I am still a beginner at this Blog thing;  God is leading me, mistakes will be made: Forgive me.

I was not expecting to have to decide if a comment was real or spam; many comments were left after my “January 2016” post: how does one tell if it is meant for me? I was about to delete all the posts thinking they were for someone else until I ran into a few that mentioned my blog’s name; WOW, it was for me, thank you.

I decided many posts were for someone selling something and talked about a messed up site, I am not selling anything. Some posts did not make sense, some offered help, and some commented that I had a very nice blog; good information and well written.  One post asked how to stay in contact: I was a bit taken-aback. I kept some and deleted some; I believe I deleted some good posts that said I wrote well: who am I that someone could appreciate my writing?

It is a learning curve, if you are the person who asked how to stay in contact with me;  an email account was set up with this blog, I just have to find it, I will post it.

Bart looked at my blog today for the first time; he said he liked it, and thought it looked well done: it made me realize some of the deleted posts might have been talking about my blog. Forgive me for not  believing you. God Bless!

Winter is coming and going this year: we have sticky snow! I love taking pictures of Nature up close!

 

 

The Important Stuff!

We had a wonderful Christmas together: my husband, my daughter, my self, Zachery, Charlie, Sam, Grace, and Fluffy!

The house didn't get clean, the Christmas cards were not sent,
Christmas dinner was eaten on the couch 
watching a movie instead of on the table with the good dishes; 
is any of that important? Not really. 
Time together is!

We did put up the lights outside especially the Cross my husband made for me years ago and found a wonderful Fraser fir, live tree at The Home Depot, which is still green and fresh 4 days after Christmas;

it was decorated and we even put a Christmas village under the tree.Discussion and Revelation:

After dinner, my daughter and I were talking about, how my volunteering at the Kalamazoo Gospel Mission during Christmas vacation, for only 10 hours a week wore me out. She gave me a glimpse of the life she remembered as a teen coming home from school and find me sitting on the couch in-front of the TV; she remembers 3 days of nothing, absolutely nothing being done, and then energy would be found to spend 1 day doing housework, preparing meals or going shopping.

When she talked about not being able to do anything; my body laid down often, because it takes back muscles to sit up; scoliosis and the surgery cut the nerves and atrophied the muscles.  I Didn’t understand why my body was so weak; I exercised and lifted weights! It was amazing how my body had one good day a month full of energy to get everything done that needed to get done; of course everything didn’t get done.

Today, God is healing my body so instead of spending 3 days on the couch and one day up and moving;  NOW my body has 5 -6 days of working with one or two days of rest! God is so Good!

 

 

Zachery has good days and bad days: days he is hungry and days he is not hungry at all, days he walks well and days he needs to be picked up and carried down the stairs. For my sanity, I have started to pick Zachery up and take him outside anytime he moves, or if I have the feeling the 4 month old puppy needs out. It is much easier to take all three dogs out every few hours; it leaves much less mess to clean up.

Sometimes when Zachery gets up, I find he really just wants me to give him attention and Love him and help his tired, atrophied muscles to relax; and sometimes he just wants to go to bed.

Something in Zachery’s personality has changed recently, he used to be one of the dogs that needed to go out when we got home; now there is a need to connect, to know I haven’t left him, a joy that I am home. Zachery has been the dog left home because Charlie needed so much attention, Charlie has anxiety attacks, Charlie goes crazy when he is left alone! Now Zachery is in need, He NEEDS TO BE LOVED AND CARED FOR, not just be the other dog anymore.

It is humbling to see the LOVE that Zachery has for me.  He is not a dog I have appreciated for the most of his 18 years. He is work to me! I don’t vacuum for dirt, I vacuum for Zachery’s hair! I walk him, I feed him, and I clean up after him; he sheds hair like no dog I have ever seen in my entire life.  I just recently realized the fine hair we have had to use a sticky roller to clean off our clothes, all these years, comes from him. He has long coarse hair, but his fine winter coat is what covers my clothes every time I pick him up.

Zachery has worked his Love on me and I now care for him as if he is my child.  I try to coax food into him every day; it hurts when he has no appetite, but it is wonderful when he is hungry and eats; tonight he ate almost a full can of dog food! It is hard to figure out what he will eat: he switches from wanting  dry dog food, to canned dog food that is all mush, to dog food that is meat and gravy, or rice, home made soup; he even tired of turkey from Thanksgiving!

I clean up after him and treat him with dignity because I know it is not easy for him getting older and he is not as able to control his body as well as he used to. I have been carrying him down the stairs for a little while; partly because it is faster, and partly because it has been hard for him to walk. Then all of a sudden he is walking and going down the stairs all on his own without help and he even has some speed to his walk.

This end of life walk is a bit crazy, God Willing the end will be peaceful.