Saturday

Saturday is always hard. There's very little for me to do. All the service agencies I deal with are closed and I have to occupy my time from 7 in the morning until evening church begins at 6pm.

Yesterday, I found some pictures of Lexi online @ my old flickr account. I had tried to access it earlier but could not remember the password. I thought that my ex had gone in and erased it but was very happy when I discovered it was still there.

I took over two-thousand pictures while I was with Ritchie, and only a small fraction of them are posted to flickr. But those few pics are of great value to me today. They represent a reclaiming of my past. It's very strange to look at the photos of our trip to Seaside last year. It was at this time that we went there with Lexi, and I had no clue that my world would be so different just one year later.

I still think of Lexi every single day, but my thoughts of her don't sting quite as much. It's as if the memories are finding there way to a deeper place in me, and I am allowing myself to smile at some of them.

I walked past the Trader Joe's near the motel that Lexi and I spent over two weeks at. There are some tall ornamental grasses out front, near the sidewalk that Lexi loved to wander through and brush against as we would pass by. They've recently chopped all the grasses down to small mounds. Something I'm sure they do every year at this time in preparation for Spring. I was able to smile as I visualized Lexi's wagging tail following her through the grass as I tried to keep her from tangling the long leash that she had.

She is a truly an amazing dog, and I've never felt so strongly about a pet. Sometimes I wonder if a big part of my bond with her is simply the things she and I went through together. And then I think: No, she really was the best dog I ever had, regardless of the circumstances. I send a prayer of love to her every day. When I get to the point where I think I'm getting too depressed over losing her, I simply send a prayer of love and look forward to a day when I will see her in heaven.