Spring Has Sprung!

I discovered this past weekend that nothing beats the rush of standing out in your yard on an early April day, soaking up sunshine and warmth, and gazing across brilliant green grass up to the budding trees! Just six weeks ago we were under a foot and a half of snow, and hosting a small herd of deer trying to scratch some sustenance from under the frozen blanket. Mercifully, we saw hardly a flake of snow after that weekend, and in recent weeks have enjoyed remarkably warm temperatures and copious sunshine (for this area).

Who would have thought that the season's first occasion for what most deem a drudgerous chore would fill me with delight?

As I mowed, Melany began working in the little flower garden beside our house--but not without interruption by Princess Chloe, who demanded adulation as she reclined on the sun-warmed driveway!

I think that if our long winters weren't so desolate and depressing, our spirits wouldn't soar as high as they do in the Spring, and we wouldn't appreciate this wonderful season so much. And with our world so widely plagued with conflict, misery, and fear, perhaps we should regard this time as a blessed portent of better things to come for all mankind:

For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations. ~ Isaiah 61:11

HAPPY SPRING, EVERYONE!

Our Surrogate Children

Every now and then someone asks me how Melany and I like being "empty nesters." I give them a quizzical look and explain that we're not--we just exchanged our now-grown children for pets, a greyhound named Frank and a black-and-white cat named Chloe. Unlike our children, our pets won't grow up, at least mentally. On the other hand, they won't incur educational loans they want us to co-sign for. So it all washes out in the end, I guess.

I'm not sure which aspect of pet ownership predominates in our house right now--the endearing/entertaining dimension, or the aggravating/burdensome one. Of course, there's no bright-line distinction, and one can morph into the other in the blink of an eye. Take Chloe -- please . . .

One day last week, as Melany was piling clothes into our front-load washing machine, Chloe crept up from behind, hopped inside, and burrowed down as Melany continued to toss in more clothes in unawares. Just before she closed the door and turned on the machine, Melany noticed the clothes inside MOVE--she flung the door open and pulled some of the contents aside, and of course found the cat staring back at her from under the pile! Once she got the cat out of the washing machine and finished with the laundry, Melany opened the stand-up freezer door to put in some items, whereupon the cat jumped inside the freezer. This time Melany saw her right away, as her black coat was readily visible against the freezer's white interior. So, she didn't come nearly as close to a bizarre and painful end as she just had inside the washing machine. But that didn't keep her from trying to exhaust all nine of her allotted lives. This past Sunday we gave Chloe her first real taste of freedom outdoors (as the weather was relatively good and the cat had recently been "fixed"), and one of the first things she did was climb the big bush beside our back door, all the way up to where it meets the roof over the back porch. Of course, she had to go explore the roof, too. Unfortunately, when she got bored with that, she couldn't--or wouldn't--climb back down the bush the way she had come up. Instead, she stood on the roof mewing and pacing back and forth until Robert opened a bedroom window that opens above the roof, for her to jump through. Just a few hours after that we caught her sitting on the second--floor stairway banister, reaching up with obvious intent to jump onto a ceiling-mounted light fixture that hangs a good 20 feet above the bottom of the stairwell, with a metal hand railing on the spiral staircase between the ceiling and the floor. Needless to say, if Melany hadn't intervened to disabuse her of this idea, she'd be occupying a small box underground right now.

Frank seems less intent on winning posthumous awards for chutzpah. In fact, he seems quite content to spend his daily life doing nothing more than dozing and trotting along the Erie Canal when we take him up there (at least once a day) so he can release all his, ah, "frustrations." He huffs at the deer hanging around our yard, especially if they approach the house, but hardly notices squirrels and rabbits any more. I guess that's what happens when middle age creeps up on you (as I know from personal experience).

Contrary to all the conventional wisdom about greyhounds' animosity toward cats, Frank gets along quite well with Chloe, notwithstanding her frequent playful "attacks" on him from chairs or from behind doorways or under beds, and even though she regularly helps herself to his food (in retaliation, he regularly helps himself to her food).


Lately, when we want to treat "the kids," we put one plate down for them, and they happily go to town side by side. Naturally, Frank sucks up a lot more a lot faster than Chloe does, but he was "here first," after all, and she hasn't yet lodged a formal complaint.

As aggravating (and expensive) as these two can be, they do add a certain livelihood to our otherwise quiet, childless home. They remind us constantly of that age-old parents' lament: "Kids! Can't live with 'em; can't shoot 'em . . ." Maybe we'll just keep 'em.

Leaf Me A Lawn

Before the crisp, golden weeks of autumn merge into the cold, gray months of winter here in Western New York, a solemn ritual must be performed by almost every homeowner: the Raking of the Leaves. There are those in contempt of virtue who have turned it into the Blowing of the Leaves or the Mowing of the Leaves, but they aren't worthy of attention. The rest of us measure our manhood in barrels or bags filled, or tarpfuls hauled, and in this department at least I can stand with the best of any half-acre man. This year I got almost the entire job done in one weekend, thanks to the efforts of my lovely assistant Melany.

In the past, I could count on the "help" of my children: in their younger years, mostly to jump and roll around in my piles to make sure they didn't get too tall, and as teenagers to grumble and amaze me with their magical vanishing acts (which is why I have no photographic evidence of their help in those years).

(UPDATE: The picture of Colin (left) and Robert immediately above has been added so as not to exclude our beloved youngest son from our leaf-raking memories--the leaves around that swing certainly needed raking!)

Then the children left the nest and I faced this enormous task all by myself (except for the aforementioned efforts of my lovely assistant Melany). But this year, I had help from a new source: Frank the Tank, Greyhound Extraordinaire! Melany brought him outside where I was raking in the front yard; he took one look at the blue plastic tarp I was raking leaves onto, and knew in his heart that we had put it all there just for him. Into the pile he dove, thrashing about in delight, and flashed me a look that said, "Try to get me out of here and I'll bite your arm off."

So, we let him stay and even rubbed his belly as he rolled around in the leaves. Just like the children, he lost interest after a little while, and I was able to finish the front yard.

Today, Melany let Frank out in the back as I was dragging myself through the last part of The Struggle. He took one look at the small mountain range of leaf piles I had built up in the empty lot beside our house, and tore into them like a cannon ball--then jumped, rolled, and buried himself in them for a good five minutes before charging out again and shaking off the bits clinging to his coat. It was so hilarious, Melany decided that we should try to "videotape" the scene with our digital camera, if we could get Frank to do an encore performance. After calling my son in Buffalo to talk me through how to do this, we coaxed Frank back into the leaves. Of course, he now adopted a coolly indifferent air as you might expect from a teenager, and contented himself with burrowing into the nearest pile and letting us heap more leaves on him. Perhaps it was just as well that he didn't play about more vigorously, because one viewing this my very first video recording would think we were in the middle of a 9.5 magnitude earthquake at the time. I'll let you judge for yourself below, and enjoy the antics of our latest four-legged "child."

Another Old Athlete on the Disabled List

. . . and this one never took steroids, made an eight-figure salary, or appeared on "Dancing With the Stars." He does, however, have long legs and muscular shoulders, enjoys a good ball game, and owns a beautiful fur coat.

I'm speaking, of course, of our dog Frank. He's now fully into middle age (7) and about 10 pounds heavier than he was when we got him 3 years ago, but he's still trying to race around like the speed demon he then was just off the greyhound track. But as any old ballplayer will tell you, age and decrepitude have a way of sneaking up on you. Well, they paid a visit to Frank this past Monday when our daughter-in-law's family came over for a Labor Day cookout in our back yard. They brought their dog William--some kind of sheepdog, I think, and a perpetual motion machine himself--and Frank, while reeling off laps around the house with the evident purpose of showing off his athletic prowess, somehow managed to break a toe in his right front paw. Yesterday Melany took the poor fellow to the vet, who advised that Frank stay off that paw as much as possible over the next 4 to 6 weeks. No more laps around the house, no more chasing down squirrels (or the shadows of them), no more brisk walks along the Erie Canal even (his favorite nightly activity). He limps his way into the back yard to answer Nature's call, then limps back into the house to resume his enforced rest. Like many banged-up sportsmen, though, he appreciates a good soak in the jacuzzi now and then.

I've reminded Frank of that old saying by Mark Twain about age being "an issue of mind over matter: if you don't mind, it doesn't matter.” But that seems to have just gone in one of his floppy ears and out the other.

Movie Review: Marley & Me

This afternoon Melany and I caught the film Marley & Me on our way home from taking Colin back to college. If you've ever been married, had children, or owned a rambunctious dog--and especially if you've done all three at the same time--this movie is for you.

I wasn't expecting too much; Marley & Me is advertised as a "dog movie," and while I'm fond of dogs (except when our greyhound Frank does things like trying to eat the presents under the Christmas tree), most dog movies I've seen have been one of two types: silly, noisy, and generally ridiculous, or maudlin and depressing. But I thought this one might be worth a try; it's done much better at the box office than most dog movies, so there might be something to it. I wasn't disappointed. While Marley & Me has its share of crazy and sad moments, it has much, much more, and in overall appeal rises rises far above the pack (no pun intended).

The film is based on a book by reporter/columnist John Grogan. According to the Publishers Weekly review:

Grogan . . . and his wife, Jenny, were newly married and living in West Palm Beach when they decided that owning a dog would give them a foretaste of the parenthood they anticipated. Marley was a sweet, affectionate puppy who grew into a lovably naughty, hyperactive dog. With a light touch, the author details how Marley was kicked out of obedience school after humiliating his instructor (whom Grogan calls Miss Dominatrix) and swallowed an 18-karat solid gold necklace (Grogan describes his gross but hilarious "recovery operation"). With the arrival of children in the family, Marley became so incorrigible that Jenny, stressed out by a new baby, ordered her husband to get rid of him; she eventually recovered her equilibrium and relented. Grogan's chronicle of the adventures parents and children (eventually three) enjoyed with the overly energetic but endearing dog is delivered with great humor. Dog lovers will love this account of Grogan's much loved canine.

I haven't read the book yet, but we're headed to the library tomorrow to get it.

I'll try not to give away more plot details than the review above does; just go and see the movie for yourself. Among the things that make it wonderful are its unusual--for Hollywood--emphasis on family values. This is presented gently but clearly; in one scene, John's liberated bachelor friend Sebastian seems almost to be coaxing him to leave Jenny after the two have had a fight, but John just looks at him like he's crazy and assures him that breaking up with her isn't remotely an option. The viewer shares their harrowing and humorous experiences as one child follows another and the parents make some hard decisions about how to balance work and family--and, despite much doubt and some conflict, family wins every time. As it turns out, professional needs are satisfied too, in more rewarding ways than they thought possible. Owen Wilson and Jennifer Anniston give moving, funny, and utterly convincing performances as John and Jenny, which is remarkable since they usually play rather loose, libertine characters (Alan Arkin plays John's delightfully colorful and cantankerous boss). Marley doesn't dominate this film, but his antics serve as a hilarious and touching theme throughout, and he weaves the family together despite all his mischief. The film's conclusion is one of the most moving I've ever seen, a sentiment audibly shared by others in the audience.

If you want to see a movie that's funny, heartwrenching, and wise all at the same time--one that celebrates what's important and most important in life--go see Marley & Me (see some trailers here).

P.S. In your Comments, feel free to mention some of your favorite dog movies!