Blessed are the peacemakers

Thank you for all of your kind comments on my last post. Things are looking up after an eventful weekend.

First off, Uncle Johnny was here. Right there you know its going to be good. Johnny spent the day Friday with me, driving around with me and Florian, being harassed by Star, and anxious that my sister and I had had a tiff. 














Though we probably would have made up pretty quickly again anyway, we had no choice when Johnny cajoled, browbeat, and verbally abused me until I got into the car with my sister that evening to go pick up my niece from daycare. 

Having suffered that sort of abuse, I was hardly in the mood to fight anymore upon seeing my sister again.

The good news continued Saturday morning, when I got a call from a deep-voiced police officer who announced that my car had been found.  

The velvet-toned and sharp-eyed Officer Sims was doing his rounds past a high-rise parking lot, and noticed a vehicle parked in the back, not in a regular parking space, in a way that looked funny to him. He called in the plates and discovered it was a hippie/ soccer mom van that we know and love. 

That parking lot? It's two blocks away from my house, across from the street my sister lives on. I must have looked right past it a few times over the past week.

The van is damaged, maybe beyond repair, but hey at least I got back that Drs. Foster & Smith luxury bolster orthopedic dog bed. That's the really important thing. 



Sitting in Florian's car in the snow outside the lot where the police had my car towed, waiting for another tow truck to bring it to my driveway to await the insurance adjuster to have a look at it this week, I had a chance to appreciate dogs, family, and Florian. 

What could have been a darkly depressing time was rendered an amusing interlude that will bring laughter for years to come, because I happen to have such ridiculous family members and dogs.
 
What could have been a lonely, freezing wait in the car was made far more bearable by the reassuring verbal avalanche of Florian as he tried to figure out how to work his steering wheel lock, in his element with a project involving cars and moving parts and things that I find utterly, soul-crushingly boring.

On Sunday, though I'm not much of a sports fan myself, it would have been tough not to enjoy an evening spent sprawled in front of my sister's TV with some really good snacks and against a backdrop of Johnny's and Florian's gentle bickering and Genghis and Star's contented gurgling growls and yawns. 



I hope that you have all had a peaceful and warm weekend too. I look forward to being more present and learning how many pretzels and beers YOUR dogs consumed!