Freedom...

So I saw my doctor about my knee yesterday, it's been five weeks since surgery and it feels great.  I stopped going to physical therapy two weeks ago, I got my doctor's blessing on that yesterday (yeah!) so I don't have to go back.  I just didn't like that new therapist, and I think I can build the strength in my leg better at the gym on the bike and not doing leg lifts. 

Dr. Hines told me that I am a superstar, and that I am getting really good at this.  Thankfully I only have two knees and so this should be it for me.  He said I can stick with my bike/treadmill routine and do a little jogging at the end for the next two weeks and then after that I can start running again.  No pain = good.  That's what I am going with.

It is nice to be back at the Y in the mornings, and I have never been so happy to have sore muscles!  The body sculpting and the abs class have been good this week and last, again I am sticking with things that don't bother my knee, but I haven't been very limited at all. 

Jen and Karen and I are off to visit my sick grandma this weekend.  We were going to wait another two weeks to go, but according to my uncle she isn't doing very well.  So we'll be off for a girls weekend, which will include a stop at the outlet mall!  Yeah, I am so ready for spring and will be happy to add to my wardrobe a bit.

So as things are getting back to normal, school is almost out!  Wow, time flies!

Going to Grandma's...

So without all the craziness of the last few weeks, we sould have been loaded up in dad's RV on our way to Texas this morning to visit my grandma.  On account of a broken leg, and collapsed lung, our trip has been postponed until next week.  Dad and Billy are still going this weekend, and next Friday Jen, Karen, and I will road trip it down to Salado, Texas to see her.

My grandma has lung cancer, she's been a smoker forever, and now she's sick.  I have fond memories of the year we lived with her and my grandpa in Florida after my mom died.  I remember we used to joke about hiding her cigarettes from her, but she never quit smoking.

My more recent momories of her are not as fond as the ones from when I was a kid, and I hate that.  We have been down to visit twice since she moved to Texas, and both times have not been pleasant.  She seemed to get mean and more religious as she aged.  These are the memories I will try to not hold on to.

I remember her yellow Cadillac, how we lived just a few blocks from the beach but we didn't go that often.  The bunkbeds she bought for the girls' room.  How Karen, Billy, and I got in trouble for opening our eyes under water in the pool in the backyard and she spanked us with that orange piece of race car track.  How she would stand with me for hours in the sun to remove the head lice I picked up from a friend as school.  How she would read to us at night.  I remember a story about a redwood tree that has stayed with me all this time, but I can't recall what book it was.  How she used to yell at Uncle Frank for driving us around with the music too loud, I was sure forever that he hated us for taking over part of his life.  Apparently he did not.

I think the thing that I loved the most about her was that she loved my mom.  She was her biggest fan, always willing to talk about her to us.  She was the only person that we had that was like that.  She would tell us about how hard she worked to take care of us, and to teach us manners, and how much she loved us.  She is the one person that made it seem like evern though she was gone, she had existed.

It was a good year.  It ended all too soon when we went off to Germany with dad and our new family.  I sometimes wonder where our lives would have gone had we stayed with her.  It does make me sad that she will be gone, that that one cheerleader of my mother's won't be around forever.  She loved us unlike anyone else, and for that I will always be thankful, and when her time comes I will be very sad to see her go.

Another Week...

So we've been without Lucy for almost a week now. It's weird, I still find myself wondering where she is and checking to see if she's ok. Penny and Rocky seem a little out of sorts still. I think they are wondering who is in charge of our smaller pack now. Neither one of them has laid on any of the dog pillows in the house in the last week. It's like they know that Lucy will be back and don't want to mess with her stuff.

I don't want to mess with her stuff. Her pink pillow that has been in our bedroom by the bathroom door is still there. She used to always lay on it when I was in the bathroom getting ready. We tried moving it to the other side of the room but I didn't like it there. It needs to be where she left it.

The girls seem to have recovered from her being gone, but I still feel her loss. She was my Lucy. I was thinking of some other memories we have of her...

• When we lived in our apartment on 50th, we bought her her own Christmas stocking, and we got a bone to do in it. We hung her stocking up, with the bone in it a few weeks before Christmas and she could smell that bone. She would just sit and start at the stocking, waiting for us to give it to her.
• Josh used to torment her with the cardboard that comes inside a roll of wrapping paper. He would chase her around with them and she would freak out and run all around.
• If we would run out of dog food for her she would get a can of tuna, and she loved it. She never ate faster than when she had a bowl of tuna for dinner.
• That poor ugly toenail. I don't even remember when it started to grow weird and look funny, but that toenail on her back leg was the weirdest I've ever seen. She did rip it off a few times, once when she was coming in from the back yard at the old house. I didn't realize what the yelp had been for until I saw the trial of blood spots all over the house. The girls got to go with me to take her to the vet that time, and they loved that they put a green bandage on her leg.
• When her hot spots got bad enough that she'd need to go to the vet, there were a couple of times that they put the cone on her so she wouldn't lick anymore. I can still hear the plastic scraping on the floor as she would get any crumbs that the girls had left behind.

So now, as the days turn into weeks, and months, and years, I know that we had the best dog. I know that I won't always feel so sad without her, but I will always miss her.

Lucy at about 4-years-old, with Paige when she was probably close to turning 1. Lucy sure did love to lick the babies.

Lucy in the Sky...

So yesterday was one of the hardest days of my life so far. We had to let Lucy go.

I took her to the vet, knowing that she hadn't eaten in a week, that her legs no longer seemed strong enough to hold her, and that her belly was hugely swollen. I had to help get her in the car, and for the first time in her 14 years she just laid in the front seat and didn't move at all. She needed help getting up the two steps into the vet's office and she had lots of trouble just getting on the scale.

I have known that this day was coming for a while, most of her Lucyness has seemed to be gone for a while, but I think that I believe that if she could still follow me around the house that she was still there somewhere. I will probably never know how she always knew where I was, her sense of smell must have been how she could still find me. Even when it seemed hard for her to get up, if I left the room for just a few seconds she would always get up and follow me.

So after talking to the vet and knowing that more tests and more medicine wasn't the right thing for her, it was still hard to make the final decision. I will admit that I am a selfish person and I want her with me, but in the end I had to be an advocate for her and say that enough was enough. I believe that she knew how much she meant to me, and in the end she is at peace, where ever that may be.

So for Lucy, I thought I'd list a few of my favorite things about this crazy dog that has blessed my life for over 14 years.

• She was with us before Josh and I were legally an "us", and she was very much a part of what that "us" has been for the last 14 years.
• That she removed most of the rubber parts of the doorstops in most of the places we lived with her.
• That she would get all the way by my feet under the covers at night and then dig and spin in a circle before she would lay down to sleep.
• That last big sigh she would do before she fell asleep, the sigh of contentment.
• That no matter how far under the covers she was at the start of the night, she would always be up on our pillows by morning.
• That if you were sitting on the couch and leaned forward, she's squeeze herself behind you in a split second to be where you were and it was warm.
• The endless hours of time she snuggled with me on the couch, especially before the girls were born when that was all I could do, she happily just hung out with me the whole time.
• That she chewed on rolly polly's like they were bubble gum.
• That she would sit at the girls' feet when they were small and just wait for the food to fall, or even steal it off their plates if they were down low enough for her to reach.
• Even though she was allergic to grass she would still roll around in it.
• That she would freak out and run circles around the house and make the girls laugh when they were babies.
• That she loved my homemade peanut butter dog treats.
• That she would just blend into the pillows on her favorite black couch and sleep there for hours.

For the last 14 years, she was always glad to see me, or smell me, when I got home. She gave me unconditional love and I can only hope that I returned it. She was one in a million, a far better dog than we probably deserved, and our first baby. She will be missed.