Holidays, Hiking, and Dogs

We had a great get-together this year with the Cranes. Not the usual tense, forced little precious moments. Everyone seemed to be glad to see each other and I didn't see any imaginary darts flying across the room. Aunt Anita had her home decorated so beautifully, as always. The food was yummy. My cheesecake fell because I thought I'd drop my oven rack down a space. Bad idea! It's always turned out so perfect, obviously by pure luck. I had no idea it could be so temperamental. I was able to stay out of the sweets, sort of, I did have a few crumbies from the strawberry cake Robin brought.

We would have like to have spent more time with Robin and Eric, but Mindy's health is declining. Travel is out of the question. I'm afraid she would wet my backseat. She seems to be constantly wetting her bed. I don't see washing her bedding twice a day for very long, so I'm afraid she may not be with us Christmas. I am increasing her dosage, but I really don't think it's going to help. I wonder if I'm keeping her here for me, but then, I'm at my wits end with walking around behind her cleaning up after her for the past three months. I tend to take the stress out on the other two dogs. I'm ashamed of it. Ruby and Oliver both came to me for attention this morning and I shooed them away. Oliver just wanted to sit on the stool next to me while I checked email. Ruby wants me to drop everything to love her. I need a break before I go clean up Mindy's bed from last night. She's laying in it and doesn't seem to have a clue that it's soaked with urine. After I finish this blog, I will go work on her grave. Lee built her a casket last week. He always overdoes everything, in true man-fashion, so it's indestructible. I think he had some time to come to terms with things while he was building it and I hope I can do the same today.

We had a another wonderful hike at Guntersville yesterday. we hiked the Terrell/Kings Chapel Trails, which circled and crossed parts of Graveyard Hill. Terrell had an old house, which appeared to be a fallen-in moonshiner's shack. We wouldn't have found it, if not for the light blue car door I spied after we missed it on the trail and turned back looking for it. The highest elevations of the trails were beautiful! Kings Chapel Trail has a graveyard with markers from the late 1800's all the way up to 1980. Most of them belong to infants and, we suspect, based on the graves nearby, young women that were unable to survive birth of their children. A lot of those were from around the 1920's. I was totally bummed about leaving my camera in the car, but we were able to get some decent pics with lee's cell.