I apologize for the lateness of the hour, but it has been one of those mornings. The pine pollen has started. It covers my windshield and most of my car; consequently, I am wheezing and having trouble breathing. I guess, though, that too has a weird sort of upside. If I do anything requiring exertion, I have to stop to breathe. I figure I’ll just have to relax for most of the day except I do need to put bags in the trunk, but for that I’ll use my carriage, the one for hauling all my uke stuff. My nose is permanently clogged. I should probably carry a handkerchief in my back pocket the way my father did or stuffed up the cuff of my sleeve the way the nuns did.

Henry has a vet appointment for Tuesday to check the reason for his limp and to get the medication for his eye allergy.

We are back to needing sweatshirts. The high today will be 59° while the low will be 50°. The sky is mostly cloudy but a glint of sun is managing to break through.

When I was a kid, my dog was Duke, a boxer. He gave me a love for boxers which has never diminished. Henry is my first non-boxer, but the tradition continues with Nala. Duke was scrabby and stubborn. He was also protective and loving. Nobody would have dared mess with us if Duke was with us. The house down the street had a dog Duke hated. They went after each other when they could. The dog was bigger than Duke who was small, the runt of his litter. One fight was horrendous. Duke got the worst of it. His neck was torn. My mother wanted him taken to the vet. My father said Duke would take care of it, licking it and cleaning it. That was when my father was away working all week so while he was gone, my mother took Duke to the vet where he got medication against infection and his wound cleaned. He got small stitches below his neck. You could’t see them. When my father got home, he mentioned how great the wound looked, how well Duke had done. My mother said nothing.

When I was growing up, I believed most things I was told. My mother had her admonitions about blindness, balls of stomach gum, giant knuckles and death from drowning, and I never questioned her. The nuns too had their warnings about sin and hell so I stayed on the straight and narrow rather than risk the devil and eternal hellfire.

My weekend dance card is empty except for a dump run. I figure I’ll go on Sunday as sort of paying homage to my father.

This entry was posted on May 22, 2026 at 1:33 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.