How many Henry updates can I write?

 

 

In late April he was back to his old self.  We were calling him Henry the Wonderdog.  Then it all went downhill again.  Not eating, barely drinking, I literally had to carry him outside and put him down in the grass so he could pee.  We’ve been on death watch on and off for the last two weeks.  Having the conversations about what to do when it’s over, and when is enough enough.  Are we being kind to him by letting him live out these last few days at home or are we letting it go too far?  Will we know if it’s time to just take him in to the Vet and get that final shot?  There’s barely anything left of him.  He’s lost a full third of his bodyweight, he’s down to sixteen pounds.  (He’s a twenty-five pound dog.)  We say goodbye to him every night, but he wakes up again the next morning, wagging his tail even when he doesn’t lift his head.  We’re not rushing this, he can do it at his own pace.

 

Suddenly a couple days ago he was a little bit hungry and I got him to eat a few bites of the leftover chicken I had grilled the night before.  By the next day he was eating dog food again.  He’s had three meals today, is pooping and peeing normally, and hasn’t thrown anything up.  Our White Shadow is back, following us from room to room, making sure he’s always close to at least one of us.  He is alert, smiling, and enjoying getting petted and loved.  He wanted to play fetch in the house with the ball again tonight so we did.  He glides up and down the outside stairs with ease.  Now we’re calling him White Lightning.  The rollercoaster ride continues.

 

 

Progress

 

 

We wrote in March that we had a VIN number for our next freedom machine, the Ford Transit Van.  It looked like this on the tracking site:

 

 

Now, in May, it looks like this:

 

 

A very small change on the blue timeline, but the build has begun.  So exciting.  Every morning coffee now is spent planning what to do to it (as little as possible), how to travel (minimalist), and where to go (everywhere it’s not triple digits hot in the summer).

 

and the Magnolia Warbler

 

 

 

They won’t hold still even for a second.

 

 

 

 

Blackburnian Warbler

 

 

I couldn’t get any really good pictures of the Blackburnian Warbler

 

… but I got these.

 

He just wouldn’t pose.

 

 

Hey look

 

 

 

Ducklets!

 

 

Dirt birds

 

 

 

 

 

Life in the slow lane

 

 

 

 

It’s just a brief heat wave

 

 

 

We’ll be back in the 90s any day now.  (We’re the second line, Edinburg.)  (That’s not feels-like temperatures, that’s actual thermometer readings.  Feels-like in the area were as high as 125.)  (We have air conditioning.)

 

May is a good time to be heading north, away from the extreme heat of South Texas in summer, and normally we’d have done that by now, but this year is not normal.  We have determined how we’re going to travel next but have not yet achieved the means. our newest freedom machine, the Transit Van.  It has not been built yet, but we checked on the tracking website and it is still scheduled for the week of May 13^th.

 

 

That’s close.  Like next week close!  It’s a six-step process and we’re told that the production phase will take from one to three weeks.  Even when it’s delivered, we still have some things to do before we’re really ready to travel, so it’s going to be a late, and warm, start to our summer travels.

 

Summertime

 

 

It’s warming up.

 

 

 

Our Happy Anniversary

 

 

Fifty years of marriage.  That has such a nice ring to it.  A Golden anniversary.  We had a great celebration then and relish it every day.

 

Now we’ve been married 50 years and 2,920 days.  We’re starting our 59^th year.  Of course, we’ve been together longer than that.  Altogether, we’ve been a “thing” for 61 years.  For our big day, we’re spending it at home.  No appointments or errands today.  We’re eschewing a loud and expensive dinner for something simple right here.  It’s a good day.

 

Westerns

 

 

Morality plays.  Character studies.  Life-lessons.  We watched a television episode of Wagon Train from the early 60s.  My head is still spinning.

 

The story wasn’t told in this order, but this is what it was about.  Two youngsters, squeezing bleeding hands together, swearing “blood brothers”.  Later in life, one losing his sight, they both fell in love with the same woman.  The discord resulted in a gunfight in the woman’s room, and she was shot and killed.  The hero of the story was so true to his blood-brother commitment that he didn’t tell his going-blind friend that he hadn’t even drawn his gun.  The woman was killed by a ricochet off a brass bed post from the going-blind guy’s gun when he shot and missed.  The good guy didn’t tell his friend, who turned out to be the bad guy, so he, the friend, wouldn’t feel bad.  He was that devoted a blood brother.

 

The result is that the other guy continued to go blind and spent the rest of his life searching for, and plotting revenge against, the blood brother who killed his woman.  In the final confrontation, years later, wouldn’t you know, the good guy never pulled his gun and the bad blind guy shot at him, missed, and got killed by his own ricochet off a rock.

 

And the moral is…

 

Countdown to the America’s Cup

 

 

Only 108 days to the 37^th Americas Cup!

 

https://www.americascup.com/37th-americascup-barcelona

 

Taking place in Barcelona this time.

 

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Barcelona,+Spain/@41.7012818,1.1990642,7.25z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x12a49816718e30e5:0x44b0fb3d4f47660a!8m2!3d41.3873974!4d2.168568!16zL20vMDFmNjI?entry=ttu

 

The competition was initiated by the British in 1851 with a race between the British and the Americans around the Isle of Wight (53 miles), with the prize being a silver cup.  The race was won by the Americans, the winning boat being named the America, and thus the name of the cup for all the races since then.  The Americans successfully defended the cup 24 times in a row, for 132 years, until 1983 when Australia took it away.  The cup, originally provided by the British, has been held by the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland.  The Brits, of course, want the cup back, but in all these years, have not managed to get it.  They created the cup itself but have never won it.

 

New Zealand defending.  Britain, Switzerland, Italy, USA, and France battling for the honor to challenge New Zealand for the cup.  The America’s Cup itself begins October 7^th.  The Louis Vuitton Cup, where the challengers all race each other to determine who gets to race New Zealand, starts August 29^th.

 

The boats will be about 20 meters long, with masts almost 37 meters high, and will fly above the water on foils, achieving up to 10 times the wind speed.  Expect 40-50 knots out of sailboats!

 

The charge for attending to watch the races?  Nothing.  No ticketing.  It is open to all.  Some of us might watch it on television.

 

The many moods

 

 

…of the Baltimore Oriole.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another outing

 

 

A driveabout with our heads out the window.

 

We drove on slow roads so the wind wouldn’t make Henry have to get down out of the window.

 

And a walk in a puppy park.

 

 

It was really interesting.

 

 

 

Don’t know how many more of these he gets.  He has lost so much weight his harness just hangs on him.  No more eating again.  He is still in good spirits, making the most of it.  He chased his ball in the house and brought it back three times today.  Judy is still mostly in the recliner at night, recovering from the knee surgery.  We all sleep on chairs and the couch in the front room.

 

Here’s a bird we don’t often get to see

 

 

 

A blackpoll warbler just passing through on migration.

 

You can see by the range map they don’t spend much time in places we can see them in the U.S.

 

It looks like this gray catbird didn’t like seeing him though.  Here the warbler is, getting chased.

 

Remember these?

 

 

 

Little insect eggs on stilts.  The insects lay them on the underside of leaves and things.  These are on the bottom of the compost tumbler drum.  I turned them up to photograph them, so really they are upside down in the picture.

 

I wrote about them a couple years ago, but now I couldn’t remember what they were, so I had to resort to google once more.  I figure if I can’t remember, you can’t either, so here they are again.  Green Lacewing eggs.  They’re a beneficial garden insect.  They eat destructive insects like aphids.  Laying their eggs on filaments like these, the voracious larvae will be less likely to feed on each other as soon as they hatch.

 

The adults look like this:

(Not my picture.)

 

Cool, huh?