Surprise! Surprise!
This past week was parching. Is the whole world on fire? I wondered. Has every other August been like this?
We have two dogs. I let them outside, and they’d be back at the door within five minutes with tongues hanging out. Maybe these are the Dog Days I’ve heard about. Our dogs are like most of us, not appreciating the white sun or the 99 degree days.
Everyone seemed to be talking about it. The heat! The heat! Such hotness!
I know talking is how people reveal their thoughts and frustration levels. We all needed to talk about what was irritating us, keeping us from doing things. The heat was our one note song.
Hot is the one note most of us in the South have been whining.
Hard to get past our whines to move on to something else. Many of us are staying cabined inside to stay semi-cool rather than withering and drooping. Our dogs, the same.
Cicadas are singing their loudest in the evening hours. Nothing scientific here, just an opinion. The sky-ripping sound goes well with the hot white heat. It’s not possible to sit outside and carry on a conversation. The cicadas sing loudly.
Have you heard their song? Somewhere between a chainsaw running and a juvenile working her hardest to make parents lose it.
Do you know that point where you have no more elasticity, no more give? Have you been there? I have. That’s where I was when my husband said, “Let’s go see puppies.”
“What puppies?” I asked.
Turns out that we have neighbors who have not been whining about the heat. This couple has been busy and adamant about finding a new puppy.
They’d confronted “Not the right one” over and over. But this time, the pieces were falling together.
I loved that the couple surprised neighbors and themselves by taking two of the puppies from the same litter! What a big surprise!
These neighbors had a different mindset from mine. They had happily driven a long distance, through the August heat, to check out these eight-week-old fur babies.
Sam, their previous dog, had stolen their hearts. He’d been their baby, their fur baby, for many years, definitely a sweet part of the family.
These two pups are their big news now.
They are Bo and Buddy. So much love going on among the four of them.
God bless,
Pat Durmon
Buddy and Bo. Photograph taken by Christin Scallion.
Poetry Books by Pat Durmon