Today is supposed to be the nicest day of the week, warm and sunny. Already it is a pretty day with the bluest of blue skies. Nothing is moving, not even the leaves at the ends of the branches. I have to do a couple of errands today and maybe I might just take a ride, a tourist ride with gawking and a craning neck. I just won’t stop for souvenirs.

Yesterday I took Gwen to the vets. Her back leg flails. She got checked, and the vets asked a few questions. I asked her what she thought. She said the symptoms seem to indicate diabetes. Gwen got lab tests. The vet called this morning. The diagnosis is verified. I have to bring Gwen in on Monday so I can learn how to give her injections. She’ll also have special food. I have to figure out how to give Jack his regular food while Gwen gets her very expensive canned food. I’m toying with feeding Jack up high as Gwen can’t jump so well with her back leg. The vet said the leg might improve but it doesn’t always. Poor baby!

One time Duke, my childhood dog, got mauled on the neck by a huge dog from down the street. My father said he’d heal and didn’t need the vets. Nobody disagreed. A day or two later my father left for the week. At that time he was working in Maine and only coming home for weekends. My mother immediately took Duke to the vet’s. He got stitches and antibiotics. Duke’s neck looked good when my father got home. He commented and said, “See! I told you he would get better.” Nobody said a word. My mother just smiled and agreed.

When I was growing up, my mother never made fancy food. My father was the poster boy for meat and potatoes and a canned vegetable or two. I liked the canned peas and niblet corn. I didn’t like the creamed corn. I thought it looked disgusting as if it had been eaten then rejected. We only had fresh veggies in the summer. Mostly it was corn for all of us and local tomatoes for my father. His snack was to slice them, put them on a plate and add a healthy dollop of mayo. He yummed his way to the end. My father was a yummer. I remember we were eating seafood in a coastal town in Portugal. We ordered the shell fish. There were even razor clams. My father ate those, and he yummed his way through all of the rest.