Sunday Scribblings.

G'Day,
The Sunday Scribblings prompt for this week is "How I met..."
The first thing I thought of was Pete, my husband and partner in life and then thought that is so predictable. The next predictable thing was my Kids then I decided on Rufus.
You can see a picture of Rufus if you scroll down to my last post, smelling the first Daffodil in my yard to bloom.
One day we were having a luncheon at work, in Junee Hospital, I think someone was leaving . We used to each take a dish to share . Anyway, one of the nurses, Shane, came in and put up a notice on the board,"Puppies for Sale". I was thinking about my poor old doggies getting older and also my son David being by himself as he had not long left home and his impending birthday, so I thought, I would ask about them. They were Jack Russel pups, eight weeks old bred by an old lady Shane knew in Temora. There were 2 girls and one boy. Shane told me the old lady lived by herself and had both parents which she treated like her babies. The parents were good little dogs, well trained and maybe a bit on the protective side but that was how she wanted them. I sat for a while and ummed and ahhed a bit then nervously said "Can I have the boy one?"
About a week went by and I paid the $70 asked for and Shane bought a small cardboard box to work with Rufus in it. He was starting on the afternoon shift at 2.30 and I was on the early shift finishing at 3.30 so there wasn't much of a wait before I took him home. Poor little doggie! He was terrified, huddled in a box where he had dirtied and vomited and was a real mess. Needless to say the rest of that afternoon was a dead loss for work . I cleaned him up and chucked away the dirty box for a clean one. Then decided that some diversional therapy might be in order. I took him around to the long term residents to show him off. Everybody Oohed and ahhed over him but when I took him into C unit I couldn't get him off one of the old ladies there. Jean Hulm snuggled up the poor little fellow and settled him down, so I asked her could she look after him until my home time. She gladly agreed. After that Jean used to ask about him for quite a while but with her confused mind she soon forgot.
When I got him home he seemed to settle in and accept that he was alright now. He introduced himself to the kitten we had, and a game of chases soon began The kitten, who knew the lay out of the room better than him, got the better of the situation. Peter my husband took a liking to him straight away and for the few days that we had him before David's birthday, Rufus's favourite place was asleep on the lounge chair with Peter after work. Our other dogs, Bart and Fred sniffed him and judged him as no threat being so tiny and then pretty well ignored him. Until he came near their food bowls, as like all puppies when you first take them home remember from being part of a litter of hungry brothers and sisters, to get a feed you get in quick. On the weekend we took him over to Wagga and gave him to David.
David worked all day and soon decided that he didn't have the time to train or look after and clean up after a pup so he came back to us. After some sad soul searching from David.
He was actually then given to my other son Michael but soon the ownership reverted to Pete who formed a special bond with him. Now days his ownership is more of a household affair. He plays with Mike, he sleeps and cuddles with me and walks with Peter and begs food tidbits off Mum. He follows us all around and is never more than a few steps behind any one of us.
Rufus is a part of our family. He replaced our old doggies when they went to heaven from old age and is now a special friend and entertainment for us all. If he lives to be as old as our other dogs he will be around for another 14 years at least, they were both 16 when they died.
When Rufus was tiny and we were training him to the lead we would take him for walks and he would lay down and want to be carried, but as he matured he discovered the joy of sniffing where the other doggies had been by, and also learned where all the other doggies lived on the way to and from the shops and stirred them all up on the way past. Peter was so funny with him, a surprise to me because he never took much notice of any of the other pets we have had over the years . He even refers to himself as Daddy when he talks to Rufus. I tease him and say that Rufus is the love of his life. I even had to step off the footpath to make room so Rufus could walk on it and not get prickles in his feet when we went for a walk one day. I pointed that mistake out! He he.
The other suggestion in this weeks post was people you had lost track of.
I thought of Dorothy.

Dorothy was my friend in Randwick Girls high school in year 7. She was a beautiful girl. Tall and svelte with long blonde hair and dimples. She had no Dad and she lived alone in a horrible old flat on Crown street with her Mum. Her Mum didn't speak much English and I think they came from Russia or somewhere over there. Their tiny flat was in a very old building, upstairs along a skinny dark staircase. Just one tiny bedroom and I think Dorothy got that bedroom and her Mum slept in the lounge room.

Dorothy used to get picked on something terrible by the "nice " girls at school. A few times I stopped her running away after they had upset her. So she used to not turn up at school quite often.
I remember her having an elder sister called Lydia but she didn't live with them. I can't remember why. Her Mum was a worrier and used to worry about her terribly but for some reason she trusted me. Funny, my friends parents were like that with me. But I was probably the one leading them along to adventures.
Anyway Dorothy Ozerskis and I were friends. We used to save up for the weekends and go into the city and hang around the Museum or go for rides on the ferry across the harbour, or to the movies then we would go into the Strand arcade to a little shop and pool our money together to share a plate of crepes with maple syrup and act like ladies. Pretty special when you are 13 years old.
Later that year I moved to Singapore and when I came back to Australia and the same school about a year and a half later Dorothy was gone. Nobody seemed to know where she was and I lost touch with her. I used to imagine that she was a model or something as there was a girl that looked a bit like her in lots of the magazines around at the time.
I wonder where she is and what happened to her.

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My Sunday scribblings this week was posted o a Monday because on the weekend we all went to Wagga for my mother in laws 80Th birthday and family reunion. I will post some pictures of that later. The party was at the PCYC hall and all of our branch of the family attended, except David who had the chance to work over the weekend refitting a shop at triple pay that was too good to pass up. It was good to see faces, some of which I hadn't seen for years and had to do a double take to confirm who they were. Nephews and neices who were toddlers when I first came on the scene over thirty years ago and are now chasing their own toddlers around. Uncles and Auntys who I have heard of but I had not met before, and their children. I don't know how many were there.
On Sunday after the party I made plans to go to Junee to have lunch with my old workmates whom I have been missing so much. We all sat around the table and talked then I had a look in the kitchen where I would have been still working if I had stayed in Junee. They all moved into the new hospital less than a month after I left and want to go back to the old hospital again where everything was much easier and they had less problems than where they are now. When I left there I realized that I am never going to have that sense of belonging so well in a group of friends again that I had there.
Along the road between Wagga and Junee the wattle trees are all in flower and all the wild almond trees are too. Very pretty. I took some pics of the wattle trees for later. Dianne, the workmate I took out there with me, and I, talked about how some people don't seem to notice such beauty in the landscape and how sad that is. Funny though, there are a lot of people around who do not seem to notice what a miracle nature is and go about their lives without seeing it.
Pete, Mum, Mike, Dave, Annie, Michael and I had lunch together at the Union club hotel in Wagga. Mum had the roast lamb and got food poisoning so that spoiled the weekend for her. She was up all saturday night sick, so she is staying in bed this morning catching up on her rest.
Well that is about all for this post. Bye.

Love Linda.