If it seems like I am taking more days to get a blog out than usual… it’s because I am! I had to sneak upstairs to write this entry. Our dog (Sprite) weighs 35 (+/-) pounds, and as soon as she “hears” or “sees” me going upstairs, she wants to follow me… like she used to be able to do. This means I have to carry her up the stairs every time I want to use the computer, and before long, she wants to go back downstairs, only to want to come upstairs again.

I put quotation marks around the words hears and sees because we are not quite sure how much of those senses she still has. But she sure does seem to have both of them when she wants to >>> when they benefit her in some way… In other words, she is very selective at deciding what she thinks is important enough to hear or see.

Sprite will be fifteen years old on Sunday, which means that she sleeps a lot of the time. She likes to follow me from room to room… sleeping under my computer desk, sleeping right up next to me when I’m on the couch, or sleeping on our bed at night. She is my loyal companion and a great family member… She just weighs too much for me to want to continuously be dragging her up and down those pesky stairs all day.

But, we have come up with a remedy for all of this carrying around… This weekend, my son and husband are going to move my computer desk downstairs to the guest bedroom. I’ll be able to use the computer when I want, and Sprite will be able to do what she likes best: sleep… on the best bed in the house, the one that until now was reserved for visiting family and friends.

Oh my goodness! I just saw my first cardinal “couple” of the year flying from a tree to one of our red-tip bushes, and I am just so excited! Our weather down here in San Antonio is currently 72°, and we are expecting to get as high as 76° today. Winter is finally here!

Yes, that’s exactly what I mean… Today’s weather is exactly what we get during our winters, interspersed with “really cold” days. By this I mean that we range from days like today all the way down to a few days out of each year when we get below freezing temperatures. Last year we actually had an ice “storm”… which was particularly bad for some of us. (We lost power for a few days, but, the good news was that not everyone lost power… The houses across our street continued to get electricity throughout the entire time while the houses on our side of the street had to make quick trips to hardware stores in able to stock up on fire logs.)

Back to my cardinals! I think that they are probably my favorite birds. The deep red of the males is absolutely a phenomenal sight to me, and I also appreciate the very soft browns of the females. We have tall red-tip bushes all around the perimeter of our back yard, so we get quite a few different birds that nest out there. One year, just by chance, my husband and I were able to catch a glimpse of a Bluejay parent teaching three little Bluejays how to fly between the bushes… landing and taking off, back and forth, back and forth for several minutes. That was fun!

Isn’t it something when small things (like the sight of a pair of cardinals) can trigger such positive emotions in us? Isn’t nature grand!?!

It’s this time of year when a lot of us reflect on what is truly important in our lives, and try to figure out how we can bring happiness to others. When you get right down to it… I think that family and friends are “what’s important” and happiness revolves around them. This doesn’t mean that the people in our lives have to be close to us… If we don’t have family members, we can make an effort to befriend people. And, if that doesn’t work, then we can simply be kind to others… even if they are strangers.

Are we really in a society that is moving so fast that we can’t take the time to be polite and treat others with the dignity that everyone deserves? Are we in such a hurry that we don’t have the time to be kind to others, so much so that we appear to be ill-tempered and impatient with the people around us? NO!

After reflecting on my previous year’s actions I usually come up with a plan… to be kinder to others and to empathize more with the people around me. Of course, as the year rolls on, I sometimes find myself falling back into some of the patterns that I try to change… Perhaps I get a little impatient to someone who is supposed to be a knowledgeable employee somewhere, who happens to know even less than I do about his/her field of expertise. Or, perhaps I “testily” tell a telephone solicitor to take me off of his/her calling list (since I am on the federal do-not-call list!) and after saying a very fast “thanks” I hang up on him/her. Or, perhaps I get impatient with our fifteen year old very loyal dog.

Anyway, at least for the next week (or even month!) I plan to be on my best behavior and will definitely try to be a better person for (and to) the people who I encounter every day…

I just cannot believe that 2008 is almost over!!! It seems like just yesterday when people were rushing about lamenting the end of the twentieth century and wondering if Y2K was going to be a huge internet fiasco, and that was almost nine years ago! (Not everyone was taking precautions against that huge internet hoax… thankfully!)

New Year’s Eve has never been a big holiday for my family, so we aren’t planning anything special—or should I say anything involving toasting at midnight. We usually go out for dinner during the “regular dinner hours”— before the “party-ers” come out to celebrate the New Year.  I have to admit that the “regular dinner hours” are getting earlier and earlier for my husband and me… something our 20-something year old children cannot understand. My husband and I used to chuckle at the “early bird” dinner times, but now we find these earlier dinner times a lot more enjoyable at restaurants… We hardly ever have to wait to be seated, and the service is usually better than when the restaurants are crowded!

Anyway…

Even though we don’t have any “wild and crazy” New Year’s Eve plans on our calendars… I can still send out holiday wishes to all of you! Here’s hoping that you all have terrific New Years… that 2009 brings each and every one of you better health and more happiness than 2008!