiss Steak look pitiful. I hadn't even put a sprig of parsley on to serve it.

Get my point? That recipe needed improvement but a 1951 magazine inspired me to next time put more effort into the beauty of my meals because we also eat with our eyes, don't we?

Yes, I adore my old magazines, even though not everything in life then was as good as it is today. We have to take the good from those days for our lives now and change what was bad, I believe. And we certainly could take some of what is bad now and return to what was good in The Old Days, amen?

I admit that I am obsessed with The Old Days, the 1950s especially.

Evan Jones, in his biography of my favorite chef from that time, James Beard, quoted this from the New York Times:

"A typical American family then could afford three children, a house, two cars, three weeks at the seashore, a television set, and meat seven times a week, all on a single wage earner's income."

Ah, those were the days, my friend...

So I will continue to read and research and dream about the 1950s and earlier. I think that in my retirement years I've earned the right to immerse myself in the study of this time period. And often I will share my passion here at Dewena's Window.

Are you rolling your eyes at me?

I could pick a stranger topic to be passionate about, for example:

"ancient Scottish grasses"

That's what a minor character in one of my favorite Louise Penny books, Bury Your Dead, was passionately interested in and spent his days in the library studying. The elderly man told Chief Inspector Armand Gamache:

"Ironically, now that I'm so near the end of my life

I seem to have all the time in the world."

I've adopted that stance too. I have all the time in the world now, and if I want to spend it in the first half of the 1900s, that's what I'm going to do, by golly.

Now, my very dear friends who are reading this, I shared my passion with you. Would you please share your passion with me?

What is your "ancient Scottish grasses"?

And many many thanks to a dear blog friend, Peggy of Season to Season,

who sent me some delightful magazines from the 1920s--Modern Priscilla--for my collection....just because she felt they wanted to be with me.

Wasn't that nice!

See there, if people know what your passion is they just might send you a gift of it sometime........

Unless your passion happens to be George Clooney, maybe?

Morning Mist

"It comes on a morning with a clear sky

and a clean horizon,

a brilliant morning full of blue and green

and the long shadows of sunrise.

It is not a gray mist;

it is white, white as daisy petals,

whiter than cumulus clouds,

shimmery white and so thin it shimmers

of silver as the sun strikes through it."
Hal Borland

A walk around our yard in the morning mist:

Thank you for taking this walk with me on

the day that my favorite nature writer, Hal Borland,

says that "another equinox is tallied off and

officially another Summer ends."

Our 2.4 acre wedge-shaped yard has over 500 ft.

road frontage along curving pavement

so few drivers dare speed on it. 

RH has a lot of grass to cut but I asked him

to leave a long section of it wild

along a thick hedgerow that gives us road

privacy and gives the wildlife shelter.

Happy first day of Autumn to all of you!

I'm so excited to see this day come!

Are you?

"This [a morning mist] is the blown breath of Autumn long before there is even a hint of frost in the air."

Hal Borland

The "blown breath of Autumn"....I feel it coming! Do you?

Those Were the Days

On a lovely September day of 1963 at 12 noon, I turn off my IBM Selectric typewriter in the Research and Statistics Department, put away the papers I've typed that morning for the latest questionnaire that will go to the printing department, take my purse out of the lower drawer of my desk and stand up to leave for my lunch hour.

I stop by the ladies room first and tell the other girls that I'm skipping lunch in the cafeteria to shop at Cain-Sloan for stockings as I'm wearing my last pair with no runs. I borrow some Aqua Net and then brush off the shoulders of the black sheath my mother made for me out of polished black cotton.

It is warm enough outside for a sleeveless dress but against the rules for me to wear one at the religious publishing house where I work. Needless to say, pants are not allowed either. 

I go to the elevator and soon am out on the sidewalk hurrying along. Five or six blocks later I am at Cain-Sloan and hurry inside to the stocking counter as I plan to go downstairs for a tuna fish stuffed tomato before returning to work.

There is one saleslady available and I tell her my size and she pulls out four thin boxes, opens the lids and spreads apart crisp tissue paper. I point to the tan, darker than what I wear, and she carefully slides her hand inside a sheer pair.

I envy her manicure, shake my head and say I'll have three pairs of the nude, knowing tan is too dark for my pale legs. I present my charge card and we conclude our transaction, smiling at each other, one lady dressed in black to another.

I wish I have time for lunch in the Iris Room--and my mother there to pay for it--but instead hurry to the basement lunch counter. As I walk back to work on this September day, a hint of fall in the air, I know I look slim in my black sheath dress, my Maidenform panty girdle not really needed except that it is proper and expected, and its fasteners hold my stockings in place better than the garter belt I wore in high school days. 

I fairly fly along Church Street in my black leather high heels. And my feet don't hurt even the least bit when I push open the doors to go inside, five minutes before I'm due back at my typewriter.

Think of that!

You might ask why I didn't wear pantyhose instead of stockings?

It took me years to switch to pantyhose. Why?

Picture this day:

I am excited to be wearing pantyhose for the first time. I swing up out of my new red MG Midget after parking on the roof at work, feeling very sophisticated and free of a hot panty girdle. 

I hurry along to the roof elevator when the dreaded thing happens. My hose begin to creep down. By the time I enter the elevator they are around my thighs. Off the elevator I take mincing steps, pressing my knees together. 

I pass the cafeteria and realize I am not going to make it much further without them puddling around my ankles. I go into the nurse's office and tell her my predicament. She solves the problem and for the rest of the day I carefully maneuver around the office with four safety pins holding my new pantyhose to my slip.

And so I threw the pantyhose out and returned to my panty girdle and stockings until pantyhose was much improved, probably about the time they came in white plastic eggs and were sold in grocery stores.

But what I wouldn't give for just one more day of shopping in Cain-Sloan in downtown Nashville at 5th and Church, my mother along to whip out her charge card and my father there to take me and my little sisters into the record department where we would pick out new records and go into a booth to listen to them.

Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end......

Oh, dear...

[Note of 8/18/23: Before anyone perhaps reads this blog post in the future, I must profusely apologize to author Louise Penny for what I wrote here six years ago. What was I thinking? While I never intended to criticize her tremendous talent and only meant to say that it was her moving away to a different type of mystery book that disappointed me--one more intensely action packed--it was ridiculous for me to presume any criticism at all. 

I did skip her novels these last few years because of that disappointment but in June this year I began  listening to all of Penny's books on audiobook with a  free library app as I realized my eye problems were cutting down on the number of books I could get through. 

I decided to begin with the newer Penny books I had missed and I must tell you that listening to them was a revelation for me. I realized that the author is a  master at writing a book series that is a delight to the ears as well as to the mind. I'm saying this because I've sampled other of my favorite authors on audiobook too this summer and so far none can compare. So much so that after listening to the three new books I had missed I began all over again with Still Life, the first novel in her Three Pines series.

Again, with all my heart I apologize to the brilliant author, Louise Penny.]

 
Last week we had dark and stormy nights, days too, here in Nashville with record cool temps. Perfect for reading Louise Penny's newest book, Glass Houses featuring Armand Gamache, now promoted to the Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté du Québec. 

I am a longtime Louise Penny fan. So what did I like about Glass Houses?

I loved the last chapter.

It was exactly as I wished last chapters to be, the essence of Penny's core characters that I love dearly, even those I am beginning to like--Ruth and her duck Rosa. Ruth is beginning to grow on me but I still have reservations about the duck.

In the last chapter the core Three Pines villagers are safe, including my literary crush Armand who is in Montreal attending to...well, I won't reveal that.

In Olivier's bistro in Three Pines, the villagers are gathered to view Clara's newest odd paintings of...well, I won't reveal that. Suffice it to say that I cried in the last chapter with love for Clara and Myrna and Ruth, maybe even a little for the duck.

What didn't I like about Glass Houses?

I'm sorry to say that the last few Penny books have let me down. To me it seems that they don't have the rich character development of the early books. This was an action driven book, which I guess is what sells to a wider demographic as this author has only grown in popularity with the majority of fans. Penny's style seems to have changed, many more sentences become choppier. Maybe this is on purpose? What readers want now? Or how the author wants to write now? So who am I to question that?

Still, let me show you a passage from Penny's Trick of the Light as this is an example of what I've missed in the last few books:

As far back as she could remember Clara wanted only one thing, even more than she'd wanted the solo show. It wasn't riches, it wasn't power, it wasn't even love. Clara Morrow wanted to belong. And now, at almost fifty, she did.

And from A Rule Against Murder:

Was there an invisible world, Gamache wondered. A place where diminished people met, where they recognized each other? Because if he knew one thing about Julia Martin it was that she too was invisible. The sort others cut off in conversation, cut in front of in grocery lines, overlook for jobs though their hand might be raised and waiting.

And from A Fatal Grace:

Saul Petrov sipped his beer and took a bite of his roast beef sandwich on a baguette with melting Stilton cheese and arugula. Beside it on his plate was a diminishing pile of shoestring fries, lightly seasoned.

It was perfect.

For the first time in years Saul felt human. He wasn't quite up to approaching these friendly people but he knew when he did they'd ask him to join them. They just seemed that sort. Already a few had smiled in his direction and lifted their drinks, mouthing 'Santé' and Joyeux Noel'.

 They seemed kind.

No wonder CC loathed them.

See what I mean?

Will I buy next year's Louise Penny mystery? I will. I remain ready to pack my luggage for a trip to Three Pines, hidden away in the Quebec countryside near the Vermont border. 

While I'm there, if I'm lucky, a near-perfect murder will take place and I will gather at the Bistro with Armand and Reine-Marie, Olivier and Gabri, Ruth and the duck, and Clara.

And with Myrna:

Three Pines had what she craved. It had croissants and café au lait. It had peace and stillness and laughter. It had great joy and great sadness and the ability to accept both and be content. It had companionship and kindness.

And it had an empty store with a loft above. Waiting. For her. Myrna never left.

In just over an hour Myrna had gone from a world of complaint to a world of contentment. That had been six years ago. Now she dispensed new and used books and well-worn advice to her friends.

                               From A Fatal Grace

Indeed I will return to Three Pines. But oh, dear...please Ms. Penny, please give me more of Myrna's story along with the action.

Are any of my visitors here at the Window Louise Penny fans? Have you read Glass Houses yet? Want to know who the bad guys are?

Now you know I'm not going to reveal that!

[source here https://www.pinterest.com/pin/263249540694841814/]