
I’ve written before about how we tend to anthropomorphize our pets. Humans have done it for thousands of years, really. I found myself wondering about that again this past weekend. Monday marked a year since Shadow died. Do animals have any concept of time or anniversaries like we do? I doubt it. I’m sure they missed her soon after she died, but I can’t believe they still grieve.
Did they even grieve in the beginning? Probably not like we do, I’d guess. I’m sure they were confused about what happened because she wasn’t around. But straight up missing her? I mean, they’re just animals, right? Animals don’t understand grief. Do they?
I’m not seeing the movement in the corners of my eyes or feeling movement on the bed in the middle of the night anymore. But I still miss her a bunch.
Sif has started watching me through the door like Shadow used to when I took Athena outside. I don’t know if that helps or not.
Diana and I spent half an hour on the phone with the vet that day, trying to figure out what was making her sick. We first focused on her eating something, because I mentioned at one point she was our hunter, always the one going after bugs and such in the house. We never really pursued that idea, for some reason.
I was talking with one of the boys a few months after she died, still trying to figure out what happened. I again thought about her being the hunter in the house, then started wondering if she’d been bitten by something she’d been hunting. We’ve seen both brown recluse and black widow spiders in and around the house, so I started searching for bite symptoms. I found this article at PetMD, and Shadow ticked off at least half of the symptoms listed there. I know we’ll never know for certain, but I’m pretty convinced she suffered a black widow bite.
Nothing is Ever Easy
AKA “If you give a mouse a cookie…”
As I wrote this post, I wanted to check on how I’d said something a while ago. When I skimmed my posts on my WordPress dashboard, a post about a friend’s death came up. When I checked that post, I realized the graphic wasn’t loading. I’d apparently hotlinked it rather than downloading it to my site, and the original site blocked hotlinking. No worries, I thought. I’ll just find another version of the image, which was the double bar at the end of a piece of music with “Fine” above it.
I spent close to an hour over a couple of days looking for the right image. Couldn’t quite find what I was looking for. It might be easier to go through my music books and take a picture myself.
Reading
I didn’t read a lot this week, given that Sunday through Tuesday I was working at the fireworks stand. But I did come across this piece at The Roys Report. I’ve long felt that the U. S. Evangelical Church is a largely white institution. While Christians talk a lot about how Jesus came to save everyone, I think they won’t say it out loud, but they’d maybe like it better if certain groups of people attended their own church.
By extension, much of the homeschooling movement in the U. S. is also mostly white, from my experience. I could count the number of non-white people we’ve met homeschooling on one hand and have fingers left over.
I think too that much of what HS families teach about the racial history of the country is probably…not as accurate as it could be. I’m sure there are homeschooled kids in Oklahoma still learning about the Tulsa Race Riot as opposed to the Race Massacre.
But as the number of Black homeschooling families has more than quadrupled in three years, those families are finding some of the available curricula wanting, and now they’re doing something about it.
I think it’s great. I’ve been a fan of James Loewen’s works for a long time, and I’ve challenged homeschoolers we’ve met along the way to take a critical look at the materials they use for their curriculum. I’m not sure how many have, but I keep talking it up. What Brytni McNeil is doing is along the same lines, and I wish her well.
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