Archive for category: Memories

Charlie was our beagle who lived for about 14 years. She was the best beagle in the whole wide world. (But even the best beagle is extremely wild and is untrainable).

There are stories upon stories that I could tell about her. For example, when she was young and if the door was open even an inch, she would escape and then run for hours. She’d return covered in filth, smelling for days.

Once she got out and we got a phone call from the local Catholic Elementary School up the road. Charlie was running through their cafeteria and our neighbor recognized her, fortunately.

Another time we were on vacation and our neighbors were taking care of her. She got out, of course. Charlie ran into a pipe about 1 foot wide in diameter that carried our little creek under the road. At the end of the pipe where it opened back up into the creek again, it was completely blocked with sticks and rubble. There was no way out. My neighbors panicked as they thought about what they would tell us when we found out Charlie got stuck in the pipe and died.

Triumphantly, Charlie ran out (head first) from the way she entered. Somehow she maneuvered herself all away around even though the pipe was so small.

We would dress her up, pretend she was Sam’s wife, cover her with a sheet and call her a ghost, and rub her soft ears all day long. Everyone who met her loved her, even Peetie 1, who really hated everything and everyone else. When Charlie was excited she’d run up and down the hall. Her nickname was “Katana” (which then led to my nickname as “Katana”). She’d chase and howl at the vacuum. She would beg for food, even climb all the way on top of the kitchen table. She’d race you up the driveway. She’d hog the whole bed.

When she was dying, Charlie wouldn’t eat any dog food, so we fed her our own meals. When she wouldn’t eat those anymore, we fed her steak dinners. I honestly think she was just trying to milk us for all that we were worth and prove that she could get anything she wanted before she left us. It worked.

Charlie became very weak, very fast, at the end of her life. She couldn’t walk too well so I carried her out to the front yard for her to go to the bathroom. At the time, the following experience was petrifying. Now, I kind of laugh/cry when I tell it. Anyway, for you all who don’t know, our front yard is just a giant hill. Charlie was going to the bathroom but she couldn’t balance very well so she fell down and starting rolling down the hill. It was awful, I tell you. I couldn’t look. I starting screaming like bloody murder because I thought she had died. My parents ran outside and my dad knew it was time.

As my mom drove to the animal hospital to put Charlie down, my dad held Charlie in his arms. My dad promises that Charlie looked up one last time, and then passed away.

After Charlie died, I told myself I would never get a dog again because losing Charlie was just too hard. But as time has gone by, I’ve realized all the great times we had with her outweigh that hardship.

Back in July I wrote a post about bangs. I have a few more stories about bangs that I would like to write about today.

Let’s see, my friends and I were just starting to drive, so I think we were sophomores when it happened the first time. Everybody was doing this cool swoopy bang thing, and I was so sick of my boring haircut, so I thought, “Hey, why not give myself those swoopy bangs and then I’ll be cool.”

I started chopping. Yes, chop, not snip. Just a good ol’ fashion straight across cutting with scissors meant for paper. I did one side of my part, and then the other side of my part.

Oh, that doesn’t line up…

I did one side of my part, and then the other side of my part.

Wait a second…

I did one side, the other side… you get the picture. That, folks, is the tipping point for tears. I called my best friends, “Uhhh, guys!” They told me to put the scissors down and they’d be there asap to help fix what had been down.

While they were coming over, I convinced myself I knew what I was doing and so I kept chopping. Bad news bears. I’m not a hair dresser and I never will be.

The damage was too much for my friends to fix so we headed on over to Great Clips, except the “G” and the “R” were out on the sign, so that night it was “Eat Clips.” The hairdressers all gathered around and asked, “What the heck were you thinking?” I’ll never forget the humiliation as I tried to tell them what I was trying to do, holding back the tears, bottom lip quivering.

“It all has to go. There’s nothing else we can do.” At first, I thought she meant shave it all off, but I came back to reality, she just meant we’d have to cut some ridiculously short bangs and take about 4 or 5 inches off the rest of my hair so it wouldn’t look hideous.

Moral of the story, don’t cut your own hair unless you know what you’re doing. And when you think you know what you’re doing, believe me, you don’t.

Summer is over. It ended yesterday. I told T.J. last night while we were laying in bed that one day when I create my own world, it will be summer all year long. But he said, “then you won’t appreciate the summer or have anything to compare it to.” As Nephi said, there must be opposition in all things. So, even though it is sad that summer is over, without the winter, I wouldn’t love summers as much.

Anyway, that being said, I have been feeling very nostalgic lately so I thought I would share some old pictures with you from past summers.

My boss hates bananas and today we were talking about her condition and it reminded me of this story.

Once upon a time when I was about 8 or 9 years old, I had a fever of 104 degrees. My parents thought I just had the flu really bad so they were going to give me some medicine.

The only thing was that I wouldn’t swallow pills back then.

So, to solve this problem my parents ground up the medicine and were going to put it in some applesauce.

The only thing was that we didn’t have any applesauce.

So, they smashed up bananas.

Smashed bananas with medicine all mushed together for a deathly sick child, not one of their nicest ideas.

With every bite there was an accompanying gag. It permanantly scarred me.

To this day, I can only eat greenish-yellow bananas if they are sliced very small or else I’ll get too much in my mouth and it reminds me of that awful day.

Oh, and a nice little ending to that story: I had pneumonia so the medicine did nothing for me. It was a complete waste.