Thanksgiving evening

Blackmailed DH into an evening walk. I don't remember how exactly. My mind is not really clear yet. But we finished the corny movie we watched after the old man's nap and it was an opportunity to restart the good habits that have fallen away in the darkness of time change and from all those other excuses that have come up in the past few weeks.

I knew the pups would want to make it to the park. And, if we got to the park, I would want to walk down the dirt road and "see what we could see." So I had even started preparing DH for coming back with the car if I wore myself out. He has had to do it only a couple of times in the past few years. [And yes, there are many who wonder why he puts up with me. Remember, I only confess MY issues. We agree we are a good match.]

The park was fairly empty. The pecan pickers had come and gone. The ball players too. And we headed down the road, finding big equipment had come before - knocking down a few limbs and mowing the meadows.

We heard the crashing of deer in the brush to the south and the hoo, hoo, hooing of two owls deep in the woods.

I have missed them, the owls. We used to hear them regularly - two great horned owls in the park and a few screech owls in a number of places in the neighborhood. I wonder if they have been here all along and I have just missed hearing them because my walks did not coincide with their activity. I have blamed it on the drought - no insects, no rodents -no rodents, no owls. But we have had enough rain to have bugs and critters enough to draw the owls back. And now we have proof.

We stopped all along the walk hoping to see their silhouetts against the Maxfield Parrish sky. But they stayed hidden and merely sang to us, one higher and one lower, but a blending duet of hoos.

We noted los niños pequeños playing hide and seek in the yard of la casa de las banderas de los Estados Unidos. We used to play hide and seek, the siblings and I. I planted shrubs when we moved here with an eye to good cover for hide and seek.

Then we saw the ambulance pull up to a house a few blocks up the street.

I know of those neighbors. An elderly woman is cared for by her niece at that house. I met the niece and mentioned that I walked by most days. She only realized she had seen me when I explained I was "the crazy lady with the big dogs." An Act of Contrition comes automatically to my lips when I see or hear an ambulance. It is a result of attending Catholic school along the main street of my home town. The sisters taught us to bless those in need and it is a habit so established that it is almost unconsciously accomplished.

We were within a few blocks of the house when the greetings of Mohawk dog and friends boomed out of the shadows of their yard. They had not been out the first three times I passed by today. FINALLY they were home and we could exchange a few barks (them) and frets (Paddy) and teasing words (me).

And then we were home.