I thought I’d get right to the important part in the post title – I mean it was the earliest I could do it.

This morning, as we were in Dr. Barnard’s waiting area, the doggie nurse remarked that she had never seen him that agile before. She didn’t work there when  he was a younger dog, dontcha know? In fact, he seemed like a different dog. Gone was the hunched walk; gone was the rigid belly that brought whimpers when touched. He looked years younger. We have seen this in December – in the space between Pearl Harbor Day and the 8th.

How did this happen? Twice? Well, it’s the doggie version of the miracle of antibiotics – administered in a shot that works for two weeks and skips the stomach and digestion juices. It’s pricey, no doubt about it, but, oh, how well it works.

Okay, no one got called last night about midnight because we didn’t want to worry folks, but Sydney began exhibiting signs of being in considerable pain, for which a pill did not seem to help.

He walked and paced and tried to dig and paw into corners and got up on the sofa with me, only to lie there stiff and panting. And his rear half was all hunched up like it gets when he has a pancreatic attack.

So we called the vet and he met us at the clinic. Sydney was more agitated (frantic was the word the vet used) than he had ever been before. (At least since he was a pup was the qualifier the vet used) He got an antibiotic shot and a pain shot and we will be going back in the morning at 9:30.

Right now we are back home and I am too worried to go right to a prone position in the dark, so I am sitting here with an electric table lamp and an oil lamp; and actually, I need the flickering flame of the oil lamp more than I do the electric one. It’s a comfort thing.

Sydney has jumped up on my sweater and is resting now; his breathing is slower and I think he may just manage to sleep. I’ll sit here and sip some green tea with peach mango and watch over him for awhile. In my little pool of light with the dark around us, I am remembering the cottage vigils in All Creatures Large and Small.  I imagine, like James and Tristan and Siegfried, I will nod off in a bit myself.

Yes, I finished up my work on the Chickenpox Sofa with a saw. The long boards are now fireplace fodder. The spot where it sat in the sitting room is empty and right now, there is no place to sit in there. I do have a master plan and it will involve sitting – just not for awhile yet. Of course, there is the floor.

Actually, I think I will eventually put the old Morris chair there; that would be the precursor to a recliner. It was also the sick chair. You could sit up and put a table leaf across the arms and have a place to put a book or drink or thermometer; when you tired, you pushed down on a button and the back tilted into a resting position.

This is not my Morris Chair, but it is an example:

My Morris Chair had arms that flared out at the end, convenient for placing a book or drink. Well, one flares out; the other has a section sawed off. Sometime, before my time, Grandma needed it for a certain purpose and it wouldn’t fit where it had to fit . . . and they sawed off part of end of the arm. (Which reminds me of my mother wanting a table low enough to work jigsaw puzzles from low chairs – so she sawed the legs on a walnut table.)

Bing Crosby sang about Morris Chairs. Of course, he’s been dead about 39 years. I remember he had a heart attack after a round of golf and when my mother saw his picture in his coffin in some supermarket tabloid, she remarked on how bald he was. She didn’t read those papers,  but the picture was right there staring at her, I guess.

My dad always punctuated any Bing Crosby song with the comment, “He can’t sing like he used to.” This Christmas I listed to a lot of Bing Crosby, often choosing CD’s of his old Christmas radio broadcasts during the war. He would always end a show with a reference to “the boys” or “our troops” on some front.

Well, after that little interlude, let me return to Morris Chairs and Bing Crosby’s song.

All By Myself

All by myself in the morning All by myself in the night I sit alone in my cozy Morris chair So unhappy there, playing solitaire

Here’s a Youtube:

I have spoken often of the Chickenpox Sofa, but I’ll be darned if I’m I going to take the time to look up any references right now. I am too busy demolishing it in situ. And by that I mean I am systematically dismantling it in the sitting room. I am 62 years old; I had the chickenpox on it when I was five. I remember sitting  Indian style and taking my medicine from the end table. I was feeling better so Mother just put a cup of tea, chocolate, whatever there . . . along with this gigantic pill, a cube, a BIG CUBE.  Something came over me and I hid it under the saucer. That “something” wasn’t on the smart side because of course she found it. And I confessed.

Heck, if I’d stuffed it way down some crack, I might be finding it today. But probably not because this sofa is very well made. I’m using pliers, hammers, screwdrivers, scissors and a pry bar and it ain’t easy. I only wish I had been put together as well as this vintage sofa from the early fifties. You know what wouldn’t surprise me, though? If one of those awful chickenpox pills had decided to stay in my body and calcify. I’m probably walking around with it today.

This is silly. I suppose some people started thinking along those lines when I mentioned taking a sofa apart in a room. Well, really, why not? It gets the job done.

I call it panache.

Just a couple of days ago it was 60? here and all the snow was gone and it was raining and muddy and, of course, humid . . . sort of a shock to the system after a frigid week. I mean, I had to put stuff in the refrigerator, instead of just setting it in the back vestibule.

It started yesterday – getting cold again. First we went to chilly and this morning it feels like 5? outside if you consider the wind chill. My feet are bare but warm in front of the firestove, as I slouch in the corner of the sofa with a bushel barrel of packed-up nutcrackers to my right. There are some still in the wild that have to be tracked down;  the  chubby ones – really, that’s what it said on the box – are leading a revolt I think. Heck, they can’t go far – they’re chubby. Ah, but given that line of thinking, what kind of pursuit can I generate?

Most of the ornaments are off the big tree – not that too many got on thanks to my grumpy and pouting elf brigade this year. I actually wrote on one box: “Not used in 2010 because I live with Humbug Jerks.” Yes, I am that type of person.

The Alien Tree is still on the wide windowsill across from me and to tell you the truth, I’m a little wary about approaching it with the intention of dismantling it. The Cow Tree is undone, though, and all cows are accounted for, including the one I wore on my belled headband all Christmas Day. I don’t think I got a picture of that get-up. Are you thinking small tinkling bells embedded in a knit band? It was a nice blue ribbon with larger bells dangling from it – and one cow that mooed when you touched its head. I held it on with a hair clip.

Quentin wore one of those knit hats that has the ear-covering arcs included and from each arc hangs a knitted string with a tassel. He made the riced and mixed the mashed potatoes with it on.

We don’t wear antlers anymore because they tend to squeeze your head until they work upward and pop off – or fall in front of your eyes like Jordy’s Star Trek visor when  you look down.

Oh, look, I found my camera.

See, nutcrackers in a basket.

And this is the bagpipe nutcracker giving me the eye. Is it an evil one?

Ah, the old Kris Kringle is facing the basket; bet he’s upset. Well, maybe it happened when he was transported from the top of the old radio to the porch. See that little drum at the top? I made that when I was a teenager. It’s sequins and there were once three. I remember sitting at the big oak table poking those pins in.  There is a big round classy Santa buried in the greenery. I can’t see him, but I know it