Off to Aurora!

Today I learned that "toss it" means something different to humans than I thought it did.  When my dad says "Let's toss it!" to me, he's throwing a favorite toy for me to go catch.  But around here it means "put it in a sack and out of sight."
     So far, they haven't gone through my toy basket and tossed anything.  I'd better start hiding my favorites just in case.  Sometimes my mom washes my favorites and that's almost as bad as not having it at all.  Almost.
      But I adapt.  That's what a dog does.
      This afternoon, though, things have changed a bit.  No more packing (we ran out of boxes my mom says) and we're off to Aurora, (my favorite thing!).  We get to run in a big yard while my mom talks with people at the museum there.  I've been visiting that museum since I was a puppy.  Well, I don't get to go inside but I know all the people there, Jan, Elizabeth, Patrick, Annette, and Pam (but she retired!).  Lots of board members, too.  They're all good to me.  I haven't seen them since May for Emma's Day.  Tomorrow, my mom will be at the Kraus House which is also known as Emma's house greeting people for the holiday tour.  You all come!  Maybe I'll get to meet you!
       Have a great weekend!  Woof!  Woof!  Bo

Veterans Day the day after

I tried to get up here early but my mom's office looked like an explosion of boxes and books and things she said "were going to the Salvation Army."  I figured I'd stay out of the way...I didn't want to be one of those things that got packed!

                My mom said it was Veterans Day yesterday when humans celebrate the end of a long a terrible time of war.  It's different from Memorial Day when we remember fallen soldiers and friends who have gone.  (My friend Hershey passed on to that big rainbow bridge just last week.  His parents have a hole in their heart).  Mom says Memorial Day is a more somber time but Veterans Day is a time to sing because there was peace in the land.  Mom says there isn't peace in the land today but it's still a good thing to sing for and we can remember veterans, too.  My dad is a veteran.  He was in the Navy.  He looks pretty good for someone who turned 80, I think!  He took me pheasant hunting just last week.  It was cool.  

                We didn't see any parades or anything.  We were packing.  Mom gave Caesar and me new hoofs to chew on so we'd get out of the way. 

                Mom and Matt are sorting books and coughing from the dust on the Zane Grey novels or the books on writing or the books marked "I haven't read these yet."  She said when her aunt moved that she had boxes labeled "Books I have only read once."  There's hardly a place to lay down in that room.  Caesar can fit under her desk but not me!

                My dad's back is hurting him quite a bit so he's resting but that doesn't stop my mom from packing stuff around him.  There's hardly room on the bed for me to lay down either! 

                My friend Simon came to visit, too.  He brought his mom and they've been packing and packing.  Simon is Ceasar's brother.  They're little and I watch over them.

                Oh, now my mom's sat down and she looks sad.  She's looking at a picture of her dad, she said, one taken when he was a young man standing beside his airplane.  He learned to fly when she was little.  Then she found a picture of him shortly before he died and she read a card she'd saved sent to her by her "groupies" she called them because they called themselves that.  She says she's not making any headway in her office even with the dozens of books marked "Powell's" which I guess is someplace in Portland. Her friend Nancy is going to take books there and get cards so mom can buy more books once we're "moved."

                Moved.  That's the word describing all this chaos and emotion with tears and yes, a little shouting too, and then hugs and apologies and my mom and dad hold each other and say, "It'll be all right.  It's a transition."  I'm not sure what a transition is but it sure seems to be making them behave in strange ways.  Why, my mom isn't even getting up early to write!  She writes when she "takes a packing break."  I wonder how long this will go on....

                Have any of you been in a transition?  How does it end?????   Bo, Woof, Woof.  (See, even I'm confused.  I think I'm supposed to Woof, Woof before I sign my name!)

                

Something's Going On

                She started talking to the pear tree, something about how she'd miss it and remembering out loud when she first noticed it, sitting on the porch swing.  She usually talks to me, my mom does, but today, it was the tree.

                Some pretty strange things have been going on around here.  There are boxes everywhere and I smell a inky smell when she writes on the boxes.  When she types on the computer, I don't smell a thing.

  I try to stay out of the way so Caesar, PeeBee and I sit on the river deck and look out (PeeBee's is on my back, of course, his favorite thing).  Every now and then she walks out and stands there staring then she reaches down and scratches my head and says "It's going to be all right, Bo.  It will."  I don't know if she's making a promise to me or to herself.

                This past week we drove to a place with juniper trees and sagebrush and my dad pushed a button on the car's visor and a huge door opened up to this massive kennel.  Or at least, I thought it was a kennel because it was all cement.  But he drove the car in there!  Mom said it would be nice to have a garage so  guess that's what it is. 

                Up a few steps and we were in a big empty house with wood floors (my favorite thing!) and into a room where the sun flowed in like water onto cool tiles, warming them up.  I could lay on my belly and look out onto a big green lawn on both sides of that room.  Caesar can see outside from those sunny room doors and he stands barely six inches from his belly to the floor. I can see without having to put my paws up on the sills.  What a place!

                My mom and dad walked around, picked up some papers, turned up the heat, walked around some more, opened curtains then brought the suitcase inside along with two sleeping bags and a pretty pitiful pad that looked like the egg cartons my mom throws away. Still, when they put those sleeping bags together and went to bed on that pad, they were at the same level as Caesar and me and we curled our backs to them, wondering, what they were doing taking us to this place of new scents, different floors, low windows to the outside and a big deck without the view of the river but of craggy trees, sage, bunch grasses and air missing river and wheat but scents of something new.  High desert, my mom called it.  Mountains, my dad said. " Coming back," they both said and they sounded happy but they both had tears in their eyes too.

                It's all very strange.  I can't wait to tell PeeBee when we get back home.

                

Letting a Cat Post

Dear Mrs. Kirkpatrick,

I was trying to comment to Bo’s blog but I don’t think it worked—probably my typing.  It’s hard with such short toes. 

Would you please tell him that I really liked his telling about cat cafes.  Cool.  As he knows, we have a sort of “moveable feast” here:  I ask for food, one or the other of Them brings the dish out, I eat—that’s the Best part—, then They pick it up Old Yellow or Mean Black, the scroungy cats down the hill, don’t get my food.  Makes a guy dizzy.  Please give my best to Bo and Caesar, even if they are dogs.

Yours very truly,

Duddie The Cat

Ok, so I let a cat post today.  Sorry his picture didn't come through but what can I say...maybe cats should be read and not seen.  Woof!  Woof!  Bo