A Petwarmers Poem

 A Petwarmers Poem  (I Love it)
WHEN I AM OLD

      When I am old...
      I will wear soft gray sweatshirts...
      and a bandana over my silver hair...
      and I will spend my social security checks on wine and my dogs.

      I will sit in my house on my well-worn chair
      and listen to my dogs breathing.
      I will sneak out in the middle of a warm summer night
      and take my dogs for a run, if my old bones will allow...

      When people come to call, I will smile and nod
      as I show them my dogs...
      and talk of them and about them...
      ...the ones so beloved of the past
      and the ones so beloved of today...

      I will still work hard cleaning after them,
      mopping and feeding them and whispering their names
      in a soft loving way.

      I will wear the gleaming sweat on my throat,
      like a jewel, and I will be an embarrassment to all...
      especially my family...
      who have not yet found the peace in being free
      to have dogs as your best friends...

      These friends who always wait, at any hour, for your footfall...
      and eagerly jump to their feet out of a sound sleep,
      to greet you as if you are a God,
      with warm eyes full of adoring love and hope
      that you will always stay,

      I'll hug their big strong necks...
      I'll kiss their dear sweet heads...
      and whisper in their very special company....

      I look in the mirror... and see I am getting old....
      this is the kind of person I am...
      and have always been.

      Loving dogs is easy, they are part of me.

      Please accept me for who I am.
      My dogs appreciate my presence in their lives...
      they love my presence in their lives...

      When I am old this will be important to me...
      you will understand when you are old,
      if you have dogs to love too.

                            -- author unknown

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PETITION TO KEEP PETS WITH THEIR OWNERS DURING DISASTERS:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/750226838

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I Have Arrived!

A funny story a friend of mine from Beaverton, Oregon sent me!

A couple from Minneapolis decided to go to Florida to thaw out during one particularly icy winter. They planned to stay at the very same hotel where they spent their honeymoon 20 years earlier.

Because of hectic schedules, it was difficult to coordinate their travel schedules. So, the husband left Minnesota and flew to Florida on Thursday, with his wife flying down the following day.

The husband checked into the hotel. There was a computer in his room, so he decided to send an e-mail to his wife. However, he accidentally left out one letter in her email address, and without realizing his error, he sent the e-mail.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Houston, a widow had just returned Home from her husband's funeral. He was a minister of many years who was called home to glory following a sudden heart attack. The widow decided to check her e-mail expecting messages of condolence from relatives and friends. After reading the first message, she fainted.

The widow's son rushed into the room, found his mother on the floor, and saw the computer screen which read:

To: My Loving Wife
Subject: I've Arrived
Date: 16 January 2004

I know you're surprised to hear from me. They have computers here now and you are allowed to send e-mails to your loved ones. I've just arrived and have been checked in. I see that everything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you then! Hope your journey is as uneventful as mine was.

P.S. Sure is hot down here.

Love to all,

Merry

We've Got to Keep Our Senses of Humor

Subject: We've got to keep our senses of humor....
I feel like my body has gotten totally out of shape, so I got my doctor's permission to join a fitness club and start exercising. I decided to take an aerobics class for seniors. I bent, twisted, gyrated, jumped up and down, and perspired for an hour. But, by the time I got my leotards on, the class was over.

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Reporters interviewing a 104 year-old woman: "And what do you think is the best thing about being 104?" the reporter asked.
She simply replied, "No peer pressure."

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Just before the funeral services, the undertaker came up to the very elderly widow and asked, "How old was your husband?"
"98," she replied. "Two years older than me."
"So you're 96," the undertaker commented.
She responded, "Hardly worth going home is it?"

************************************** 


I've sure gotten old. I've had 2 by-pass surgeries, a hip replacement, new knees. Fought prostate cancer, and diabetes. I'm half blind, can't hear anything quieter than a jet engine, take 40 different medications that make me dizzy, winded, and subject to blackouts. Have bouts with dementia. Have poor circulation, hardly feel my hands and feet anymore. Can't remember if I'm 85 or 92. Have lost all my friends. But.....Thank God, I still have my driver's license!

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 An elderly woman from Brooklyn decided to prepare her will and make her final requests. She told her rabbi she had two final requests. First, she wanted to be cremated, and second, she wanted her ashes scattered over Bloomingdales.
"Bloomingdales?" the rabbi exclaimed. "Why Bloomingdales?"
"Then I'll be sure my daughters visit me twice a week."

************************************** 

Three old guys are golfing.
First one says, "Windy, isn't it?"
Second one says, "No, its Thursday!"
Third one says, "So am I. Let's go get a beer."

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A man was telling his neighbor, "I just bought a new hearing aid. It cost me four thousand dollars, but it's state of the art. It's perfect."
"Really," answered the neighbor. "What kind is it?"
"Twelve thirty."  

Allan Alda- A Lessen in Change

Hi all,

Hope you all are safe, out of the way of harms way of the hurricane.  I read this exert that was on Beliefnet.com, written by Alan Alda.  I just had to share it.

A Lesson in Change
It took a major health scare for me to learn that I needed to start paying attention to my life. By Alan Alda I was in an ambulance, bumping down a mountain road for an hour and a half. Someone on a gurney was moaning at the top of his voice. It was me.

I was gripped by something that comes upon us from time to time, whether we like it or not: change. It wasn't something I felt I really needed.

I was aware of being tripped up by change for the first time when I was seven years old. One day I was playing with my friends and the next I was in bed with a case of polio. I got over that, but a year later, my dog died from eating leftover Chinese food and I got introduced to the biggest change there is. I suddenly realized that death is permanent. It won't go away; nothing you do can bring your dog back.Then in my teens, I chose a profession that has change at its very core; I became an actor. People in other lines of work sometimes don't change jobs until years have gone by. Actors change them every few weeks. M*A*S*H, of course, went on for eleven years, but that was an oasis that only made a desert of change seem even hotter. Every new job is another set of challenges, with new skills to master, or fail at in a public way. And every few years the kind of part you were once right for is only right for the generation behind you.

You'd think after forty years or so of a life like this that I'd be used to change. But it still could surprise me when it made its blunt and unforgiving entrance. I suddenly had to leave the familiar place I was in and go into the unknown. I did know that if I didn't accept change I couldn't grow, I couldn't learn. I couldn't make progress at anything unless I was willing to gothrough this dark tunnel of uncertainty. So I went through it, but usually I went through it warily, sometimes even a little suspiciously.

It took a lesson on top of a mountain in Chile to make me accept change in a way I never had before. I think I even began to like it.

I was in an observatory, in in a remote part of Chile, interviewing astronomers for a science program called Scientific American Frontiers. The show often called for me to do dangerous things in far-off places, and I was always a reluctant adventurer because I'm a cautious person. This wasn't dangerous; it was just talk, but suddenly something inside me literally started to die. My intestine had become crimped and its blood supply was choked off. Every few minutes more and more of it was going bad, and within a few hours, so would the rest of me.

The astronomers brought me down the mountain and hustled me to the closest town; not a very big one, but amazingly, there was a surgeon there who was expert in intestinal surgery. I had only a few hours. There was no chance to fly to a larger city.

It's not just that I'm cautious; I usually practice a form of caution almost indistinguishable from cowardice. And yet I wasn't frightened. It happened too quickly for fear to set in. Knowing I might not wake up from the surgery, I dictated a few words to my wife and children and grandchildren. And then I went under.

I woke up a few hours later with a deep understanding that this surgeon had given me my life. I was grateful to him in a way I had never been grateful to anyone before; I was grateful to the nurses and to the painkillers; I was grateful to the soft Chilean cheese they gave me to break my fast. The first bite of that bland cheese, because it was the first taste of food I had in my new life, was gloriously complex and delicious. Everything about life tasted good to me now. Everything was new and bright and shining.

I hadn't asked for this change and I certainly wouldn't have picked it if I had a choice, but it actually transformed and excited me.

When I got home, I saw that I was paying more attention to things. The way the cheese tasted when they finally let me eat again became the taste of life for me. And I began doing more of the things I care about and caring more about whatever things I did. It didn't matter if what I was doing was an official, important enterprise -- or a game on a computer screen. I gave it my attention. My sense of taste for everything had been heightened.

It's only been two years since that night in Chile. Maybe this will all go away, and maybe I'll take life more for granted again. But I hope not. I like the way it tastes.

Wishing you all a beautiful fall weekend.

Love ya,

Merry

Joke (religious)

----- Original Message ----- Subject: Preacher man As a young minister, I was asked by a funeral director to hold a grave side service in a new cemetery for a derelict man (with no family or friends) who had died while traveling through the area. The funeral was to be held way back in the country at a new cemetery. This man would be the first to be laid to rest at this new cemetery. As I was not familiar with the backwoods area, I became lost. Being the typical man I didn't stop for directions. And when I finally arrived an hour late, I saw a crew and a backhoe, but the hearse was nowhere in sight. The workmen were eating lunch. I apologized for my tardiness, but the workers just looked puzzled. I stepped to the side of the open grave, to find the vault lid already in place. I assured the workers I would not hold them long, but this was the proper thing to do. As the workers gathered around, still eating their lunch. I poured out my heart and soul. As I preached, the workers began to say "Amen," "Praise the Lord" and "Glory," (they must have been Baptist). I preached, and I preached, like I'd never preached before. I began from Genesis and worked all the way through to Revelation. I preached for 45 minutes. It was a long service. Finally, I closed in prayer and it was finished. As I was walking to my car, I felt that I had done my duty and I would leave with a renewed sense of purpose and dedication, in spite of my tardiness. As I was opening the door and taking off my coat, I overheard one of the workers saying to another. "I've been puttin' in septic tanks for 20 years, and I ain't never seen nothing like 'at before."

 I hope no one was offeneded. Merry

Pete the Cat (NEAT)

I hope you all like this, I had to share it with you.  (just in case you don't have time to read all this stuff like I do all day)

AFTER 10,000 YEARS
by Niki Behrikis Shanahan

      Our family didn't have any pets when I was growing up, so I
didn't give much thought to having a companion animal.  I suppose if
you never had it, you don't know what you're missing.
      My husband, Jack, always had cats in his family growing up.
When Jack and I were first married, we lived on the second floor of a
condominium.  Little did we know who was living on the first floor --
it was Pete!
      One day we heard a cat meowing in the hallway outside our door.
Jack dashed to the door and let the cat in.  It really didn't matter
much to me if he let him in or not.  Pete kept visiting us, each time
meowing outside the door for admittance.
      One day, I was writing at the kitchen table when Pete came in.
He got up on the chair beside me, and I looked into the most
beautiful green eyes I had ever seen!  On other occasions he would
walk around, and rub up against my legs as I did the dishes at the
sink.  Little by little, this short fluffy bundle of love stole my
heart!
      Then it happened.  I started looking for him -- I was hooked!
We started feeding Pete on a regular basis and he would stay for long
periods of time.  One night he didn't leave, sleeping on a rocking
chair in the living room all night.
      Finally, I discovered that he belonged to Judy on the first
floor.  I explained to her Pete has been stopping by to visit and
that he had stayed overnight a couple of times.  She told me if Pete
bothered us, just to throw him out!
      Judy said that she was getting married in a couple of months and
she didn't know what she was going to do with Pete, because her
fiance had a dog that couldn't tolerate other animals.
      That was the day that I decided I would definitely adopt him.
      Jack was going to night school and was busy with that most of
his spare time, so Pete and I kept each other company.  Pete would
get up with us in the morning and have breakfast -- he was always
veryvocal about being fed promptly!  He would sleep on our bed,
usually laying on my legs all night, sit on my lap in the evening,
nap in my arms, and play toy and flashlight games with Jack.  He'd
let you put a little rubber duck on his head and allow us to be
amused by it.  He was a good sport.
      He was very cooperative the year I put a Santa hat on his head
and asked him to pose for our Christmas cards.  He loved to sit under
the Christmas tree.  When I would bring the tree into the house and
lay it against the wall before setting it up, Pete would sit under
it, ready to start celebrating right away.  He loved to open the toys
at Christmas, and exchange gifts and cards with his Grandma and
Auntie every year.
      Fourteen wonderful years passed.  It was a couple of weeks
before Pete passed away that he was sitting on the bay window in the
dining room.  I went over to see him, and there I saw a beautiful
pure white cat outside directly in front of the window where he sat.
The white cat was staring up at Pete.
      I called Jack to come over to see this white cat who seemed to
be in a trance as she gazed up at Pete.  Jack came over to take a
look and within a couple of minutes she vanished from sight.  I
immediately ran outside to leave her some food in case she came back,
but all the while I had an uneasy feeling inside me that this was no
ordinary cat.  We never saw this white cat before, and we've never
seen her since.
      I couldn't get it out of my mind that the beautiful feline was
an angel, ready to take Pete to heaven.  I asked Jack if we could
pray for Pete a little later that night and we did.  Within a couple
of weeks Pete did pass away from a heart attack.
      Pete lived to be close to 22 years old, which is a long time for
a cat, but not enough when you love someone.  He enjoyed a very
loving life with us, and was really only sick the last year of his
life.  Even though it pains us deeply that he is gone, we know he's
with the Lord in heaven waiting for us to join him someday.
      The great bond between Pete and I inspired me to research the
Bible to see what God had to say about the afterlife of animals.  I
found many scriptures in myresearch and I felt the need to document
it in an organized way.  Once I began to type everything in a file, I
said to Jack, "I think this is a book!"  I was delighted with my
findings that proved scripturally that all the animals go to heaven.
I titled the book, There Is Eternal Life For Animals.
      On December 15, 2002, it was exactly one year since Pete passed
away.  I was feeling very depressed, and just moping around the
house.  I looked out the window and noticed that it was snowing.
Later I looked out the back window at the place where Pete was
buried, right under the big rock.
      I had to look twice because there was a snow shaped cross on the
big rock right over Pete's grave!  Why isn't there any snow on the
rest of the rock?  There's snow everywhere else, on the trees, on the
grass, everywhere.  But on the rock it was only in the shape of a
cross.  After the snow was gone I went to see what the rock looked
like, and I noticed that there was a branch which formed the vertical
part of the cross, horizontally it looks like an indent in the rock.
We have photos of the rock fully covered with snow, and others with
the snow melting, and we have a photo of the rock with the Cross of
Snow.  I know it's a sign from God that Pete is alive and well in
heaven!  I believe that God wants us to share this story with all
those who are feeling the pain at the loss of their animal
companions.  It's true that God preserves people and animals as is
stated in Psalm 36:6.
      I often wonder what it's like in heaven, and what everybody is
doing.  Sometimes I imagine Pete's playing with the other animals,
perhaps riding on a big elephant!  I'm sure he's spending time with
my Dad, who passed away 40 days before him.  He and his Uncle Johnny,
my brother who passed away at only three years old, are no doubt
enjoying each other's company.
      Whenever I feel sad about my boy being gone, I stop and think.
I'm going home to Pete someday and we're going to live forever in
heaven!  Then after 10,000 years go by, I'm going to turn to Pete and
say, "Well son, what do you want to do today?"

            -- Niki Behrikis Shanahan   <eternalanimals @ comcast.net>

____________________________________________
Niki is from Massachusetts.  Her book, There Is Eternal Life For
Animals, has been reviewed 43 times by readers at Amazon.com and has
received the highest 5 star rating. 

My friend Patty

I realize I have been blessed by having Patty for a friend for 48 years.  God joined our paths when my parents moved to the town she lived in.  We were adolescents.  She has been one of the biggest influences of my life, even though there have been some fairly long periods of time that we weren't in contact.  She is one of the very stongest persons that I know, and too independent in some ways.  But I realize this illness, the decisions she makes for treatment or no treatment are HERS, no one else's.  What she does will be for her son, her daughter, her grandchildren, her mom, and to a lesser extent her brother and sisters.  I talked to her on the phone this morning, and she said that she will  have tests starting the end of the week.  She will see the Oncologist again the end of September.  If her options inlude any hope of true recovery (Not surgery then 6 to 12 months of treatments and illness followed by death) she will have them.  Right now they do not kinow the extent of her condition.  I will keep you posted on it. For me.  I have to tell someone this.  I can't just sit her stoicly (sp) and be strong.  I am crying, I am weak, I am losing a best friend. In a way, I am being selfish, I am losing my childhood heroine, it's my loss, she will be in a better place.  But I need all the support I can get, from any of you who read this and are willing to help me, and from God himself.  Her concern (other than her family) is that I take care of my medical needs!) Can you believe this angel my freinds?

For Pat

Prayer for Friendship
You have blessed us, O God,
with the gift of friendship,
the bonding of persons
in a circle of love.
We thank you for such a blessing:
for friends who love us,
who share our sorrows,
who laugh with us in celebration,
who bear our pain,
who need us as we need them,
who weep as we weep,
who hold us when words fail,
and who give us the freedom
to be ourselves.
Bless our friends with health,
wholeness, life, and love.
Amen.

Vienna Cobb Anderson  |  Source: Adapted from "Prayers of Our Hearts" © 1991 Vienna Cobb Anderson. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

 

I wish the prayer below said, "Fix Pat Jesus!"

Fix Me Jesus
Oh yes, fix me, Jesus, fix me.(HER)
Fix me so that I can walk on
a little while longer.
Fix me so that I can pray on
just a little bit harder.
Fix me so that I can sing on
just a little bit louder.
Fix me so that I can go on despite the pain,
the fear, the doubt, and yes, the anger,
I ask not that you take this cross from me,
only that you give me the strength to continue carrying it onward 'til my dying day.
Oh, fix me, Jesus, fix me.

Thank you dear friends who have read this, stick with me now, I pray, but even more important pray for Patty.

I love you all, even though I many not know your faces, I know your hearts.  Thanks for your praryers and your understanding.

Merry