Story by Jon Stalnaker
AKA The Studebaker Dude
We are now a month into our third year living in Oklahoma. For my wife Carlene, it’s not as big of a deal as it is for me. She grew up a military brat and was married to a career military man before me, so she is more used to picking up and starting over in a completely different environment. Besides, her daddy was from Oklahoma, so she had a big head start over me. I was born and raised in California and other than a 3-year, 8-month, and 9-day adventure in the Air Force, and some business traveling during my postal career, California was about all I knew. I should probably speak for myself. Our first year was filled with learning to cope with the Oklahoma weather. I also spent many hours putting together furniture as we moved from a tiny California cottage to well over twice the house. And then I hurt myself playing on the ice when I was disregarding the solid advice from my wife, who knew better.
We spent most of last year getting the hardscape on our half-acre prepared to accept a vision we had for a garden oasis of plants and trees and flowers and birds and butterflies. We attempted to grow a few beautiful plants but lost most of them. It took us a while to find a landscaper who could help us, and we met Armando, who set us up with the beginning of what we hope will grow big and strong and beautiful. The butterflies immediately took to the new vegetation. We are now off to a good start and hope to see our envisioned oasis bloom this year.
We have also experienced some nasty varmints that share this property but are not welcomed. We did get a feral cat (Neko) as a bonus to buying the house and we have come to love her, even though she has made us bleed more than once. She’s a good mouser and has brought us many critters and dropped them off at our back door. It was fine when she brought rats and mice and moles and gophers but she doesn’t understand that we don’t appreciate all of her kills. We didn’t like the squirrel or the birds, but this week she crossed the line when she presented us with four dead, silky soft, adorable little baby bunnies. How do I teach her the difference between varmints and cute critters? Oh yeah, that would be I don’t! I figure it was all to blame on the total eclipse, they warned us on the news that the animals were going to do strange things. Neko loves our new wall in the backyard and she sits on a pillar that I incorporated into it. I call it her “Tower of Power” as she loves to sit up there and survey her domain. She came with the house but we don’t consider her our cat. We do give her food and shelter and as much love as she is willing to accept, but we know that we belong to her and not the other way around.
Our dog Sally is getting up there in years and is beginning to slow down. We’ve been a one dog family all along but we’ve been thinking about getting her a companion dog. We looked at one a few weeks ago but Sally was not too interested in her so we passed on that dog. But we had filled out the application and had been approved, so when Carlene saw a cute little dog on Facebook, we became first in line for the adoption. We visited him today and by the time this story gets published, Sally will have a kid brother named Willy. He came with a different name but we like to name them ourselves. He’s similar to Sally but only half the size and he is deaf. We are all excited and ready to go get him tomorrow. Willy and Sally got along fine today so we hope the transition is not too hard on the little fella. He’s 3 years old and only recently diagnosed as deaf. He had some issues but got lucky to be given to a wonderful foster couple that have turned him around in just a few weeks. Willy might not be too happy to leave them as they are wonderful people, but I’m sure he will fit in nicely in our home where he and Sally can be besties.
