Coming in Threes

Between sorting photos and everything else going on, writing for a new blog wasn't coming to me. The trip to Seal Rock was wonderful and a delightful three days with our friends. When you can still enjoy being with people after over 40 years, that's a good friendship. I took a ton of pictures as did Farm Boss and many will find their way to the blog. Words for them though didn't seem to be coming.

When we got home there were several things with which to deal. I had not mentioned that my cat, Persia, was living her last days. She was a very old cat and we knew it wouldn't be long. If she had not died, we'd have had to face putting her down. She had quit eating. She used to love to lie next to me, to come wherever I was, but in the last two weeks that had changed and she was more solitary-- perhaps caught up in the dying process. I would watch her breathe to see if she was still alive.

Before I left Monday, I held her on my chest for an hour or so and knew it likely would be the last time. Getting home, when she didn't come, we knew we had to find a body and eventually we did. She had just gone to sleep, gracefully and gently. We buried her out by the stone bench where she had loved to sleep on sunny days.

I cried as we all do when a beloved pet has gone on. Her aging process was a reminder to me of what I will face if illness doesn't take me first. I watched her wither, her weight drop, her hearing go, and I hated facing her loss. It's the price we pay for ever having the pets to love. The other alternative would be we die first and leave them. That's not a good thought either.

Then there was the calf. We didn't find it. We have yet to find its body and obviously it would be a body by now. The person looking after the cattle had seen the calf on Tuesday with its mother, or so he had said, but by Thursday morning it was gone. There are two possibilities. The most likely one to me is that it got into the creek and drowned. We have searched the banks but haven't yet waded the creek. We'll do that on the week-end.

If the creek didn't get it, then something took it off the place. That could be a theft or the thing I'd least want to think-- a cougar got it. We know they live in this area but we have never had one predate the livestock. If that is what happened, the problem will not be finished.

It was after that when I thought about that old saying about how things come in threes. I thought it's silly to even think of it, but I wondered.

Perhaps the third came Friday when we saw the emergency vehicles head to the neighbors' home up the road. We found out soon that their 4-year old grandson had taken off with their dog, and there was no idea where he went or what happened. By nightfall, trained emergency teams were on the hill and they had a tracking dog who had picked up his scent. Aren't such groups wonderful!

When they finally found him, it was two miles away and because the homes in that area had been alerted to keep an eye out. They heard their dogs barking and found the dog first and then the small boy. He was okay and as of yet I don't know why he ended up where he was.

If the first two stories had sad endings, this one had as good a one as possible given the upset that goes with a child disappearing that way.
Anyway above is the photo of Parapluie, Fisherman, Farm Boss and me that we took with self timer when they arrived at the beach house Monday afternoon. The first photo is the view from the beach house. There will be a lot more photos to come but it's hard to get my mind around organizing them.

Wednesday night at the beach, I had realized that I was dreading coming home. I had put my return out of my mind until then. It helped me enjoy the trip and truthfully nothing going wrong here could I have fixed.That is how life goes sometimes.