What To Do With Dick

Dick and I met on June 18th, 1996. Three weeks prior to our chance meeting, his dog Elijah died. Just a mongrel who walked up to Dick's house by the lake one morning. For days, they fed him, but left him outside. After awhile, they took him inside, figuring someone had dropped him off. He arrived in good condition and not in distress. Didn't appear like he was lost at all and walked up to Dick like he had simply come home to his master. He lived with Dick for 19 years! Nobody, not even me made it 19 years with that man! I wish I'd shaked that little guy's paw, but Dick was so full of stories and memories, that I still knew him and it is fact that Dick thought Elijah was a soul mate from another life. 

Sort of collie-ish with fur about four inches or so in length. I can only relay what Dick told me about this dog and what I could see in pictures because once again, I never laid eyes on him. The fur was black and brownish all in the same hair. You know blackish tips? Small, like a border collie, but clearly other stuff thrown into the gene pool. White ruff and coupla' paws. White tip on tail. Old soul who was his friend through two marriages and many houses. What that dog heard and saw? Several girlfriends, several nights full of anger and angst. I was always so grateful to this puppy to have been there for my guy through all his time of turmoil. Certainly when he'd needed a friend, Elijah had been there to listen and just sit with his master. 

Every boy needs a dog, right?

What To Do With Dick

What To Do With Dick

So stacked underneath that pristine, well turned wooden box is another. 

This dark stained one is rough and uneven though it's shellacked and lovingly marked with a brass plaque, it's obvious to all it's a crude sort of box that we'd put tools in out in the garage.

 And that's exactly what it once was. But now and for the last 16 years, it's held the ashes of Dick's beloved dog of 19 years; Elijah. Dick also added to this box Elijah's leash, food dish and a Kit Kat bar. (They would share one daily you see. Chocolate toxic to dogs be damned? No… A true case of ignorance is bliss!) This box had actually been a product of his grandfather's efforts and my Dick had lovingly placed his pet's ashes inside. 

That was my Dick for you…

What To Do With Dick

I have a smallish red cherry wood box on a shelf in my house.

Beautiful this box is and really quite heavy although I must say: "Dick you've lost some weight!" 

This tasteful, unassuming box contains the remains of my love and likely it's weight belies all the stuff I sentimentally had cremated with his body. Sent him wearing his brand new jeans we'd bought the Saturday before he died in Port Huron I did! Still had the tags from Walmart on them. He had this one favourite Tee shirt, black of course, with a 40's Caddy on it. Done like pin striping on a street rod and cost a small fortune ordered special from California. Socks. The nice thick wooley ones he liked to wear in his boots so his feet wouldn't hurt. His boots. The brand new ones we'd just bought in May with gift certificates his mom had given him her last Christmas. Oxblood with lots of stitching. A bit of a banty rooster was my Dick! The belt we'd just bought in Florida the March before he died. Black. Hand tooled with silver conchos on it. I also added to his cardboard casket a lock of my hair and some of his little cat girl Suzie's. I added a metal die cast model of a street rod he'd lusted after. I added a bracelet that I had worn 3 weekends before when we'd been at the Kitchener Blues Fest. I added the statue of the angel he sat on top of his mother's casket just 8 months before… There was stuff in that cardboard casket…. 

Making my throat hurt remembering….Stopping

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The Optimist And The Pessimist

Did you ever hear the joke about the world's biggest optimist? It's one of my favourite stories and became one of my mottos back in high school. A lot can be learned from this little story if you so choose and sums up my life. I'd always believed that when one door closes, another opens and so even when your twin flame suddenly dies and you think you can't breathe anymore, you think: Hell! What's coming's gotta be a doozer! 

Here's the optimist and pessimist joke: 

It's a joke about twin boys about six years old. Worried that the boys had developed extreme personalities -- one was a total pessimist, the other a total optimist, their parents took them to a psychiatrist.

First the psychiatrist treated the pessimist. Trying to brighten his outlook, the psychiatrist took the scowling little boy into a room piled to the ceiling with brand-new toys. But to the doctor's dismay, the little boy burst into tears. "What's the matter?" he asked, baffled. "Don't you want to play any of the toys?" 

"Yes," the little boy bawled, "but I can't because I'll break them!"

Next, the psychiatrist treated the optimist. Trying to dampen his outlook, the psychiatrist took this smiling twin to a room piled to the ceiling with horse manure. But instead of wrinkling his nose in disgust, the optimist emitted just the yelp of delight the psychiatrist had been hoping to hear from his brother, the pessimist. Then, the boy surprised him further and he clambered to the top of the pile, dropped to his knees, and began gleefully digging out scoop after scoop with his bare hands. 

"What do you think you're doing?" the psychiatrist asked, just as baffled by the optimist as he had been by the pessimist.

 "With all this manure," the little boy replied, beaming, "there must be a pony in here somewhere!"

Yup! That's me! Shovelling all this shit! I just know I'm going to uncover a Clydesdale or maybe even a Unicorn!

Hello all my old friends

So here I am, sitting in my new RV in Rondeau Provincial Park, writing for my blog again. It's a Thursday night. 7:08 to be exact, or 19:00 hours for you military folks. I'll start this off with a short run down of where I've been for the last year and a half.

Dick died last August. Need I say more?

Surprise! Widow!

The while before that you ask? Well, Dick and I were having the best months we'd ever had! Funny that….

I'm going to look up my last posting on Secrets For Happiness to see when the last regular post was there. Right at this moment, I can't remember and I've used up my monthly quota for download on my internet stick, so I'll check when I'm back home and on my unlimited home plan. Once I look that detail up, I can cross reference the timing, but I do know that I tried to write just after he died. I apologize for making such a cryptic post at that time. (Eva - I couldn't reply. I tried…)

I'm healing nicely. I've got on with my life somewhat and can function, although most of that is because I met my Dick late in life and I'd been single for 13 years before, so I know how to be that. I'm also blessed with fairy tale types of friends and family. I have never lacked for help or someone to talk to. I do have Post Traumatic Stress disorder attached to the building where I worked, but that was not their fault and is just one of those flukey things we all must live with. I'm very much a cockroach. I adapt. And last but not least, the best medicine; I have my cat. 'Nuff said on that.

So! The plan:

I'm going to start blogging again. Almost Retired Handbook is going to be a sort of novel interspersed with some true occurrences and some flights of fantasy. I likely won't tell you which is which. (I won't get sued that way if I hurt somebody's feelings.) And I'll warn you. I'm not going to watch my language or try to be politically correct because… Seriously?

My Secrets For Happiness will be sporadic with photos of places I'm going in this new life of mine. (Called Lucy's New Life Plan I might add!) I just took some pictures of Rondeau Park today while I was out walking. Don't get the wrong idea… I walked to the restaurant, Rondeau Joe's, for a pickerel dinner! And the pictures might look different  because I'm taking them with my Blackberry because one of us scratched the lens on my Nikon in Florida a year and a half ago. We couldn't for the life of us think when we'd done it, but there it is, a half inch gouge in the lens and more to fix it than the things worth! I still use it for my Ebay stuff and have taken a few thousand pics since.

Now, bear with me if I miss a day or week or month. I still work a lot what with Ebay and my other internet store and you know with all the stuff I did around the house and all the stuff he did, I'm a busy girl. (Damn! I hate vacuuming!)

Enough preamble here…

I'll be in touch...