Being Grandma in 2024

June 2, 2024 Shirleyjdietz5 Comments

This year has produced three times with GwennieRu so far. The first was in December – February when she had her heart surgery, the second was when she visited Wisconsin in April, and now I am with her and the family again at the end of May.

I chose this date to come because Daddy Kevin and the boys were traveling to a baseball game in Baltimore for three days. During that time, it was me, Julia, Gwennie, Ryleigh and her girlfriend, and Reagan and her girlfriend holding things together at the farm. We all helped with baby care. I helped with farm chores and some landscaping projects. We women can do some awesome getting along when we set our minds to it.

The boys left Thursday afternoon, earlier than I was expecting. I was out getting my food supplies when the nanny called me and wanted to know who was taking over, as she needed to get home. I did a U-turn and came home to relieve her. Julia was soon home from work and we started our time without the men.

Friday morning – well, first I must explain about the dogs. Back in February I mentioned the mating of Penny the lab, and Hanky Panky the poodle. Eight puppies resulted from this union. The planned kennel area in the basement had not materialized and the puppies had been born and raised in the living room and kitchen, upstairs. Sales of Doodles have dropped off since Covid time and the six remaining puppies are now 10 weeks old. Previously, it had been a challenge living with the three adult dogs who are good at being in the way at every opportunity. Now there are nine dogs. Six of them are still in the process of being trained. Six of them are small enough to slip under the chain link fence when left outside. Need I say more.

Friday morning my first trick was mixing cereal, getting Gwennie in the high chair and feeding her. It didn’t go quite as planned. When Gwennie doesn’t want something, like sitting in the high chair, she makes it impossible to happen. Fighting her and the newfangled baby equipment resulted in a bowl of cereal upside down on the carpet and a distressed child (not to mention a distressed grandma).

Julia left for work, and I took Kevin’s usual job of watching Gwennie until the nanny arrived. I had not quite caught on to the morning routine, and Gwennie could tell. I picked her up to comfort her and walked to the kitchen in time to see several puppies, outside, on the wrong side of the fence. Babe in arms, I rushed out to secure them before they ran away.

Calling “puppies, puppies, puppies” as I had heard Julia doing, I opened the gate expecting them to come back in the yard. Instead, the puppies who had still been in the yard ran out to play with their siblings as I struggled to control the flow. Gwennie was mesmerized, clinging to me as, one handed, I tried to scoop them in the right direction. Once in the yard, they followed me into the house and I shut their doggy door. Thankfully, the nanny arrived and I went out to find the new escape route and block it.

Doing that, the feeding chores, and a good bit of weed whacking took most of my day. Later that evening, as I was telling Julia about my morning, she dejectedly asked me if this visit was turning out to be as bad as the last time. Seeing the situation on the farm through the lens of my writing had been kind of hard on her. That is the tricky thing about writing experiences of the kind where one has to laugh to keep from crying. In reality, Julia has to do this ALL THE TIME, and I know she is doing the best job she can. I am now learning to laugh more while in the midst of the normal chaos. Just so you know Julie, my visits to you and the family are rich with all kinds of experiences that I do not regret or shy away from.

Tomorrow, my week of substitute nanny begins. I am looking forward to being with Gwennie, the family, the dogs and puppies. Just sayin’…

Don’t worry Grandma. You will get the hang of it, eventually.

A to Z Family Stories: F for Fred and Friend

April 7, 2015April 7, 2015 Shirleyjdietz2 Comments

They just showed up one day and started hanging around our back porch for the shelter, I guess. Fred and Skippy, two dogs probably out having fun, but of course we thought they were homeless, starving, needing love. So we named the big, fuzzy brown one Fred and the short legged black and tan one Skippy, and adopted them as our new farm dogs. My brothers were always happy to have a dog or two around to play with and this curious looking pair was friendly and seemed to have adopted the boys too. Then Fred had puppies.

Obviously, the naming came before anyone cared what gender they were, and looking at them it was much easier to imagine the big one being the boy and the little one being the girl. But, no. We don’t talk about Fred very much past this point and I think it’s because he she ran out on us – too much family responsibility I’m guessing. My brothers decided to raise two of the puppies, again picking noble doggie names for them – Steve and Andy.

Everyone’s memory is kind of fuzzy about what became of Steve and Andy as well. One of the problems with farm dogs was that they often craved the excitement of chasing cars. That was a problem with this rambunctious pair and likely the cause of their demise. Which brings me back to Skippy, the one we remember most fondly.

It became apparent that Skippy had at one point been someone’s house dog. He was very comfortable coming in and generally well behaved. Even mom liked him. He was always willing to eat leftovers that no one else wanted and that was his main diet. No one ever thought of buying food specifically for the dog, not on the farm. There were always other “things” for them to eat. And here comes the part of the story that we always laugh at when talking about Skippy.

When we milked cows, the milk was poured into a funnel like strainer with a heavy paper filter at the bottom, and into large metal cans. Washing up the equipment, we always took the filter out and tossed it – into Skippy’s mouth. He loved the wet, milky circles and pretty much swallowed them whole. Evidence of this would come in the spring as the snow melted and exposed the little white piles all over the lawn. They were composed of milk filter material and tin foil, swallowed with his leftovers.

Skippy was an adventurer though. He considered us his home but the world was his playground and he would be seen at neighboring farms and sometimes out in the woods. He often came back with wounds and bite marks, looking as if he had been fighting with other dogs. For a small dog, he had an amazing amount of hormonal motivation leading him to wanderlust. He may have just disappeared, like he came. No one remembers exactly. We’ll just say that maybe he and Fred found each other again and lived happily ever after…

Another Interesting Day

July 8, 2014July 8, 2014 Shirleyjdietz1 Comment

It’s July already and I’m having another interesting day. Thankfully, this one had nothing to do with me visiting a doctor’s office or my health, but it does have a medical component to it. Remember hearing about the old days when doctors made house calls? Well, guess what? My daughter, the veterinarian, still does (read about her here). She traveled 275 miles to see this client.

We had a restful Fourth of July weekend visiting Doctor Julia ( ) in Jacksonville at her home. Then yesterday the Doc, the grand dog Tess, the husband and I all traveled south to our home. Julia still has lots of friends here and a couple of them breed Dalmatians – the dogs with all the spots. There was a litter of puppies due to go to their new homes this week and they needed their health certificates. I always love watching the Doc work so I volunteered to go along and help. I’m a nurse and a good animal holder.

It was kind of like being at try-outs for a remake of “101 Dalmatians”. There were 10 of the cutest, roly, poly, wiggly pups waiting to be brought out, one by one, and checked out from head to toe. And the process is not all that different from what I’ve recently been through, although I wasn’t checked for worms (yet). Listen to heart and lungs, check ears and mouth, temp, stool sample, vaccines and de-wormer, toenail clip… an assembly line that amounted to a good morning’s work.