Snoop

This is Snoop, my brother's new(ish) dog. Snoop is about eight months old and is a very energetic puppy. He can't stand it when we're all sitting together and not paying attention to him. He'll come up to my chair with one of his toys in his mouth and beg for a game of tug-of-war, which he plays with wild abandon, growling loudly the whole time.

He's not even at an age where he can be petted very easily because he just doesn't want to sit still. He'd much rather be gnawing on my hand. (And I'm under strict instructions not to allow that. You may remember my brother's previous dog, Queens, did the same thing and my brother still accuses me of ruining the dog by tolerating it. At least Snoop hasn't broken my skin, whereas Queens used to leave me with scratches from her sharp puppy teeth.)

Queens had a good life but unfortunately she developed lymphoma and only lived about three years. It was a freak thing -- very unexpected and very sad.

Here's Snoop on our walk yesterday. He's actually more proportional than this photo suggests -- I think it's just the angle of the shot that makes his head look so big and his body so skinny. My brother is saying that he wants to fatten him up a bit, but Snoop is in the gangly pre-adolescent stage.

We visited my mom yesterday morning. She's now living in a nursing unit, following a springtime bout with flu that left her with diminished mobility. She was sitting in a wheelchair but she seemed happy, laughing and smiling. One of the other women on her floor said that Mom, who is 85, is always so friendly and has a contagious laugh, so that's good to know. She has no idea what day or time it is, or even where she is, and she can't really talk except to say "No!" now and then, to be honest I'm not entirely sure she knows who I am -- but she just rolls along with all of it. Some dementia patients get angry and some get frustrated but Mom has always just been giggly.

I suppose that's a blessing in a bizarre way. As I've told my brother, she's like a TV set to a non-broadcast channel. Her screen is on but there's only snow. Of course I miss being able to talk and communicate with her but overall, at the risk of sounding cruel, I feel pretty matter-of-fact about it. It is what it is. It's hard to imagine that just five years ago we were having conversations and going out to eat and even going to Savannah.

I also ran some errands with my brother and spent time with my nieces. My younger niece, Kate, is in fourth grade and obsessed with Warrior Cats, a popular book series about clans of feral house cats. There's a web page with some art tools, and together we designed our own Warrior Cat:

I know, it looks a little like Carmen Miranda. Carmen Meow-randa, maybe.

It was also my sister-in-law's birthday and we had some vague plans to go downtown and have a drink somewhere before JM (my brother) made steaks for dinner, but in the end the drink never happened. Well, not downtown, anyway.

We watched the early '90's movie "Point Break," with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze, which I'd never seen and don't even really remember being released. It was OK.

And at night we watched "The Breakfast Club," which of course I love, being precisely that generation. I think I saw it about ten times in the theater when it came out during my freshman year in college.

I had such a crush on Emilio Estevez.

Oh, and of course we went to Publix, because I'm in Florida and that's what we do when we need groceries.

This was for sale at the checkout. Sometimes the world really confuses me.