Author: susank456

I love to be outdoors, hiking, pheasant hunting, playing with my dogs. And I love to take pictures of the things I see and write about my experiences. I don't take life too seriously, I poke fun at myself and just about everybody else. I've gotten selfish as I've gotten older.

Death Wish

Though I’ve not seen any of our state’s predators, it is widely recognized that living in the State of Washington we have a large number of predators, Mountain Lions, Bobcats, Lynx, Bears, Wolves, Coyotes and Foxes. Each one of these predators have the ability to eat small and large animals. I am putting out an all call to any or all of these predators. If I send you my address would you send a couple of emissaries around? I promise you will be richly rewarded.

Sound totally insane right? Well I know that mountain lions and bears can’t read (maybe wolves can, they are pretty smart) but I do have a totally rational reason for the need. We have rabbits here. Brazen or stupid, I don’t know which and I don’t care, I just want them gone. The other day a rabbit ran into our backyard in the afternoon while Orso and I were out there. He ran straight at Orso then turned and ran at me with Orso in hot pursuit. I was almost run down by a charging hundred-pound brown locomotive that only had eyes on a one-pound fur ball. Good thing I was paying attention and jumped aside.

Yesterday morning on our early morning walk, yes I still walk Orso at the crack of dawn, when I noticed Orso was very intent on something ahead of us. Something small with tall ears, another rabbit was sitting in the road just waiting for us, not moving, just waiting. Stupid rabbit, or maybe he was suicidal having the curse of not knowing utter fear and was totally bored with the good life. I tightened my grip on the leash and told him no, for all the good that did. He still lunged at the rabbit and woofed quite loud at four in the morning. People are sleeping and don’t want to hear a very deep loud woof then the screams of a rabbit in the jaws of my menace.

Again this morning we ran across another rabbit with a death wish just sitting on the side of the road, watching us come toward him. Again with the woof and the lunge. The evil little creature jump meandered off with a couple of small hops. Not the wild jerking and sprinting I have seen on the nature shows with a fox or coyote in hot pursuit. I could see my fears of being a boat anchor coming true once again if I don’t get rid of these small suicidal marsupials.

Hence my plea to all predators, please come, I’ll send you my address and I promise you will feast handsomely.

Someone Talk Me off the Ledge

I am having a life crisis and need some guidance before I make a huge mistake. Orso is ten years old and our only dog now. He is calm and sedate for the most part, giving way to the eternal puppy inside occasionally, running around like a loon. Those displays of puppy idiocy are few and far between. Life is good, quiet and boring.

Because life is going so well, there are fewer moments in life that are out of control and as chaotic as in the past, when he was younger and we were three dogs strong, AJ, our counter surfer and pantry raider, Charlie, our split personality dog, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Walking them was always a challenge and I had many instances of being the boat anchor, getting dragged after some poor unsuspecting creature of the night. Worst of all I have less and less to write about. No one wants to hear about how loud Orso snores or how he runs in his sleep.

So in an act of idiocy I have started looking at animal shelter websites and rescue groups online for another dog. I am not sure I am ready for another dog, I don’t want to go through the last weeks of Charlie’s psychotic breakdown, bringing a new dog into our peaceful home. I am somewhat gun shy after that and I won’t put Orso through the terror of Charlie’s vicious episodes with a dog that might not be animal friendly. During my recent business trip to Kansas City, I went to a dock dog competition where the local humane society was parading adoptable dogs around. I saw a big boy, an Akita mix, that if I still lived in KC I probably would have taken him home. Then another friend showed me pictures of a litter of Mastiff puppies that are five weeks old. Thank god they are too young to separate from their mother or I might have taken one of them, even though I do not want to go through another puppy phase EVER AGAIN.

My quandary is that I am probably one of the most boring people in the world, so unless I take up some new sport, like rock climbing or trail riding, I don’t have much to write about anymore. We all know how well I would do at rock climbing or trail riding and I think that eventually even Aflac would cancel my policy. That brings me back to my present problem, taking the leap and getting another dog.

I need the voice of reason to slap me across the back of my head and tell me, “Are you out of your mind? What are you thinking? Take up knitting or something a lot tamer, dummy!”

Poor Mitch, he is in so much trouble and doesn’t know it yet.

Poetry for Wednesday

Alone

Footfalls on the wood floors
Echo through the house
Though no one notices
All alone no one to talk to, no one to listen.

The quiet deafening, no one to hear
The sighs of loneliness, float on summer breezes
The days turn into nights, all alone
No one comes, no one cares.

Day Trip

Sunday we jumped in the car and drove up Highway 101 to Port Angeles. The drive was very picturesque driving along Puget Sound on the right and the Olympic National Forest on the left. I didn’t get many pictures, spent too much time just enjoying the ride. Orso got a first look at pigeons and just couldn’t quite figure out how to get to them.

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One of Those Days

We all have them; you know those days where you are better off staying in bed. Some of us have multiple days in a row where everything you touch goes way wrong. And then there is me. When I have one of those days or multiple days that go bad, it usually means I have maimed myself in some sort of fashion, and holding true to history, I’ve done it again.

Yesterday, I was sharpening my boning knife on the sharpening stone using deliberate circles like my dad taught me. I held the knife at about a forty-five-degree angle to the stone going in a counter-clockwise motion. Flipping the knife over I repeated the process only going in a clockwise motion, when the knife slipped and sliced into my right thumb. The good news is that I got the knife good and sharp. The bad news is that I bled all over the kitchen.

Today I put a bottom round roast in the crockpot to cook all day for dinner. The roast was so tender by the time dinner rolled around that it was falling apart in the crockpot as I was dishing it up to put it on the platter. I used a large fork and spatula to try and get it out of the crockpot when it broke apart, with part of the meat plopping back into the crockpot and splashing a small piece of cooked hot onion to wrap around my little finger and another piece of onion stuck to the left side of my hand below the thumb I tried to amputate yesterday.

I ran to the sink and turned on the cold water, pulling the onion off of my finger and let the words fly. Who would think a hot cooked onion would stick like glue and burn the daylights out of you. I actually have blisters on my little finger and a long red streak on the other side of my hand. I thought that using the crockpot would make my life easier not help me meet my deductible for the year.

Needless to say, I am not looking forward to tomorrow.

My Neighbor is Trying to Kill Me

Honestly, I am starting to believe that behind that sweet smiling generous face lurks a serial killer. This is probably why two other houses have recently gone on the market and I didn’t see the owners move out. All of a sudden the houses were just empty. She killed them. And she kills in the most insidious way, she will never get caught. It started out so innocuously, she offered to give me a couple of her Azalea bushes because she has too many. Sounds innocent enough right? Wrong, once she gets you in her yard, the evil begins.

She picks out a large mature Azalea bush and says how about this one? You think, wow a full grown bush, this will look great in my yard. So you say sure, that is so nice, thank you. Then you have to dig it up, not easy, after that you have to carry the full grown bush to the truck, remember it is a full grown bush and the roots are covered in about five pounds of dirt. After you place it in the truck and turn to say thank you, she says in a super sweet voice, oh I have more for you. You can’t leave with just one.

The first plant transplant excursion with her netted me four mature Azalea bushes, three Foxglove plants and one large fern. That’s how she sucks you in. She gives you a reasonable amount of plants to whet your appetite. Just like a crack dealer. The second plant transplant excursion she had me dig up four more large Azalea bushes and a sickly Rhododendron. One of the Azaleas was so large we had to get her husband to help lift it up in the truck.

She caught me on Monday and told me that according to the Almanac, Tuesday was the day to move plants and she had another Azalea to give me. Stupid me, I fell for it again. I got over there and she had me dig up eight Azaleas, one more Rhododendron and two very large Barberry bushes, resplendent with a ton of small sharp thorns. That was so much fun, I think I left a pint of blood in her dirt. Maybe that was the whole ploy, get me to bleed in her dirt and fertilize the soil. She wanted to give me three more extra-large Azaleas and two seven-foot-tall Rhododendrons, but I begged off by saying we should wait until the rainy season when the soil is easier to dig in. Maybe by then she will have forgotten or I’ll be dead from her generosity and it won’t matter.

I am going to have to up my game if I’m going to survive and expose her for the evil wicked woman that she is. Giving away extra plants in an evil ruse to make my yard lush and beautiful. Such evilness. Well I’m on to her game now and I’m eating my Wheaties, so I can dig with the best of them.

Sunday Poetry

Light Steps

Tiptoeing across the room
Careful not to make a sound
Slipping out silently
Creeping down the stairs.

Stepping to the door
Turning one last time
Making sure no one is awake
To witness the escape.

Walking through the door
Softly pulling it closed
Turning around to face the unknown
Walking toward freedom.

It’s Gotta be a Record!

Maybe even a World’s Record or close to it. There should be cake to celebrate or at least wine. I started thinking back to our move out here. The dogs and I got here in August of 2015 and lived in the apartment until we bought our house and moved in the middle of March. The house is a two story with the bedrooms and wet bar on the second floor. That means at the very least I would go up and down those stairs a minimum of six times a day. One time down to feed Orso and take him for a walk, back up the stairs to shower then down again to go about my day. One time up to get a bottle of wine and down to open and drink the wine, one last time up to go to bed. I go up and down many more times than that each day, but you get the point.

Take that minimum number and multiply it by the three and a half months we’ve been in the house, that totals to over six hundred times up and down the stairs. And I haven’t fallen up or down the stairs once. That’s gotta be a record. If that doesn’t sound so awesome, then look at my history. I’ve fallen down the stairs to the old house and hit the side of the house at the bottom. I’ve fallen up the basement stairs and took the skin off my shins at the old house. I’ve fallen off the side of the road walking the dogs. I fell over a giant boulder in the middle of the road one morning walking the dogs. I got tangled up in a four-foot step ladder and fell down a hill. I have a knack for falling, either up or down, I’m an equal opportunity faller.

Come to think of it, most of my falls were at the old house. Maybe it was the house. Maybe the house had it in for me. Maybe I’m not that clumsy after all, maybe I was attacked by the old house. Well I got the last laugh, I’m not there anymore. So take that house!

In the ten months we’ve been here, I’ve only fallen twice, once at the hands of the dogs dragging me across a sidewalk to meet a new dog and once hiking when I tripped and fell over a downed tree. All in all I’ve done pretty well out here and haven’t had to go to the emergency room once, which is a good thing since I don’t know where the hospital is.

Lazy Sunday

Sunday is all about rest and relaxation. For a dog that is almost 10 years old, he is still such a puppy!

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Dog for Rent

“One very large dog for rent. Extra-large dog weighing one hundred two pounds wants playmate of equal size and temperament. Dog needs to be willing to play tag and wrestle. Has to like being chewed on. I will even supply the yard if necessary. If interested, please call.”

That is how my ad will read. I’ve decided that in order to keep Orso happy and content, I am going to rent him out as a playmate to other dogs. I’m not strong enough to really play with him. He does not have the “soft mouth” labs are famous for, he bites down hard and one of these days, I’m pretty sure he’s going to break my arm. He’s faster than I am and has learned how to whip around on me and grab whatever is closest to him, whether it’s my leg or arm.

This morning he was in a playful mood and as I reached down to push him, he turned much faster than I expected and grabbed my right forearm and bit down. At first I thought he broke it, but after I pushed back my sweatshirt, I saw the hole and blood. How he can bite through fabric and break the skin, but not the fabric always surprises me. So now I’m sporting two bruises on one side of my arm and a large puncture wound on the other.

So in order to keep me in one piece and Orso tired and happy, I need to find him a playmate. I am not ready to get another dog, so renting him out is the next best option. So what do you think, any takers?