Does my dog Lucy have a "Bucket List?" She does now!

   Everytime I log onto the social networking site of Facebook, I am greeted with an advertisement for the "Allentown Bucket List." even though I live in Trexlertown. Last weekend, while I was visiting Brown University in Providence Rhode Island, when I logged on I was entreated with a "Providence Bucket List."
    I found it fascinating how that changed by location, I know why, but that is for another blog entry on another day.

     What's bothering me today is that Lucy, my little Black shadow of a Cocker Spaniel, appears to be nearing the end of her life. She will be 14 in October, or about Betty White's age in human years. Dogs can't tell us directly if they are suffering, but her tail constantly wags and she still has moments where she will grab her toy and want me to play with her.
    But the seizures are becoming more frequent. I pick her up and hold her until they pass, and then she acts as if nothing happened, before she lays down and sleeps for awhile.

   I know what's coming, but in the meantime, I have made a Bucket List for her:
       1. Let her sleep on the end of the Bed

       2. Let her ride in the car with me to the bank, so she can get the free dog treat from the Window teller.

       3. Stop at McDonalds/Burger King/Wendys and get her a plain Hamburger on each ride. It's not like it will kill her, right?

       4. She doesn't leave the yard as long as I am in it (Never has, really), so I took off her Invisible fence collar so she doesn't get zapped unnecessarily. I figure at her age, she probably has enough pain, why give her more?

       5. Make sure that her bed is within arms reach of me when I am working on the Computer. Lucy is truly my shadow, she follows me everywhere when I am home, and lays as close to me as possible. We recently purchased a separate, extra dog bed that is next to my chair so I can reach down and scratch her head when I am working. She laid there anyway, so we figured she might as well be comfortable.

     I don't know what five things Lucy would want to do before she goes to the great puppy playtime in heaven, but these are the five I have to offer. Any Suggestions? What would you do for your "Shadow?"

      

Does God need me and my riding lawn mower in Heaven?

I hope so. It occured to me that maybe God didn't need groundskeepers, but that doesn't go along with the whole great plan of giving us free choice.

  As a fallen away Catholic, if the Pope has any hope of ever getting me back in the fold, he needs to let me believe that there is more to do up there than play Bingo, say the Rosary, or Bowling and Golfing with Jesus. Some of us need something else.

  Anyway, what brought up the whole lawn mowing in Heaven subject was a dream I had the other night.

   I was mowing the lawns in the neighborhood where I grew up on my riding mower. Now I know it was a dream, because my Dad thought it was the law to make you push an old mower that took half an hour to start. I would never have had a riding mower in my old neighborhood.
   So there I was mowing away, with a Yuengling in my cup holder and I happen to look over at the big yard on the church grounds. There I see my parents and all these other dead people I knew in real life smiling and waving at me, telling me to come on over, and they will open the gate and let me in. Even all the dogs I had in my life are running around in there.
   The thing is, I realize they are all dead, and I'm wondering if once I drive my lawn mower over, that's it for me?  Or is God just trying to ease my fears, and let me know that one, I'm getting in, and two, he's got a job for me. What do you guys think?

A "whisper Close" Toilet seat?

There comes a time in every home owner's life, when you have to replace a toilet seat. No matter how comfortable it might be, if you are getting splinters in unwanted parts of your body, you gotta do what you gotta do. Some things you just can't fix with duct tape.
  And even if you try, your wife is not going to be happy about it.

   So off we went to the home improvement store, where Mrs C. made her choice.

  She chose the Bemis "whisper close" model, pictured here.

   Changing the seat was not hard at all. But I have a question about the marketing of toilet seats.
  Who really sits around thinking up the marketing campaign, and where do they sit to do that thinking?

   Also, on the box it proudly tells you that you don't have to worry about pinching your fingers with this seat.
   I suppose if you have small kids that is something to worry about.

  I just can't help but wonder if I will have to start worrying about hearing whispers in the bathroom.
   "Don't forget to put me down when you are done Chris. I don't like it when you leave me up."

   And here I thought the people in my head talked too much, now I have to worry about whispering toilet seats?

Great moments in Lawn Mowing History: my first (and hopefully last) Riding mower.

I had an early Morning Breakfast with some Friends Saturday, but I got home in time to take a very important call from LOWES. About 8:45 AM the phone rang. "Mr Casey, Your delivery window is 10 AM to 1 PM."
  Oh yeah, it has been 6 long years of pushing the lawn mower around, but now I have a riding mower, thanks to the love and generosity of Mrs C.  Kathy Frederick at the Junk Drawer Blog might love her new Dyson Vacuum cleaner, but there are no words to describe how I feel about my Bolens model 762 Lawn tractor.

  
   Here she is, before I backed her into the garage and her personal parking spot. After they delivered her, and before I took her out for her first spin, I sat in the kitchen and carefully read over the operating instructions. I want her to last a long time, and I want to take care of her. (Don't worry, I do feel much the same way about Mrs. C) So it is vitally important that I know how to operate her properly and maintain her in tip top shape. I checked the oil, the battery cables, and gave her a good look over before I added fuel to the gas tank. It warmed my heart that she fired up on the first try. She even has a large bright headlight for mowing as it gets dark.
She has a great safety feature in that she will not run in reverse if the power transfer to the blades is engaged. I had a blast mowing my yard..... and a neighbors..... and then maybe another neighbors, I hope they didn't mind. But she has one feature that is the most wonderful of all, the kind a real man loves. My lawn mower has.........

A Cup Holder!

Is that not the greatest idea in Riding Lawn mower history? I loved mowing my lawn so much on Saturday that when my wife pointed out I had missed a spot I had to mow the whole thing again on Sunday.

Eat your heart out Kathy Frederick!

A man holding on to what he can....through Farmville

    Over the past three weeks one of my old friends from the Army that I had not heard from in close to twenty years reached out to me on Facebook. We started trading messages and over the course of time he told me about how his wife had been killed in a car accident caused by the bad weather in February.

    We share things with other people for all kinds of reasons. sometimes it is egotistical, to show what we think is our superiority, and sometimes we do it when we are searching for someone to commisserate our troubles with. In his case, he was searching for someone to share his burden with.

   I did what friends do, I read his words and I responded as supportively as I could. I don't want to go into too much personal detail, but I realized as I was reading that his sense of loss was profound in a way I could not imagine.

  He and his wife worked many miles apart in different industries, but they both worked at a Computer. He told me how they had regularly communicated during the day via Facebook. Since her death, it had been difficult for him at work, because he missed her regular messages.
   But he couldn't stay off Facebook, because he felt an obligation to take care of her cyber farm on Farmville. It had been an ongoing competition between them, to get the craziest and wildest things on their Cyber farms. He asked me if I thought it was stupid that he do this, go to her farm each day and feed her animals, and harvest her crops. Farmville let people get puppies this week, and he got one to keep her avatar company while he is working. He thought she would like that.

   I don't think he is stupid. I think he loved her so much that he is holding on to whatever he can to keep her in his life.

   My point in writing this is that sometimes I have made fun of people who spend way too much time online, and I tell them to get out and get a life. Yet here I find someone who goes online during the day to try and hang on to one that is gone. Who the hell am I to judge?