Author: Sue Fagalde Lick

writer/musician California native, Oregon resident Author of Freelancing for Newspapers, Shoes Full of Sand, Azorean Dreams, Stories Grandma Never Told, Childless by Marriage, Now Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer's, and the Up Beaver Creek novel series. Most recently, I have published three poetry chapbooks, Gravel Road Ahead, The Widow at the Piano: Confessions of a Distracted Catholic, and Blue Chip Stamp Guitar, plus a full-length collection Dining Al Fresco with My Dog. I have published hundreds of articles, plus essays, fiction and poetry. I'm also pretty good at singing and playing guitar and piano.

Singing in the Secret Garden

I have survived my annual music marathon, also known as the Sunday of the Samaritan House Secret Garden Tour. Each year I seem to draw the short straw and end up leading and accompanying the choir at both Masses at Sacred Heart Church before rushing to my assigned garden with a car full of instruments and sound equipment to play music for four or five hours outdoors until the last garden junkie has examined every plant and posy in the place.

I’ve belonged to various bands, choirs and ensembles, but these days my non-church gigs are solo affairs. It’s just me and a ton of gear, moving from singing with steel-string guitar to playing instrumentals on classical guitar to mixing vocals with instrumentals on my electronic keyboard. Sometimes I play mandolin, recorder or harmonica, too, all in the interest of maintaining the voice and tender fingertips as long as possible.
Loading all my equipment into the car and getting it set up in the garden is an athletic event in itself, but that’s just the beginning. Every year on the day before the tour, I decide that I should not do this anymore. It’s been 10 years. I don’t get paid. It’s exhausting. People are walking around me socializing and talking about flowers. But when I start to sing out there for friends from all aspects of my life, I start to think well, maybe this isn’t so bad. Halfway through, when my voice is starting to go and my fingers are starting to complain, I wonder if I’ll make it to the end. But then I cross some kind of barrier and want to keep singing and playing forever.
This year I had the added worry of an aching right elbow inflamed with tendonitis. All week, I iced it, wore a brace and tried not to use it. I’m left-handed, but it’s amazing how many things I do with the right hand, how many situations in our lives almost require use of the right hand. Doors and cupboards open in your face if you use the left hand. The gearshift in the car is on the right. I can’t make the cheese slicer work with my left hand. I have discovered that every time I push myself off a chair or the floor or the bed, I use my right hand. The left one doesn’t feel . . . right. The whole thing has been a pain. Why would I antagonize it by playing music all afternoon for free?
Because it’s magic, that’s why. Because I love the sound and the feeling of making music in the garden. At these affairs, I can play anything I want. No need to be liturgically correct or please a picky audience. These people like it all, and there’s something special about acoustic music outdoors. It just sounds good.
This year the gardens were in Toledo, Oregon. I was stationed at the Cook garden, which overlooks the Yaquina River. What a gorgeous place, what wonderful people. Everywhere I looked were beautiful plants and the kind of quirky decorations I love. Flowers growing out of an old washing machine. A giant stone frog. Rusty pans, saw blades and shovel heads hanging among the green plants. The Cooks set up a cover for me to play in case it rained—it did a little, but Oregonians take a vow not to complain. Behind me sat a vintage Porsche. Across the driveway, two roosters crowed between songs. And to my left, the river trickled along, blue and wide.
The garden lovers came in their floppy hats and sturdy shoes, enjoying the gardens made known only to those who buy tickets to the tour. As they walked up and down the paths, taking pictures and gathering the names of their favorite plants, I sent my music into the air. How lucky I felt to be there.
The annual garden tour raises funds for Samaritan House, the homeless shelter in Newport, Oregon. Down-on-their-luck families who move into the shelter not only get a place to sleep but receive help finding jobs and planning their futures so that they can soon move into their own homes.
This morning, I’m tired, my fingers are sore, and my elbow hurts, but I’m happy. It was totally worth it. Again.

How not to bathe a dog

It started with a discarded McDonald’s cup on the side of the road. A big plastic one. Annie grabbed it in her teeth, did a U-turn and started trotting toward home. Okay, I didn’t want a long walk anyway.
The contents looked like water and a lump of what might be dirt. It had rained briefly in the morning. I figured it was perfectly safe, unlike the various coffee and chocolate drinks she has picked up in other discarded cups. I laughed as she hurried along, cup clenched in her teeth, liquid sloshing out on her face and chest. So determined, so darned cute, doing her part for recycling.
It wasn’t until we got to our back yard and I unleashed the dog and took away the cup that I smelled it. Whatever was in that cup reeked something awful. Skunk spray would smell better. As I took the cup, the rest of the contents spilled out, and Annie started rolling in it. And rolling in it. And rolling in it. Oh Lord, such a smell.
I threw the recyclable cup in the garbage can, wanting to get as far away from it as possible, then pondered what to do about my dog, whose new name is Stinky. I had never bathed her, always left it to the professionals at the kennel, but now in addition to reeking of eau de awful, her tan fur was streaked with mud from all that rolling in the dead-leaf area under the trees. It was already past dinnertime, but a bath was required.
I had once tried to clean her with the garden hose, but the cold-water spray scared her so badly I can’t even water the flowers now without her bolting for safety. But a nice warm bath in the house ought to be less frightening.
Okay, I can do this, I thought. I dug in the cupboard and found an ancient bottle of anti-itch shampoo the vet gave us for a previous dog. Like that dog, Annie had itchy skin, so this would help that, too. I prepared the bathtub by putting down the non-slip mat, pulling down the spray nozzle and warming the water. I grabbed the sponge from the kitchen sink to be converted into a permanent dog sponge. Then I lured Old Stinky into the bathroom with Milk-Bones and closed the door. She started getting suspicious.
The water was a perfect temperature. I wouldn’t mind soaking in it. But how would I get this 80-pound smell-factory into it? I put cookies on the edge. She gobbled them up and backed toward the door. I patted the side. “Come on, it’s warm. You like water. Look.” No go. I had to get this dog washed. I soaked the sponge and rubbed it on the dog. Okay. I did some more. She was starting to get wet. I squeezed some blue shampoo out of the bottle and rubbed it into the fur on her back. Sudsy. I scrubbed it in. Okay. She was used to getting shampooed at the kennel. Of course they had a dog-sized tub and a noose-thing to keep her in it, and we were still on the floor.
More shampoo. More rubbing. So sudsy. Too sudsy. How could so little shampoo create so many suds? How the heck was I going to get this gunk off her fur? She had to get into the tub, but so far that wasn’t happening. Okay. How about this? I kicked off my shoes, stripped off my socks, pants and underpants and got into the tub naked from the waist down. I knelt in the murky water where patches of tan fur floated like ice floes and beckoned my sudsy dog. “Come on, it’s great.” Not moving. I grabbed her slippery front legs and pulled. “Come on.” Nope.
I was squatting in a half-full tub of fur, dog shampoo and stink, and she was standing on my pink bathmat covered in suds. If another human lived here, perhaps he/she could have helped me lift the mega-dog into the water, but it was just me and Stinky. Screw it. I grabbed the spray nozzle and aimed it at the dog, letting water, shampoo and dirt flood the bathroom floor, soaking the flowered linoleum, the bathmat, my shoes and the scale. As the water rose, it trickled toward the carpet in the bedroom. This was not good for any of these things, but I got enough of the suds off the dog and toweled off the rest as she strained toward the door. Now she smelled of shampoo, with an undertone of the stink, but it was tolerable.
With aching back, I rose, opened the door and let her bolt toward freedom as I blotted up the flooded bathroom with five of my best towels and scrubbed out the tub with multiple layers of Comet cleanser.
Okay, done. Tomorrow I’d go to Fred Meyer and buy her a new collar; the old one was going in the trash. It was finally time for our belated dinner. As I pulled out leftover chicken and salad makings, I looked out the window. There was my dog, rolling in the dirt.
There has to be a better way.

The road always leads back to California

Seventeen years ago next month, my late husband Fred and I moved from San Jose, California to the Oregon coast. I had never lived outside the Bay Area before. I was always within an hour’s drive of my family and all the landmarks of my youth–the schools and churches I attended, the newspapers I worked for, and the parks, beaches and theaters I had enjoyed all my life. My parents still occupied the same house they had bought in 1950.
I had no idea what a shock it would be to move away from everything I knew. When Fred and I came to Oregon, we knew three people in the whole state: the real estate agent who had rented us our house and friends from San Jose who had moved to Bay City, up the road a couple hours from our new home. We also had no idea anyplace could have so much rain and wind. That first winter was brutal for California kids who were used to annual rainfall in the single digits, not Lincoln County’s 80 inches per year average. And the homesickness! I was a weepy mess and would have gone home to California except for two things: We couldn’t afford it, and Fred loved it here.
Instead of moving back, we visited. A lot. That first year, we went back so many times our friends suspected we hadn’t really moved away. Gradually over the years, our visits have stretched out to two or three times a year. Now, with Fred gone, I go back to California alone. I’m guessing I’ve done the drive about 40 times. It’s a beautiful drive, whether I take the meandering coast route or zoom down I-5. Either way, it’s about 13 hours of driving, two days for me. I can tell you all the landmarks along the way, the good places to eat, the scenic attractions worth seeing, and the places where the driving gets hairy. I wrote a book about our move to Oregon and what followed. (Shoes Full of Sand—buy a copy please). Maybe someday I’ll write one about the road to California.
Various reasons take me back home. Holidays (rain and snow), the annual Dia de Portugal (hot!), funerals, and reunions. Most recently, it was my cousin Rob Avina’s wedding reception with the beautiful Candace Bates. It’s the best kind of occasion to drive down for because I get to see a maximum number of relatives at one time. Rob and Candace got married on a cruise ship just before it left for Alaska. But their families threw a bang-up reception at the Santa Clara senior center, where several of them work or volunteer. Nachos in the courtyard, a banquet in the auditorium with a Hawaiian band AND a DJ, lots of toasts, lots of photos, lots of dancing, and lots and lots of hugs. And now I have a wonderful new cousin.
I bunked at my childhood home, where my 91-year-old father and I talked nonstop for four days. And then it was back on the road again. I swear sometimes I think I live on the freeway or at a Best Western motel. I hated saying goodbye to my dad and everyone in California. It physically hurts every time. But when I cross the border back into Oregon, which is my adult home, where my work and my dog are waiting, and where I have acquired more friends than I can count, I shout and pump the horn. I’m back!
It won’t be long before I return to California by plane, train or car because half my life is there and half of it is here. As my father is fond of saying, “That’s just the way it is.”

OMG! They can see me!

Things move fast in this 21st century world. On Friday morning, I received an invitation from Huffington Post Live to be part of a webcast panel discussion on growing older without children. It was scheduled for 6 p.m. that very night.

I hadn’t done a webcast before. I’ve been on TV and radio, but this was different. I would talk from my own office with other panelists I’d never met speaking from their homes or offices in other parts of the country and a hostess in a studio somewhere. Following instructions, I installed a new program on my laptop and tested it with the pretty young producer—but not before I got all dressed up, even put on my dangly earrings and eyeliner. Suddenly I could see her, and she could see me. Looking at myself on the screen, I wondered how I could get rid of my jowls by 6:00. Duct tape? And why was my hair sticking up like that?
Meanwhile, I had a chiropractor appointment, and Annie, my dog, seemed to be sick. Yikes. How could I do real life when I was going to be broadcast on the web in mere hours? I drove to town, got my spine adjusted, raced back to the office and hoped Annie could hang on till Saturday. On our afternoon walk, she was active enough but cranky, going all Cujo when we met other dogs. Maybe she just didn’t like unfamiliar voices being broadcast into our house.
At 5:30, I redid my hair and makeup and took my phone off the hook, then went to my computer. The producer had said some guy named Max would send me a link to the show at 5:45. Sure enough, there it was. I clicked on the link, and suddenly I could see him—so young, tattooed and pierced!—and he could see and hear me sitting here at my desk where I’m typing in my nightgown right now. I could also see myself. Suddenly I wished I looked like all those young women on TV with the skinny bodies and the long flowing hair.
We had 15 minutes to showtime with nothing to do but stare at each other, so I started reading a newsletter on my desktop computer, multitasking as a way to calm my nerves. When I turned back, my laptop screen was blank, except for a message telling me the server was unable to connect. What! I was offline, Max was gone, and the show was starting in a couple minutes. I clicked “Try again,” which never works on this computer. Shoot! I clicked restart and watched in despair as the computer shut down and started up again, wasting valuable seconds. I prayed, “Please God, please God.” The icons on my screen filled in, and I clicked my Internet connection. “Please God, please God.” Nuts! Unable to connect.
Drastic measures were needed. Phone back on the hook, it rang immediately. Max: “Hey, is there a problem?” “My Internet connection went out. I’m rebooting.” He told me to get in when I could. The show would already be going. I ran to the other room, turned off my WiFi connection, held my breath for 30 seconds and restarted it. Then I ran back to the computer to reboot. “Please God, please God.” It was 6:00!
Internet! “Thank you, God.” I clicked the magic link. I heard myself being welcomed to the show. Right away, the hostess turned her attention on me. Apparently this segment was at least partially inspired by my Mother’s Day Huffington blog post. I started talking, and sounded at least reasonably intelligent. I could see myself and four other faces. Why was I making such weird expressions? Why did my eyes look half-closed? Why couldn’t this be radio? We talked, we debated, we answered questions. Then, without an apparent goodbye, the hostess thanked Cadillac for its sponsorship, and suddenly we were watching a car commercial. We panelists, still in little boxes at the bottom of the screen, looked at each other via computer from Oregon, California, Massachusetts and New York and asked, “Is that it? Are we off the air?” I checked my other computer. Yup. One by one, we clicked exit.
A couple hours later, I tried to explain all this to my father. He did not understand. Where is this? It’s only on the computer? You can’t see it anywhere else? Then he launched into a tirade on the evils of computers. Sigh.
Epilogue:
Annie and I went to the vet on Saturday. She has an infection which antibiotics should cure. She already feels much better. “Mom,” for whom the weekend also included playing and singing at two Masses, hosting the open mic at the Nye Beach Writers series, and singing at an open mic in Yachats, is exhausted.

The Farmers’ Market is the Place to Be

 Where can you buy fresh strawberries, salad greens, pastries, homemade dog treats, beaded jewelry, wind chimes made from broken crockery, artistic photographs, and tie-dyed everything? That’s right: the farmers’ market. The Newport Farmer’s Market reopened last Saturday on the grounds outside City Hall. The weather ignored the predictions and offered blue skies and warm sun as hundreds of people strolled among the booths, toting cloth bags for their purchases. Many brought babies and/or dogs that darted around sniffing each other and inhaling the delightful scents of hot pizza and kettlecorn.
It’s the place to be on Saturday mornings, so I was there, $15 cash burning a hole in my pocket. I wandered among the potted plants, avoided the Mother’s Day rush at the cut flower booth, fingered the fused-glass flowers and refrigerator magnets, and oohed at the watercolor paintings as the artist looked on. I must have said the word “pretty” dozens of times. But in the end I settled for a bag of Gilbert’s Glorious Goober Gobbles, dog treats for my dog Annie. They’re peanut butter flavored with yogurt-based frosting. I used the rest of my cash for lunch at the Chalet, where I’m in love with the turkey wraps. Annie’s reaction to her present? “This tastes weird, and how come you didn’t take me with you?”
The Newport Farmer’s Market continues through the summer on Saturday mornings at City Hall from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. We’ve also got farmers’ markets in Yachats (Sundays 9-2 at the Commons), Waldport (Wednedays, 10-4:30 at the Community Center), Lincoln City (Sundays 9-3 at the Cultural Center), and heck, probably every town in Oregon. Maybe I’ll see you there.

Poets’ Concord: Where Everyone Speaks Poetry

While the rest of Newport, Oregon celebrated Loyalty Days with a carnival, a race, a parade, the crowning of a festival queen, and a field of flags honoring our veterans, and while freakishly hot weather brought scantily-clad crowds to beaches where it’s usually daring to go without a coat, hat and gloves, approximately 100 of us gathered at the Hallmark Inn and Resort last weekend to talk about poetry.
Poetry? Yes, poetry. Your average American will think you’re strange if you say you like poetry, stranger still if you tell them you’re an actual poet, but not here. The Northwest Poets’ Concord, now in its fifth year, is a wonderful three-day event in which we’re surrounded by our people. These are the kind of folks who spill their coffee or trip on the stairs and say, “Ah, there’s a poem in that.”
We gathered for workshops on performance poetry, sonnets, poems about body parts, poetry and photography, poetry and yoga, poetry and drama, poetry and the blues, and more. When the days’ classes were over, we gathered in the new beachside banquet room below Georgie’s Beachside Grill for open mic sessions where we could hear and cheer each other’s poems. And we stopped at the conference bookstore to buy each other’s books and take a little of the magic home.
Poets usually write in solitude, but for three days in Newport, they’re not alone.
It felt odd to emerge from my final session into the hot afternoon and shop for dinner at the J.C. Market with the tourists buying beer and ice. They didn’t understand that every item that went into the cart could become a poem. Ode to a watermelon. The perfect sonnet about a tomato. Fried chicken blues. You never know.

We Meet the Monster in the Forest

The bushes rustled and shook. Something big was in there. And it was coming our way. Annie froze. I looked around. Nothing but trees, shrubs, birds and field mice for a half mile in any direction. Newport Airport to the north, trees to the east, more trees to the south, houses too far away to the west. No humans close enough to save me from whatever it was. It might be a deer, an elk, a cougar or a bear. All have been seen in the area, although not usually in mid-afternoon. We hikers are instructed to remain calm, keep talking, and fluff ourselves up as big as possible to convince the animal that we are more scary than they are. If that doesn’t work, duck and cover and hope to survive. Having an unpredictable dog with you does not help.
I tugged on Annie’s leash. “Come on. Come on. We have to get out of here.” She moved an inch at a time, too scared to walk. The creature was coming closer. Sweating under my tee shirt and hoodie, my heart pounding, I continued trying to drag my dog toward the safety of the road. But we weren’t fast enough. The creature was coming out, coming out, here it was.
Oh. “I thought you were a bear!” I exclaimed to the Mexican man with a giant bouquet of salal leaves balanced on his shoulders. I don’t think he understood a word. I tried to form a sentence in Spanish. I knew “oso” was bear, but I couldn’t figure out the verb tenses to say I was afraid.
Annie stared, her tail between her legs, still afraid. To her, he looked like a man with no head, just a bunch of leaves. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I told her as Leaf-Man went by us, soon followed by a leaf woman with another big bunch of greenery. The two work for the company near our home that sells greens to florists to put in bouquets with roses, carnations and other flowers. Several times a week, a giant truck backs up to the dock at 98th and 101 to be filled up with bundles of leaves they gather from the wilderness areas around South Beach.
Yesterday, when I saw the bushes moving again in the same general area, it occurred to me that THIS might be a bear, but I doubted it. Sure enough, another man emerged with a big bundle of leaves. He was wearing hip-high rubber boots. Annie didn’t like the looks of it at all, especially when he hefted the leaves up over his head and walked by us. But I had my camera this time, so I snuck a picture of the fabled Leaf-Man.
Someday the rustling in the bushes might be a bear, especially when all those blackberry vines full of flowers start producing fruit. If so, I hope Leaf-Man is nearby. That ought to scare any old bear.

Spring brings memories of Fred

It’s spring. The rhododendrons are starting to bloom. The wind is soft. The grass is tall. Along the road, the trilliums are turning from white to pink and lavender, and yellow flowers have blossomed on the Scotch broom. Annie and I can sit on the deck again in the sun instead of hovering around the pellet stove while the rain pours down.
A week ago, I cleaned the winter grunge off a couple of lawn chairs and set them on the deck. Saturday, between chores and church, I sat in one of those chairs with a cool drink. My late husband Fred came to mind. I remembered sitting here with him on an afternoon like this.
I think about Fred more often this week. The second anniversary of his death is tomorrow, April 23. On that morning when his spirit left his body, the rhodies were blooming and the robins were singing. Tulips sprouted in a rainbow of colors amidst green leaves and green grass. After winter’s storms, we shed our coats and came outside.
It’s been two years since that shocking morning when our lives changed forever. It’s a little over four years since Fred fell and started his nursing home journey. It has been 11 years since his Alzheimer’s Disease became apparent. Sitting here in the yard with my dog Annie, who barely knew Fred, I ache for a human companion to sit with me.
I don’t usually sit on these chairs. I sprawl on the deck with the dog or sit out under a tree with a book or my guitar. Maybe I feel less grownup, less alone, sitting on the weathered wood of the deck.
I think about my father, also widowed, who often sits in his patio on an old leather recliner with split seams and stuffing coming out. Perhaps he remembers when the patio was new and the family gathered there for barbecues. There are cobwebs and spiders in the brick barbecue pit now. Almost 91, Dad goes on, and so do I.
I don’t think about my loss every minute. I’m busy with the good life God has given me, but sometimes something as simple as sitting in this blue-green plastic chair makes me think about my husband. It’s Fred season. The rhodies are blooming. The birds are singing. And tax season is over. Fred had a tax business and did people’s returns for more than 25 years. He barely looked up between late January and mid-April, but after April 15, we would take a vacation, often combining it with the celebration of our May 18 wedding anniversary. It would have been 28 years next month. What a wonderful day that was, blessed with the marks of spring, just like this day.
I miss my husband, my love, my companion, the man who made me laugh, made me feel safe, and made me see the joy in life. Dr. Seuss said, “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” I try to keep that in mind even as something deep inside me screams “No! I want him back.” In 2011, spring came, and it was time for Fred to graduate to the next life. I have to let him go. We all do. But let’s remember him this week. Stop to enjoy the flowers and the birds and sit on the deck in the sun with a good glass of wine. Cheers, Fred.

The cockroach on my eyelash

Have you ever watched “House” on TV? No, it’s not on the Home and Garden channel. It’s a doctor show on FOX about an infectious disease specialist named Gregory House who treats all kinds of weird diseases. Typically his patients come in for something minor, say a sore knee and end up with all kinds of horrible symptoms. Their skin turns wild colors, their livers fail, they vomit blood, they go into cardiac arrest and are just short of dying when someone realizes that oh, they went to Outer Mongolia six months ago and picked up a parasite. With treatment, usually something against hospital rules, they immediately recover, and House is lauded as a genius.
I’ve been feeling like one of those patients this week. Last Saturday, my only problem was a runny nose from the dust emitted when my vacuum cleaner went ballistic from all the dog fur stuffed inside it. After spending hours taking the ol’ Bissell apart and cleaning it, my nose was running like Multnomah Falls. But that’s just allergies, I thought. Yes, it was still running on Sunday and I sneezed while playing the piano in the middle of Mass—and squelched a couple of other sneezes—but I was not sick.
Monday I woke up tired and achy. I was sure a little caffeine would fix it. Nope. The aches got worse, and slowly I developed a fever. By bedtime I was shaking so bad with fever and chills that my teeth were clacking together. Should have gotten that flu shot, I thought as I retired to bed, huddling in a fetal position.
Tuesday morning, the fever was higher, but I took some Ibuprofen and over the course of the day I cooled down to normal. However, now I had a new problem. My stomach hurt. I couldn’t even look at pictures of food on TV, and things got more miserable from there, with some symptoms I won’t describe. You can guess. Another day in bed, hugging my dog against my tummy. But I got to watch my favorite talk shows on TV.
Wednesday when I woke up, I had a new problem, a strange one. I was seeing this thing out of my right eye. It looked like I had a cockroach perched on my eyelashes. In fact, I swatted at it a few times, but it wasn’t actually there. It was like a super-floater in my actual eye. This was quite distracting. I left off my writing mid-sentence because it was hard to see and I was freaking out. I’m sick; it will go away, I told myself.
When the cockroach was still there on Thursday, I called the eye doctor. My stomach still hurt, and I was worn out from the fever, but I joined the ranks of white-haired cataract surgery patients for the long wait to see Dr. Haines, much more handsome than Dr. House. When I did get in, he dilated my right pupil and took a long look. Now, I wanted him to say it was nothing and it would go away, but instead, he looked at me with a serious face and told me I had a definite “vitreous detachment.” A what?
Now I’m not going into the medical description he gave me. I barely understand it myself, but the vitreous is the gel-like goo inside the eye that kind of holds things together. This detachment is common in older folks. Best case, nothing more will happen. The cockroach will remain, but I’ll get used to him, maybe give him a name. Worst case, this leads to a torn or detached retina within the next six weeks. If I start seeing flashing lights or what looks like a curtain across my eye, I have to boogie back to the doctor ASAP for laser treatment.
This made my stomach hurt worse. I also got a bloody nose. This morning, I’ve got the antsy stomach, I’ve got the cockroach, I’ve got the bloody nose, and I’ve got a singing gig at 2:30. Life goes on. Maybe I should call the cockroach Gregory.

A little ditty about the dog

Worn out from a busy weekend and sleep deprived from not getting enough zzzz’s, I offer this little poem. After all, it is National Poetry Month.
Objet d’Art
Some people have crystal vases
or sculptures in the entryway.
I have a bottle of medicine
to be squeezed into the dog’s ear
as I hold her between my legs,
promising her a walk, a cookie, anything,
if she’ll let me do this one more time.
(eight more days to go! I have lost track of how many times we have done this. The vet says Annie is a “poster child for ear infections.” She’s got those cute floppy ears and she’s always getting wet . . .)