I have never believed in waiting for the right time.  Maybe it is my comfort with chaos or the fact that I have never encountered a moment when everything is how I thought it would be, but mostly I think its because I have seen too many people not go for what they wanted because they were waiting for the right time to do it.  So on this note, I was just informed that my turn has come up on a waiting list for a puppy.

I have had several puppies and four babies in my adult life, so it is not blindly that I am walking into this significant commitment.  I know how much attention a puppy needs to settle into the great dog you want for a decade.  My last puppy is near the end of her life and I want our new dog to be showered in her goodness, so the time has come.  Besides that babies of all kinds make life slow down, which is a good thing, even and especially when you are most busy.

So our new puppy was born this past week. I have been on a waiting list for quite a while and just got a note that the newborn litter had 2 more surprise puppies –that they didn’t see in the ultra sound. The idea of the puppy flipped between excited anticipation to anxious rumination about how to fit in another project. Then when I was talking to my husband tonight about adding this new baby to our soon-to-be empty nest  and going on about what to call this new puppy and  how  there will never be a right time… I babbled on with names like Chai, as our current beautiful Ridgeback is named Coco.  Then I thought of Simba, one of our kids’ all-time favorite Disney characters.

Just then as I was dipping the tongs of a fork into our honey, produced by our own beehives, which is so exquisite, that it tastes like medicine of the gods,  he suggested “honey” as her name.  And I relaxed, feeling elated that he knew her name before I did.  Somewhere in Southern Oregon is a tiny one week old Ridgeback puppy named Honey waiting to be loved for life.