Broken Bond?

When we welcomed Bella into our family nine years ago, she was “pair bonded” with Maya, her companion of several years. The girls caught our attention when they were featured on a segment of our local TV news. Their owner had multiple sclerosis and could no longer care for them, so she surrendered them to…

A Presidential Weekend

On this Presidents Day weekend, we had the opportunity to admire our own president being presidential. President Biden made a surprise and historic visit to Kyiv, a show of U.S. support and solidarity with a democratic nation battling for its survival after Russian forces invaded the country nearly a year ago. It was the first…

Protecting Them With Our Memory

Friday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the day when, 78 years ago, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz, the Nazis’ biggest concentration camp, during the final months of World War II. Established by the United Nations in 2005, the day commemorates the killing of 6 million Jews, two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population, as well as millions of…

A Brief Respite

A respite is defined as “a short period of relief from something difficult,” which is what we experienced this weekend as we returned to Loyd Park. Next weekend’s trip to Illinois will bookend last weekend’s trip home from visiting Jon’s mom, but this time we’ll be packing up her belongings and moving her to an…

Back Home, Again

We took the Thanksgiving break as a chance to return to Jon’s hometown for a few days to see his family. We do this roughly once a year — but this year was a little different. Jon’s mom needs to move to an assisted living facility, so the trip centered on touring Cambridge House and…

Friday Freeze

The arctic front that moved through North Texas wasn’t enough to break out the sleds or cancel school, nor was it a deterrence from a final weekender before our Thanksgiving trip to visit Jon’s mom in Illinois. However, it did require us dressing in layers even for quick dog walks and moving most of our…

Life is Short

The average human lifespan is 76.9 years, or about 4,000 weeks. That means we have 4,000 Saturday nights, 4,000 lazy Sunday afternoons, 4,000 TGIFs. In the grand scheme of things, 4,000 weeks isn’t very long, and time seems to pass faster as we get older. By this calculation, we have only about 1,000 weeks left…

The Haunted, Hunted Kind

One of our favorite musicals is Jesus Christ Superstar, the 1971 rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice. The lyrics to “Pilate’s Dream” include the line, “I dreamed I met a Galilean, a most amazing man. He had that look you very rarely find — the haunting, hunted kind.” This weekend found us…

The Downside to Doubling Up

Jon’s appointment at noon on Friday to receive both the COVID booster and the flu vaccine had us wondering whether we should cancel our weekend camping plans. After all, we had no idea how he would respond to the “dynamic duo,” and if he was going to be miserable, we thought it would be best…

Work-Life Imbalance

Last Sunday, as we enjoyed a late-summer weekend at Loyd Park, we grew increasingly hesitant to just pack up and leave, especially considering we would be returning to the same site in four days. Why not stay through the week and commute back home for work each day? That turned out to be a bad…