Decadent Decade

I was walking the new puppy this morning (yes, Ken let me...and her name is Scout) and many thoughts came pouring forth. She's an Aussiedoodle, the grandbaby of our Sadie girl (who is an Australian Shepherd, almost human). One of my strong motives for getting a second dog is the biblical adage: two are better than one. Numerous members of my family think that I am nuts for procuring a second dog, particularly a puppy. But I believe she will be good for Sadie, will keep her company when I'm busy or gone, and will all-around be better for everybody, even me, who needs to get my hinder parts off the chair and do something to bump some of this rust off. Meanwhile, I'm already sleep-deprived and trying to figure out how to train a puppy after all these years. I have a little schedule. We'll see how that goes.

As I was walking through the yard, remembering our first Aussie, Zoe, and her early days as a pup, it struck me that it has been ten years ago since we brought her home. A decade ago that flew by like a minute. We like to think that nothing ever changes, because sometimes the minutes drag by. We might be too acclimated to 30-minute sitcoms, where a week's worth of activity gets summed up in 20 minutes, if you take out the commercials. I was fatter, ten years ago, but much more limber. Real estate was still slow, though my art business was steady. We had recently moved into our delightful Victorian home in Villa Rica, all three of our sons married and our daughter away at college. It was a sweet, very quiet time. When Elizabeth would come home on her breaks from school, she and I would pal around and talk on the cool front porch. Then we'd paint something in the house, eventually getting it all beautiful. We had no grandchildren and it was a brief, still season. Then the harvest began to come in...

Three grandchildren in the space of about 7 months, and then they began rolling in like a gold rush. In a couple of years, real estate started cranking up, a dribble at first and then a geyser. These years, on my most frantic days, I threaten to throw up my hands, put all our grandkids on a boat and find a nice island somewhere. The Scriptures say that children are the crown of the aged and boy do I love them crowns. What a difference a decade makes. To every season, turn, turn, turn...