Paisley May 1999-July 14, 2012

Paisley was a brindle Boxer with a kind, gentle spirit who rarely barked, loved to lay in the sun, and earned the name Tigger for her vertical bouncing as she greeted you back home.  She had a stump of a tail that wasn’t big enough to express her happiness so she resorted to wagging her whole rear-end.  She loved running at the dog park and had kisses for everyone she met.  So powerful were her kisses, that you could hear her tongue as it thwacked her nose. 

She came to live with Dave and Shannon at the age of eight weeks-old for their first wedding anniversary on July 18, 1999.  It was Shannon’s gift to Dave.  Paisley spent the better part of her puppy obedience classes walking around the ring backwards trying desperately to greet whoever  was behind her. 

Paisley spent her last few years living with Shannon’s parents.  Shannon’s parents were able to give Paisley the walks and attention she deserved.  When Paisley still had energy and good mobility, she loved to watch Judy (Shannon’s mom) swim laps in the backyard pool.  Paisley would race from end to end, licking Judy’s hands as she touched the wall to turn for her next lap.  When Paisley got too hot, she would sit on the steps of the pool in the shallow end to cool down. 

Paisley would take nightly walks with Art, Shannon’s dad.   “She’s kind of a chicken,”  Art had said about his walks with Paisley.   Paisley had been known to be spooked by her own shadow and in her scramble to get behind whoever was walking her she’d nearly trip whoever was on the walk with her. 

Paisley was a sensitive soul.  If someone got mad at her she’d slink away and pout for extended periods of time.  She was a sneaky girl when it came to the comforts of furniture and loved to spend her time sitting on the furniture she wasn’t supposed to sit on.  If caught, she would move in slow-motion off the couch or chair which broke the tension and evoked laughter.  It is hard to stay mad at someone with brown puddles for eyes.  

Shannon recalls the time 65-pound Paisley and three-pound Alli the Pomeranian joined forces.  Alli showed Paisley where the treats and food were kept at Art and Judy’s home.  Paisley then clawed the closet door open.  Both of them enjoyed their team effort thoroughly and were found with their heads in a bag of dog food stuffing themselves silly.  The family often joked that those two dogs, big in heart and little in brain, shared a bond and a brain and together made a good pair. 

Paisley joins Mocha, Alli, JoJo, Rusty, and Mindy at the other end of the proverbial Rainbow Bridge.  She and her gentle spirit have left a hole in everyone’s hearts and a trail of tears glistening on sun-kissed cheeks.

"(S)He took my heart and ran with it, and I hope (s)he's running still, fast and strong, a piece of my heart bound up with (hers)his forever"
 Patricia McConnell

Our Own Little Toothfairy

Ella has had a front top tooth hanging by a thread for a few days. I don't pull teeth out. Makes me woozy.  She doesn't like teeth pulled out, makes her woozy.

The tooth fell out on it's own today without her knowing it.  

Thinking Clover was chewing on a squinkie, Ella ran to fish it out of his mouth. Turns out he had found her top front tooth on the floor after it quietly exited her mouth.  Clover was playing with it, perhaps trying it on for size as his puppy teeth have recently started falling out. Were it not for his fascination with eating tiny things off the ground -- as well as butterflies, moths, and earthworms -- we might never have found the tiny front tooth for Ella to stick under her pillow tonight.

Lasik, Tummy Tuck, or Bust

I need surgery.  For five years I have known that I need to get surgery on my belly.  Various doctors have talked to me and told me to get it done.  A full-term twin pregnancy left me with with “severely separated” muscles and a hernia.  Recently, doing a crunch in the gym, something twinged painfully and I thought my insides were coming undone.

Last fall when I re-entered the corporate world as a clinician, I elected to put a large chunk of my pre-tax salary into a use-it or lose-it account to cover medical expenses. 

I reasoned that if I tucked away that much money from my paycheck that my desire not to waste the money would propel me past my fears of going under the knife.

I reasoned wrong.

Here it is, 2012 is half over, and I have not moved forward with my surgical plans and I have plenty of excuses not to get it done.  I am beginning to wonder, am I really going to lose all my money because I haven’t any courage? 

Not only do I need my stomach repaired before I completely burst open, but I would like to get LASIK so I can lose the nerdy glasses that I hide behind – it’s totally psychological – my idea that I am hiding, but still.  I am afraid to get the procedure done, and afraid not to have anything to hide behind. 

In an effort to reassure myself LAKIK is safe, easy and a wonderful thing to do, I googled for people’s experiences.  There I learned about doctors botching surgeries, people’s vision being distorted,  permanent eye damage and even the risk of going blind! Holy shit! 

Thinking that maybe I should hold off on Lasik, I googled abdominoplasty pictures and recovery.  There I found pictures of women with drains and tubes coming out of the freshly operated on bellys, horror stories of the pain and the feeling of being sewed back together so tightly they “can’t breathe.”

I thought maybe if I added in a boob job with the tummy surgery that it would serve as an incentive to get the work done; and of course Dave was supportive, “You deserve it,” he told me.  Visiting the plastic surgeon’s office, I tried on different sizes of boobs.  In stead of looking in the mirror seeing a buxom beauty, I saw myself as top-heavy and fat and asked the nurse for a smaller pair.  “Those are the smallest ones we have," she informed me. "We rarely use those.”

Oh dear.  Why must you make everything so difficult, I asked myself.  You have really got yourself in a pickle now.

 Maybe I should use the money and check into a chemical dependency rehab in Florida or HI or CA.  Not that I have an addiction, but I am sure I could fake one, and then it would be like a vacation.  There are treatment centers have serve lovely meals, offer massages and meditation times, all set on a private beach, not to mention the meetings with the therapists in which I could talk about myself guilt free, the opportunity to sleep in without children pestering me, and the fantastic psych drugs that may be prescribed.  I could probably afford at least a few days rehab with the use-it or lose-it money tucked away for medical expenses…