The Power of Positive Thinking

My sweet puppy-love, Raikki, needs some seriously positive energy directed his way, my people.

Tuesday night, we got home kind of late after spending the evening with some friends. We let all the dogs out and fed them and let them run around a while. Just before going to bed, we let them out one more time. Jasper and Chico came back in, with Raikki behind them, and as he came up the stairs, Dr. SmartyPants noticed he was dragging his left rear leg. Now, Jasper and Raikki are known to roughhouse quite a bit, and so our first thought was that Raikki had pulled a muscle or something and was just favoring the leg.

The Smarty called me in the kitchen and I started manipulating Raikki's leg, trying to find a sore spot, but nothing seemed to be causing him any pain - he just couldn't make the leg work. I pushed along his spine, but still no painful spots. Within about an hour, neither rear leg was functioning, and while he wasn't in any obvious pain, he was obviously in a great deal of stress. We talked about going to the emergency vet place, but with no one to stay home with the boys, we decided to make him comfortable and be at our vet's office as soon as they opened in the morning.

We put him in bed with us and watched him pretty much all night - there wasn't a whole lot of actual sleep going on.

We got to our vet as they were opening and after a physical, she decided to send us down to the University of Tennessee's vet school for a neurological exam, as she was afraid he had somehow ruptured a disc. The neurologist spent about an hour with him, and given his lack of pain, and all his other symptoms combined, diagnosed him as having had an FCE, which is something like a stroke that affects the spine instead of the brain.

The bad news is that there is nothing medically that can be done for it - no meds, no surgery, etc. The good news is that with physical therapy, there is a possibility that he will regain mobility in his rear legs.

He spent the night in the hospital last night for observation. They called me this morning and told me that he was about the same as yesterday, but that he won't drink any water and he's becoming dehydrated. They'll be doing some urinalysis and blood work to see if there are any other things going on that are causing that, and they may have to start an IV with fluids if he doesn't start to drink soon. If so, he'll go into their ICU and likely spend another night.

If he makes it through all this, he's in for a long road of recovery - and so am I. Raikki weighs about 68 pounds, and there are no flat exits from our house, so I'll be building up my muscles helping him navigate the stairs in and out of here, not to mention helping him with whatever therapy activities he will have to do.

In his favor are his age (20 months) and the fact that he's composed of nothing but muscle and energy. And all of it will be worth it if I can watch him like this again...

Ode to a Tomato

Small or large, red or yellow
nothing can compare
to having one's own mater plant
on one's own deck so fair.

Upon rising I always check
to see what may be ripe,
and smiling, pluck the juicy fruit
from vines held up by pipe.

(or bamboo...whatever - you try rhyming bamboo.)

Into the colander they go
to have grime washed away.
And then the process doth begin
of what to make today.

Salsa, salad, sauce or sandwich,
it really matters not.
The main thing is to eat them all
before they start to rot.

(Seriously. Three tomato plants and I'm overrun with tomatoes. Who knew?)

They've weathered storms and broken stems
and suckers tween the branches.
Now I wish I could remember if
my grandma boils or blanches.

For canning is the way I see
to preserve summer's boon.
To drive away the winter's cold
that's bound to come too soon.

Dear tomato, my sweet friend,
you're more than just a food.
No matter what you are placed in
you make it twice as good.

Oh, Boy.

I feel like I've spent his whole life trying to help people understand him.

When he was a toddler, we had a play group in our neighborhood that would meet once a week at fun locations, or at each others' houses. They were usually an hour or so long, and Derek would spend the first 45 minutes of those times sitting on my lap and staring at the other kids. These other boys and girls would be playing next to each other, talking baby talk and banging tea set cups on the ground, smiling their toothy grins, while my boy sat on me, his brow furrowed in concentration, his lips pursed with anxiety.

15 minutes before the end of the group, he would cautiously venture out, pick up a toy and sit down next to another child and start playing.

Then, everyone would start leaving, and he'd be devastated that the whole thing was over.

"He must be shy," the other parents would say. "Come over here and play with my daughter," they would ask, as soon as we arrived. I would try to explain to them that he was not really shy - he just liked to assess the situation before venturing in. He was cautious. He needed to fully understand how the social dynamics were going to work before he was going to be comfortable playing.

They would just blink a few times and say things like, "You know he's only 15 months old, right?"

I knew. I had been analyzing him for 15 months.

His first day at Kindergarten, he didn't cry or cling. He walked into the room, found a quiet place and started watching. His teacher told me later that he didn't speak to the other kids for about two weeks, and only spoke to her when she asked him a direct question. After the two weeks were up, he was laughing and playing and interacting with all the other kids just like all the other kids.

"He must be really shy," she said to me. I told her no - he's not really all that shy. He just wanted to find his place in the group and make sure he wasn't going to make any tremendous social gaffes. He was just assessing the situation before venturing in.

She blinked a few times and said something like, "You know he's only 5, right?"

I knew.

He's analytical to the extreme. He's intensely hard on himself. He's a perfectionist, which stalls his ability to move forward sometimes. He's brilliant and tender and good and just and occasionally infuriating.

So this past Monday, when I was talking with his new tennis coach after a lesson, I was preparing myself to explain Derek to him, so that we could just get on with the coaching already. But before I could say anything to him, his coach said something like, "Derek's really driven. He's super analytical about every stroke - maybe a little too much, but we'll work on that. He's also incredibly hard on himself and I can tell he's got a little perfectionistic streak. He tends to get in a few good strokes and then start over-analyzing things and that's when he kind of loses his edge. We'll need to work on him not thinking everything to death."

He knew.

People. It was all I could do to hold myself back from bursting into tears. Frankly, I did burst into tears, but I managed to wait until I was alone. So many coaches...so many teachers...so many people who just didn't get him. And this one tennis coach finally sees what I've seen all along.

Potential. Ferocity. Determination.



Thanks, Coach.

My Little Chickadee

I finished a new little painting a couple of weeks ago. It's based on a sketch I made a couple of months ago.
Actually, it's not all that little...



That's it above my king-sized bed. The painting is 6 feet x 4 feet. It's like Chickdeezilla, really.

I originally painted it for my mother, but it looks so nice above my bed, I may not give it to her.

Is that wrong?

Fleeting

The summer is flying by more quickly than I ever thought possible. I'm rather stunned that it is the middle of July, honestly. I haven't meant to take a break from blogging, but that seems to be what I've done. Maybe I needed it. Maybe I was feeling stagnant and frighteningly non-clever, and didn't want to just come out and say so.

***

I feel like I've been gone forever. I logged into blogger and found that the entire format has changed - it's so very streamlined and pretty. I think I like it, although I'm finding myself searching for familiar buttons and commands a little more than I used to. I'm also using Google+ here and there - trying to figure it out and see if I can replace my Facebook account, with which I have a love/hate relationship. If you're on Google+, look me up.

***

I have a million iphone photos of this set of power lines. I'm starting to compile them all into one place to tell a story. I'm fascinated by them the way they play with the sky. Is that weird? Part of the fascination has to do with the fact that they cross over our tennis club and I see them every day, in all different sorts of lighting situations. There are a couple of red-tailed hawks that nest nearby, and I often see them swooping around or lighting on a cross-bar to scan the field below for prey. They give power to the people in the community and give advantageous hunting strategy to the hawks.

That makes them pretty important, I'd say.

July? Really? Dang.

I hope your 4th was wonderful. Sorry I missed it...

I'll be back soon, I promise. I just need to get a few more hours sleep...

Fledging My Birds

This nest was knocked out of my crepe myrtle tree during the storms this weekend. When I saw it, I lifted it carefully, fearing that it had turned out eggs or sweet baby birds, but it was completely empty. The babies were gone - already fledged. I hope they were okay.

That process of fledging is such a quick one for birds - it takes only a few short weeks to go from hatchling to fledgling. The process for humans is decidedly more complex.

My babies aren't babies any more, but it can be so difficult to remember that when they fall asleep on the couch after a hard day of play, or when they wake up in the morning with their hair all mussed from a good night's sleep. I think it is less obvious in their transitional times between sleeping and waking.

Why is it so hard to let them grow up? I spend all my time teaching them to fly and wishing they would just stay in the nest. No one ever tells you, when you first become a parent, that the entire time your children are growing up you are teaching them to leave you.

But that really is our only task. As much as we would like to shelter them in our nests until the day WE die, that is not our calling. We (and by that I mean "I") often miss that point by coddling and protecting and keeping them from doing things they are fully capable of doing.

Like laundry.

And then I spend a weekend watching them play tennis in a tournament. I watch them deal with frustration and anger and conflict resolution with the other player in an incredibly mature way. I watch them lose big and not fall apart. I watch them almost win, and then lose graciously in the face of their opponents celebration. I watch them shake hands across the net and walk off chatting amiably with the guy that just beat them. I listen to them plan how they are going to work on this thing or that with their coach the next week and I realize something.

I realize how amazing these little people are. I realize that they've reached a place where my parenting is little more than a gentle nudge in the right direction occasionally. I realize that they are steering their own ships with rudders much larger than me and that somehow they know how to do that. Somehow, miraculously, they understand how to do things that I've really never taught them.

Now - those of you with older children will laugh at me and tell me to get ready for the teen years, and I completely understand that my job is not finished. I know that. Teens are a whole different story and we'll deal with many NEW! and EXCITING! ISSUES!

I know that. I know that. I know that. We'll just call those years the flight lesson years.

Right now, my little chirpers are testing their wings - stretching them to see how big they are and how well they will hold them up when they do leave the nest. And I'm going to let them - even though it is hard to watch them grow away from me - even though they may fall and get hurt - even though it may break my heart.

I'll be there to help them up, dust them off a bit - help them reset their goals. And maybe feed them a worm or two.

Or a taco.

Happy Father's Day

For all you wonderful men out there - fathers, uncles, grandfathers, mentors, teachers, coaches, good neighbors - who so positively impact the lives of children...

I wish you a wonderful day full of the things and the people that you love.

I know the papa in this house is getting lots of extra kisses and hugs today!

xoxo to you all!

Too Soon Gone...

I recently joined in a Facebook discussion about real and virtual friends, and if one could be friends with someone you've never actually met. I took the side of "absolutely," and today I feel it even more.

A great light has gone out in our little blogging community. Char was a one-of-a-kind soul. Her photography and writing were both so poetic and dreamlike. She was kind and thoughtful and she will be missed tremendously by any who were privileged enough to know her, in real life or in this virtual one, as I did.

Any of the wonderful compilation of posts here can tell you what you should know about Char. Take a few minutes to read them, look back at the lovely images she shared so freely with us.

Godspeed, Char. And thank you.

Flashback Friday

With a nod to Deb...my own Flashback Friday...

This is what five years looks like. The photo on the left was taken in July, 2006. The photo on the right was taken last weekend.

My baby is not such a baby anymore.

I'll just be over here in the corner, rocking and weeping.

A Utopia of Temperance

The Smarty and I went riding around last weekend, looking at houses in the country with huge tracts of land. This is not because we are selling our house and buying anything out in the country with huge tracts of land, but because for some reason we like to dream about having a house out in the country with huge tracts of land.

Usually, we go out and see how much land 34 acres really is and then laugh ourselves silly at the thought of actually taking care of so much land and then we drive around and just enjoy the scenery around here in east Tennessee. Then we say things like, "But Father...I don't want the land...I only want...to siiiiing!!"

Bonus points for knowing what the heck I'm talking about.

Anyway, on our travels about the rurality of our region, we stumbled across Harriman, TN. We had, of course, heard of Harriman, but hadn't ever had reason to visit there. On this day, though, they were having a car show right on the main drag, and Dr. SmartyPants can't pass up an unexpected car show any more than I can pass up an unexpected art show.

Harriman's downtown is just as cute as a button, people. It has everything that makes small town Americana so sweet and quaint, including a half-restored theater and a couple of antique shops and a group of grannies line-dancing to "Boot Scootin' Boogie."

But the most interesting thing to me was the historical marker I spotted in the middle of the town. While there have been other towns established in Tennessee as utopias, this one takes the prize for being the most high-falutin'. Can you read it?

Harriman: Utopia of Temperance
Incorporated in 1891, this was to be an ideal industrial city, an object lesson for thrift, sobriety, superior intelligence and exalted moral character, where workers would be uncorrupted by Demon Rum. Named for Union General Walter Harriman, former governor of New Hampshire. Leader of movement was Union General Clinton B. Fisk, founder of Fisk University and Prohibition candidate for president in 1888.

Love it. It actually remained liquor free until 1993, although I'm not too sure how they did with the superior intelligence and exalted moral character thing. Such interesting places all around us...you can read more about Harriman, TN here.

Happy Monday. Except that it is Tuesday.

So, yeah. I was going to post yesterday, and somehow I realized it was like 10 pm and I had nothing to say except Holy Smokes, I'm Tired, and that just didn't seem like it was something worthwhile, so I kept it to myself.

Until now, that is. So there you go.

Mondays are just going to be those kinds of days this summer, I can tell. We start early and go late, and every moment in between is completely full of non-stop tennis. Last night, when we finally got home and started cooking supper, near eight o'clock, Joshua lay down on the couch and promptly fell asleep. Joshua never just falls asleep. Joshua lays in bed, reading for hours after lights out.

I love tennis.



Tuesdays involve tennis, though not to the same degree. I'm thinking of having them run laps around the lake in order to compensate for the lack of activity. Would that be wrong?

Nah...

Weekending

Going here tomorrow.

Getting one of these and one of these. Because I am a crazy bird lady.

Watching this and this on Sunday, at least when we aren't playing here.

Hoping to finish cleaning my house this afternoon, so I don't have to do anything domestic over the weekend. Wishing I had a housekeeper. Realizing I do! But it's me.


Sighing.

What are you doing this weekend?

Quietly

It's a typical summer morning. The temperature is mild, but rising. I've been up a couple of hours and have already made my way through a couple cups of coffee, a bit of morning news, the kitchen clean-up, the tennis match water and oranges prep, and a watering can or two on the tomatoes.

My boys sleep. They are still snoozing that childlike summertime way that seems to last for days.

And I'm torn. Torn between the reality that we have school work to accomplish and laundry to do and beds to make and bathrooms to clean and tennis matches to prepare for, and the luxury of letting my kids sleep in - not just for themselves...

...but for the quiet that envelops the house when they are asleep. I love that quiet, for a little while. If it goes on too long, it gets a little oppressive and I start longing for the sound of elephants running up and down my stairs and across the upper floor.

But for now, I think I'll savor it. Maybe I'll fix another cup of coffee and sit on the deck and breathe in the still of the morning and the aroma of growing tomatoes. Maybe I'll close my eyes and pretend I'm at the beach. Maybe I'll crawl back into the bed and take a 15 minute power nap.

Or maybe I'll just sit here.

Listening.

Happy Accidents

I love unexpected surprises, don't you? This photo, from the end of the film, yielded a lovely little double exposure, and I couldn't have planned it any better. The church is one of three in Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It's a lovely clapboard structure, seated on a foundation of stacked stones culled from the valley. Inside are hard wooden pews, aligned in rigid rows, and a pulpit at the front topped by a heavy bible.

I don't remember which shot came first, but I took a photo of both the outside of the church, and of the open bible, and somehow they melded together into this shot. It looks almost as if the very walls of the church are constructed of scripture.

Seems apropos, doesn't it?

Lazy, Hazy

I shot some black and white film in our Canon AE-1 a while back, where a while back equals last summer. I just got the film developed this week. I'm always on top of things around here.

This is the corner of my front porch next to my gigantic oak leaf hydrangea, and it's one of the nicest places to sit and watch the cul-de-sac go by while sipping a cool beverage. The hydrangea provides shade and perfume, made all the more sweet by the unrelenting heat. I'm half-hidden when I sit there, so I can listen in on conversations and squabbles, territorial disputes and sibling battles, unseen and unnoticed.

It's kind of an eavesdropper's heaven.

Monday Listings

My tomatoes are doing well.

1. I only have to water them three times a day in this heat.
2. I also fill soda bottles with water and poke tiny holes in the bottom and let them sit in the soil around the tomato plants to constantly drip drip drip water to the roots.

It's hot.

1. I'm not complaining. 
2. I'll take the unrelenting 90+ degrees over winter, any day.

Tennis. 

1. It's my whole life. 
2. The boys have practice Monday and Tuesday, matches on Wednesday and Thursday, and we usually play as a family on the weekends.
3. It's a good thing I like tennis.

I had some black and white film developed.

1. It's very expensive.
2. I love digital.

My Sketchbook Project sketchbook is available to view, now. 

1. Just click here.

I have two dogs.

1. They both dribble. 
2. Mostly water. 
3. Dogs are gross.
4. My other dog is a cat. 
5. That isn't true. 
6. He's a dog. 
7. He just acts like a cat.
8. He's very confused.
9. So am I.

Where I Intend to Spend My Summer

Some of it will be spent here, with my sad little plant that either receives too much sun or not enough or maybe I water it too much or not enough. In any case - it's living, and exactly the same size as it was when I planted it. I have other plants that are growing just fine, although not this particular type. I'm thinking it needs replacing.

Pretty much the rest of it will be spent here, where the boys will play team tennis and they have matches or practice every day, Monday through Thursday. Today is Derek's first match, and he's nervous.

But not as nervous as I am. He really has no idea.

Ah - what we mothers (and fathers) go through...

I Love Maters

I love maters.
Do you?
I plan to spend the entire summer eating maters every day.

My favorite recipe?
Pick a tomato.
Wash it.
Cut it into wedges.
Sprinkle with sea salt and black pepper.
Place a wedge in mouth. Chew. Swallow. Repeat.

My second favorite recipe?
Pick a tomato.
Wash it.
Slice it.
Spread mayonnaise (never Miracle Whip, people. that would just be crazy) on two slices of WonderBread.
Place tomato slices on top of one slice of bread. Season with sea salt and black pepper.
Place the other slice of bread on top.
Cut at an angle (not straight across - come one...what's wrong with you?)
Take first bite.
Scrape WonderBread from back of teeth.
Repeat last two steps.
Make another mater sammich and do it all over again.

I'm telling you - it makes me want to bolt a wood-frame screen door to my back door and install the spring a little too tightly so that it slams shut when I go in and out.

Because then it would definitely be summer.

In the Summertime...

We've gone from winter to summer here in Tennessee. Spring popped up for a moment, just long enough to let the dogwoods and azaleas bloom, then she fled south for the year, I guess. In the past few weeks, we've gone from 50 degrees to 90 - and skipped the open window season altogether.

I love open window season - my house gets aired out, my electricity and gas bills go down, my allergies hit an all-time-high. Okay. I can live without the last one, but the other points are valid.

This year, we went straight from heat to a/c. We're supposed to break the record high temperature set back in 1918, today. Hello, summer.
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Derek and Joshua start team tennis today. I'm not entirely sure how all that works, because I missed the orientation meeting on Saturday. I had it in my calendar, I talked to Dr. SmartyPants about it, told the boys I'd be going. Then I proceeded outside to plant my vincas, and an hour and a half after the meeting was to have started, I came inside, picked up my phone and realized I had completely missed it.

Hi. My name is Diahn. I'm a complete flake. I cannot function without my iPhone. It will now be strapped to my forehead like a phylactery.
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I miss Melinda. Mudbug Madness was this past weekend, and I didn't get to go this year. That makes me sad. But I may get to see her soon, anyway. That makes me happy.
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My mom butt-dialed me Friday. I could hear her and my sister and niece talking about getting food at the grocery store. They didn't hear me. It made me laugh.
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My tomato plants have the most adorable little tomatoes on them. I like to go out and gaze at them and smell the leaves. Is that weird? If I were to ever wear perfume, I'd like it to be eau de tomato leaf, but I don't wear perfume, so I guess that's irrelevant.

And weird.
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This weather makes me want to sit on my patio in the evenings and drink margaritas. It just seems right.

Anyone want to join me?