Under a Blue Moon

I was going to title this post the skunk story but, after reflection, it seems too flip, too casual.  I will start off with the skunk story though.

When Beau was a few years old he would occasionally tangle with creatures that roamed the night in our little suburban neighborhood.  A raccoon would lumber through the backyard and Beau would fly out the dog door and total pandemonium would ensue.  Always in the dead of night when the house was quiet and the neighborhood peacefully sleeping. 

There would be this wild commotion and all kinds of howling and we would bolt awake and run out to see what mischief was underway.  Let me be the one to tell you that the sight of a man, in the altogether, breaking up a fight between a 35 lb. beagle and a raccoon of a similar size sears itself into your brain and isn’t something to be forgotten easily. 

One evening, late but before we had gone to bed, Beau went outside and then there was this awful, painful howling.  Rick ran out to see what was happening while I helpfully stayed in the house and peered out the back patio windows.   Beau was literally foaming at the mouth.  We were absolutely panicked – did he get bitten?  Does rabies take effect that quickly? 

Then we noticed the smell. 

Freshly spray skunk doesn’t smell like what you get when you drive past a skunk that didn’t get out of the way quick enough.  In retrospect that almost has a nice, familiar scent to it.  No, freshly sprayed skunk has a very strong chemical quality to it.  But unmistakably skunk.  And Beau had gotten sprayed straight into his face.

Mind you I am still in the house, cracking open the back door to offer my opinion of the situation.  I got on the phone and called the 24 hour emergency line at the vets where they very quickly told me NOT to bring him in.  They gave me the recipe for a shampoo concoction that called for lots of peroxide, baking soda and laundry detergent.   

I hopped in the car and drove to the supermarket where the night crew was restocking the shelves.  As soon as I walked in the door I could hear murmuring down the aisles.  "Do you smell that?"  "Is there a skunk in the parking lot?"  As I walked past each aisle the talking would cease and people would just stare, rather horrified at me, their hands covering their mouths and noses. 

I swear I wasn’t anywhere near the dog or the outside but still managed to imbue my person with the unmistakable smell of skunk.   It took a good three weeks for the smell to totally go away and I don’t think my winter coat ever did smell right – I ended up tossing it.

Beau had Addison’s disease.  It started out that he would get these horrible infections in his claws and they would all fall out, grow back, fall out again.  It was some sort of autoimmune response to the Addison’s.  We finally got it sorted out and he was on a monthly regime of medication that would keep his potassium and sodium levels in check.

A couple of months ago he started to lose his appetite.  Beagles are known for their appetite and for him to refuse food was just unheard of.  Many tests were run and finally it was determined that the years of medication and the disease itself had finally just worn him out.  He was in renal failure.  They gave him a few months to a year to live.  The best we could do is keep him comfortable and on a kidney friendly diet.

Last week his little body just couldn’t take it anymore.  On Tuesday Rick said he was restless and wandering the house, looking for a dark, quiet corner to lay in.  On Wednesday morning Rick found him in the same predicament, trying to find some relief in the darkness of our closet.  He picked him up and put him in his bed were he napped for a bit then woke up, restless again.  Rick picked him up and took him outside, carrying him one last time around the property before loading him and his bed into the truck and to the vets. 

What happened there I’ll never truly know.  I was down in the bay area, recovering from surgery so I don’t know what those last minutes were like.  I can only imagine.

The house has an emptiness to it that is hard to explain.  Who knew a small little beagle could take up so much room.

I wanted to do a corners of my home post and was looking around for a corner you all haven’t seen ad nauseum already (is that redundant?).  This corner is in our bedroom and I took about 800 billion pictures and this is the best I could come up with.  I seriously need a new camera.

One would think having a fireplace in the bedroom would be all swoon worthy but honestly we’ve had a fire in it maybe three times in the six years we’ve lived here.  It smokes which really ruins the ambiance.  I would love to get an insert for it and just have fake logs in there.  The gas is already piped in so I would think it would be pretty easy.

About a year ago Rick was looking in a fireplace store near his work to check out glass doors.  He pointed to a very plain one and asked how much it was.  $5000.  For that much money it better come with it’s own personal woodsman to cut wood and stack it on our back deck.

I wish I had a better picture of the Paul de Longpre print above the little chair.  I love that print.  I saw it in a little shop in Grass Valley and my friend went back and bought it for me for my birthday a couple of years ago.

I should take the glass out of the frame – I think prints look better that way.

The print above the fireplace I bought at Cost Plus about 15 years ago for about $10 and spent $150 framing it.  At a do it yourself place – I can’t imagine what a professional would have charged.   I have no idea who the artist is but it’s an urn filled with flowers and I find myself trying to replicate the colors when I plant the pots out on the deck.  All pale pinks, blues and yellows. 

Well there you have it – one poorly lit corner of our home.   

Okay maybe not exactly like the scene with Robert Redford and Meryl Streep but I did get my hair washed today.  Let me tell you it makes a person feel about 1000 times better when they have clean hair.   I feel like a new person. 

Of course instead of having the blazing sun warming me and lions off in the distance I was laying on cold, hard granite with the neck of my sweatshirt getting increasingly soaked and a Dixie cup pressed up against my ear while the was cat rubbing up against Rick’s legs, wondering what the heck he was doing to me. 

I bet 95% of the female readers know exactly what scene I am talking about. 

Thank you Rick ~ you’re better looking than Robert Redford, anyway.

When I woke up this morning I was dreaming that I was taking pictures for a post – I was at an old French amusement park.  The colors were all faded pinks, reds and turquoise with kind of a golden, sepia light.  Old ferris wheels and ticket booths and popcorn carts.  I kept thinking what fabulous pictures I was taking and I couldn’t wait to get them uploaded.   

I’m hoping to get back to regular posting this week – can’t promise the pictures will be all that interesting but I’ll try.

My goodness having surgery sure takes the starch out of you, doesn’t it?  I feel like I’m in a perma-fog.   All I want to do is sleep sleep sleep. 

The surgery itself was rather uneventful ~ always a good thing, surgery-wise.  I have a nifty Frankenstein like thing going on behind my ear and the right side of my face is a bit puffy.  I forgot about this part – I can’t taste anything on the right hand side of my tongue.  This happened with the other surgeries and it’s really odd.  Everything is kind of metallic feeling on my tongue.  It should go away in a couple of months though.

At least I have this pretty quilt to snuggle under while I convalesce.  My sister made it and gave it to me for my birthday.   The colors are so muted and pretty and it just makes me happy to look at it. 

Here’s an unrumpled view of it:

I may never get out of bed.

Except I have planting to do – another sister gave me plants and I need to get them in the ground.  I have just the perfect spot for them.  I love bleeding hearts ~ they are so Victorian looking to me.  I can picture stepping out of my conservatory into my little walled garden of roses, forget-me-nots and bleeding hearts.

For now it’s back to bed – I promise to be perkier very soon.

I’ll be offline for a few days – Having my bionic ear tuned up. 

I was all set to do a post on the lovely quilt that my sister made for me but my camera batteries died.  So something to look forward to later on in the week.  It’s dreamy – I’ll tell you that.