Fleetingly Carol

Beauty relief (as opposed to comic relief) If you have not had the opportunity to read Fleeting Waterworks, you should do that right now. It will be necessary in understanding Fleeting Waterworks Revisited. Go ahead. I'll wait. La dee da da. La dee da. La dee da  ^da^  da dee da da da. Are you finished already? Ok, let's go. As you can see, I have weak, um, er, pipes. Oh, the trouble this causes. Have you ever been talking to someone and they suddenly cut the conversation and disappear? You thought you had said something to offend, didn't you? Well, dear Reader, I can assure that the most likely cause of the sudden departure was a weak floor. I have the very bad habit of waiting until it is almost too late before I get up to do anything about the overflow. I like to get things done in as timely manner as possible. When I stand up to use the facilities, I also like to have a plan of further action that makes it worth getting up from my comfortable chair. The

The Devil had passed, but not Princess’ memory of him. She stayed with the shakes, like the DTs. She shook so violently inside the crate, I was afraid for her.  The wild dog came out in her as we tried to approach the crate to check on her wounds. We couldn’t open it for fear that she would escape and try to dig a hole in the floor or couch again. Old Man and I decided it was time to call Eldest Son. He told us that if we couldn’t keep her, call him. We couldn't and we did. Eldest Son had just lost his job, his car was repossessed and was in no way able to come to our aid. He lived several states away. We talked and we cried. We came up with this solution and that solution, but none were acceptable. He finally said the most feared words, words that I knew were coming, but didn’t want to accept. He had a friend who practiced veterinary medicine and who lived close to us. Eldest Son said he would make the call. As we were talking, Eldest Son was on speaker-phone so Old Man cou

When Old Man was Young Man and the kids were younger - when the world was new and all, dinners could sometimes be very, oh, what's the word? tense. Ours was a very nontraditional dinner-time. We ate with one another with no television running in the background for distraction. This, Dear Reader, is ancient history, not even cable or dish networks had been invented, much less the Internet, computers and cell phones. I don't know how families do it these days. Why, I was on that very popular social website (which I can't name because of the Terms of Service on Blogger, the hosting website for this blog. I am not allowed to say their name, or any product name, for that matter). Anyway, here I was reading all the posts by family and friends, when a new one from Son came through. It simply said, "Daughter, get downstairs, dinner is ready." Not 2 seconds later, Daughter posted, "But, Dad, I'm right in the middle of a school project." Her father's res