Throw Back Thursday - The Duke With Four Legs Edition

Those of you who are long time visitors here at Sweet Tea Reads may remember that our dog Duke started off as a foster dog, and that he came to us heart worm positive, and with a bum leg.

Saturday, October 20th, was five years since we brought Duke home.  The memory showed up on Facebook, along with the first pictures we took of Duke, back when he still had four legs.

It’s actually a little weird seeing pictures of him with all four legs.  He gets around extremely well, and just doesn’t seem to be lacking in any way.  Well, possibly manners, but certainly nothing he needs to live a full and happy life. 

We had Duke for about six months before his leg was amputated; long enough for him to get through the heart worm treatment, and become healthy enough for the surgery.   It was also long enough for us to become too attached to ever give him up, so he became the second in a long line of foster failures. 

Duke recovered quickly from the amputation, and gets around much better than he did before it, as you can probably tell from this picture of him at the Walk to End Alzheimer’s last month. 

Throw Back Thursday - Baby Frankie

We adopted Frankie when he was a very small kitten, but I didn’t start blogging until he was almost three.  Frankie will be nine later this year, and he’s a big cat now, so it’s kind of fun to look back and see how little he used to be. 

I don’t think I've shared any of Frankie’s kitten pictures here before, so here’s the Baby Frankie Edition of Throw Back Thursday.

He was so little when we first brought him home!

He spent most of his time exploring.  Everything was interesting.

He also spent a lot of time tearing things up.

His busy schedule left him pretty tired sometimes, so there were also lots of naps.

And bedtime with his favorite blanket.

Throw Back Thursday - Baby Howard

Howard is probably our most photogenic cat, and definitely has the best poses.  My phone is filled with pictures of Howard, and most people who visit our house end up taking a few pictures of Howard while they’re here. 

I’ve realized that I very often include a picture of Howard when I don’t have another picture to go with the post.  He’s adorable, and there’s no shortage of good Howard pictures, but I’ve never shared any of his kitten pictures.  Howard is eleven, and I’ve been blogging for six years, so he was all grown up before I started sharing pictures of him here. 
So, for Throw Back Thursday, I give you Howard’s kitten pictures, while I take a little stroll down Memory Lane.

Howard definitely fit a lot more places when I first brought him home from the shelter:

He didn't mind the incredibly small TV in my teeny, tiny studio apartment:

And lastly, one of the very few pictures of Howard being still when he was a kitten.

Have a great Thursday!  The weekend is almost here!

The Lilac Bush, Three Years Later

I usually love it when the “you have memories” notification comes up on Facebook.  Most of the time it’s kind of fun to see what was going on exactly a year, or several, ago.  Sometimes it’s a good way to measure progress and see how much has changed.

This picture popped up today, from three years ago.

In 2015, the attorneys in my office gave me a gift certificate to a local nursery for Administrative Professionals Day.  That was a good year in the yard, so I was delighted with the gift certificate.

One of the things I bought with it was a lilac bush to plant in front of the house.  I had forgotten how small it was when we first planted it.

As you can see from these pictures, taken today, it really has grown a lot in three years.

I really, really like the bush, so I’m very happy it’s doing so well.  It smells great, and I love the flowers on it.

So what about you?  Do you like lilacs?  Do you enjoy it when Facebook informs you of memories for a specific day?

The Best and Worst Ages From Childhood

It recently came up in some blog conversation with Dana at The Daily Dose that we both like the number five a lot.  I just like the number; she likes it because she remembers five as being a really good age from childhood.  That made me think about the best and worst ages of childhood, so here they are:

Worst childhood age:  (Yes, I’m doing worst first.  I really like to end with the positive.)  For me it was definitely six.  My grandparents (my mom’s dad and step-mom) were killed in a car accident that year.  They were hit head-on and died pretty much instantly.  They were the grandparents we saw the most, so I really felt the loss.  My mom also kind of went off the deep end in the months following the accident, and that was a little scary to watch.  Today I think she’d have been encouraged to seek counseling, apparently not so much in the late 80s.

I remember what scared me the most, though, was that was the year I learned that there were things in the world my dad couldn’t fix; any time before that any problem or crises seemed to be resolved when my dad came home from work.  He was the fixer.  I remember waiting in the kitchen for him to come home after my mom got the call and called him at work, and being shocked and scared that we didn’t just magically stop crying when he walked in the door.  In retrospect, I think I was really lucky to have spent the first six years of my life believing there was nothing my dad couldn’t fix.  I know now that not all children have that kind of security at any point in their lives.  (And I still think he can fix almost anything.)

Best childhood age:  For me it was definitely four.  We lived in Texas that year.  As an adult I realize it was probably one of the years that my parents would consider the worst.  We moved from South Carolina to Texas for them to go to work for my grandmother and step-grandfather, and things didn’t go well for them.  I thought it was wonderful at the time though.

They owned an RV park and we ended up living on site, in several different RVs over the course of the year.  I can’t imagine doing that now, and definitely not with a two and four year old and a cat and a dog, but at the time it seemed like a grand adventure.  I had great fun checking out the different features of the different RVs.   And I had free run of the park for biking, swimming, and being fed obscene amounts of candy by retirees who didn’t get to see their own grandchildren as much as they wanted.  It was a great time and place to be four years old. 

So what about you?  What age do you remember as being the worst from your childhood?  What age was the best?  Do you like that number now?