Dueling Nylabones

Bumpy Roads and Happy Endings

East Pawnee Butte

"The bumps in the road just make the ride more fun."

Dave and I were late bloomers, each married for the first time in our mid-forties. We met via the Internet, went out on a blind date, and became inseparable from that point forward. Two years later on Valentine's Day, we decided to give it a whirl. We married on September 2--Labor Day--that same year.

2002: The first half-year was completely worry-free, wedded bliss. First Christmas ornaments, first this, first that, loads of fun all around. Then the roller coaster ride began and our lives have been pretty hectic ever since.

2003: We decided to remodel this old house. At the same time, I learned my job would be eliminated so I scrambled to find another and oh my, was it ever a horrible job. Construction was completed by our first anniversary; two weeks later, Dave was laid off from his job. He quickly found another, which he hated nearly as much as I hated mine. Then just after Christmas, Dave’s older brother became ill and died very unexpectedly. It was a devastating time for his family.

2004: I landed a good job working for the state. About that same time, dad was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and struggled with his health all year. My brother Ted and I spent a great deal of time helping dad meet all his needs, determined to fulfill his wish to stay at home as long as possible. And he did, right to the end.

2005: Dad and Ted were at a memorial service for one of our neighbors when, after the service, dad collapsed with a heart attack and died outside the chapel. Somehow we always knew that's the way he would leave this world: poof, gone in the blink of an eye. Ted and I cleaned out and sold our childhood home. Dave was laid off again but soon found another job.

2006: Our old dog Raven destroyed the ligament in one of her back legs while chasing a kitty down the street, which necessitated a form of doggy "knee" surgery. We finally had a chance to indulge in one of our dream vacations: Autumn in New England, visiting Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Dave's father was diagnosed with congestive heart failure shortly after we returned. A week before Christmas, his mother suffered a stroke.

Cottonwood Pass, west side of the Continental Divide

2007: We both turned fifty, and spent most of the year selling Dave's family home, settling his parents in a nursing home, and managing their finances. After a long and difficult summer, as his illness grew worse and more unforgiving, Dave's father mercifully passed away in September.

2008: My mother-in-law's health stabilized and she seemed comfortable in her new surroundings, so we took a road trip to the Meteor Crater, the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, and the Four Corners. We had a wonderful time. Later that year, after a Broncos game, my gall bladder exploded. A quick surgery fixed it right up.

2009: Raven was diagnosed with canine lymphoma; we kept her comfortable and happy the final few months of her life. We also added a new dog to our family, Tonka, then took a long-overdue vacation to Washington DC, Virginia and West Virginia. At the end of the year, we lost Dave's beloved mother Marge. She was buried on a brutally cold December day.

2010: Dave was laid off once again but worked part-time for most of the year. We took several weekend trips around the state. I returned to my own form of therapy: writing, and discovered this wonderful online home for my journals. After suffering through years of back problems I turned to holistic treatments, without success.

2011: Dave spent the year honing his househusband skills (he's really quite good at it). We decided to add a second dog to our family and after much searching found our little Crazy Daisy. The doctors finally diagnosed the source of my back problem, and I chose corrective surgery. Recovery was slow but went well. Plus, I had the best home health care aide you could imagine.

2012: This year has been good. I feel stronger than I have in a long time. Tonka finally admitted that he does, in fact, kind of like his little sister Daisy (shhh, don't tell her). Dave held a difficult but good-paying temporary job for several months; he is now focused on relearning his househusband skills. And for the first time in years, we are taking a vacation!

Originally the plan was to visit Hawaii for our tenth anniversary, but we scaled it back to suit our circumstances. South Dakota, here we come!

Owl Creek Pass, southwestern Colorado

"Somewhere along the way in this hard and bumpy road called life is someone who will fix your broken-down car and drive you to your happy ending."


::: handing Dave the keys :::

A Reunion

The essence of nostalgia is an awareness

that what has been will never be again.

~ Milton S. Eisenhower

Early yesterday morning I caught a glimpse of my left hand. At first it was the wedding ring that caught my eye, but soon I found myself studying the back of my hand. Spreading my fingers outward, each digit seemed cleft in two by what looked like a deflated beige football. The joints were wrinkly, the skin no longer taut, as though the outer shell had been worn far too long and was now stretched to the point that it no longer fit its frame.

Something about the hand seemed familiar, oddly comforting. What was it? Then I realized, it was my mother's hand resting on the sofa's arm. Creased, wrinkled, filled with folds of skin and faded scars from a lifetime of work, adventures, stress, these hands appear much like the soft, plump hands that reached out to me as a young girl. Back then, their look seemed foreign, strange, so unlike my own. Now I sport a pair of appendages with those same foreign markings and feel a sense of connection to another person's middle-aged world.

A few weeks ago I hosted a party for some high school classmates. With the exception of my dear friend Peggy, I had not been in touch with these people for many years. We all graduated together thirty-seven years ago, and the last class reunion I attended was ten years later. In all that time, I have had little contact with or knowledge of the lives of these people.

Easy interactions were the order of the day. Rather than halting conversations that sometimes mark the discomfort of people unfamiliar with one another, what we experienced was a common level of familiarity. Much water had surely rushed under each of our bridges in the time between then and now. Some of us may have missed out on one another’s lives for decades but we seemed to pick up where we left off, as if high school was in the not-too-distant past.

In studying each other's faces that day, I'm sure most of us could see the shadows of our high school selves in the wizened smiles and different proportions that now define us in our middle years.

Now that we have arrived smack dab in the middle of middle-age, the life changes each of us have been through certainly color our perceptions. But as we listen to old friends speak--and search for meaning in the words left unsaid--we may sometimes neglect to see the parallels in our lives. Have we really changed so drastically that the essence of who we once were no longer resides within us? Perhaps that younger self lurks just beneath the surface: idealistic, hopeful, unblemished and filled with promise.

Like the wrinkled hand that was so vexing to me, there was an unfamiliar familiarity to all of these people. Our hands may be worn with age, our faces may be seasoned, our eyes may have witnessed countless images of beauty and sorrow, and our individual realities may have driven us headlong down the path to where we now find ourselves. Yet it all makes sense.

Left to right: Stewart, Mark, Peggy, me, Vicky, Karen, Kathy, Kim, and John.

An Uphill Climb

Pictured above is Mount Princeton, taken from the Collegiate Peaks Overlook state park on our recent trip to Salida, Colorado. It was an incredibly beautiful day as we enjoyed our picnic lunch, looking down over Buena Vista and the Arkansas River valley.

Soon the second table under our shade shelter was snatched up by fellow travelers. The two couples spent much time discussing the surroundings. What was that town in the valley below? One woman insisted it couldn't possibly be Buena Vista. "That's nowhere near here," she said. I smiled to myself, hoping for their sake she was not the group navigator. Then one fellow asked another, "Is that a ski area?" Eventually--after a lively debate--they came to the conclusion that the slivered mountain trails were not ski slopes, but avalanche chutes.

After checking in to our motel, we took the dogs downtown to Salida's Arkansas River water park. Isn't this horse trough flower planter lovely?



Normally Tonka is afraid of the river's current but on this trip he tapped into his latent courage, grew some doggy water wings and swam like crazy.

We drove around the neighborhoods in search of homes for sale. It was a sizzling hot afternoon and this deer had the right idea.

Then we headed back to the motel for an impromptu happy hour.

On day two, we zoomed up the highway to Nathrop to check on a friend's trailer. He had asked for a photo looking down on the river from the Mini-Gorge Bridge to assess the river's depth. We all agreed the Arkansas was running pretty low.



Both dogs had a blast swimming and playing in the river here, too.

Our planned activity for the day was a short hike. We asked some neighbors near the Mini-Gorge Bridge about the half-mile trail to Agnes Vaille Falls. Super easy, they said. Very pretty, they said. Oh, it was pretty alright. Easy? I suppose that depends on your perspective. (By the way, Agnes Vaille was an interesting woman. You can read a little bit about her life on the sign.)

Okay, one-half mile, shouldn't take long. Clouds were gathering but we figured there was still plenty of time. A group of hikers arrived at the same time, so we held back. Notice the pointed peak above?

Several minutes later and there's the peak again, with some ski slopes avalanche chutes below. We've gained quite a bit of elevation already.

I stopped along the trail to photograph this dead tree, ostensibly for its stark beauty. In fact, what I really wanted to do was catch my breath and consider how much I was beginning to feel like this dead tree.

People were now leaving the area in droves. On the way downhill, one woman remarked about how we weren't even close yet. Seriously? The nicely groomed path soon disappeared; the trail grew narrow and less discernable. At this point we let go of the leashes and left the dogs to fend for themselves. Now we're scrambling over rocks, moving slowly through the slippery, less forgiving area of the trail. At least, we think it's still the trail. At the end it became quite steep, then just as I'm crawling up the side of a huge boulder, I hear a loud thunder clap in the distance.

Finally we made it to the falls only to discover that because it has been so dry this year, there is barely any water pouring over the edge of the mountain.

We plopped down on a nice, flat rock to rest and admire the scenery, which consisted mostly of rocks. Lots and lots of rocks, with an occasional tuft of pretty little wildflowers peeking out. And I'm thinking, well great. Here we are, sitting right in the middle of a rock fall area as a high altitude summer thunderstorm bears down on us. Perfect.

The other group of hikers was cavorting near the falls and Dave said he wanted to wait for them to leave first. No way, I said, hearing another crash of thunder as the storm drew closer. So down we went, gravity aiding us in our race back to the starting line. No time to finish reading the interpretive signs, there's lightning right over there! We made it to the car just as the skies unleashed a torrent of rain.

FYI: Dip Danger. Always a problem in the Colorado Rockies. Beware.

And yes, a good time was had by all...

Fatherly Foliage

The year my father died was the same year my brother turned fifty. Although dad was always generous with his grandkids, he was a bit stingy with me and my brothers most of our adult lives. Dad figured we should fend for ourselves; he did not want to encourage any lingering parental dependency.

That changed as he grew older.

My brother's family planned a surprise birthday party for Ted's fiftieth. Dad--who never was much for parties unless they were happening at his house--declined the party invitation. Instead, he asked me to deliver a birthday gift: a card with an envelope containing five one-hundred dollar bills. When Ted opened it, he was so surprised.

The weekend before my birthday, less than two months later, I was at dad's house helping with a few chores when he handed me an envelope with the words "Happy-Birthday-Debbie" penciled on the front (dashes between words was dad's signature way of writing). In it I found five one-hundred dollar bills.

I protested, thinking it was too much money to lavish on someone having an ordinary birthday, especially coming from a parent living on a tiny fixed income. I suggested he wait, maybe another two years when I turned fifty. Dad gave his typical response, "I don't think I'll be around that long."

For years, everyone in our family had listened to dad anticipate his demise, which by his reckoning was sure to occur at any moment. In his fifties and early sixties, dad repeated his wish to achieve one last milestone: collect his first Social Security check. Once that occurred, he could promptly expire a happy, fulfilled man. Sure enough, he did collect that first check, followed by more than twenty years of continued benefits.

Dad insisted I take the money as a birthday gift. A few weeks later, he was gone.

So I used some of that birthday money to plant a tree in his memory. We had already discussed replacing the back yard apple tree we recently removed. Now the tree-planting served a higher purpose.

A maple tree is what I had in mind, and we found a lovely specimen at my favorite plant paradise, Paulino Gardens. The tree we chose was a Deborah Norway Maple, a perfect fit!

That tree was no more than ten feet tall, splindy but healthy. In seven years' time it has spread and grown into a beautiful shade tree that I adore.

Following dad's death, my sweet neighbor gave me another gift of remembrance, a beautiful yellow rosebush. That bush is planted near the maple tree, next to a commemorative stone where the yellow rose petals land after the blooms are finished showing off.

Surrounding the rosebush are clumps of purple irises, the offspring of a plant that once lived in mom's garden. Dad gave me the iris tubers when I first bought my home seventeen years ago. They spread like wildfire and brighten up several gardens each spring.

This year the irises were exceptionally pretty and fragrant. The rosebush is covered with bright yellow blooms that give off a sweet licorice scent. And the maple tree has grown so big and strong, a family of birds christened it with a brand new nest in the upper branches.

I am so grateful to have inherited my father's green thumb, as well as his love for plants and gardening. It has served me well.

Thanks, dad.

Olympic Dog Napping

Sabbatical

East Butte at Pawnee Buttes, Colorado

Having a bit of trouble engaging my brain in writing exercises at the moment, so I'm calling it a "sabbatical" (because that sounds so fancy, doesn't it?).

Should anyone stop by, I hope you will take the time to read some of my journals. Thanks for visiting.

Canine Joy

Tonka and Daisy
at the Arkansas River near Nathrop, Colorado
September 2011

Personal Holiday

HHS Graduation Day, May 29, 1975
(photo courtesy of George Scott)

After graduating high school in May 1975, my parents allowed me one last slacker summer before I began a lifetime of work. That year I spent the months of June and July doing, well, pretty much nothing. It was great.

Then along came August, time to knuckle down. It didn’t take long to find a job. Soon I was hired part-time at Diners Club in the microfilm department, making a whopping $2.10 per hour.

Not long after I was promoted into a full-time position researching stray payments, those checks with little or no identification, to determine whose account would be credited. At this point my pay spiked to $2.30 per hour. I was rich!

A couple of months later, I transferred into the word processing center. Three of us were isolated in a small glass-enclosed soundproof room with our mag card machines. Do you remember those? Mag card machines were basically a souped-up version of the IBM Selectric typewriter, with the capability of storing your work on a magnetic card until you were ready to let the words fly. All you had to do was press a button and voila! the machine would replay all of your keystrokes. We really fancied ourselves on the cutting edge of technology.

The majority of our work consisted of sending out thousands of form letters, mainly credit card application rejections. I was determined to be the most prolific word processor in the history of word processors (a new profession, granted, so probably an easy “A”). In this position we sometimes spent an entire day doing nothing but typing names and addresses, over and over and over. Occasionally we were slowed down by bizarre handwriting or by an applicant who failed to include their ZIP code on their application. Now you'd have to stop, pull down the big ZIP code directory stored above your desk, and look up the address.

Sometimes the addresses weren't in the big book. When that happened, we were told to use the general ZIP code for the applicant's city. Over time, we started to memorize those general codes. “What’s Minneapolis?” one person would shout above the racket. “55401,” another would reply. To be honest, sometimes we just wanted to keep the rhythm going and didn’t even bother to look up the address. Because you’d no sooner turn around and there would be another stack of a thousand rejected applications, ready for a letter.

The company was located miles away at the Denver Tech Center, quite a distance from the northern suburbs. I didn't mind. I enjoyed driving, and back then a commute through metro Denver was not the nightmare it is today. I loved the freedom and the responsibility, and especially loved having enough income to buy my very own car: an avocado green Chevelle with loads of horsepower.

In 1975, Interstate 225—which skirts the eastern edge of the metro area—was still under construction. It ended at South Yosemite, a few exits shy of its goal. I would avoid the Valley Highway traffic and sneak out from I-270 to I-70 and then onto I-225. Once I discovered this “back way” to the Denver Tech Center, I loved my commute.

The Denver Tech Center began its life in the early 1970s. Diners Club headquarters was located in a low brick building on the southern tip of the DTC, a little bit north of Orchard Road. I often sat outside at lunchtime, and remember seeing nothing but prairie as far south as the bluffs rising alongside the highway on the northern edge of Douglas County. This scenic area, where once a thriving cattle ranch existed, has since been transformed into a suburban sea of homes. And the last time I was in the DTC, I could no longer find that old building. I'm sure it's there somewhere, dwarfed by the glimmering high rise buildings.

Anyway, this rather meandering story began as a way to commemorate my favorite holiday, a personal holiday of sorts. You see, my job at Diners Club had few perks, but one thing that stood out was what I considered the best benefit offered to employees: a bonus holiday in celebration of your birthday. This proved to be quite a revelation for me.

After that, no matter where I worked, my birthday tradition has been to take the day off. Oh sure, I'll admit a few times I may have called in "sick" (cough, sniffle, cough) but mostly I have been up front with my employers and told them, listen, I just don't want to work on my birthday. Most have been agreeable.

And now, thirty-six-and-a-half years later, today is no exception. I’ve grown quite tired of working but am still grateful for another personal holiday. So thank you, Diners Club, for the annual inspiration.

Hmmm, what shall I do this year?

Traffic Jam

Tonka frequently hogs the doggy door, especially when it's rainy or cold and snowy (he's a sissy about going outside in bad weather). Daisy loves the snow but she's usually the one stuck in back.

This morning she seemed unfazed by the traffic jam. More often she will either nip at his legs or pace around behind him whining loudly until his butt moves out of the way, at least enough for her to squeeze through.

Sometimes I think he does this just to bug her...