In the wonder of Christmas,
may you find peace.
In the beauty of Christmas,
may you find hope.
In the love of Christmas,
may you find joy.

My girls and I wish you a joyous holiday!

Merry Christmas!

Miss Chipmunk Cheeks does not have heart disease! Yay!! She has turbulent blood flow in her right ventricle. The cardiologist said it’s not a cause for concern.

And we all breathed a sigh of relief! Okay, I breathed a sigh of relief. Jool was completely unconcerned about anything except eating because “you know they didn’t feed me at the vet clinic, Mom!”

Ahem. Yes, Jujubes, I do know they “didn’t feed” you. Yeah. Okay. We’ll go with that.

And then some not-so-good news

The Buglet, on the other hand? Well, we still don’t know. Her thyroid test result was in that lovely “gray area.” More concerning, though, was that her calcium level was elevated. That’s often a sign of cancer.

She went back to the vet today for more tests: more blood drawn for a different thyroid test (free T4, for those of you keeping score at home) and X-rays of her entire body to look for tumors. 

Bless those vet techs’ hearts! I really feel for them. To say that Catherine the Great is not a good patient is putting it ever so mildly. I fear they got a taste of my little Tasmanian devil today!

We’re encouraged that there were no tumors on the X-rays…but that means we still don’t know why her calcium level was too high. There may be more tests in her future.

I guess I should trim Katie’s nails so she can’t completely rip a vet tech to shreds when she gets fed up with being poked and prodded!

Meanwhile, back on the ranch…

The cooler weather has the girls making laps around the back yard like they were running the Indy 500. With puppy tackles instead of spectacular crashes, thank goodness. Although I have to say, the puppy tackles are pretty spectacular!

Jool stormed the door when I got home, running outside as I was coming in with Katie. I can just picture her: “Heeeeyyy…Mom’s got Katie’s crate in one hand and a purse and a bag in the other. No way she will think to block me from zipping outside for some fresh air!” ZOOM!!

Since a) it was already dark outside, b) I saw the neighborhood coyote one street over as I was rounding the corner, and c) my sweet little calico kitty practically glows in the dark, I tracked down the flashlight (WHY is the flashlight NEVER where it’s supposed to be??) and hunted that little girl down. Surprisingly, she made it easy for me. There must’ve been coyote scent in the air.

(And then I put the flashlight back in the flashlight drawer. Amen.)

And right now? Well, Ginny’s got the itchy-butt and is wallowing all over the sofa and growling at it. Her itchy-butt, not the sofa. That girl, she’s always good for a laugh!

Waiting on test results makes me alternately anxious and cranky. I imagine worst-case scenarios, my mind a wild, undisciplined child on a sugar high soaring up-up-up. The inevitable spectacular crash follows. With tears. Lots and lots of tears.

But wait is all I can do.

Wait on the cardiologist’s review of Jool’s echocardiogram.

Wait on Katie’s blood test results. (Is she a good dieter, or is she sick??)

Just wait.

And trust.

Because you don’t belong to me.

And neither do you.

God has trusted me to care for you, to love you, to make sure you have plenty of dogs to torment and things to rip to shreds. But only for a little while.

However long that little while is, I’ll take it.

My cousin gave the girls some of her dogs’ favorite homemade dog toys a while back. They’re long pieces of polyester fleece with knots tied in them.

I have a few theories about how this one ended up stuck in a tree 25 feet off the ground.

Theory #1

A week or so ago, a fierce storm blew through. Rain. Hail. Gale-force winds that threatened to pick my house up off its foundation and fling it to Kansas.

When the wind swirled up all the contents of my back yard and flung them around, this lone dog toy seized the opportunity to escape a life of dog slobber and neglect. As a gust of wind blew, it flung itself toward the sky with all its fleecy might. And got stuck on a tree branch.

Theory #2

There’s a stream and wooded area right behind my house. Lots and lots of birds. The weather has cooled off considerably in the past few weeks, so the birds are on the lookout for comfy-cozy nest-building materials.

They spied this fluffy piece of fleece lying in the back yard. And, well, it hadn’t moved in quite some time. Clearly, it had been abandoned, and as such, was fair game.

So, the birds readied a polyester fleece extraction team. Just as the sun began to rise, they swooped down and scooped it up. “Fly! Quickly!” the lead bird called. A few more branches and then nothing but blue skies ahead, but then….”SQUIRREL!!!”

The resident obnoxious squirrel gave chase. The birds climbed higher and higher, but the fleece was heavy. Flapping frantically, the right-wing bird nervously glanced behind him.

WHACK!! He hit the tree.

Dazed, he dropped his end of the fleece. As it fell, the knotted end got stuck on a branch. The lead bird made the call to abandon the mission. “It’s okay, guys. The mission was not a failure,” he said. “We’ll put out the word in the neighborhood that all birds should come here and take a piece.”

Theory #3

The resident obnoxious squirrel is, sadly, really lonely lately. He runs across the roof, up and down the trees. But there’s so much for the girls to bark at that he’s not getting nearly the attention he needs.

Sitting in a tree one day, he spied a piece of red fleece on the ground. He ran down and grabbed it then bounded up the trees and across the roof, the red fleece trailing behind him like a flag wafting in the wind. A chorus of barks rang out.

“Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! This is fun!!” He ran some more. Now the dogs were barking their fool heads off and running back and forth across the yard, occasionally stopping to give high-pitched yelps as they flung themselves into the air.

“Oh, boy!!” thought the squirrel. “What a terrific game!”

But then the human called all the dogs inside.

“That’s okay,” the squirrel consoled himself. “I’ll just park the fleece right here until they come out again.”

And now? With the exits – and I do use that term loosely – all sealed off, that brown dog o’ mine is learning new tricks. The kind of tricks that “trick-or-treat” refers to.

We’ve moved past the days of eating everything in sight (including brand-new Birkenstocks sandals), ripping things to shreds (preferably something tasty like a $250 check), and digging holes in the yard.

We’re smack-dab in the middle of the days of eating everything in sight, ripping things to shreds, digging holes in the yard and escaping through them, running up and down the fence barking and pretending to attack people, counter-surfing at every opportunity, jumping over baby gates, chasing the cats relentlessly, and eating as much cat litter as possible.

You see the difference, right?

And did I mention that the other two adolescent tricksters join in the fun about, oh, 75% of the time? Oh, yes. The terrible twos? They’re a breeze compared to adolescence.

Like my friends who have human teenagers, some days I think I’m not going to live through it. Other days, I think they’re not going to live through it.

But just when I’m ready to go on the offensive, pack their little doggie bags and send them on their merry way, they counter with a sneak-attack of adorableness.

After a particularly trying day last week, Ginny crawled up into my lap, snuggled with me, and showered me with kisses. I cupped her face in my hands, kissed her on the nose, and said, “Ginny, do you know what I love about you?” Her soft, kind, brown eyes stared into mine as if to say, “No, Mama. What?”

“Everything!” And then I laughed out loud, realizing what I just said to the dog who has consumed about half of my favorite socks, the one who counter-surfs to steal food that I just put on the plate a second ago.

And then I smile and laugh some more and give her more kisses.

Because it’s all true.

I remember exactly where I was.

I was driving down MacArthur Boulevard on my way to work. It was a bright, sunny day. I was headed to work later than usual, so there was almost no traffic. My radio was tuned to the classical music station. I wasn’t paying much attention to it, although I thought it was odd that the news segment was going on and on. Then I heard them say something about an airplane crashing in Pennsylvania. And that they didn’t know if it was related to the three other airplanes. Confused, I quickly switched the station to NPR to get the whole story.

I remember crying. A lot.

I remember feeling utterly helpless, useless.

I remember checking with Michele to see if her brother was okay.

I remember scouring the news for word that someone had been found alive in the rubble.

I remember going to church that Sunday and feeling like God had wrapped me up in his arms and wasn’t ever going to let me go.

I remember, in the days and weeks that followed, checking the names of those lost, hoping I wouldn’t see my friend’s name, and the sense of relief when, day after day, I didn’t.

I remember hearing stories of heroism, of people phoning their loved ones to say good-bye.

I remember not being able to laugh for the longest time.

I remember dear friends, all of us visibly shaken, getting together for lunch or to chat, just checking in, making sure we were all as okay as we could be.

I remember struggling to figure out what “normal” was and how I could get there.

Today, 10 years later, my “normal” doesn’t look anything like I envisioned then. I’m getting pretty good at facing new challenges and recovering from life’s sucker-punches. Which, frankly, more than annoys me.

But I keep pushing on, anyway.

This life is worth the effort.