Angel Wings and Blessings in the Storm

Our sweet Boomer earned his angel wings this week.

I didn't take any pictures this week. The one above is of Boomer a few years ago.

It was a hard week. We had to say goodbye to our beloved dog. The cancer roared back with a vengeance and all of our palliative care was no longer enough. By Wednesday, we knew he needed help and quick. His breathing was very labored and his lymph nodes were swelling by the hour. They were as big as lemons. We were blessed to find a mobile vet who specializes in end-of-life care for pets. She came out and helped him transition out of this world. It was a very peaceful process and she was very sweet and kind. We will miss him so much. The house is too quiet now. In time a new pup will come into our lives, but for now we grieve.

 I did venture out to do some grocery shopping on Tuesday. I wanted to get things like Tylenol, butter and flour. My mother also had a small list of needs. Many items were hard to find and I had to go to several stores, but I was blessed to find most of them. I was most impressed with Trader Joe's system of social distancing. They did a great job.

We are not sharing with our children our concerns that this may go on for many months. None of us knows what next week, let alone next month, will bring. However, we are actively preparing for the long haul. Sometimes blessings come along that we don't realize are blessings at the time. Remember the tree that fell down a few months ago? The neighbor next to the neighbor whose tree fell into our yard decided to remove the same kind of trees from his yard for safety's sake. This has created a nice sun-filled space in our back yard that isn't in the septic field. Now we can have a small garden. We are going to give it a try. It may be very necessary to have a bit of extra food in the future.

I am so blessed to have a spacious back yard. I must admit that I have at times hated all the three-quarters of an acre. It was terribly overgrown when we bought this house. This was a foreclosure and the yard was more like a jungle than a suburban yard. Don't even get me started on the vines. They are everywhere and relentless. We have worked at it for years, but rarely had time to enjoy our yard in any way. It just seemed like we were racing around managing vines, weeds and wild onions. Now, we have tons of time and no where to go. We work in the yard as a whole family for about 30 minutes a day, and we are actually using our yard for recreation in the evenings. It is a lovely addition to our quarantine routine. (I will show photos next week.)

The biggest blessing of all this week is that dear husband is now home. When Covid-19 started moving through the VA Hospital, David asked to take sick leave for a few weeks. He explained about our medically-fragile adult son and the need to shelter in place for our family. His boss agreed. We are so blessed that he has accumulated months of sick leave to take, if need be. However, he will probably start doing telecommuting work in the next week or so. We are so very blessed that he is home. Hopefully, we got him home in time and he will not get sick.

I hope you all are safe and sound.

Blessings, Dawn