the book.

As I make finishing touches on my book, I think to myself...  Wow!  Writing a book is hard work!!!

As I go over it again and again I find things I want to change and things that don't sound right ...  and this and that...

Blah. blah. blah.

I've worked for about 5 years on this and now I look at it and think, what?  is it boring?  is it stupid?  am i just so tired of reading the same thing over and over again that i am TIRED OF IT?

UGH!

I am hoping to have it sent out by weeks end and then I can get on with life while the publisher does the rest.  Well, once it's set up I'll have to go over it yet again to look for mistakes and whatnot.

I'm hoping that it will be published the beginning of December.  We'll see.

All I know for sure is that right now it seems like such a drag and I am so tired of it and I just want to have time to blog and visit blogs and mingle and enjoy and so on and so forth.

Ok.  I'm out of here.  Back to work for me...

Gracie’s Diary

Preface     

Saying Goodbye

      The time had come.  Dr. Fox handed his assistant the black bag, then held the syringe as he waited for me to say goodbye. Tears welled up in his eyes while he looked at the sick dog lying in front of him on the porch floor.  He’d done this procedure plenty of times before, but it never got any easier, he told us.  My steady flow of tears dripped onto my dog’s face as I held her in my arms.  Soon she’d be out of her misery.

      “Do you want to stay with her?” he asked. 

      “Yes,” I said, wiping my eyes.  “I don’t want her to be afraid. How does it work?”

      “After I give her the injection, she’ll simply go to sleep,” he said.

      The blanket that had become her resting place for the past week smelled, and her body heaved as she lifted her head to look at me.  Her eyes were on me… those trusting eyes.       

     Outside, December winds whipped soft snow just beyond the porch window.

     A warm spring day came to me, a day twelve years earlier when I had pulled into our gravel driveway with a whining cardboard box sitting beside me.    

    “Look what I have in here,” I said.  Jackie’s eyes sparkled as he ran to greet me, and he scooped the tiny black and white pup into his arms. 

     “Can I keep her, Mom?” he asked, giggling as she cleaned his dirty face with her tongue.

     “You can,” I said, “but it’ll be your job to take care of her.”

     He named her Scooter, and her German Sheppard and Poodle mix resulted in my making up my own special breed German Poodle.  There wasn’t another family on the hill who owned one.  Through her a boy would learn about commitment, responsibility and the pain of loss. 

     The memory faded and I felt her fur wet against my face from the tears I couldn’t control. 

     “Let me know when you’re ready,” Dr. Fox said.  Jackie, now a tall, lanky teenager, knelt down and held her face next to his, then quickly pulled away and bolted inside.  As a boy, tears were acceptable.  But now he tried hard to stifle any emotion.

      “Okay,” I said, “I’m ready.” 

     She left this world watching my face and trusting me.  “It’s okay girl.  It’s okay.”  Her eyes slipped back, disappearing into her head.  I felt the life drift away.

     Jackie sat with a tear-stained face, staring into nothingness and I threw my arms around him while we cried.  “She’s gone,” I said.

     Trying hard to swallow his pain, he wrapped his best friend in his favorite flannel shirt and carried her out back to bury her. I watched out the window at the silhouette of a boy and his dog as they disappeared quickly into the green open Harden Farm fields.  Life felt empty.  I wondered how a single dog could make that much of an impact on a family.

      I would never love another dog as much… or so I thought.