Archive for the ‘Family’ Category
My youngest brother graduated from college this weekend. Naturally, I got pictures, and got some good use out of my new Canon EF 50mm ƒ/1.4, which I think may be my new favorite lens.
Next weekend I’ll be back in Vermont for Memorial Day: my sister and brother-in-law are hosting a barbecue. I’m sure I’ll get a ton of photos from that.
Went up to Vermont to spend some time with my mom and the other various family members left in my place of birth. Of course, I got some photos of Olivia, and quite a few of my dad, who happened to be over at the house while I was there. Sunday, I thought I would do something for my mother and cook her dinner, so I set off to the grocery store in search for some swordfish steaks, only to find out that not only was the fish market almost completely out of swordfish, but what was there was also fifteen bucks a pound. I don’t think so. So instead, I got some salmon, thinking that it was a similar type of meat and would cook nicely without changing too many of my plans.
What I hadn’t planned on, though, is that apparently my mother hates salmon. D’oh.
I do have to say, though, that despite that one little snafu, I completely rocked the meal: salmon steaks with lemon garlic herb butter, fresh brussels sprouts and rice pilaf. Three out of four of us loved it. Unfortunately, the one person who didn’t was the one I was cooking for. :)
And now, the aforementioned photos:
Amy came down to Connecticut on Wednesday with the baby, so I went over and had dinner, and took these while I was there.
Drove up to Vermont yesterday to spend Easter with the folks. Got these photos of the niece (and even one of two of my other nieces as well).
Visited the family in Vermont this past weekend and got a bunch more photos. Even snagged a couple of one of the cats and my sister’s dog. Lots of great baby faces in this set.
My sister came down to visit my dad again this week and so I made the trek over to the house today to spend some quality time with them and, of course, to take new baby pictures. Twice in the span of three weeks is great (and I’m probably headed up to Vermont this weekend, too, so that means even more), and she’s really starting to show some great facial expression, even reliably grinning when you do certain things (a raspberry sound seems to be her favorite).
Took advantage of a lack of sleep today to go visit my sister, who was down at my dad’s house with the baby. Got these photos while I was there.
Went up to Vermont this weekend (as detailed in my previous post) and got a good number of new photos of the niece, as well as some great shots of my sister’s dog.
We put our dog to sleep today.
This is my eulogy to a shepherd/retriever mix named Mahogany (so named for practically no reason at all, since she wasn’t mahogany colored—we literally couldn’t think of a name for her and this was the first one that was suggested by my sister after a marathon naming session that didn’t make any of us retch). She was getting on in years, had lost much of her hearing and was the second dog in a row that we owned that had Cushing’s Syndrome. But she was in our lives since I was fifteen, which is about half of my life, and she meant a lot to me.
When she was younger, she was a terror. We got her at about eight weeks, the day after Christmas of 1994, and she was adorable and fuzzy and couldn’t go the whole night without having to go out and pee. Somebody had to sleep with her in the back room of our house so that we could take her outside when she needed to. She was terribly submissive, and had a knack for peeing all over the floor when somebody new came into the house. And if somebody showed up in our driveway, she would go crazy, but not because she wanted to hurt them. It was more of a “OMIGOD THERE ARE PEOPLE THIS IS GREAT I LOVE NEW PEOPLE I WONDER IF THEY WILL PLAY WITH ME” kind of thing. Funny that nobody else but us saw it that way, though.
Since then, she was kind of a fixture in my life. I’d come back to my parents’ house for a weekend and she’d be there at the door, as excited to see me as if I had simply gone away for the day and was getting home.
Even as she got older—and her age really started to show—she would still have puppy moments. Though the fur under her chin started turning gray at the young age of two or three, she still loved to go outside and run like there was no tomorrow. And she loved playing in the snow, right up until the end. Somehow, she never really grasped the concept of how large she was. It was always funny to see a sixty-five pound dog try to climb into somebody’s lap while they sat in a recliner. And God save you if she ever climbed on a bed while you were laying on it: your face was inevitably doomed to a quite literal tongue-lashing from the dog, which would only let up once you had capitulated that she was, indeed, the winner.
My mother told me earlier this week that she was going to be put down. I’m thankful that my job affords me the ability to work from any location, because I decided quite fast that I would drive up so I could see her again and say goodbye. And this morning, at nine o’clock, we made the trip to the vet’s to put her to rest.
The entire process took only about two minutes. It’s not the first time I’d seen a family member die—no, this was in fact the third time I’d had the privilege. The vet pushed what seemed to be an absurd amount of anesthetic through a syringe, and quite soon, the pup’s breathing slowed and stopped.
She died with her eyes open. I had thought she would drift off to sleep, but I guess it happened too quickly for even that.
In a way, getting to say goodbye to my dog makes me feel a little better about not being able to say goodbye to my grandmother. The frustration of having one family member pass on so fast is tempered a little bit by the ability to show the other one how much I loved them both. It’s a small consolation, but it is one, at least.
My parents say they probably won’t get another dog for a while. The last time we had to put a dog down, it was about six months before we all decided it was time. Now that there isn’t a whole house full of kids to help take care of it, I wonder if it might not be a little while longer, if at all, before they get another. But this family has always had a dog in it, and I can’t imagine it without one in the house to help keep the cats company.
I just hope that if they do get a new one, it’s not something small. I wouldn’t want to accidentally step on it.
October 23, 1994 — February 20, 2009
You were loved and you will be missed by all—even by those who thought you were trying to eat them.
Five months is an awfully long time for me to go without any kind of update at all. There are a couple reasons for it, not the least of which is that I keep planning on updating the design of the page before I update next—not that the two are mutually exclusive. The other has simply been life interfering.
Since the biggest update has to do with what’s written directly below this one, I should get it out of the way first: My grandmother passed away on Tuesday morning. It was quite a shock to all of us, because she had been doing very well, only to aspirate on her breakfast Monday morning and go into cardiac arrest. The broken leg was healing so well that they had put a regular walking cast on it and expected that she was going to make a full recovery. She was in good spirits and was responding well in all areas. And then it all came crashing down. After a day on the ventilator, we made the decision that it was for the best if we take her off, and once we did, that was it. It’s for the best, really. It’s certainly a better situation than the alternative, with a decline from the Alzheimer’s reducing her to a person that couldn’t even recognize her own family. She went out with at least some of herself intact, which is good.
The rest of what I could say isn’t really much in comparison. Work is going great, life is pretty good (apart from the elephant in the room) and I happen to be going on vacation next week to see a friend get married in Key West. That’s going to be great: a friend and I are renting a convertible and driving down the Florida coast from Miami. I bought a brand new camera for the occasion and I plan to get a ton of good shots.
So yeah, that’s about it.
