If Only We Could Keep Time In A Bottle

Oliver is back home where he belongs. He had a great time at puppy camp, returning home a wee bit more sensible and a whole lot smellier. First order of business was a bath in Hawaiian Hibiscus Bubblicious Puppy Wash. Oliver loves his bath, so this was a real treat for both of us. I could tell the puppy camp smell was bothering him, too. Being the cutest dog in the world, he is even cuter when wet. His hair curls and he just loves being clean. His personality just makes me smile, unless he’s being destructive, and then, not so much. Since the soak and suds, he’s been sleeping . Puppy camp can be exhausting when working the entire time. He did lose some weight, so I know he had a blast running, jumping, and swimming. Next time, I will increase his daily meals, knowing he has lots of friends to play with. I remember his shy behavior when we picked him up from the parking lot of Atlantis Casino in the resort town near us. The breeder had been delivering another puppy on Christmas morning, and was kind enough to bring Oliver with him so we could make our decision. Such a timid and shy little guy he was at only 4.5 months old. He weighed 12 pounds and snuggled against me quickly. That decision took seconds to make. He was our puppy. Hard to believe that this bold, 25 pound dog is the same one. Looking at how he’s bloomed and changed, it reminds me of myself. Even down to the way I wear my hair, I’m no longer that 2020 version of a scared woman-child, shaking in my own boots. As I have grown stronger, so has Oliver. We are a team, the two of us. Whenever I go into the RV barn, Oliver is right by my side. I think he wonders when we’ll take the next trip. A trip like we used to go on. The long ones in the Winne-Bark-Oh. The one where we’d go to the beach and walk on the pee-ier. The one when Dad was still here. That kind of trip. This morning, in a fit of wistful thinking, I went to look at an RV lot in the next town over. I went inside a smaller version of what we used to own and wondered if it would be small enough for me to drive. Thirty feet of motor home is very intimidating, so I never drove ours. After VST died, I couldn’t even enter the the space without breaking out in hiccup-py tears. It was sold, complete with all our ghosts and memories. So, my RV barn is empty. How fun it would be to have a small rig for running to see CC or my other friends in the foothills of California. I could stay in the driveway of K or T like we did when VST drove. The fun I could have. The reality is there is no magic way to keep time in a bottle. No magic wand to erase the fact that I’m a 65 year old woman with zero mechanical skills. That the road between here and there will be tough enough to navigate in the Jeep without Oliver. Those beautiful days with VST are now great memories, but memories that happened long ago. There is the small fact that the motor home I looked at sported a price tag of $165,000. With that, I smiled and headed across the high desert back to Winterpast . Memories are a great thing. You can remember the good times. The laughs. The sighs. The sweet nights. And forget the normal parts of RV-ing with a husband. If you have been there and done that, you know to what I refer. I need not say more. Open your bottle of memories once in awhile and let time stand still. It feels great to know those wonderful things really happened. We were there. They happened to us.