The Dog That Never Stopped Barking

The day they come into our lives is the happiest. And the day they leave us, as all things do, eventually, is the saddest. Today is one of these sad days. 

I speak, of course, of our pets. Our creatures. Our friends. Our family members. Our companions. Our worry. Our ball and chain. And our ultimate happiness, joy, and sometimes even single reason for getting out of bed in the morning. 

Our family has had cats that we all shared. They were our cats. Maybe only Bella, the half-siamese stray kitty (https://wander-world.blogspot.com/2018/12/good-night-sweet-princess.html) was half a stray and half my dad’s cat. But the rest of them were ours. 

The dogs, though, the two dogs my family ever had, were without a question my dad’s dogs. No one disputed this! They were both named Bobby, both pure-bred German Shepherds. And were absolutely 180-degrees diametrically opposed! They were massive, scary-looking dogs, all chest and muscle, all head. But temperamentally, they could not have been more different!

Bobby #1 (https://wander-world.blogspot.com/2010/06/cainele-care-latra-numai-la-pisici.html) was quiet, and patient. He used to put his large head on your knee as you sat down and just sit there, looking at you with begging eyes, just to be close to you. Not Bobby #2. 

Bobby #2 came into dad’s life mere months after Bobby #1 died. Dad got his first Bobby the year my sister got married (2000) and when he died, the year I got married (2010), dad got Bobby #2. The second Bobby was all voice! You could hear him from two neighborhoods down the street! He would bark at cars, people, birds, cats - a loud, aggressive, piercing bark and howl. All lungs. All power. You’d wish you died a decent, painless death before you came face-to-face with that dog. He seemed to be a menace and he was after you till you were over, for sure - the very last breath of you.  

Dad loved it, though, because he wanted people to fear him so they’d never think of approaching his house! It worked. I am sure of it. 

The first thing he did when he grew up tall enough to not be a puppy anymore was to pull down all of mom’s laundry off the clotheslines and bury it in the yard! Freshly clean white sheets - buried in the yard’s muck. Deep. It was the day I thought for sure mom would kill dad! 

Then, my aunt went to feed him one day, and he shredded off her pants! Never bit into her flesh at all, but tore up her pants. And she is the kindest, most caring people you’d meet! And she was, after all, the hand that fed him. No matter! 

My parents knew pretty early on that this was no dog to be let loose in the yard, like the first Bobby. Dad immediately built a separate yard enclosure for him, where he was free to roam and as loud as he wanted to be (and boy, was he loud!), but where he could not get in trouble with people. Mom and dad went in there to feed him. Dad had his meat-smoking and wine-making equipment in there, so he went in there quite often. He played with him every time he went into his "territory". He also had a clear view of the rest of the yard and who came and went. He never seemed alone nor lonely because he spoke with every breath he took. You could say he was the perfect dog for our chatty family! Finally we met our match! He'd wag his whole body and pull at the fences and gate around him to tear them down if you ever so much as made eye contact with him! You would never be able to ignore him. Ever. It was a thing to watch!

For years - 10 or so - I believed Bobby #2 was just an aggressive, angry dog that was so defensive of my dad and the house that he was willing to tear anyone or anything up that, to his perception, came between dad and his security. But later on people started debating whether  he was truly just angry and hateful towards people (he was raised from birth by people, always with a family, always cared for), or just lonely and asking to play ... A dog that should have never been a yard dog, but rather a family, living room kinda dog?! We will never know, because all he ever was was a yard dog ... 

It was not till last year, when we went back to bury dad and when he was over 12 years old, that I finally got the courage to pet him! It took 12 whole years for me to build up the courage to approach him. And for mom to feel safe enough to let him out of his enclosure and around people. 

Bobby #2 died today, June 1, 2023. Ironically enough, like the big kid looking for play that he was all his life, he died today, on International Kids’ Day! 

Six months, one week and three days after dad left us, Bobby finally crossed the rainbow bridge to be with him. They are both in Heaven now, Bobby waking up the dead, quite probably, and dad trying to catch up with his shenanigans. They are probably both looking for Bobby #1 and all our kitties to have a good ol' family reunion and dad is surely smoking some yummy ribs and sausages and sharing them all around. I'd like to think of this, rather than spend some time just crying and letting my heart bleed ...

Our house back in Romania is probably dead-quiet. Our streets have found a silence and a peace that they have not known for 13 years now. As much as the neighbors will enjoy the silence, they will also probably miss the bucolic flair of the barking dog in the night... 

My heart goes out to my grieving mom who had to muster the courage and the force to put him down after he had been suffering for months from a tumor and a frail back. 

Rest in peace, sweet fellow! Our lives are richer and kinder because you were in them! 

Bobby #2 in 2018 and last year (2022) when he finally came out of his enclosure. He was a handsome guy, for sure.

A Bit of Everything: St. Petersburg, FL

St. Petersburg, FL is a city on water. It sits on the Pinellas peninsula between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, and is connected to mainland Florida to the north.

I finally managed to string a few thoughts together after our trip there about a month ago. 

• On our first morning in St. Pete (as we have learned that everyone calls it), we went to The Hangar restaurant for breakfast. Appropriately named, it is perched above a small private airport, where planes take off right from under your plates. I actually know someone who lives in Florida and not only owns their small private plane, but they built it themselves (former airline pilots, now retired). Yeah, Florida does seem sometimes like the land of all possibilities, until you check out their politics (I could not help but notice that there is even a “Fox” car rental place in the Tampa airport. No joking!). I was just fascinated how much traffic that small airport displayed in just less than an hour while we were eating our fresh fruit. And Florida does have really good fresh fruit! 

• At the restaurant, we had a very cranky waitress. She was fine and all till the hostess placed two small children with their grandmas (who reminded me of Grace and Frankie: one, in a posh pair of pressed pants, and the other in a Dali “surrealist” shirt and a flower-pattern Hawaiian pair of baggy pants) in her section, right next to our table. She hurried to get the kids’ order ready first, saying that “She tried to be fast so they have something to keep them busy for a bit.” One of the grandmas is impressed and says “Wow! You must have kids of your own. You know how to handle them!” to which the waitress says with a frown: “No, I don’t have any. I actually very much dislike kids.” Mic drop! I have been accused of being bluntly honest myself, but dang! 

• The cranky was everywhere in Florida, I might add: the hotel receptionist was flustered when someone came to grab a drink from the fridge at the front desk and asked them to add it to their room tab (why? isn’t this how it works?!). Then, the receptionist told us that to get our valet to drive our car around, we should text this number (showing it to us on a piece of paper), and “they sometimes answer it.” I was confused. So, sometimes we won’t get our car back (the parking was valet only). Another hotel guest confirmed in the elevator that “yeah, you need to call and then come down and wait for at least 20-30 minutes and sometimes they need reminders even after that. But they will eventually get your car.  Good times!” - she added. I was beginning to wonder where the “Southern hospitality” lives in Florida?! Definitely not in the ... umm ... “hospitality” industry. 

• We did run into this sweet hostess at the Dali museum, right after we stepped in. She advised us, unsolicited, where we could go and start the guided tour through the museum with a docent. This proved to be a really nice experience as the docent walked the galleries with us, sharing real-life stories about Dali and explaining the paintings through that realistic frame. This docent was one of the most memorable parts of the trip: she could not have been more than 4ft 11in in height, with a voice as quiet as a whisper, and she must have been at least 100 years of age! And this is no exaggeration. She was using a walker and her small frame was bent over by age and osteoporosis. Her fingers crooked and gnarly. She was frail in stature and physique, but so sharp in mind and humor. At times, she made the stories about Dali eating cheese on the Parisian sidewalks and watching the bull fights so real that we were thinking she must have been there and witnessed these moments herself. 

There are details like these that make travels unforgettable. The museum was everything I was looking forward to: originality, breathlessness to be in the same room with some of the most amazing works of art of all centuries. But the docent, the Avant-garden where we had a small pastry snack on the persistence of memory bench, were details that punctuated it with uniqueness and gave it a vivid contour, all ours.

Various scenes from The Dali Museum. Standing in front of "The Ecumenical Council" (and so many others) was a "bucket list" moment for me

I could not peel myself away from the trompe-l'œil of the "Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln" painting. I just could not figure out "how he did that" ...

(For full effect, click the picture to enlarge it, then look carefully at it by squinting your eyes. After a while you will see that the window becomes Lincoln's portrait.)

• If in Arizona, we had the best experience with foods - availability and diversity everywhere - in St. Petersburg we had some spotty encounters.
  We were hard pressed to find a breakfast place on Sunday morning (which was also my birthday as well as Easter). After striking out on several places that could not place us or offered to place us after a minimum of two hours, we ended up having breakfast at Starbucks! And what do you know: even Starbucks was out of bagels. 

• We wanted to try out what seemed to be a more off-the-beaten-path breakfast place called Bacon Bitch. Seriously - who would not want to eat in a place by this name?! But as we were waiting to be seated, I saw one of the waitresses smoking in the kitchen as she was rearranging her shorts and ponytail while she cleaned out the edges of the plates with her spare hand before taking them to the customers in the dining room. I was hungry, but umm ... Nope ... Sorry, Bacon Bitch: clever name, but you lost me! Literally.  

• We did find a couple of good food places. Frenchy’s Outpost in Dunedin had the fresh seafood you expect from a seashore town. The Teak restaurant is a show stopper: it is at the very end of the St. Pete Pier and a feat of architectural design. It looks like a spaceship waiting for lift-off. Although the food was remarkable (they had replaced their regular seafood menu with “Easter”-inspired dishes, so it was more mashed potatoes and ham and less seafood gumbo), the view is why it’s worth the trek. Best views of the water and of the bay towards the city that we could find. The sunset over St. Pete was stunning, even on a cloudy day. 

Scrumptious claws at Frenchy's Outpost

Various views of and from The Teak restaurant, on the St. Pete Pier

• We visited the Chihuly Collection at the Morean Arts Center on one of the days. The Chihuly pieces were amazing, as we expected, but what was truly memorable was the glass-blowing demonstration we watched after visiting the museum. Glass blowing is not only an amazing feat of human skill and ingenuity, but there is also so much science - particularly chemistry, physics and biology that goes into it - and those were explained in detail. Made me want to call my nephews and ask them to make sure they stay in school and won’t skip their science classes ever. They will be useful for something. One day! 

Glass blowing demonstration at the Morean Arts Center

Ceiling in the hallway at the Chihuly Collection

• I am glad to see more and more mural art in many of the towns and cities we visit. I have always liked murals and even tasteful graffiti art - it’s always surprising the amount of talent and thought that goes into creating them and really gives the flavor and tone of a particular city. And St. Pete is another one of these “mural cities”. 

Just a small sample of the much mural art adorning the walls of St. Pete's buildings

• St. Petersburg seemed like a mish-mash of a variety of styles, really: I would say that here, modern meets art deco meets traditional Southern charm. In terms of vegetation, palm trees, live oak and Spanish moss dress up the avenues. A bit of the tropics line up the St. Pete Pier parks. If you really want to take in the tropics, the Sunken Gardens has them on display! You get lost in the tropical forest there, with no hope of finding your way back. 

Small glimpses of Eden at the Sunken Gardens

• We had a lunch snack at the Doc Ford’s Rum Bar and Grille right at the pier. The place was an absolute zoo on a holiday (there is definitely no Covid19 anymore, folks!), but The Eagles (who we had just seen in concert in Greensboro only 4 days before our trip) music was blasting and our waiter, Patrick, knew how to serve up pina coladas and yummy crab cake appetizers. 

Beach fare at Doc Ford's Rum

• Not sure if this is all of Florida, but at least St. Petersburg on a busy, warm afternoon in the blazing sun is a pure stench cocktail:  the smells of the ocean, salt, sewage, and sweat mix together in the most distinctive odor. 

• The area around the St. Pete Pier reminded me of so many other public touristy piazzas where jokers, dancers, mimes, religious orators trying to save your soul merge to remind you that this world is nothing but Babylon redone: we saw  people walking a tightrope as they were practicing yoga in a park, people stringing hammocks from palm trees on the bay, and a crowd of people dancing on club techno music, as if in a reinvented version of the 1990’s MTV’s Spring Break shows. 

• You know you’re in Florida when you drive on what seems to be a highway but you see nothing but water all around you, not a lick of civilization, for miles on end. Only in Florida do you drive endlessly on ... water. We saw this sign while getting ready to drive on one of the many bridges that read: “Long bridge ahead. Check gas.” And I thought running out of gas in the middle of the desert in Utah would be bad ... 

This was a weekend of strange coincidences. As coincidences go, you never know what they mean. You just notice, if barely: we went to St. Petersburg for my birthday which is 4/9 - or 9/4 in Europe. The entire weekend, these two numbers kept popping up everywhere:

• The Starbucks we finally had a small breakfast at on 4/9 was at the corner of 4th St N and 9th Ave N. Its address was 900A 9th Ave N. 

• When I woke up that morning, I had 9 tabs open on my google app.

• Chihuly’s Macchia Forest collection has 9 pieces in it.

• At the end of the day, I had walked 4.09 miles, according to my watch.

• Our departure gate was number 90. The very last one. 

Chihuly’s Macchia Forest with the 9 pieces

Seeing the Dali museum was the purpose of this trip and that did not disappoint. Everything else was just the cherries on top. 

Sunset over St. Pete, as seen from The Teak restaurant on the St. Pete Pier

You Have Arrived!

 

I know I always start with this question: “where have the years gone?” or “when did this happen?” so I will switch it up this time. I’ll just say: you’re here, on the 15th year of your life! You have arrived.  And, I am sorry to say - I know it’s painful and depressing and what not (or knowing you, probably not) - but you’re no baby anymore. Welcome to young adulthood, son! The fact that you are a tax-paying, potential union-enrolling workforce member should tell you that childhood is in the rearview mirror. 

And oh, I am so happy for you! I feel like in some ways we have all been waiting for this day since the minute you were born, on your terms only, 2 months before your time 15 years ago today, when you could not even breathe on your own... I have been wondering and dreaming about what purpose you might have been put on this planet for. And now, that day is near: we’re gonna find out. I hope soon!

I hope your natural-born curiosity, your immense empathy, your love of family among other things will guide you to great things, sweet boy, and will only put you in the best places to make the most of. 

As any teenager, of course, you are playing the part: confused, klutzy, lost at times, eyes wide-open with clever and not so clever ideas, full of energy and drive, almost to a fault, with seemingly no direction at all, you plough right on through ... You try out every thing that comes to your mind (just like you did as a small child when you were learning how to knit and do woodworking right alongside learning how to build stuff from legos and how to play Minecraft several years before your time). And yet, there is  a grace and a kindness about you that warms my soul and wants me to always draw you near ... 

Sometimes I think you’re like a garden: beautiful and loaded with richly-growing, blooming vines, with breathless smells and vibrant colors; but also full of weeds. I want to compulsively reach in and pluck all the weeds out, so I can let all the flowers shine free. And then I stop myself and think: those are not mine to pluck! Those are yours to groom or let die; yours to decide how to use them; yours to turn into lessons or let overgrow and eat all the beauty out. But yours. Your decision only. 

Hopefully, with guardrails and “training wires” all around you from all of us, you will find the right path to grow into. Or maybe not. But you will have to do you, and do it on your terms just like you did your birth in your own terms, too. You will be either a worse version than we all ever dreamed for you to be, or much, much better yet than our wildest imagination. 

Spring forward, sweet child! Shoot to the stars and be daring! I know somewhere in there there are good bones ... you just need to fill them with good dreams and put them up to good deeds, too ...

Do you remember my bracelet: find your purpose, my dear boy! The world is your oyster. Make yourself count for it all! 

Love you mostest still and forever ...

Happiest of birthdays and I wish you the best wishes you can ever wish for yourself! 

Point. Shoot. And gorgeous.

This is past due, but such is life ... Better later than not at all, I guess. 

Again, I live in a world of a fragmented mind, one which most days is not my own. It’s occupied by work, dark thoughts of having lost dad, endlessly trying to find him in everything; and even darker thoughts about mom and where she is in her life, will she ever be “mom” again ... 

The world as it is seems to blow up with every breath ... We lose more rights, we lose more people to guns, to suicide, to hunger and thirst, to diseases, we lose whole countries to despots, we lose ourselves, we lose hope. Especially hope. Some days I feel like every headline is an April Fool’s joke! And I need to double and triple check every sentence. And then I sigh. It’s all true. All disappointingly, gut-wrenchingly true ... It’s the world as we see it now - shitty, abject, unfair, gaunt, non-common-sensical. It is no joke! 

And among all these thoughts, among it all, a faint desire to live on, to travel, to seek beauty, to push through it because we never know which day is our last. And when that day will come - do we really want to say “I wish I did”? I know I don’t. So, drained of hope and energy, I push through, I bite down and make travel arrangements, buy plane tickets (now, we’re in the world of “where can we fly direct?” to save as much time as possible through not too many airports and to minimize the exposure to too many people for too many hours on end), rent cars and hotels, and charge my camera to prepare for our next destination. 

So, in February-March we took a trip to Arizona. We booked a hotel in Tempe, then spent almost equal amounts of time between it, Phoenix, Scottsdale. One day, we spent most of the time in Saguaro (pronounced “sah-war-oh.”) National Park, less than 2 hours from Scottsdale, and the rest of the same day we took a brief tour of Tucson. 

Our first stop in the desert was at Papago Park, between Tempe and Scottsdale

I read somewhere a short description of these cities like this: “Tempe is a college town. Scottsdale is touristy. They know tourism and do it well. Phoenix is just a big metropolis.” (did you know that Phoenix is the 5th most populous city in the US, even before Philadelphia and way before San Francisco?! Neither did I!). I could not have put it better myself. 

These are the random thoughts and a couple of images from that journey ...

• If this trip won awards in any category it was for the amazing food everywhere. Not just good, but diverse - the variety and the many options for this vegan pescatarian were almost endless.  Flavor galore, diversity - Phoenix has it all. One thing that stuck out was that most places serve three meals every day and “Benes” were on almost every menu. Translation: “benes” are eggs Benedict done 100 ways. I am still puzzled as to why in the middle of the American Southwest an egg dish is so popular?! Or breakfast for that matter?! 

The Phoenix Saute at The Daily Jam in Tempe - a perfectly complete and completely vegan breakfast

• There was a huge bottle of lotion in the bathroom, anchored to the wall. This thing was like 1lb of lotion:  a clear reminder that you’re in the desert now and your skin will crack. So, lather up! 

• It was nice to see “letter mountains” again: is it a custom? A tradition? Don’t know, but in the American West where they post huge letters on some of the most prominent mountains in the middle or on the side of a city: there was a T for Tempe, an A for Arizona State University in Tempe and another one yet for University of Arizona in Tucson.

• A billboard showed ‘Straight into the mountain we head. Just like we like it!’. And I could not have agreed more ... 

• So. Many. Cacti. I grew up with cactus plants in my house: they were small, maybe 8 inch pots. My grandma had about 10 green thumbs, not just one! She did so well with all the plants, but she did the best with cacti, I think. Growing up I heard about it from her that it is easy to grow cacti but that it is hard to make them bloom or make them grow - they grow slowly, they bloom once in a hundred years - is what grandma said although later on in my life I lived in the desert and I think they bloom more often than that. She had all these types of cactus plants - the ones that looked like flattened footballs (the prickly pears), the ones that looked like cucumbers, and these ones that looked like leafless twigs with millions of long, poky thorns on them. She made them all grow and bloom. It seemed like every year.  Well, now, in the desert during this trip, I saw all of these and then some, about 1000 or more times bigger than I could have ever imagined as a kid. My childhood cacti were mere molecules compared to these plants we saw in Arizona.
  The saguaro cactus (the one that looks like a person with arms) is on every postcard and license plate in Arizona. You think you’ve seen them all till you’re standing next to one of them and then you’re asking yourself: what the heck is this creature?! They could be a power pole? A frozen human being? A tree? Definitely not a mere plant. They are enormous! The height of your house or bigger. And then you learn about their age - they don’t even get an arm till they are 100 or 150 years old. You drive down the road and you’re thinking: these cacti lining up the dusty roads have been here longer than any of the houses and maybe even longer than the whole state of Arizona. 

• Tucson was clearly poor: barred windows, homeless people in empty deserted mall squares - in contrast to the new almost posh campus of ASU in Tempe and the hopping, happening Biltmore fashion mall in Phoenix. 

• Tucson felt like the place where all ideas or dreams came to die. It was almost like a depressing, ghost town where humans have not been convinced yet that the town is truly over. It was at the exact opposite end of the liveliness of Tempe and Scottsdale. 

• Scottsdale Old Town is a must-see - yes, a bit touristy but done well, with minimum kitsch. Clean, inviting, and the people are welcoming, knowledgeable, and bend over backwards to accommodate. Just inviting! 

Some snaps of Old Town Scottsdale

• A reminder that you’re in the high-desert and in big-sky country: you must wear sunglasses even on cloudy days.

I have no idea how many hundreds of years this saguaro is for as many branches as it shows, but ... many ...

• Tempe - more than just a backdrop,  a mountain in the middle of the city is just another bump in the skyline.

• Street names and people remind you you’re on borrowed land here and must walk carefully: Talking Stick Way; Indian Bend Road. A rich Native American and hispanic majority of people live here. Their influence in everything from architecture to menu items; we had avocado in some shape or form with every meal, just like I had olives with every meal in Turkey.

• We visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West compound (home and architecture school). There, where human ingenuity meets and gets lost in nature, we got the best advice: if you hear a rattle, don’t investigate! If you see something, don’t take a picture of it. Just walk away! - this could be the motto for just about every stop anywhere in Arizona.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West compound - Scottsdale, AZ

• While driving through Saguaro National Park, or hiking at the Javelina Rocks, or taking in the hundreds of cactus species at the Desert Botanical Gardens in Scottdale, or chasing quail and so many other birds making homes inside the saguaros, you can easily see that you are clearly  back in the land of point-shoot-and-gorgeous. No special training or qualities required for amazing pictures. Every single picture is a winner! 

The many aspects of Saguaro National Park outside Tucson, AZ

• More modern architecture than I expected - I would have expected this modern vibe somewhere like L.A. or something, but not in the middle of the desert. I also know now where all the ranch homes of America have settled: in the Phoenix-Scottsdale-Tempe area is where they all went! You are hard-pressed to find anything but a ranch anywhere. They must be easier to keep cool in the torrid summers.  

One of the modern apartment buildings in Scottsdale, AZ

• You can say that this trip started with a beer. Several years back (2012), we went to the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, CO. There, we tasted many beers but one in particular stood out for us and one of Aa’s friends: the Orange Blossom (a lager) of the Papago Brewery in Scottsdale, AZ. Ever since 2012, I have wanted to find a way to visit Scottsdale and get all the beer I wanted. Coming here, I was hoping that the beer is local enough and good enough (it won a medal in its category at the beer festival) that every restaurant would carry it on their menu. Not the case. We finally did find one of the two beer joints (Huss Brewing)  that carry it on tap and it was every drop as good as I remembered it. 

Orange blossom lager (right) at Hussing Brewing in Scottsdale, AZ

• Food and service won everywhere in Phoenix except the airport. If you want a piece of white bread (when you actually ordered a slice of sourdough) with a side of attitude at 7AM - go to the airport and order it first thing in the morning. Not a lie! 

So. Many. Birds. We saw such great diversity of birds and hundreds of wild quail.

Just a glimpse of the Desert Botanical garden in Scottsdale which was amazing. One of the most beautiful botanical gardens I have seen. You think that desert vegetation is sparse and poor, but it offers such diversity and surprise. Life is truly miraculous and it springs everywhere ...

As we were making our way out of the botanical gardens, we caught a glimpse of the iconic Arizona sunset. It was as breathtaking as you always hear about ...