Doobins Hits Pay Dirt

The other day, Garnet and I took Sparkle Girl and Doobins to Dan Nicholas Park in Rowan County. The place is a kids' paradise. It has a carrousel, miniature golf, a kid-size train, paddle boats and a petting zoo.

Plus, you can mine for gems. The first time we went, I thought the mining-for-gems part was going to be hokey. You give the park people 7 bucks, which seemed a mite pricey, and they give you a bucket of sand that has been salted with "gems." You take it to the sluice, put some sand in a wire-bottomed box, put it in the water and uncover your gems.

I was wrong about it being hokey. It turned out to be one of the highlights of Sparkle Girl's day. She was excited to find the gems and enjoyed deciding which ones to set aside as gifts for her cousins. So, as we headed down to the park this time, she was quite excited about the prospect of finding more gems.

Now one of the things that's true about Doobins is it can take him a while to get used to the idea of doing something new. You can present him with the possibility of something that you know he would enjoy, and he may or may not do it. The best approach is to let him decide in his own time. Pushing him only guarantees increased resistance.

The first time that we went to Dan Nicholas he declined to ride the carrousel or the train and had not wanted to mine for gems. This time, though, he was excited about the prospect of mining for gems.

On one of the Web sites for kids, he has been playing a gem-mining game and deriving great satisfaction from showing off any new acquisitions to Sparkle Girl, Garnet and me. So the chance of finding some real gems was quite appealing.

It proved to be quite the red-letter day for Doobins. He decided that he wanted to ride the dragon on the carrousel. We had to wait one round because another kid got to the dragon before he did. The man running the carrousel was quite understanding about us wanting to wait.

While Sparkle Girl, Doobins and I were riding - carrousels make Garnet queasy - Garnet went over and talked to Mr. Carrousel Man. I found out after we got off that she was asking him whether listening to the same song all day drove him crazy. Yes, indeed, he said. The carrousel used to have three songs but something malfunctioned, and now it just plays one. He sometimes wakes up at night with the song playing in his head.

So, if you're looking for a cause, you might consider finding out Mr. Carrousel Man's real name and then start a drive to get him a new sound system. Something with Fats Waller might be nice.

Doobins also readily got on the miniature train with Sparkle Girl and Garnet. It was my turn to sit out. My thinking was that the train might be, like the booths in some restaurants, a tight squeeze for me.

Doobins loved the train almost as much as Garnet loved seeing the smile on his face.

Next it was off to the gem mines. Outside the place where you pick up your buckets is a giant mining car that sits on a section of rails. The gems in it are bigger than my fist. It looked exactly like a large-scale version of the gem-laden mining car in the video game. The two buckets of sand salted with gems that they gave us were generous enough that they were too heavy for the kids to carry their own. I carried them.

At the sluice, Garnet and I would pour some sand in the sifting boxes, and the kids and water would send the sand on down the sluice, revealing one gem after another. Too excited by the prospect of finding the next gem to add the one in hand to their respective piles themselves, the kids would hand their gems to one of us to take care of so that they didn't lose any precious gem-discovering time.

By the time their respective buckets were empty, each had a pile that was almost precisely the same size. I silently thanked whomever salts the buckets for making sure that the gems are evenly divided.

At the end of the sluice were clear plastic bags for putting the gems in. We put the gems in the bags and tied the ends so that there would be no heart-breaking spillages.

As we were walking toward the petting zoo, Doobins lifted his bag of gems above his head and said, "Yreka, I'm rich."

Yreka, I, too, am rich.

His Dogness

In recent weeks, His Dogness has been getting up and wanting to go out four to six times a night.

That's what was going on just before I took him to the vet's some months back and discovered that his kidneys were failing him. The medication that the vet put him on was a big help, though, and, in the months that followed, we went back to just going out once, maybe twice a night, more if I let him eat late or eat something exotic.

When the numbers started going back up again, I fretted that meant that his kidneys were taking another step down. I put off going to the vet, though, because I thought the solution might be giving him a tranquilizer or something just so that I could get something resembling a night's worth of sleep.

Then I had a brain wave.

His Dogness has never been a fan of summer heat. When he was younger, I used to make him take his full evening walk no matter what, though. I figured it was for his own good.

As he has gotten older, I have let him abbreviate the walk somewhat in the heat. And, this year, with all the troubles that he has been having, I thought I was doing him a favor to let him sometimes skip the walk to Old Salem and, instead, take a modest stroll down the alley behind the house instead.

He did seem to appreciate it at the time.

Only later, though, did my brain notice that the time we stopped taking real walks every day was about the time he had to start going out more at night. Say, I thought, maybe there's connection.

As soon as I went back to taking him on a real walk in Old Salem every day, he went back to just needing to go out once or so.

I wish the solution to every problem was so simple.

Sparkle Girl Rats Me Out

Left on my own, I tend to be a slob.

For many years, I would let my house fall into ever greater disarray as the work week progressed. Then, on Saturday, I would spend two hours straightening and cleaning.

It was a pattern that allowed me to be a slob yet not stray too far into chaos. And, back in the days when Sparkle Girl, Doobins and Garnet were coming over to my house regularly, I was fairly good about staying on top of things.

In recent times, though, we have fallen into a habit of spending most of our time together at their house. I seldom straighten and clean, and disorder has come to reign supreme. It's fine with me personally, and His Dogness doesn't seem to mind.

But it can be a problem when I have unepxected guests. As it happened, Sparkle Girl and Doobins ended up over at my house the other day when the house was in its natural state. I knew that Sparkle Girl would notice the mess but I wasn't sure about Doobins. I had my answer when he announced from his perch on the couch, "It sure is messy here."

A little later, Garnet came over. I warned her at the door. She slowly strolled through the house taking it all in. That came as no surprise. What I didn't see coming was Sparkle Girl taking on the role of tour guide. As they moved from room to room, Sparkle Girl would point out things that she thought Garnet might not notice on her own or that she thought were particularly worthy of mention.

The highlight of her tour was the rug in the hallway. Perhaps, it has something to do with the physics of air flow. Maybe it's the fact that four rooms open onto the hallway or that it's a relatively small. I don't know. What I do know it's a favorite gathering spot for dust bunnies whose principal ingredient is dog fur.

As they stood in the hallway, Garnet leaned over so that Sparkle Girl could whisper in her ear. Afterward, Garnet stood up, nodded knowingly and said something.

I couldn't hear any of the words but I didn't need to.

I congratulated myself on having, earlier in the day, taken the time sweep up the baby powder that I had spilled on the bathroom floor. I shudder to think what Sparkle Girl would have had to say about that.