Exceedingly Mundane

So much has been going on lately. My dad fell in mid-February, which started a cascading set of events. We went down, took him to the doctor, the ER and then stayed while he was in the hospital overnight. We brought him home with us, and less than a week later, we had moved him into an assisted living facility 10 minutes from our house. That was about 3 1/2 weeks ago.

This past week, I thought things were getting better. I had been telling Beau that soon, things would get back to normal. Soon, we would be able to start back walking, me and Beau. Soon the time would change (it did today), which means that Tim would start back playing golf, so that Beau and I could hang out more while Tim was gone. We go on walks, we go out back and play, he chases squirrels, we read together on the glider, we hang out on the deck and talk, and on and on and on. Beau was my constant companion, and especially all of the times while Tim is gone, he is my best friend, my comfort and my security.

Tuesday, he was out back playing, chasing squirrels. Tim was cutting down the last of the tree in the backyard, so he had to go behind the fence for his squirrel obsession. He seemed fine. Wednesday morning, we got up and he seemed really lethargic. He didn’t want to eat or drink and just wanted to rest. He seemed restless, not staying on his bed, but wanting to move some, and he never could seem to find a comfortable place to stay long. He had been sick the previous week, not eating and then throwing up, but he had gotten back to normal, or so we thought. Wednesday, early afternoon, I went to see my dad and do things for him (errands, paperwork, bill paying, visiting, etc). I left late afternoon, telling Dad that I needed to go check on Beau, that he wasn’t feeling great. By the time I got home, I could tell that Beau was not doing well. His eyes looked like he was in pain, and he could barely raise his head. I called for Tim, and we couldn’t get him to get up, he was so weak. We called the vet and ran him over. Tim and some of the vet helpers helped carry him in on his bed. They checked him out, and a few minutes later, they told us after the doctors looked at him and ran some tests, that he was in very bad shape. His belly was full of blood, from either a tumor on his spleen that had ruptured, or his actual spleen had ruptured. They didn’t think he was strong enough to survive surgery, and we made the most difficult decision, to let them end his suffering and go to sleep. We brought him home and buried him out back, where he had been playing less than 24 hours before.

My heart is broken into a million tiny pieces. I miss my baby. We should have had so much more time with my Beau baby. We only had him 6 1/2 years, but we loved him every single second of every single day since we rescued him. I see him, hear him … everywhere. I look for him constantly. I think of him constantly. We went through this when we lost our Sally girl, so I know that I will get better in time. But right now, it’s the toughest part. I miss him so, and just want him back.

My darling Beau, I hope heaven is full of squirrels and lizards and squeaky toys and your favorite treats. I hope you’re happy and at peace. Know that we love you and miss you. Now and always.

My days are fairly uneventful. I really want to get back into my photography, but can’t seem to bring myself to go out on little jaunts to interesting places to take cool pictures. At least not while it’s in the 93-103 degree range! So, instead, I’ve returned to my favorite photography subject – Beau!

Poor Beau. He doesn’t always like to have his photo taken. Some times he complies, and then other times, as soon as he sees me with that camera in my hand, he stops whatever he’s doing and moves or runs off or something. Just like a kid, I suppose 🙂

I am loving iPhoto, but I couldn’t find a way to make a photo collage. So my buddy Dawn had twittered and maybe blogged about Picasa, so I decided to check it out. I downloaded the Mac version, and after it “acquired” all of the photos on my drive, I was able to make this in about 5 minutes total. I’m pretty happy with it!

A Day in the Life of Beau:

If you’re the only dog in a house where there are no children, no cats and no other pets, it stands to reason that you will be a little spoiled.

If you’re a dog who happens to live in OUR house, you will be very spoiled!

Beau doesn’t think so, but he is. I know he is, because I’m the one who spoils him. 🙂 I particularly love to buy him new beds, new collars and treats (lots of treats!). He is set with toys. He has a toy basket full and he only plays with them sporadically. He has 3 beds and I would have 5 more if I had room for them, LOL!

This winter has been particularly cold, so I thought it was time for Beau to have a newer, bigger, softer, better blanket. I mean, a dog gets cold in a climate controlled house, you know?!

So, here’s Beau with his new blankie:

Sometimes, we wrap him up so tight, you can barely find him in his new blankie:

On chilly days, when Beau wants to go outside and enjoy the sunshine, his mama thinks he gets cold, so she wraps him up (on his glider), in his new blankie:

Do you think Beau is spoiled? Do you think Beau is loved and well-cared for? I think somebody loves Beau the wonder dog 😀

Every week, I empty the kitchen and breakfast room of all the chairs around the table, and sweep and mop the floors really well. Beau, for some unknown reason, loves, loves, loves to lay up under the table when all of the chairs are gone. He actually grumps and growls at me when I start to move them back and he has to move out 🙂 I have never actually seen him do this before, though, and he laid like that for a long time, propped up against the leg of the table. I’m really surprised he did, that table leg is pretty hard and probably not very comfy!

P.S. Tim said this looked like a yin and yang photo of him, with the sun and shadow on his face. I love photos of him like that! Aw heck, who am I kidding, I love all photos of my Beau-Beau 😀

Sometimes I love that my puppy dog is so vocal, and sometimes, it drives me nuts! When we rescued Beau, the foster home he was living in told us, “He NEVER barks!”. Well, even though he lived there six months, they were dead wrong. The dog barks all the time. He sings, he cries, he whines, he wails, he howls, he moans in his sleep. I guess all dogs do, to a certain extent. But, we happen to think that Beau is extra vocal and expressive.

This is just a short snippet, but this is very commonplace in our house. Beau thinks it is his job to be on guard duty all day long, so he stands at the back door, looking for predators in the back yard (most notably squirrels, but also lizards, bugs, birds and most any critter that moves). It’s his job to protect us. And apparently to alert us to anything moving outside.

P.S. Donna, you asked for it, so here’s yet another Beau post and video, LOL!

Tim and I said a few days after we brought Beau home from the rescue that we almost wished we had waited to name him. They were calling him “Sonny Boy” at the doggie foster home where he was living, uh, not a name we would ever call him in a million years! I had already picked out Beau (short for Beauregard), but after spending some time with him, we’ve come up with several different names that we could have named him, based on his personality.

One of those is Bob. As in Bob Barker. Because the dog barks. All.The.Time! Beau is a very vocal dog and we have decided that he likes to hear himself speak, bark, howl and sing! I’ve posted a video of him before, singing along to Happy Birthday to you. Here’s a short clip of a normal day at our house.

Tim was trying to warm up some leftovers for lunch, and Beau decided he wanted to play. Or more precisely, to bark:

Even though I took a long hiatus from blogging over the summer, that does NOT mean that I have not been taking photos of Beau! Tim is always picking at me, saying, gee, don’t you have enough photos of that dog already? But, you know, I can never have enough pictures of my Beau Baby! 🙂

Beau, being a cool dog:

Beau, being a sad dog:

P.S. It goes without saying that the less time I spent blogging, meant the more time I had to spend with Beau! Beau and I play together a lot, and we hunt squirrels and lizards constantly! We’re both looking forward to fall and cooler weather (well, lately, it’s cooler, but there’s soooo many mosquitoes, so really we’re looking for fewer mosquitoes to bite us!), so that we can hang outside together in the afternoons and evenings 🙂 Beau is a wonderful companion, you know!

For years, Tim and I have called family members on their birthday, and we sing a birthday song to them. Believe me, it’s not great, but it’s just something fun that we do. Most of the time, it’s the traditional “Happy Birthday to you” version, but every once in a while, we get a crazy hair and sing the Beatles’ version of “They Say It’s Your Birthday” (or whatever it’s called!).

This past weekend, we called our sister-in-law Amanda on the phone and *tried* to sing to her (sorry, Amanda, hope you had a great birthday!). We finally gave up, because Beau immediately started singing along! It cracks us up and we have a hard time finishing, because we are laughing so hard! He’s been doing this for about a year now. We like to think that he just likes to sing along with us. Family members and friends like to tell us that he’s howling because we sound so horribly awfully bad!

We had to stage this one, but I got out the camcorder and we proceeded to sing the beginning of the Happy Birthday song 3 times. All 3 times, Beau sang along (as he was standing at the back door, looking for squirrels, which is his normal daytime job!).

Here’s proof, finally!

More photos of Beau, being, well… Beau!

We keep an old bath towel by the back door, so we can wipe Beau’s feet off. Lately, it’s been fairly dry, but sometimes in the morning, there is a lot of dew on the grass and he comes back to the door with wet feet. And of course, when it rains, he is messy. Beau is a mud puppy – he loves the rain and mud! He likes to go out and play in it and comes back looking like he went to the spa and had a mud bath 😀

Anyway, every once in a while, he likes to play with his towel. Hence, my towel boy!

From earlier in the summer, when I was on my blogging hiatus:

Beau was napping, and actually being a very good boy. The blanket and his bed are the dividing line for where he is supposed to be. He’s not supposed to come on the carpet side, into the den (but he cheats all the time and comes a body length over!). He seems to prefer the carpet and rug though, to the hard tile floor of the kitchen 🙂

I caught Beau napping and was able to sneak and run go get my camera and take a couple of shots. Caught napping:

And after he heard the shutter click of the camera:

You can’t sneak anything by MY watch dog!

P.S. I love when he uses his bed for a big pillow! I think it’s just so cute 🙂

Anyone remember that old song, Rubber Band Man? Geesh, I think that’s the title. I can hear the melody in my head, which probably means it will be stuck there all day 🙂

I’ve had a “rubber band ball” for at least twenty years. I kept one in one of my deep drawers at work for years, and I have had one at home for the longest time. Don’t ask me why I keep rubber bands, but I do, and twistie ties too 🙂

I’ve been doing a lot of decluttering lately (more on that in a coming post). One of the things I cleaned out was one of the two junk drawers in my kitchen. I started with the smaller one, naturally! I found this nice Oxo drawer organizer at Marshall’s and bought it. But, my rubber band ball doesn’t fit in the drawer any more, it had gotten too big. So, I had to let go of it (although, currently, it’s in Beau’s toy box!).

Here’s my rubberband ball:

A picture of Beau playing with it, he was really confused by it, it’s heavy and bounces really funny!

And one of the final product of the junk drawer (sorry, didn’t take a “before photo”, but believe me, it was messier than this!):

It’s actually nice to open that drawer and look for something now!

I love this picture I took recently of Beau laying at the back door, in sunshine and shadow:

He’s my sweet baby 😀

Since I don’t have cute kids to post pictures and videos of, you have to see my furry child. 🙂

I told Tim not more than 10 days after we picked up Beau from the foster home where he was living, that I was so glad that we got a dog with “extra personality”. Beau is a very vocal dog. It’s funny, because the couple at the foster home told us, he never barks, he’s very quiet. Good grief, they could not have been more wrong! Beau barks all.the.time. He speaks all.the.time. He’s a very vocal dog. And we LOVE IT!

Usually, when I get out the camera or camcorder, he shuts up. But a week or so ago, he kept going, even after I turned on the camcorder. The video is a little over a minute long. Probably too long for most of you, but at least give it a few seconds. You can hear Tim in the background offering a running commentary:

“Oh be quiet”
“What are you doing?
“You’re not worth nothing!!”
“Oh good gracious”
And my favorite at the end … “Do you want a treat?” – to which Beau responds by whipping his head around so fast, he must have given himself whiplash! 😀

Here’s my sweet Beau, having a grand ole time 🙂

I gave Tim a new gadget this year for Christmas – a Flip video camera. It’s very small, and it was really sort of a selfish gift – I think I’m going to use it as much as Tim! Tim is always wanting me to tape his golf swing. He analyzes it on the computer, and then works on his swing with various clubs. I have an older Kodak camera that takes MPEG’s and we have a very old handheld camcorder, that uses Hi8 tape (so of course, he can’t use that with the computer). I got him the Flip Video because it is really small, and it has a nice little pop-out USB connector on it (which plugs right into the computer, or we can use the cables to hook it up to the plasma tv and watch the videos on the big screen). However, as I said, it was sort of a selfish gift. I thought I *might* use it sometimes to take videos of Beau. And of course, at family get-togethers and birthday parties and such. So, really, it was sort of a gift for both of us. 🙄

Guess what I have more videos of than anything? Yep, you guessed it – Beau. I only uploaded a couple, and I’m hoping they work. I have steadfastly refused to setup an account at YouTube so far, but I may have to do that soon. I’m trying to get these to work from Google Video. Please let me know if you have any trouble viewing these videos. If you even want to look at them. After all, he’s just a dog. He’s our furry child, but he is just a dog. 🙂

These are a LOT more pixelated and blurry looking online than they are on my computer. Oh well, you get the general idea. First, here’s Beau playing in the leaves a few days after Christmas. I uploaded it but forgot to post it!

Beau playing on his old bed, rolling around like a crazy dog. He does this a lot! (Note: Longest Video)

Beau playing with his new new Wubba (and Tim!) – he uses all his paws. Only fair!

P.S. My blog buddy, Desert Songbird, requested new photos of Beau, so I thought I’d try this. I can post photos of him too though. I still take tons of photos of him. Poor thing. He’s getting old. I found the first couple of grey hairs on his muzzle the other day. I nearly cried. I don’t want my puppy dog to grow up and grow old 🙁

Beau is the coolest dog around!

Lest you think this was an easy photo to get, think again! Beau does not like anything on him. He tolerates a collar but that’s it. I’ve bought him bandannas and scarves and camouflage vests for hunting, and even some cute reindeer antlers for Christmas. He doesn’t like anything on his head or body. If he keeps it on two seconds, it’s a LONG time. 🙂 He tolerated Tim’s sunglasses for a second or two this weekend though, long enough for me to snap these! 😀