Coming home

    Yes, the title is a bit of misdirection.

While Florida is my home, in my heart, I think Ohio will always be my home. I arrived back in my hometown this past Tuesday, staying until Sept. 10, to attend a class reunion, see family and friends, and visit places I remember from my younger years.

This is the 45th reunion of the Licking Valley Class of 1968. While I’ve reunited with many of my former classmates on Facebook, this will be the first time I’ve seen many of them since Graduation Day, 1968. We’ve already had one event, and it was a blast connecting with two friends I grew up with in Toboso, remembering various events from our childhood.

Toboso, Ohio is the little town where I spend my childhood, and I know from previous visits how much it has changed. I hope to spend a little more time there this visit, but there are also other places I have fond memories of that I hope to visit as well, seeing what changes have occurred. Some of those visits will be the subject of future blogs over the next few weeks.

But for now I’m content in living with my memories, knowing that while Ohio is no longer my home, it is still home in another sense. I suspect that for many of us who now live life at turtle speed in places other than our hometowns, you feel the same as I. So relish the memories while you live the present.

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Goodbye Scudder

    

    We said goodbye to our old buddy, close companion and good friend this past week. Scudder went to the Rainbow Bridge, where he’s now waiting for me, on Tuesday afternoon, Aug. 20. Adjusting to life without him has been difficult.

No more long walks outside as he sniffs every blade of grass to find the perfect spot to do his business.

No more counter cruising (he was very adept at that in his younger days).

No more sharing the couch and watching the Buckeyes together.

Nope, Scudder’s in a better place now, no longer suffering from a bad hip, no more pain from the possible cancer we suspect he had. And now he’s reunited with his long-time companion, Tessa, as well as Holly, Bubbles, Harley and Valentine.

Scudder gave us 16 years of joy, companionship, love and faithfulness — all the qualities that make dogs man’s best friend. The grieving will continue, but Scudder still lives in our hearts and minds and we’ll never forget him.

And so, one last time, goodbye old friend. I miss you.

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Preparing to say goodbye

    This is going to be a hard post to write.

In June, I wrote the Lab Trio blog post about one of my cross-stitching projects and our Labs, both current and past. One of those Labs mentioned in that post was Scudder, my old man at 16 years.

Now, I’m preparing to say goodbye to him (and getting teary-eyed as I write those words).

At 16, Scudder’s old for a big dog, and a few weeks ago, one of his hips finally gave out. Now, he was still eating well, could hobble along on three legs once we carried him outside and his eyes showed a lot of life. My wife and I decided that we would not put him through the rigors of surgery to correct the hip problem but knew our time with him was limited.

Over the past few days, his ability to move has worsened and he can no longer get up by himself. So, the time is nearing when I’ll have to say goodbye to my old friend. And these last few days with him, I’m going to relish the memories of our years together, some of which I’ll share in a later post.

Meanwhile, my heart is breaking, just as I knew it would, but I don’t want Scudder to suffer. So clear the path to the Rainbow Bridge because a very special dog is coming soon.

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Dog Days

   Ah, the dog days of summer, that most sultry time of the season.

According to everything I’ve read, the dog days usually begin around July 3 and end around Aug. 11, or yesterday. I don’t know about the dog days anywhere else in the country, but here in Florida, the memo announcing the end of dog days was apparently misplaced.

It’s hot out there.

Beginning late last week, the dog days ramped up down here with feel-like temperatures over 100 degrees. This is the first time this summer that the outside temps during the day were practically unbearable. And there’s been little rain to cool things off, although in our neck of the woods, we had torrential rains Friday evening along with a tornado warning. The radar images made it look like a Fourth of July celebration with all the reds, yellows and orange lighting the screen.

But I digress. I repeat, it’s hot out there. But I’ll take the heat over the still-to-come most active period of our hurricane season, which will happen while I’m back in Ohio. Meanwhile, like my two labs, 

I’ll just take life at turtle speed and relax in the air conditioning.

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Book news

I’ve not blogged for almost a week now, not because I didn’t have anything to write about, but because I’ve been otherwise occupied.

You see, I have news as evidenced by the photo. The cover art for my forthcoming book, Dancing on a Tightrope, written under my pen name, Jon Dalton. It's a murder mystery set in Southwest Florida. Think Raymond Chandler or Mickey Spillane meeting Travis McGee. That's the feel some of my critique partners had.

So, I’ve been busy completing final run through, then to my editor (hopefully today).

Keep your fingers crossed that all goes well and you see it on Amazon sometime this month. Now back to the writing cave.

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16 years of happiness

16 years ago today, the love of my life became my wife, and I have to say that my love for her has grown more with each passing year.

Although we were still learning about each other on Aug. 2, 1997, there were two things we both knew: we were soul mates and we were best friends.

Like all married couples, we’ve had our ups and downs. We’ve laughed, we cried, we’ve argued, we’ve made up. But through it all, being best friends, being soul mates has seen us through every moment.

If, like me, you’ve found your soul mate, take a moment and hug, kiss and remind him or her how fortunate you feel to have him or her in your life. Soul mates do not come along every day, and when you find yours, keep them in your heart every day.

As for us, we’re going to do some quite celebrating today, but Sweetie, know that I love you, I adore you and I cherish you.

Happy Anniversary, Sweetheart.

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