Not yet.

That thought kept running through my mind as I watched our 15-year-old dog yelping in pain, unable to move.

She came to us as a temporary dog. One rainy night, our son and his family heard a sound outside their home. They looked and found a puppy struggling in the ditch, close to drowning.

They rescued and took care of her until she was about 8 months old. An opportunity to go to school out of state meant they’d have to give their dog away. They tried to find a home for Channell, but in the end, I told them I’d keep her until they got back.

I’ll admit, I’m not a pet person. I used to tell my boys they could have a picture of a goldfish for a pet, but eventually, they wore me down.

I told my husband I’d take care of the dog, but she won him over in a matter of days.

It wasn’t hard because Channell is a great dog.

She doesn’t jump up on the furniture, has never torn anything up and only barks if someone’s at the door.

When the grandchildren were young, she never bit or nipped at them as they often pulled on her tail or ears. She whines if my husband – her alpha mate – leaves without her, and he enjoys taking her places with him.

We know she’s getting older – she sleeps a good bit of the time and she lost her hearing a year or so ago.

When she gets up, she slowly stretches each leg out before tentatively moving forward. We don’t notice her aging because it’s been gradual over the past couple of years.

Two weeks ago, I noticed she wasn’t eating and had a few accidents inside, a rarity for her. I took her to the vet who diagnosed a bladder infection.

After a few days on an antibiotic, Channell rebounded, so my husband took her out to the country where she loves to run and play, even at her age.

He came home with Channell in a sling, the whimpering dog unable to walk or move. We think she fell but we’re not exactly sure what happened.

An X-ray showed no broken bones, but she has arthritis all down her back and it’s a wonder she’s as agile as she normally is.

The night after her injury, I kept getting up to check on her. The only parts of her that moved were a slight wagging of her tail and her big brown eyes looking at me, almost questioning what was happening.

I had no answers, but I touched the top of her head – the one place where she didn’t yelp when touched there – and told her what a good dog she was and how much we loved her.

Even though she couldn’t hear me, the words comforted me, and I hope she somehow could sense my caring and sorrow that she was in so much pain.

When I left to go to my mom’s birthday party in Louisiana, I quietly told my husband I supported whatever decision he might have to make about her future, and I was sorry if he had to make the hard one all alone.

But the next day, the old gal was actually moving around. She wasn’t running but she did manage to walk to the door and go outside. By the time I got home, she was almost back to her old self, and I thanked God for helping her recover.

Channell’s an important part of our family. When the time comes for her to cross the Rainbow Bridge, I hope we’re with her in those last moments so we can give her the caring goodbye she deserves.

But not yet.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Our mom is turning 90 years young next week.

Mom says she doesn’t feel 90, and she has the outlook of someone half her age.

As a front-row bystander to her life for many of those years, I have a few insights as to how Mom’s retained a young attitude.

#1:  She doesn’t see herself as old. By society’s measuring stick, she’s definitely a senior citizen, but she doesn’t accept that verdict. Recently, she went on a senior citizen’s trip to a casino in Baton Rouge.

When I asked how it went, she said the trip wasn’t any fun.

“All those old people slowed me down,” she said. When I reminded her that she was the same age as those she was complaining about, she sniffed and said “I’m a young 90, not an old one.”

#2:  She listens to her own voice. When there were hurricane warnings last year, Mom got in her car and drove around. She wanted to see what was going on out there.

My brother said the governor ordered everyone to stay home. Her answer was simple:  “Well, he didn’t tell me.”

#3:  She has deep beliefs. When we were kids, Sunday Mass was a requirement, not a choice. Even though she was probably tired and would’ve liked to relax on a Sunday morning, she made sure all seven of us were dressed, out the door and sitting on the front row.

#4:  She has a great sense of humor. My brother came to visit her and she asked if he was hungry. He said he wasn’t, but she said she could fix him a sandwich.

He declined. She offered leftovers. He declined. When he was leaving, she stood at the door with a paper bag, rattled it and said “We have pears!” We teased her unmercifully for weeks about being a food pusher.

Instead of getting mad, she gave all of us a plate with a pear picture on it for Christmas so we’d always have pears.

#5:  She’s not a great driver, but that doesn’t stop her. Even at the age of 89, she still gets out and drives herself around town. But not without minor incidents she tries to keep a secret.

She keeps asking my brother for bumper stickers advertising his Catholic radio station.

We thought she was helping promote the station.

Nope. She uses the bumper stickers to cover up the dents on her car, much like one would put a bandage over a scrape.

#6:  She loves the casino. When I asked her why she plays the slot machines when she shops thrift stores, she said: “Don’t think of those quarters as real money, and you’ll have a lot of fun.”

#7:  She knows every one of her children and grandchildren personally. She remembers our friends from elementary and high school and she knows who we hang out with as adults.

She knows what sports and activities her grandchildren play and enthusiastically supports them in whatever they choose to do, from soccer to baseball to playing an instrument.

#8:  She knows what to remember and what to forget. As a natural snoop, I grow frustrated when she can’t remember some of the family gossip that rears its head from time to time.

She told me it’s more important to know what to forget.

#9:  She’s loyal. Whether it’s a claim to fame at having watched “The Young and the Restless” for over 40 years to still being a top fan of Elizabeth Taylor and Sean Connery, if Mom thinks you’re great, you’re that way for life.

#10:  She gives great advice. She knows when to dry tears and when to say that’s enough.      Her advice is exactly what you need to hear at that exact moment, even if it stings a bit to hear the words.

Happy 90^th Mom. You are loved even more than you can guess. May the casino chips fall in your favor, and let’s hope there’s a 007 movie marathon on your special day.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

Sydney’s eyes slowly opened. Her classmates were standing up, pulling on backpacks and stretching. Class must’ve ended, but she’d been asleep. That late-night job at Popeye’s was getting to her.

She popped a piece of gum in her mouth and slowly made her way out of the classroom. At the door, she once again noticed the now-faded sign Mr. Thompson had posted on the wall – “Stay on the path.”

What the heck did Thompson know about a path. She looked at the teacher – he was at his desk, his bifocals balanced on the end of his nose, as he frowned at the laptop screen.

They’d all heard about Thompson’s frustrations – he was secretly a rock star. Many times, they heard him brag about the gigs – did anybody really use that word anymore? – he’d snagged at some of the bars downtown.

But here he was, day after day, year after year, slaving away at teaching freshmen literature.  She had no interest in Jay Gatsby or Daisy Buchanan. She had even less interest in Shakespeare.

“Follow your dreams,” Thompson would tell them. “Stay on the path, get a good college education and don’t forget to register to vote.”

What kind of mediocre dream was that Sidney would wonder. Not hers, that was for darned sure.

She yawned, melded into the crowd, and made her way to gym class. For the first time, Sydney wondered if anybody else questioned the sugary goop pedaled by teachers.

“Don’t follow the path. Blaze the trail,” was a poster on the wall in the gym. That was a direct contradiction to what Thompson had posted, but the gym teacher was certainly different than the rock star.

Ms. Booker was young, and rumor had it she’d been courted by the WNBA. For some reason, nobody really knew, Booker had finished her college basketball career and returned home to take a teaching and coaching job at Southmore High School.

Booker sure hadn’t blazed any trails. She’d followed the path and it landed her in this back-woods town in a dead-end job.

Sydney yawned again. She hated her job at the grease pit, even more so because she closed up at night. It wasn’t that Sydney was a go-getter – the late-night shift manager made more money, and Sydney had to hand her paycheck over to her mother.

That woman had followed a path all right. The same one her mother and grandmother had followed – get pregnant young, drop out of school, take a job making minimum wage and spend your later years with yellow teeth and nicotine-stained fingers, complaining about the landlord.

“Do better in life, Sydney,” her mother would tell her in a tired voice as she laid on the couch, surrounded by cigarette smoke.

Sydney pushed the image from her head and wondered if she could escape dressing out today. Maybe she could claim she was sick, or she’d pulled a calf muscle. But before she could approach the coach, Booker blew her whistle.

“Don’t even come up here and tell me you’re too sick to participate today,” she yelled. “Unless you’re bleeding from the ears or nose, you’re dressing out.”

So much for weaseling out of gym class, Sydney thought.

She dressed out in her smelly gym clothes, not caring that she smelled like day-old fried chicken. As she stood with her classmates, noticing with smug satisfaction that nobody stood too close to her, Booker began to talk.

“Today, we’re going to talk about motivation before I make you run laps around the court,” she said, holding a basketball under her right arm.

“My college coach had a saying – sometimes the right path is not the easiest,” she said. “That’s definitely true in here. Sydney, stop that yawning and spit out that gum.”

Sydney swallowed her gum, not caring if it rotted in her stomach for the next 75 years as her best friend had told her numerous times.

“But sometimes, the right path is the easiest one,” Booker said. “And today, the right path is running around this court twice and then taking a seat on the bleachers.”

She blew the whistle and indicated the girls should start running. Sydney didn’t mind the warm-up. Running was something she enjoyed. She had a course she followed in the evenings – around her block, cross the street to the abandoned house, down the sidewalk, being careful to avoid broken concrete and the barking pit bull, and then around the corner for the last leg home.

The mindless running allowed her time to think, time to sort out where she wanted her life to go. That’s the mindset she adopted as she ran around the basketball court, past the nicked-up bleachers, past the rack of basketballs and past the girls who brought doctor’s excuses and got out of running.

Sydney wondered if those girls had a path already forged for them. Excuses after excuses to get out of doing what needed to be done. Her mother certainly had her fair share of excuses – she couldn’t ask for a raise because she was afraid of her boss. She couldn’t look for a different job with better pay because she didn’t think she had the skills to get a better job.

She was on that same path she’d always been on, and she’d passed the same markers, the same rejections and put downs she’d always heard. Familiarity was comforting if not exciting.

Sydney had decided a long time ago that wouldn’t be her lot in life, but as she turned the last corner for her laps, she realized something. In her four years at this god-forsaken high school, for the hundredth time she’d seen that stupid sign, she hadn’t blazed anything. She wasn’t an honor student; she wasn’t the fastest runner and she wasn’t filled with creative ideas.

She was a plodder, somebody who followed the path that others had laid out years before. What if she made a change, she thought. What if she decided to take the road less traveled – she’d heard something about that in freshman literature class.

Without thinking, when Sydney turned that last corner, instead of heading to the bleachers, she kept running out the door, into the hall.

“Robinson, come back here,” she heard coach Booker yell. But Sydney wasn’t listening. She was on a different path, not the same one she’d been on for the past 16 years.

She wondered how far she could run before she either ran out of gas or the security guard caught up to her on the golf cart.

Only one way to find out, Sydney thought. Keep running on a different path, starting right now.

And so, she ran.

 

We all have chores we secretly enjoy. Mowing the grass is a couple of hours where we don’t have to answer our cell phones or talk to anybody else.

I don’t mind washing my car. For an hours’ worth of work, I can get in a clean car, both inside and out, until it rains again. Thanks to the drought, that clean feeling lasted weeks.

There is one chore, however, I despise. I’ll put this one off until I can’t avoid the task any longer. The job? Cleaning out the refrigerator.

My husband went on a trip for a couple of days, so I took the opportunity to clean out the fridge.

A big job requires preparation. First, put on loud music. I found a YouTube channel with hits from the 1970s and Elton John got me in the right frame of mind.

Elton and Susie were hopping and bopping to the Crocodile Rock. I was hopping and bopping to wilted lettuce and shriveled grapes.

The next step was get an empty trash bag. Check.

Next, fill the sink with hot, soapy water.

And, last, take everything out of the refrigerator and stack the bottles and cartons on the kitchen counter.

Check.

During the pandemic, I watched more cleaning videos than I care to count. I know how to shampoo a rug and that dryer sheets can remove hard-water spots from shower doors.

Thanks to the organization videos I watched, our refrigerator is filled with small baskets.

One holds packets of cheese, one has packets of pepperoni as the grandkids love making their own pizzas and one has all the little things that don’t fit in the other baskets.

Then I took inventory. The milk had expired three days ago – that went down the drain as did the yogurt containers from 2020.

There was a bag with leftover chicken. I think I baked that, what, two weeks ago? I learned a long time ago to never open the Zip-Loc bag when the food’s been hiding in the back of the fridge for a while.

Oh, here’s that small bag of ground meat.  I might’ve been wearing a sweater when I first browned that ground meat, so in the trash it went.

Once everything was out and sorted, it was time to clean the shelves. That’s where the hot, soapy water comes into play.

I remembered seeing organizers tell viewers to take the shelves out, but that was too much work, and Elton had already sung “Honky Cat,” “Tiny Dancer” and “Rocket Man.”

I used a dishcloth and wiped the shelves clean.

Hey, I wasn’t getting graded on the cleanliness of the fridge, so spot cleaning was good enough for me.

An hour later, I was finished. The trash bag was full, all the bottles and cartons were back in the fridge and the soapy water was cold.

Goodbye, unpleasant chore. We’ll meet again right before Thanksgiving when I’ll need room for a frozen turkey to defrost.

As I patted myself on the back for a job well done, Elton was singing “I’m Still Standing.” And guess what, Elton? So was I.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My granddaughters and I curled up on the couch this weekend and watched the 2015 live-action remake of Cinderella. The gowns were incredible – can we bring back chiffon – and the sets were lavish.

Writers updated the story to give Ella a bit more spunk, but we still have a long way to go to transform these fairy-tale princesses into young women who can take care of business.

Walt Disney films often perpetuate the idea that women are weak and their only goal in life is to remain oblivious to their own beauty and marry a prince who’ll take them away from a life of drudgery.

One of the firsts was Snow White.

She knew how to take care of seven other people in a cramped little house without the benefit of electricity, running water or a paycheck.

In “Sleeping Beauty,” instead of hiding the truth from Aurora, the young princess should’ve been warned about the dangers she might face. She’d know to avoid needles and could head up an anti-drug campaign at the same time.

And if you’re asleep when your prince comes along, we need to have a talk about recognizing signs when choosing a suitable life partner.

In the original “Cinderella,” Disney’s female lead never questions why she, the owner of the castle, has to serve as a maid. She never complains, never talks back, never stands up for herself.

Let’s look at her resume. Cinderella knew how to run a household, keep a castle humming, sew, cook and complete all of that on a non-existent budget.

The movie “Tangled” is based on the tale of Rapunzel, a young maiden kept prisoner in a tower by an evil witch. The Disney princess was somewhat brave, I’ll give her that.

But if Rapunzel knew she could throw her hair down and help someone up into the tower, why didn’t she cut her own hair or sew all those sheets and drapes together and make her own escape rope? Nope, she had to wait for bad-boy Flynn Rider to come along and help her out.

In “Beauty and the Beast,” Belle has a bit more independence. She refused to marry Gaston, the manly hunk of the movie.

Belle complains about the “provincial town” she lives in but does nothing to improve the situation.

I wish we could’ve seen Belle open her own library and teach adults and children how to read.

Instead, she marries the prince and lives happily ever after, her life’s goal to read every book in that huge library. Not to anyone else. Just to herself.

In “The Little Mermaid,” Ariel trades her voice, her best asset, the one quality the guy remembers about her, for a chance to make a guy fall in love with her.

A guy she met once, and he was unconscious for most of that encounter.

If you’re going to trade your talent, trade it like most people do – for a job with a 401k and vacation time.

Which brings me back to the Cinderella movie.

Instead of accepting her role as servant in her own castle, let’s have Cinderella see an attorney right after her father’s death.

She would contest the will, claiming at least half the assets. Then she’d force the stepmother to sell the estate, sue her for back wages, invest all the money and live an independent life as a wealthy woman.

The next time we watch an animated princess movie, we’ll watch Moana sail the oceans, or “Encanto’s” Mirabel discover her special power was inside her all along.

Also on the watch list is “Brave’s” Merida chart her own course. Another good one is going along with young Tiana as she finds her way in “The Princess and The Frog.”

We need to teach our girls that finding true love requires more than a kiss when you’re asleep or a visit from a fairy godmother.

True love requires commitment and honesty.

Wearing a chiffon dress on that quest, however, would be acceptable.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

 

 

When we were kids, this was one of our favorite taunts: “you’re not the boss of me.”

As the eldest, I could claim superiority. But these days, I’m not in charge of anything or anybody, least of all myself.

That’s because so many things are now the boss of me, even in my own house.

When our boys were babies, they definitely ran the show. The baby cried, I got up no matter if it was 2 a.m. or 2 p.m.

He wanted to eat, I fed him. Diaper wet and they were miserable? They cried, I obeyed.

It was easier to be the boss when they were toddlers. Some days, though, they wore me down and I gave in. That’s when they realized an incredible truth – she can be conquered.

Our dog bosses me around, and she can’t even talk.

Whenever she wants to go outside, she stands at the back door until I let her out. If I don’t respond quickly enough, she barks until I get up to do as she commands.

She does the same to come back in. She stands at the door. She barks, I obey.

There’s lots of bosses in my kitchen. The microwave will ding without stopping until I open the door. The air fryer uses the same command except the tone’s a little friendlier.

If I open the dishwasher door before the cycle is finished, an alarm beeps until I reset the machine.

The first time the dishwasher chimed, it took me over an hour to run down the sound. Now I know better than to interrupt the machine before the cycle’s finished.

Our refrigerator also dings if I leave the door open too long. Let’s face it – sometimes you have to leave the door open when a snack attack hits and you’re rummaging round for something to eat.

The refrigerator, however, shows no mercy. It will ding and beep until I close the door.

Our dryer is probably the loudest boss in the house. The beep that machine puts out can be heard in the back bedroom. It’s also the easiest boss to ignore – the dryer gives up after beeping three times.

Even though my cell phone is relentless with its bells and beeps, at least I can silence it. Then again, if I ignore a phone call or text message, the prompt stays on the phone until I clear the app out.

The newest boss is my car. It’s equipped with all the latest safety features, and they look appealing on the website.

These features include a post-collision safety system, adaptive cruise control and lane tracing assistance as part of the basic package.

These are quite helpful, except when they actually kick into action. If I get too close to the white line on either side of the vehicle, the car beeps until I move over.

It does the same when I attempt to back up. I actually don’t mind this safety feature.

I wish I’d had it a few years ago when I backed out of a parking spot without seeing a car behind me and ended up with a dented back fender.

There’s one silent boss on my car that’s quite useful – the icon that shows up on the driver’s side mirror to let me know another vehicle is in my blind spot. I still find myself looking over my shoulder – old habits are hard to break.

There have to be some places, some appliances, something in my life where I rule the roost.

When I think of one of them, I’ll let you know.

That is, if they let me.

 

  This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.