Anniversary

It is with mixed emotions that I have reached 46 years of marriage, with husband who passed on May 10th.  We never did much more than a restaurant dinner, and some small gift on the day.  This year will pass without that.  We did go to Myrtle Beach for our 25th, and stayed for a week at a beach condo; and we went on a three day cruise from Boston to Montreal for our 40th anniversary.  And we went to Carmel, CA for one of the early anniversaries when we lived in San Francisco.  All of them were great, sightseeing and eating way too much.  I think I will do grilled steak tomorrow; I have never fixed them, but I guess it isn't all that hard.  My son, C, made a crock pot dinner of beef stew a few days ago which was inedible.  I've eaten some poor food, like 1000 year eggs, abalone, other ethnic meals, but this stew was the awfullest of them all.  We don't know what went wrong, if it was something in the spices, or what; it smelled good while it was cooking.  Even the dogs were less than thrilled when C mixed it with their dog food.

Our neighbor just brought us homemade cinnamon rolls, yum.  And she also gave us a macaroni salad with lots of veggies in it.  She is spoiling us!

I got our photos from the funeral back from Walmart and they made me cry.  The ones of , well here you can see for yourself:

The few we took were all done before anyone arrived, so Susan (N's sister) isn't in them since she came later, straight to the venue from Kentucky.  I never asked her how she found the funeral home, I had hoped we could have some time to visit, as she was originally planning to come the day before.  Anyway, here is the box with ashes, beautiful flowers and a stained glass backdrop.  I would have loved to take one arrangement home, but these obstreperous cats would have it in shreds in a single night.  Instead the funeral people took them to the nursing home where my mom and dad both lived at the end.  

And here is a photo of our living room, a little cluttered but not too messy.  The foot in the white sock on the right edge is of N's foot, in his favorite easy chair.  I can sit in it myself now.  Alone.

Well, this has been an uplifting post (not).  Hoping all of you are doing fine and enjoying the company of your loved ones for as long as possible...

Thought for the day:  "A clean house is the sign of a misspent life."

Sweet Willie

On June 1st, about 9 pm, we heard (the mare)one of the horses making a racket, but we could not see why she was calling.  Only one horse seen, not two.  Flashlights up in the tall grass, there was my bay gelding Willie, dead.  He was in full rigor, so he had been dead for a while.  We put the mare in the barn, and tried to figure out, by flashlight, what had happened.  But even in daylight the next day it looked like he just laid down and breathed his last.  I hope he didn't suffer, but really there was no sign one way or the other.  I spent hours on the phone trying to get someone with a farm, backhoe, and flatbed truck to get him and take him to be buried.  Our property is only 1..5 acre and anyone looking our way would see (and smell??) what we were doing trying to dig a mammoth grave and move Willie to there.  Nine hundred pounds of inert horse.  And it is not like the matter can wait, with temps in the 80s.  The man we finally found (friend of a friend of a... you get it) came in about 2 hours with his son, and had him in the truck , covered and tied down in 2 hours more.  The fee was $450, which was far less than I thought it would be.

The mare is still in the barn, because she needs to get used to no Willie.  They are siblings, Willie was the older at 25.  When we let her out it will be just in the day, so we can see what she is doing, if she starts racing around and calling.

If Norm were here it would have been so much easier, he knew people he could count on finding someone for this.  I have thought about this for the last 2 years or so, and asked here and there what we should do, given our two geriatric horses, but got no solid leads.  I will keep this man in my organizer, the way my luck is going I will need it soon.


Thought for the day: " I'm not fat.  I'm just...easier to see."

In younger days