Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Second child syndrome



These are my second children, Starflower and Hopi. Starflower is my second born child, as headstrong but sweet as they come. Hopi is the puppy we just picked up Saturday, a three hour drive away from our home. She's a Brittany, a bird dog, which is in line with The Hermit's new job. Go hunting= contacts=money. That's all I will say about our system of wildlife management here in Minnesota, since my job is in fish and wildlife management and I intend on keeping it.

Anyway, she is cute, ain't she? The dog I mean, although the girl...You keep yer hands off her! Anyway Hopi is eight weeks old, hyper as anything, a much more trying puppy than Sally so far. I have yet to bond with her as much as I did Sally, but I resign it to the "second child syndrome"; the second just requires more work than the first, no matter how cute they are. Sally is doing her best to be a guiding figure in this young pup's life; she is starting to have the mothering instincts.

On the way to get Hopi we drove through some country I hadn't seen in a while, including the town where I spent four years going to college. That town was devastated by a tornado in 1998, and the college campus sustained a lot of damage. I immediately recognized the lack of large trees, but I was relieved to see many of the beautiful old houses in town still standing. I wanted to stop at campus and look around; there are a few new buildings and a few old ones that are no longer there. However, it was Freshman Drop-off Day, so it was too crowded to approach the campus closely. We ended up having a picnic at a park downhill from campus, but storm clouds were approaching. I could feel a drop in atmospheric pressure, and I was nervous; this town is Tornado Alley. When I was a senior, spending my last few days on campus, I remember seeing rotating funnel clouds directly overhead, and it wasn't just from what I was drinking!

Anyway, Hopi is our new Brittany puppy and I know I will love her...when she settles down a bit!

p.s. I've already noticed how much Starflower looks like a mirror image of my profile picture, minus the blue eyes.

6 comments:

Lené Gary said...

Your two second children are precious (especially the human one). :)

Growing up in Houston, I learned about tornados as they spun from the hurricanes. I don't remember the pressure change you spoke about, but I do remember the sickly green color of the sky--when it was time to duck in the tub or get under the stairwell.

Anonymous said...

They're both pretty darn cute. And Starflower really looks like you.

It sounds like my husband went to the same college you did - he graduated in 1982. We went down there the summer after the tornadoes, and he was shocked by how sparse it looked without the trees.

R.Powers said...

How cute!
Both of them.
Now we'll get double pupdates!
Happy happy Joy joy!

Anonymous said...

So brown eyes trump blue, eh?

Deb said...

lene- Thanks!
I've seen that green sky too; I wonder what causes it? But the pressure change was just weird; all of a sudden I felt uneasy. Or maybe it was from within; I don't know.

tracy- yep, good old Gustavus Adolphus. I graduated in '89 so your husband and I missed each other by a few years. It was amazing to go back and see how the town and the campus had changed. But tell your husband The Flame and Patrick's (formerly Schoop's) were still there!

FC- yes, double pupdates are in order, and I'm getting behind with Sally. She's pretty much a full grown lab now, and I might as well name her Lady, I catch myself calling her that all the time.

pablo- yes, the rules of genetic dominance are stacked against me. But if any of my offspring marries a blue-eyed spouse, or even a heterozygous brown, there is a chance! And I just heard an interesting bit of Bible trivia today (not that I'm into Bible trivia much). It seems that Leah, one of Jacob's daughters, was unable to be married as she had "weak eyes", which, I guess, meant blue eyes.

Anonymous said...

You have a beautiful daughter, Deb. And she does look so much like her mum.

I always wondered about that translation, "weak eyes", and what it meant originally. I've seen it translated as "beatiful eyes" and "doe's eyes" too, and in that company, the "weak" seems out of place.