Life goes on...

A couple of months ago we got an English mastiff puppy, which probably isn't what most newly retired couples long for. We weren't in the market for a dog at all, and a dog the size of a pony even less, but we all know how that goes. Friends of ours know a breeder who had a litter of ten puppies, and they were looking to give the runt of the litter to a good home. He was their favorite, and they didn't feel that they could sell him since they didn't expect him to be the GIANT dog that a mastiff person would want. Our friends said that no, they couldn't take on another dog, but they knew just the couple who might be interested. And here we are.

When my husband received the email about the puppy I was online, reading a story about an English Army munitions specialist who was killed in Afghanistan. I pretty much knew right then and there that he'd be our dog, and that his name would be Ozzie, for Oz, the soldier I'd been reading about. We had to wait a week to see him, but finally there he was. At six and a half pounds he was less than half the size of the rest of the puppies in the litter, and skinny, with a pitiful looking mottled coat. In other words it was love at first sight. The other clincher to the deal was that he would be eight weeks old and ready to go home on my husband's birthday. So we fell for this tiny little puppy who needed us, and eleven weeks later he weighs about fifty pounds, and is exactly the bouncing baby boy mastiff you'd expect him to be.

Marilu, of course, knew all about Ozzie, and how he came into our lives. If she thought we were crazy she didn't say so, being a dog lover herself. I mention all of this because this morning Ozzie came in from the back yard with a frog leg hanging out of the corner of his mouth. Goofy dog. But it's this sort of thing that was so much fun to tell Marilu about. She'd have said that it was quite the visual.

For the last few days weather has been dreary, rainy and overcast. Very appropriate for how I've been feeling since I got the news about Marilu. I spent the rest of that day staring at the computer screen, willing another message to come through. It didn't work. But today, finally, the sun came back out, and Ozzie had a frog leg hanging from the corner of his mouth. And I dug up two more of those darned stinkhorns out of the front yard. Much as I hate to face it, life goes on. It sucks, but it goes on.

Just sayin'.

Hello Marilu, goodbye heart...

I got my first computer long enough ago that when I went to the local community college to take an Intro to the PC class, it was about DOS. I had been hearing all about the Information Superhighway for a while by then, and was not happy to be left standing in the station. So I bought my first computer at Hecht's in the Columbia Mall, on a whim, and I'm not sure when the computer actually became an addiction, but here we are.

It took another year or more to meet Marilu. I had written a generic message about stenciling to everyone in AOL who had listed stenciling as a hobby, laboriously typing in each and every one of the 112 email addys, and she was one of the few who answered me. Thus began our friendship, which has lasted from then until now. Or, more correctly, from then until yesterday, because Marilu died yesterday. I've been sitting by the computer, tearily waiting for more information about what happened, and when exactly, but I'm not sure I'll ever know more than I do right now. We've lived 3000 miles apart for our entire friendship, and I never met her face to face, or even heard her voice, but she was with me all day every day. Every funny thing that happened was funnier because I imagined sitting at the computer later on and telling her about it. A fight with my husband? Ha! I could count on her to be on my side. Worries, joys, frustrations, she heard it all, and vice versa. I'm selfishly wondering how I will manage without her to talk to. Without her funny commentary on life. She once told me, when I asked her what the heck blogging was, that we basically blogged to each other, and she was right. Getting a message from her, and sharing whatever nuttiness had happened to me, was the best part of the day. So I'm going to continue to write to her here. I hope that one day I'll get a note in return.

I called her the Oracle of Marilu, because whenever I had a question about anything, it seemed that she always knew all about it. Why look things up when you can just ask Marilu? It worked for me. She was a voracious reader, about all sorts of subjects, and I'm not sure that I ever stumped her, except with the Stinkhorns in my yard, she said she never heard of those. I wish I hadn't either. And I've still got the Stinkhorns but I've lost Marilu, what kind of order to the universe explains that?

Life isn't fair, Marilu and I agreed on that... just sayin'.