Well, yesterday was quite a day, filled with unexpected pleasures as well as problems. It all started because I had to go into town to accomplish requisite errands. Hot day and way too much traffic as I made my stately way across town, one side to the other. Ending up, on the way home, at the grocery store. I noticed I’d had several missed calls from home and realized I’d left my ringer turned off—ugh, never a good idea. So I phoned Hollis and in a broken up reception he told me he was on Gap Creek Road taking Gracie to the hospital, that something had happened to her paw and he’d called the vet and they’d said to give a small half tab of Benadryl and come on up. He was in a dither and so was I when I pieced the story together.
So, instead of going home, I, too, immediately headed up Gap Creek Road and up to Hendersonville to “Uncle Ted’s Western Carolina Emergency Veterinary Clinic. And found Hollis holding a trembling little black dog who yipped and cried when she saw me come in the door. He passed her to my arms and told me the story. They were walking to the mailbox when she yanked and ran ahead with her leash, dragging him forward, and then suddenly she just dropped and fell over on her side. She wouldn’t get up, couldn’t get up, so he picked her up, ran her home and called the Vet, left, and tried (again!) to call me.
As it turned out, the doctor couldn’t find anything at all, even with high-powered microscope—no bite, no cut, no abrasion, no nothing; all was intact— and she was calming down, so we bundled her back into my car and headed homeward, me following behind Hollis. And it was then that the heavens burst wide open and the rain surged down. Not just in sheets or waves but in blinding buckets that in five seconds flooded the road and obscured all vision left, right, back and forward. So we pulled off into an empty church parking lot and Hollis put a towel over his head and jumped into my car where we figured, if we had to wait it out, we’d all wait it out together.
And that’s when we realized that neither one of us had ever had lunch and it was now close to 5:00. Ah, but yes, I’d been to the grocery store! So with Gracie in my lap, radio softly playing, rain pelting down outside, we had ourselves a little picnic in the storm.
A Jug of Wine
A Loaf of Bread—
And Thou
What a cozy little time we had, too! Gracie was coming round and doing fine, we were doing fine, and it mattered not at all that the world outside wasn’t doing fine. We looked at each other and said, “What a groovy way to weather the storm!” and at that very moment, (no kidding!) the rain stopped, and a gorgeous lustrous rainbow arc’d across the sky! We sat there breathless, speechless, thinking—what a gift, what a perfect ending to a day fraught with pain and worry and uncertainty!
So there we were, a happy little threesome, channelling ‘ol Omar and his Rubaiyat, marvelling at the glory and splendor of Gracie’s Rainbow in the parking lot of Grace Baptist Church—our hearts filled with joy and thanks.
(P.S. turns out she was bitten by a teensy yellow jacket, smaller than a sweat bee. There were several of them in the pathway this morning. Their sting was mighty but invisible even under lighted magnification. So all’s well and our hearts are still full of gratitude! And we’ll watch our steps even more carefully now that we know there’s yet another enemy lurking in these Dark Corner hills!)
Views from Annie's Cabin 
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