Yup. A dog and a slide.

Here she comes, bounding across the room at a run. I'm standing near the couch. Her tail is wagging so hard that she's having trouble running with her back feet and she trips over herself, doing a face plant into the floor. Unphased she lurches to her feet and wedges her golden body between my knees. She likes having her legs and back scratched in this position, but begins circling around so that she can go through the "back scratcher" again and again. I'm leaning over as her tail disappears and suddenly I've got a face full of puppy tongue.


Her breath is usually okay. Puppy breath. Even though she's almost full grown now. She's the same size as Buddha. She used to be smaller than Anaya. Now she's almost too heavy for me to lift. She's still as sweet as ever. She loves affection. She is an absolute affection hound. I remember how she used to snuggle up to Anaya.  I remember how sweet it was to see them together.  Best buds.  Snuggle buddies.  Lately at night she's been sleeping at the end of Solara's bed, cuddled up at her feet. In the morning when I wake up to visit the bathroom I have to carefully leap over the spot outside my door that creaks - otherwise it will wake Angel up and she get so excited to see everyone that she wakes everyone in the house up.

I know I was really down over Christmas, but I'm starting to feel better already. Yesterday after writing my blog post I was still really lethargic and down. I couldn't seem to get out of my slump. I basically laid around, sad, mopey and down for hours. I felt like a lump on a log. I needed to get out of the house and get some exercise and have some fun. I needed to find something to do.

I got out my computer and began searching for family activities in our community. I found the Eileen Daily pool and the picture looked pretty awesome. They have a waterslide, a lane pool, a leisure pool, hot tube, sauna and steam room. They've also got an exercises room. We decided that we would get our butts in gear and get out of the house. We searched for our swimsuits in boxes yet unpacked, grabbed some towels and headed out the door.

The pool took only ten minutes to get to, we must have been lucky with the traffic. When we arrived Solara saw the slide coming out through the building and she said "Whoa!! Look at that HUGE slide!" That was when I started to feel a bit of excitement too. We paid and I was surprised to note that it was cheaper to go to this pool than the one in Nelson. It was about $3 each. Solara led us to the famiy changing room (which we've always used because it takes an army to get Anaya in and out of her wet suit), and that was when it hit me. Anaya wasn't with us. She wouldn't get to float in the water, or zoom around on a floaty with daddy. I pushed the thought to the back of my mind and focused on the feeling of the cold, wet, slightly yucky changeroom floor. I detest changeroom floors at pools. It seems impossible to find a clean dry spot to dry your feet off before putting socks on....ugh...

So I pull on my swimsuit, everyone shoves their stuff in our locker and we head out to the pool itself. It's a neat place. Solara tugged at my arm, indicating that she wanted to go into the big pool. Upon entering the water I noticed that it was nice and warm. We swam and chased each other, floating around on giant turtles and butterflies. I missed Anaya and thought of what it would be like to have her with us, floating around. I rolled over onto my back and looked up at the ceiling. A plethora of rainbows surrounded us. There were all sorts of kites hanging from the rafters and not plain kites, either. There were dragons, mermaids, flying fish, airplanes, windsurfers and more. Anaya was there with us after all. My gaze turned towards a shiny glint in the corner of my eye, and stuck in the air exhaust vent I saw a balloon. It was the same rainbow tye-dye balloon that I got Anaya for her birthday last August. I smiled.

All in all things were going much better. We did laps going up the stairs to the waterslide, sliding down, and going back up. Now that is a fun workout. I could do that all day. We played "diving whales" in the dive tank. I made quite the splash.

When we got home we were happy and tired. We all slept soundly and awoke this morning in a good mood. I'm so glad that I'm feeling better. Being depressed us such an awful feeling.  I'm glad I made the decision to get out and try to do something fun.