Saying Goodbye

So I was in Rochester this past week.

I was productive too. Finished a huge chunk of my insurance licensing course.

I ended up with Strep somehow. So from Tuesday night to Friday night was a little rough. Thank God for antibiotics. I think. Still debating that.

I had a really great trip. We went out one night for Halloween, handed candy out to excited kids dressed as Angry Birds or zombies on Halloween night, saw Perks of Being a Wallflower (finally!) and cooked and caught up on Revenge episodes with Paul. Side note: The beginning of Perks of Being a Wallflower has the tunnel that Paul and I would drive through when he picked me up from the airport in Pittsburgh. It's through a mountain pretty much and comes out onto a beautiful bridge that shows you a good expanse of the city. I remembered it immediately. So cool. The movie was fantastic, for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

But the real reason I'm writing, which is really difficult to do today, is because Jasper is gone. My 11-year-old, crazy, stinky, always smiling Lab had cancer throughout his entire body. They found it last Monday. Jasper had been throwing up all over the garage last Sunday at Jack's birthday and they took him to the vet only to find problems. He had a piece of steak bone stuck in his intestine and also had cancer everywhere. Even if the bone was removed, the vet said he had two weeks tops because his appetite was pretty much gone. We had noticed he wouldn't eat his dog food unless someone stood over him. And I noticed how he was puking a lot. And he even pee'd on my mom's oriental rug when I let him in the house. We are talking about the dog with steel kidneys here. He had the capability of holding his urine stream all day if we had to go away for something. He was a champ.

So Mom called me Monday afternoon and I almost dropped the phone from my hand. I had just finished running and felt as though my heart had stopped beating entirely. She said that Hurricane Sandy knocked power out at the vet's and they ended up not taking him until Halloween morning. She said he watched Dad with big sad eyes, almost pleading with him to fix him like he so often did. Paul commented that it was probably best I wasn't home to see it all. The poor dog kept drooling and barfing everywhere. He was weak. Monday night we figured out Skype on Jack's iPad so I got to see him one last time. He was just quiet.

Halloween day passed and I tried not to think too much about what coming home to the empty garage with the empty food and water bowls would be like. No Jasper to run up and sniff my jeans for those exciting Rochester and gas station highway stop smells.

We used to laugh about how he would pop his head out from under the garage door as it opened and he would raise his head as the door went up so it looked like his head was raising the door. Silly. Or if all the garage doors were open except one and he was outside, he would wait for the one you were opening at that moment and then enter the garage that way. He was just silly. It's instances like those that made us laugh after a long day at work or school.

And I can't even begin with his personality quirks. He was a wild puppy. Tearing clothes and the yard up in one fell swoop. We left him home in a rush one day to get to school. He was only outside maybe a half hour but we came back to find my mother's precious dogwood tree had lost a rather large limb and it was scattered around the lawn in splinters. Jasper was rather proud of that one and even helped us clean the sticks up. He was proud until Dad got home and started yelling. Then he was nowhere to be found.

We had a similar instance where my mom was watering a plant and Jasper decided he wanted water. So he stuck his nose in and mom batted him away. Rachael Vaughan and I had just gotten home from the barn and watched as the little tyrant spun around and bit the beautifully formed flower head off her plant. Just snapped it off, spit it out, and nonchalantly walked away.

Jasper is a type of stone. Ironic considering Jasper's favorite food wasn't dog food, or even people food. It was rocks. We caught him laying at the end of the driveway chewing. Dad would jack his mouth open and two or three rocks would tumble out as he fought for his head. Not only did he eat them, he passed them. And his love for them only grew. He loved to swim, but was terrified of jumping off the dock unless one of us ran and jumped with him. It took him until he was 9 years old before he would try it. But he had NO FEAR whatsoever of sticking his head underwater and coming up with rocks bigger than his own head. And he would deposit them either on the lawn or the big Jetski dock rock. He had a collection that we would routinely throw back in. Much like restocking a fishing pond. And by the time he turned 11, his teeth were filed down to nubs. Jasper was a show on his own. Moltys and their company would come over, most notably Mr. Ferrarri who was Jasper's biggest fan, and they would watch this nutty dog hunt around for a prize of the sandy variety.

There's other little stories that just show how he grew into our lives and became family. There was the day that Paul took him on the jetski. He wasn't a fan. There was also the day that Paul and Jasper took the surf bike for a ride until Jasper got bored and simply walked off the back leaving Paul to flip over.

And everyone had a voice to narrate his thoughts. It was always your basic, dopey, happy voice that laughed every other sentence. But we all loved giving words to his doggie persona.

I took Jasper for his last car ride with me about a week ago. He passed out in the back seat until I opened the window and he stuck his head out. Ears flapping, nose sniffing, we drove along and he wagged his tail. The Buick and my Legacy were his cars. He didn't want you to ask him to come, he demanded and expected the door to just be opened for him automatically.

But I think the best part of Jasper, and the hardest part of saying goodbye...is the fact he was always there, in the garage or in the kitchen hallway if I needed a neck to hug, or some fur to cry into (no matter how stinky it may have been that day). If I had a bad, I could sit on the steps with him and he'd push his nose around until I pet him for hours. Or we'd go outside and he'd get a superb grooming. The dog shed like no other. He was like another brother for me though. Although he was like an older brother for the simple fact he picked me up when I was down.

You were the best of the best, buddy. I hope doggie heaven has lots of Otises for you to go swimming in and find rocks. You'll never be forgotten

An overload of Jasper pictures:

Halloweeeenie is near. So I'll take a little trip to the past.

With Halloween coming up, I have to be honest...I already have TWO costumes ready to go. On my GAME this year. I even picked out a costume for Jasper but can't seem to find it online anywhere for sale. I think it's from PetCo. Wahh.

Yup. Love it. He'd be perfect.

So today, I want to discuss Halloween costumes. And true to my original promise of my old journals, this entry is going to probably sift through some fond old memories or zebra costumes, fairy costumes, and sky dancer dolls that helped create a lasting friendship.

I guess when you're a kid, Halloween costumes are a big deal because you ARE someone else for that day. I had a horse thing. So any animal that resembled one was fair game. When I was 4, that was a zebra. My mom got really into it. She bought fabric and a pattern from JoAnne's and set down at her old sewing machine to make me the best damn zebra on the planet. We had a stuffed head too. Although I'm not one hundred percent sure how she made that/bought it. Only problem, the head sat on top of my head and she had to walk around me the entire night HOLDING it upright. And it was hot. And itchy. Can you see where this is going? A whining 4-year-old with a grouchier parent chasing after them, holding a cumbersome zebra head (that was almost true to size if I do recall) more like a leash than a prop. Yup. That costume was never re-gifted to another fortunate soul.

Then we have the fairy costume. The BEAUTIFUL fairy costume that Lisa once again slaved over her sewing machine to make. Years later she overheard me describing it as having cheap fabric or how it was an awful color. Can we just discuss the glare and retort I received in about 0.2 seconds? It really was a nice costume. I must have remembered it wrong. I have a great picture somewhere of me at Nonna's table with a big cheesy grin on my face and a cookie in my hand.

A few years previous I was Jack Sparrow. I had some eye liner issues considering my mass of black gunk far surpassed even Johnny Depp's masterpiece of eye art. I think it was halfway down my cheeks by the night's end. But that costume was SPOT ON. Props to my creativity with that one.

Then there were countless wizard, M&M, jungle girl, and flapper costumes. I am repeating my Twister costume. Tried to be Rosy the Robot from the Jetsons (too expensive), and was even Tom Cruise last year.

But I also need to talk about my Halloween partner in crime. My neighbor in the blue house next door, Emily. We were best friends from the moment I walked through the little archway of trees and saw her playing with her SkyDancer. I was crazy for those things. They were cheap plastic with almost grotesquely perfect Barbie faces and crummy foam wings. And they had rather large chests for such dainty dolls that were supposed to "float" through the air. So you'd pull their little string/pullstart/whatever that spun them in a circle of death and they'd launch into the air and most always crash to the dirt, tree stump, driveway with a wing crunched up underneath them. They made better knickknacks to look at it in an 8-year-old's room rather than a serious toy to play with. And if it was muddy out? Forgettaboutit. So anyways, I walked over and played SkyDancers with Emily all day. Boom! Instant friendship. One silly day we sat and watched our neighbor's house across the street because she babysat us and let slip that she knew a friend, who knew a friend, who knew a friend's cousin, that knew Leonardo DiCaprio. So in our minds, that meant he was DEFINITELY gonna show up in a limo and instantly want to spend allllll day with two 8-year-olds. Chyea. Dreaming big on that one. Halloween also came EVERYDAY for us. We constantly played dress up in my mom's old clothes and dresses. One dress was a perfectly awful pregnancy dress with all buttons down the front and dragged across the floor. Whoever was the villain wore this beautiful masterpiece of ugly clothing. Seriously. It was a work of art making this thing as atrocious as it was. And then we would act. These intricate stories of knights or Batman or Backstreet Boys groupies. I don't remember any exact stories, just that we would hide under beds or run around the yard and our surroundings were so much more than our drab neighborhood.This ceased as we got older, obviously. Instead we ended up sitting on the grass with my old radio, listening to KC101 all day in the shade. Or in the winter, building snow forts and chasing our brothers through the yard. Then we moved on to watching movies instead of acting them out. Emily eventually moved away but we caught up last winter. Sometimes it hurts to look back on memories because no matter what you do, you can't bring them back. Because I'd give anything to have a carefree snow day with Em, playing dress up and making hot chocolate.

What made me think of this was a fairy commercial on TV the other day. It made me think of all of this - Halloween. SkyDancers. Emily. Dressing up.

As a little kid, dressing as someone or something else is so much more enticing. You escape being a little kid. Now, Halloween is more of a laugh rather than something to be taken seriously. I miss Emily. And Halloween as a kid. I don't even know where my SkyDancers are. Probably the trash. But the nice part is having these memories written down. Even though my 1st grade journal has a terrible hand drawn picture of a SkyDancer and one sentence saying "Tuday I Played with Emly." I was a champ speller when I was 7 or 8. hahaha.

My advice - GO DRESS UP AND BE MERRY!!!! Halloween is a pure excuse to act like a kid and GET AWAY WITH IT.

:)

Happy Howloween!

What an interesting weekend...

Well, I went home this weekend. My leg was beyond aggravated and Buffalo was out for Regionals. I cried about it. Yeah, I know. But once I got it out, I remembered what I always remember from when I had mono and missed states. "This is just a snapshot, not your whole photo album." Thank you to the Woodland Coach for that one. He's right. I had a great race at MAACs. I'd consider it going out with a bang. If I feel better, I always have the Goshen Turkey Trot to blast off some extra racing energy in. Plus, there's no pressure. I just get to run.  Right now, the focus is on getting better.

So...I had a relaxing time at home. Spent a lot of time with the leg up. Did homework. Bought the Water for Elephants DVD and Elf. Went to O-Joe's with my parents and the Shannons. Watched Lisa and Janice walk back to the cars, arm in arm, belting out, "Hey, hey we're the monkeys!" Always entertaining. Grandma pulled out her wedding dress. I got a guilt trip about being the only girl on this side of the family and she's going to have to just give it away because "Who the hell's gonna wear it?" O_O Yeah. I did help her hang it up and spread the train out. It was all wrinkled from being in a white plastic bag after being dry cleaned. I didn't want to make her feel bad, but even if I did want it, the alterations to it would be ridiculous. I just laughed off her rants though. She settled down when my Dad and Jack walked down to say hello.

I made a bath appointment for Jasper, aka Sir Stinks-a-lot. Oh my God. He was terrible. He looked like he had things GROWING in his fur. He's hit the mangy old man stage, sadly. But my mom called it a "whore" bath when he got home. He smelled like Vanilla Body spray. hahaha They basically just tried to do a cover-up of his nastiness. I bet he'll be stinky again in a day. He covered me in dog hair though when I was playing with him. Someone's getting a new, high-tech doggie brush for Christmas! haha

So yeah...didn't really do much. Mike will be home next Tuesday and Paul and his Dad are coming down Thursday for dinner :) so I just need to get my two Sports articles written this weekend and I'm golden. Just my capping presentation to work on. I WANT TO RUNNN :(

Ok...that's enough. Jasper pictures!!!!!

Dream Analysis

I really started wondering the past few days about analyzing my dreams. I've had some doosies lately. But the one tat ALWAYS bugs me, is how my teeth fall out. Some girl in my class last night said that dreams where your teeth fall out signal an instability in your life. Well, that's spot on. I'm a senior in college. I'm unstable. I don't know where I'm going with my life.


Ok...so I looked stuff up and it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. Internet dream dictionaries that are free probably aren't the best things to look into. But in further regards, what the hell was I thinking to have some of the dreams that I do? Like when I was 4 or 5,  had a dream that a giant, rainbow, tap dancing fish in a top hat ate my entire family. then we sat in a completely white room and had a chat. Explain that. I had a realistic dream of being chased up a tree in the jungle by a cheetah and I felt and watched it tear me apart and eat me. That one woke me ups creaming when I was 6. I've had dreams where I've gotten out of bed and ran to the bathroom in college to start brushing my teeth and get ready for class, only to see it is 2:15a.m. and my roommate has just gone to sleep. I was staying at Paul's and made him get up to knock on the bathroom door ebcause I thought someone was in there. No one was. So he grudgingly gets up, opens the door for me and goes back to bed. I looked inside and went back to bed, never using the bathroom. That was another weird one. And I didn't actually remember it the next day. He reminded me and then I remembered. I have colorful, wild dreams that rush and fly around. I was riding horses through a giant lollipop forest with the Harry Potter cast. I just don't even know where some of these things come from. Either I'm crazy or creative. I wish some of this creativity would bust out when I'm writing.

I'm tired, but can't sleep. I have a workout today. I want today and tomorrow to be over so I can go home Thursday and get a little change of scenery.

 I also miss this goofball.

 Scenery shots from Otis mid-June