I was looking for something on the Internet. Whatever it was, I don’t remember now. At some point in my search I landed on the blog of a couple here in Kendallville, whom I do not know personally. I do know now that they have An Amazing Barking Dog. I browsed through the entries, sort of like I used to peek from the backseat of our Going-to-Grandma’s House car at the Christmas trees in front windows.

Their names are Bob and “Big Lou”; I saw no last name and I recognized neither. They are “Living the Dream” here in this small town in Northeast Indiana. I will have something to think about tonight as I wait for sleep: Where would I want to be living the dream?

But anyway, there were quite a few recipes. I just let my eyes rest on the title of one: Marmalade-Glazed Pork Roast with Parsnips and Onions. Ha! The picture was very nice. But . . . I am going to go to the work of making that and then have people EAT it? I don’t think so. Taking a picture of it to at least show the work was at least something.

Peanut Butter sandwiches. That’s the way to go.

Mother and Grandma were good cooks. Mother liked to find great recipes. Not me.

Now my dog is barking . . . and I am out of here.

Of course, we had to watch the movie about the mega shark and the mega crocodile  because it is our destiny. It is written in our stars; unfortunately, there were no stars in the movie. The shark ate a submarine, however, and that was pretty cool.

I also watched The Town and it had a nice little plot and shoot-ups like they had in the old days. You know, where there was a lot of gunfire and no one got killed. That happened in this movie – AK 47 guns all over the place firing at multiple police cars and no one was hit.

One thing, though – the criminals doused the crime scene with bleach to destroy DNA evidence. Does this really work? Not that I NEED to know; I’m just curious.

I read a post today about  vegetarianism – and I guess that would include all meats. All my life I have taken for granted that I will eat hamburgers; uh, that would be beefburgers, not pork burgers, which the “ham” erroneously implies. I take the moment to be perfectly clear about this because when I called this place “The Leaning Cow”, I did not think ahead to the fact that I might start identifying more with cows than with the reason for their leaning . . . the tipping part.

I thought I would aggressively bring up confrontational topics, but I didn’t. This isn’t about that.

This is about me and cows . . .  and hamburgers, meatloaf, sloppy joes. Beef. And what are cows? Well, yes.  This became a problem.

This is Sweet Moo. She was the one who was unable to concentrate on her reading when Sydney was getting his liver checked. She has the cow essence. Some of our other friends are four-legged, furry, cute and black and white spotted.  They are as cow as one can get when stuffed. Some of them aren’t stuffed; they are carved or crafted and just as real – maybe not as cute, but still they have personalities. People bring them to me. And the little guys  look at me. We had this problem with cookouts, for instance, and in defining the policy of  “The Leaning Cow”.

Of course, I could have just ignored it because they are not officially real, but I don’t really accept that – I can stretch my understanding of real. And, sometimes, that stretching gets to an uncomfortable point. This is what I said to the faces suddenly watching my burger eating, and, in some cases, their own munching:

Somewhere there are brain dead cow donors.

Okay, it is not good at all. But, hey, folks, this is not easy to rationalize. So I don’t think about it. Much. And when I do think about it I say, “Well, what about the Green Giant and Little Sprout?” Green Giant Foods 35+ years ago sent out stuffed Green Giant dolls for kids to hug. My mother got one for Robert William and it came in a transparent package. On the outside was written something about her ever-loving Green Giant arriving. She laughed about what the mailman had thought.

So, you’ve got this Green Giant sitting there being  your kid’s friend and you want that kid to eat what? Beans? Green beans?

And that’s how and why my cows and I do our fairy tale, let’s pretend little thing when the grill comes out.

I was sitting in a slightly reclined position here looking out the window and I decided I would take a picture of the cold outside the window.

It makes for really great frosty sodas from the vestibule – but misjudge it and  there could be an explosion or two.

When I downloaded this photo, a bunch came along with it that I thought had already been processed.  Mostly they were of people at the table for Christmas dinner,

but there was a series of attempts to get a picture of Shane and Quentin. Sometimes Shane is upside down;sometimes he splays body part’s across Quentin’s face. I am showing these two. Oh, I should prepare you for the beaver hat worn under the hoodie . . .

I opened up my mail this morning and saw I had a note about my family tree. It was in reference to my grandmother’s grandmother, but when I took a look I found myself just staring at my grandmother’s name and the dates of her birth and death. I loved her very much. It fascinates me that someone for whom I cared so deeply is totally unknown to my children and grandchildren.

There is a picture, somewhere, of Grandma and me ready to head off for Sunday School in Scott. She stood there somberly staring at the camera and I was to her left, holding her hand. I remember that morning. I remember the smells of rural Indiana in the 1950’s. I remember the scent and feel of her. It is so real . . . and it doesn’t exist for my descendants. Then, again, she never smelled the sun-kissed blond hair of Robert William and Quentin.

I am the link, but I can’t make them real to each other. It’s a bit frustrating. That’s the way things are. Still, I am aware of the connection and when I toss one of the comforters Grandma made over her great-grandsons and great-grandchildren, I am comforted.

My intuition is running up to snuff. Sydney has no masses in his liver; what the vet did see was some abnormality around the ducts – so we are staying on antibiotics, pain medicine and adding a new medicine that will thin the bile.

Sydney is staying at Dr. Bzrnard’s for a few hours in order to have an ultrasound of his liver. He was snippy this morning and had to wear a muzzle while examined. He got a shot to make him more comfortable and so now we wait.

If we were to use this as a test of my intuition, I’d have to say. I don’t believe there are any tumors.

We are just sitting around the main cafe room, no on really talking – just some sipping of drinks and the ticking of the clock.A couple of regulars have pulled on their earflap hats and squall jackets and gruffed out some words about checking on things outside. Foo suddenly decided she had to busy herself buffing up the Foo Bar. Rose is in the little cherry rocker that about four generations have been rocked in. Maxwoo said she guessed she didn’t want any gingerbreadmen (tasty boys) this morning and Spiffie is reading but hasn’t turned the page in over a half hour.

We wait . . . each in our own way.

I am waking up and very soon I will be in the shower. Then I will put on clean clothes, but ones that can be incredibly “dog-haired” because I am taking two dogs to the vet at 9:30. Shane’s foot is hurt and Sydney turned his nose up at chicken and roast on two consecutive days and has been snappy.

I don’t think we have good news about Sydney. His liver enzymes were all elevated – every one of them. He has been on medicine to help his liver, but the enzymes are definitely up. I am telling all these concerned redyarn-headed folks here that we don’t need to get ahead of ourselves. But, then, you know the Boy Scout motto.

Hmmm . . . something just happened that has occurred before. I’ll be using Firefox and all of a sudden a Google Chrome window opens and above it is the sentence: Chrome Google is not your default browser. Well, yes, I know that. Maybe this is some sort of Internet door-to-door salesman. I hope it’s not like those old vacuum cleaner salesmen – you know, the ones who would throw dirt on your floor when you opened your door.  Imagine a pile of Google Chrome code all over my Firefox window.

The shower . . . it calls me. And not with a siren’s call – more like GET IN HERE RIGHT NOW IF YOU KNOW WHAT IS GOOD FOR YOU.