What’s making me smile this week…

• Fresh Market, just opened yesterday in Heavensville, I was there when the doors opened, It’s totally AWESOME!
  
• Jane’s Krazy Salt, love it on everything
  
• Johnson & Johnson Baby Oil Body Wash – Original Scent, ahhhhh
  
• Grampie’s Salad Dressing Recipe, courtesy of my friend, Barb
  
• Vanity Fair Napkins, the white dinner style ones with the embossed shells.  Yes, I know it’s strange, but I really enjoy them.
  
• The M&M’s haircuts, I’m finally getting the hang of using clippers
  
• Friendship Bread, a great read about life and loss, and finding hope again
  
• Anticipation of seeing sweet little Abby tomorrow, maybe she’ll say “Hi Grammie” when she sees me ;o)
  
• My fleurs, the garden is in bloom, oh people you are so missing out by not having micro irrigation – lush blooms, totally 100% maintenance free.  I can never thank John enough for setting it up last summer.  It’s fantastic!
  
• That piece of apple pie that’s sitting on the kitchen counter

I hope you all have a lot to smile about, too.  ~ jan

Old dogs, taking life one day at a time….

We live our lives alongside our pets, growing old together, and sometimes the changes are so subtle that we don’t realize the deterioration. Mollie has degenerative hips, and has gotten noticeably worse since this spring.  She has good days and bad, sometimes she can’t stand up from a sitting position on our stone floors, or even outside on the concrete, and I have to lift her to the carpet or the grass so that she can get traction to walk.  Sometimes she stumbles, and if it’s really a bad day she bunny hops in the grass to go potty.  But some days she’s fine, running through the yard, following us around, a lot of it depends on the weather, like the rest of us when we get old(er).

I groomed her today, she no longer stands in the sink, or stands on the grooming table, but that’s okay, we work around it.  She’s happy and not in pain, her little tail wags, her eyes are bright and shiny, so we carry her on the bad days and rejoice when she’s having a good one and runs through the yard toward us on those short little legs.

Mollie was a breeder mom that came into our lives five years ago.  At that time the breeder said she was six years old, but we’ve always thought she was older.  She’s a such gentle little soul, our Mollie.  She was never spunky, never played with toys or even jumped on the couch, and we attribute it to the fact that she probably didn’t get much attention as a young dog.  She’s the direct opposite of Maggie, who has always been a little social butterfly, but then she has been the center of attention her entire life.

I always say that Mollie loves me like nobody else ever has, she shadows me constantly, is miserable when I’m not around, and is always content just to be by my side.

So we are living life one day at a time, enjoying her every day, giving her lots of massages and special treats, and when she has  a day like today, when she is walking really well, our lives are a little more joyful.

That’s all any of us can do anyway, live in the moment, one day at a time.  Dogs just grow old too soon, but oh what joy they bring to our lives in the years we have them…

~ jan