Hot-Seat Time

Yesterday (Saturday, April 21, 2007). at about 6:30 p.m., before supper (“super”), I took the Killian-dog for a walk up-the-street, which I’ve successfully done all this past week.
The sun is still high, so we can do it, despite the daily afternoon nap requirement, which I sometimes skip.
Killian loves it. “I’m walking with The Boss.” He always returns with a gigantic smile on his face — although it’s more him walking me.
Another lady was walking her dog as we went around (the Michael Prouty Park), and was loading her dog into her beige-metallic Jeep-Liberty as we started across the parking-lot.
“Where’s your other dog?” she asked.
HOT-SEAT TIME! Try to speak slowly and deliberately so as to not jumble anything.
A long pause passed before I could answer.
Unlike Motor-Mouth, or most normal people for that matter, speaking is not natural for me.
I’m not using the speech-center I had before the stroke. That got vaporized by the stroke.
What I say often doesn’t make sense. The constant correcting leads me to not say much.
“Gone,” I finally said.
I also don’t like saying anything for fear of inadvertently blurting out the wrong thing, as happened at the Honeoye Falls Veterinary with the lady there to put her cat to sleep.
“Oh that’s too bad,” the dog-owner said.
Her dog started serenading us loudly from the back; thankfully an excuse to end the encounter.

My loud-mouthed brother-in-Boston once misspelled “Super-Bowl” as “Supper-Bowl;” and subsequently loudly insisted that is how it’s spelled.

RE: “daily afternoon nap requirement.....” —Ever since my stroke 10/26/93, I’ve pretty much had to take a nap every afternoon. Brain-fatigue.

“Our other dog” is Sabrina, deceased about a month ago. (Both dogs are [were] Irish-Setters.)

I’ve also referred to my loud-mouthed brother-from-Boston (“Jack,” and “the almighty Bluster-King”) as “Motor-Mouth.” He’s always loudly blabbering, and making strident pronouncements.