Friends

I'm sorry for the brief absence but the last two weeks or so have been difficult and time consuming. First, we had to euthanize our dog. She's been a part of our family for 16 years and I'm sure I don't have to tell you how difficult it was to make that decision. The only thing that made it bearable was our veterinarian's statement when he saw her. He said she looked worn out from all the pain. We probably should have let her go 6 months ago, but we just couldn't find the courage. I'm going to miss that little white Westie. She was like one of my children.

We barely had time to adjust to our dog's absence when family arrived from England to spend a week at our house. I work from home and I told myself it would be a cinch to get up a little earlier and do some work, post something on my blog, and entertain my guests the rest of the day. It only took one day for me to realize that was unrealistic. We live in the country and anything worth doing or seeing is at least an hour or more away. By the time my head hit the pillow at night, getting up earlier than usual was not a priority.

To complicate things even more, we had agreed in advance to drive our friends to Pittsburgh this past weekend via Niagara Falls. We have family in Pittsburgh and our guests are spending this week with them. Anyway, I found out it is almost a thousand mile car trip to go from the Flint area to Port Huron to Niagara Falls and then through New York to Pittsburgh and back to Flint again through Ohio. We left on Thursday and got home last night to an empty house, and the realization that our dog was gone hit me like a ton of bricks all over again.

So, that explains my absence. Thanks for leaving comments while I was gone. I'll be back to posting again soon.