I discovered this photo of Diego smelling the flowers and I couldn’t find any evidence I’d ever posted it in my blog, so couldn’t resist posting it. R.I.P. Diego. We miss you!!!!
For Cee’s FOTD
Click on Photos to Enlarge.
Forgottenman suggested I add THIS LINK to show what Zoe was like the first day I met her.
For MLMM Challenge
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Can you find three dogs in this jumble of sheets and pillows? Barely room for one human to join them and it takes a bit of pushing and relocating. Now it is 6:30 a.m. and soon they’ll all be off like a shot for a walk with Oscar. It’s the first day of the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, so we’ve all been up since 6 when the cohetes (bottle rockets) started going off. The actual celebration is Dec. 9-12, but San Juan Cosala likes to stretch the occasion out from Dec. 1-12.
There will be shrines set up in front of buildings all over town. Yolanda will switch my candles to a position in front of the Virgin statue on my divider between the dining room and kitchen and “native sons”—men who have gone to work in the States—will send money for huge displays of flowers in the church. On the 12th, the 92-year-old statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe will be paraded through the streets and there will be a huge procession with many of the people being led blindfolded behind her statue. In former years, many would crawl on their knees in the procession, but I’m not sure if this happens now. Always a celebration being held somewhere in surrounding villages.
Ajijic is still celebrating the San Andreas Festival, with booths and carnival rides being set up all over town. Earlier, San Juan celebrated for San Juan, then Day of the Dead, now the Virgin, then Xmas. In Jan., Tres Reyes and February Candlemas, then Carnival leading up to lent and depictions of the crucifixion. I’ll stop there as I could go on month-by-month throughout the year.
Oscar just arrived and the dogs are off like a shot, my body being no big obstruction—they all just ran over or leaped over. Coco always returns for one brief cuddle as Oscar puts the leashes on the others, then bounds out a second time when it is her turn. I’ll know they are home when I hear their food dishes rattling as he doles out their breakfast. It is 6:54. So go mornings on M-W-F in this house.
For Bushboy’s Last on the Card prompt
When I look in the mirror, I sometimes feel like I’m becoming my mother, but when I look at my arms, it is also revealed that I am becoming my grandmother. By the time she passed away at age 96, any effort to assist her in rising or sitting up by grasping her lower arms could result in the skin actually tearing off in pieces like tissue paper, and although not quite at this stage, At 76, I have grown fragile. My skin has become translucent, showing off deep blue or purple bruises from below given birth to by slight bumps or scrapings against even smooth surfaces—the edge of a table or a door. Small beads of blood flow out from tears of skin caught in a cat’s claw or a dog’s questing paw, and the skin of my lower arms is dappled with these signs of affection left by even the most furtive advances of the smallest of my dogs.
At night, in bed, I am a highway for dogs jumping into bed to snuggle down for the night and likewise for the same dogs springing from the bed to investigate the slightest noise in the backyard or the street. One bound, using me as trampoline, propels them to the floor, and one more, in a flash, shoots them out the door. Any stray possum or other late night intruder into their domain not driven off by their initial loud growls and following barks is dealt with in a snap of the jaw. No furtive ingress into my nighttime garden goes unnoticed. Then, the intruders dealt with, back into bed they bound, usually landing on one arm or the other, leaving yet another mark of their affection. They are my protective angels, these small warriors of the night, but I fear they are loving me to pieces, as one glimpse of my arms will attest to.
The words for Sunday Whirl Wordle 627 are: caught pieces snap flash angel stray furtive dappled flow skin translucent blue
It all started with Frida, who I first met as she trotted down the carretera traveling west as I walked with my friend Joe, going east. She was so tiny that I thought she was a big rat at first, but as she drew nearer, I realized it was a tiny puppy who, when she got up to me, immediately stopped and looked up at me with those eyes that indicated that we already belonged to each other. When she got older, for the next 15 years or so, she spent most of her days up on the dome of my house supervising the neighborhood, and when she passed away, it didn’t take long for me to figure out how she should be memorialized. It took me some months to find a terracotta sculpture that looked like her and to find men to concrete it securely in place. Inside are Frida’s ashes. There she has resided for years, surveying all who pass as she did during her life.
As new dogs arrived in my life, they took to occasionally visiting her on the roof, and then a strange thing happened. In the house kitty-corner across from me, two smaller terracotta dogs appeared, on the post beside the entry gate, Frida directly in their line of vision a story above them on my dome.
Then, less that a year ago, the house directly across the street from me sold, and a few days ago, when Yolanda mentioned my neighbors putting dogs on their roof, I corrected her that they were on a pedestal by their front gate, but she said, no–on the roof–and directed me down the street to look back at the house of the new neighbors. There, securely affixed to their chimney stack, almost obscured by the trees, was another Frida!
That is how “In the doghouse” came to be a non-derogatory term in my neighborhood. In fact, I am now just waiting for the next roof dog to show up!!
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(If you’re not exhausted after wading through these, you can find a bunch more photos from last year’s event HERE.)
When I tried to get in a little quiet time in the hot tub before a very busy day, the doggies joined me. Morrie tried to join in but then deserted for a little Zen time of his own.
Click on photos to enlarge.
When I sent my neighbor David a thank-you for sending me the photos of Coco and Zoe on the roof—naughty kids—because their mom and Yolanda forgot to shut the gate up the stairs, he shot back this answer, which I didn’t receive until this morning:
“HECK, WAIT! There’s more. . . . and then there’s Morrie! With some prodding, he got the nerve, too . . . and joined the rooftop party!
Above are the photos I had missed last night as they hadn’t yet downloaded. If you missed yesterday’s post, HERE are the photos of Coco and Zoe he’d sent.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 