The ramblings of an addled mind.
It’s raining.
Not hard, just a gentle rain.
Before it started raining I was mowing the front yard.
I was using our self-propelled walk-behind mower: that area is way too steep for the riding mower.
Riding mowers tend to roll over out there.
Rolling a mower is not fun.
I hit a stump. Continue reading “Sisyphus and Blondie Bear”
Tim is a friend of ours. He used to be our next door neighbor and would help me cut and stack firewood, but a couple of years ago he and his wife were offered a great deal on a house she had always admired and they moved down the road. He’s still one of my best friends, just a more distant neighbor.
I had the truck today — because I was doing a dog transport for the local animal shelter — and decided to stop in and see Tim on my way home. We talked for a while. His dog made it known that he needed to go out for a walk. As we were leaving, Tim said, “Hey! Do you want some firewood?” He pointed across to the far side of his property where recent winds had broken off a small maple tree. He’d already cut it up but had no use for the wood. We use firewood for heat, so I’m always glad of a gift of firewood, especially when it’s already cut up and ready to load! I thanked him and loaded it up.
I figured I’d back the truck in to my loading dock, roll the wood splitter out onto the dock, split the wood as it came off the truck and stack it. Since it’s green wood, I won’t be able to burn it this year, it needs to season first. I’ll stack it on the far end of the “ready to use” wood stack and hope we don’t burn through the whole stack this winter.
Before getting started, I went inside to check messages and check on the dogs. While I was inside someone in the area decided to start some target practice with his blunderbuss.
Blondie Bear is terrified of gunfire. (Read More…)
I am normally up somewhere between 4:00 and 5:00 AM every day. Most days when I get up, slide my feet into my slippers, grab my robe from the hook on my closet door and head for the kitchen to make coffee, Cochise will get out of his snuggle-bed at the foot of our bed and come padding down the hall behind me. I turn right into the kitchen, he turns left into the living room, settles onto a quilt near the fireplace and goes back to sleep. After the coffee is setup I’ll give his ears a light scratching just to tell him I appreciate his company then I settle into my easy chair with my Bible to do some reading while it’s quiet. Blondie gets up when Marie does; around 6:00.
This morning I got up and Blondie came bounding down the hall after me. She was all wound up! She wanted to wrestle and was thumping (body slamming) my chair to get me to scratch her. She’d flop onto the floor and roll up on her back for a belly rub… way more energetic than she normally was at this hour of the morning. I wondered if she was excited about it being Christmas morning. She DID go into the dining room to look at the tree and sniff the packages a couple of times. But how would she know anything about Christmas day?
The sun is shining again today, as it did yesterday, but not for a long time before that. Blondie and Cochise are making the most of it: or trying to.
The sun has not yet swung around far enough to admit much of the sunbeam through the window, just a strip in front of the sofa. They’re not allowed ON the sofa and they know it. So I put the snuggle-bed over in the sunshine for Cochise when they came in from their last exercise time and he was shivering. It’s cold out. The cold doesn’t bother Blondie, she has a heavier coat.
Cochise curled into the bed, felt the warmth of the sunshine and moaned with pleasure. Blondie stood nearby and looked at him enviously. She poked at him with her nose. He yawned at her (which in dog-speak does not mean he’s tired – in this case it was “go away you’re bothering me”).
We have had a real problem with Blondie exploiting any weakness she finds in a fence and making a break for the wild woods. As a result I have taken to tethering her in the shop yard or locking her inside the shop if I have to step away for a bit – like to go get the mail or do some gardening. After her last escape I spent a morning tightening up the fencing, bolstering posts, and sealing up the lower edges where she (or something) had pulled up the pins that hold the fence to the ground. I eliminated all the potential escape routes I could find. But she is strong as a bear, and it constantly surprises me what she’s capable of. Continue reading “Making a Break For It (again)”