Tracy Petry

The year was 1982. The place was Ridgefield, Connecticut. The photo is from the high school yearbook, and the group you see is the Theater Club. That year we produced a fall play - The Rhimers of Eldritch and a spring musical - Hello, Dolly! I can still name just about everyone in the picture. I'm still very close friends with a couple of people, still Facebook friends with more than half. Oh, yeah, and I'm married to one of them. A few years ago my class (not the same one he graduated in) had our thirty year reunion. Thirty years . I have no idea how that happened. I never had kids so I still don't feel like I'm even thirty years old myself, never mind graduating school that long ago. Anyway, my class had a thirty year reunion up in Connecticut, and we'd just moved down to North Carolina. Money was tight; we were eating mac and cheese every night and hoping the power wasn't going to shut off, there was no way I could have gotten up there for that reunion ...

Even I shrieked in terror. Seriously. Someone was showering with these creatures. My husband questioned what sort of foul adhesive was holding those creatures to the shower wall. Sincerely, isn't getting clean the point of taking a shower? How do you accomplish that in this ? Are you going to complain about the landlord on social media when you don't get your security deposit back? If you do, and I catch you, I'm posting the pictures and tagging you. It's like going to the zoo and seeing monkeys flinging feces.  Could you sleep knowing that this was lurking in your master bath? I couldn't. Then again, I haven't touched on the horrors of the master bedroom. The bed consists of four mattresses piled on top of each other. I see how colorful the top mattress is. I'm not looking forward to seeing what the one on the bottom looks like.  Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite. Ever heard that? Ever wonder what a bedbug really was? Or ...

Coda came into my life when I was coming to the end of my thirties. I'm in my fifties now. He was a little bundle of joy that became a huge bundle of joy. I don't think he gave me a minute of trouble in his whole life. Coda was in my life before my husband. And somehow I guess on some level I thought he would always be with me. His first home was in East Haven, CT where we lived just down the road from the town beach. What could make for a happier puppyhood for a lab? He was a fantastic swimmer and got plenty of time in the water. We had a fenced in yard he could play ball in, and we even made a poured concrete ornamental pond for him to dip in and cool off in between rounds of fetch. He made no protest at all when we brought other dogs into the house; some were fosters, others belonged to people who stayed with us for a few months here and there, and one special pup named Adoc became his brother. Sadly, we lost Adoc to illness when he was only four and a half years old...