Hazy Daisy of Skylark

That was our dog's official name - Hazy Daisy of Skylark - though of course she was Daisy to us. In the picture, we're laughing because Daisy (age 9) walked into the living room and plopped down among us when we were taking a picture for the 1990 Christmas card.  Circling from the left:  Cindy (23), Kate (20), Dan, Diane, Lynn (24).  Her birthday is coming up on Jan. 29.

You're probably wondering when we got her - and where.  We have to go back to 1981 to find out....I didn't write in my diary regularly then. Sometimes there were gaps of months.

August 24, 1981 - Monday    "Monday has always been one of my best days for getting things done.  Here I am at 7 AM doing this instead. Must have been something to do with Daisy's being downstairs.  She's our 7-month-old ( Jan. 29) yellow Labrador retriever puppy, already about 60 lbs. & still growing.  She certainly has changed all of our lives.  

I drove up to Wisconsin (near Waukesha) to buy Daisy from Phyllis Putney in April during spring vacation, having called around the area & finding no puppy for sale closer.  I was very surprised at the size of Daisy even then.  The breeder told us she was 9 weeks old - didn't realize that she had her dates wrong.  Daisy was then 11 weeks."  Kate and Cindy, both on spring break, were with me on the drive to pick Daisy up.   Lynn was in high school at Fremd, which had a different vacation schedule back then.

"I think the first month would have been easier if we had had her at 7 or 8 weeks old.  We had some difficulty house-breaking her - and especially at night.  She pooped in her cage - in great volume - every night.

Daisy is a beautiful animal - white with a little tawny golden hair on her back and some tan on her ears.  However, she's hard to handle because of her size and is not all that absorbed with trying to please the humans around her.  She has improved greatly, but is still more work than I'd bargained for.

I hear her rattling her cage even as I write this.  Yesterday our family project was to work on Daisy's doghouse & run.  We built a doghouse, which stands 4 ft. high, and also tried to level the run, which we had built last spring & filled with cement blocks for flooring."

I went on to say that the adjustment to having Daisy was more of a strain than I had thought it would be. The 3 girls were about to go back to school, so I would be the main caretaker again.  Eventually Daisy became so much a part of the family that it was hard to imagine us without her.

I'd had a torn ligament in my knee from a McDonald's golf/tennis outing in July.  While we were warming up, my opponent hit a ball way to the back of my court.  I didn't realize I was backing up into a puddle of water! Had missed 3 weeks of golf and tennis because of the injury & was wearing a brace temporarily.

, Diane's Surgery in New York City, 1965

Diane's picture was taken in our apartment on Kappock St. in Riverdale, just north of the confluence of the Hudson and Harlem Rivers.  Yes, my hair was long, but done up in a stylish hairdo on top of the head.  

My mother's 1965 diary mentions that I had surgery on July 14 to remove "2 pieces of pencil-like scar tissue and a cyst off of an ovary".  She mentions 10 days later that "Diane phoned during the evening & we all got a word into her - but mostly listened to her - with Ken carrying load of conversation on this end.   She had gone home Thurs. from the hospital."

 I went to Beth Israel Hospital in NYC for an exploratory surgery.  I remember the surgeon later saying he had taken a tiny piece out of the ovary because that would encourage fertility if I should want to
get pregnant.  About 10 months after the operation, Lynn Meredith was born at that same hospital just 5 days before my 30th birthday.

At that point, my parents, Ruth and John Kellogg, were selling the house in Oak Park and about to live in an apartment temporarily.  They were going to have a new place in Clearwater FL re-done, adding a 3rd bedroom and extra bath, taken from the unit next door to them.  The other one became a one-bedroom, one-bath condo.

Christmas, 1992

The 1992 picture was taken in our living room with the tree as a backdrop.  Dan and Diane were 56 with Cindy (25), Lynn (26) and Kate (22).  Diane's diary follows. Neither the picture nor the words are in my book,  Pieces of a Life.

Dec. 26, 1992 - Saturday   "Yesterday was Christmas.  It went well after a tiring Christmas Eve  - ended up cooking til 11:30 PM - had a mishap with the salmon ball that caused a flare-up beween Dan and myself.  

Had the 3 boyfriends here - Tim, Jim and Bruce plus Vi.  Had an 18 lb. turkey and many dishes, mostly new ones.  

This was the first year that we broke our Christmas Eve ritual of putting out cookies & milk for Santa and coming in to see it all gone the next day (on film).  

Heather Reis and her boyfriend ,  Kip, dropped by.  Ended up talking health & vitamins to them because of an injury - twice - Kip had.  Snapped the Achilles' tendon.

Lynn & Jim left right after dinner to go to northern Wisconsin to use their new snowmobiles.  The other 4 were here all afternoon.  We drove Vi to Riccio's at 5:30.  Cindy & Tim stuck around til about 7 or 7:30 - then went to T-Ann's.    

Today Dan and I both did some Christmas errands first thing. Got bogged down in a long Ken phone call about Mom, $$, etc.  They only go well if one agrees with him, no matter how taxing it is to do that.

I think about Mom all the time.  She could live many years.  How sad that she doesn't know she has grandchildren or to be able to picture her own life other than from moment to moment...It's ironic.  She was so careful to diary her life, to keep everything in order."

At this point my mother, Ruth Meredith Kellogg (86), was in an Alzheimer's facility in FL. Her husband, John, had died in 1987 at age 87.  Brother Ken and his wife, Nellie, lived close by her in FL.

Heather Reis was a good friend of Lynn's.  The 3 boyfriends sorted out this way: Tim and Cindy, who dated several years and were living in Seattle,  Kate and Bruce, who dated a shorter time and Lynn and Jim Waldman, who dated 10 1/2 years and were married in 1995.  

Dan's sister, Vi, was 72.  Her husband, Chuck Saletta, who was 10 years older, had passed on.  She was in good health at this point, but that picture would darken later in her 70's.

Another important character in this story is Daisy, our yellow Labrador Retriever.  She had died on Aug. 22, 1992, just a few months before I wrote this page in my diary.  There are many mentions of her and how much I missed her, as did Dan and the girls.