Tag: humor

I Don’t Have Time for This

I should have known something would happen this morning on our walk.  I should have seen the signs. We had a full moon tonight, plus it was an orangish red color.  I think that is what some call Blood on the Moon.  Full moon and weird color must mean something.  Mitch said that he thought it meant a storm was coming.  I now think it meant weirdo coming.

Our predawn walk started off normally, dogs sniffing the air and scanning the dark looking for something to charge after to see if I will be the boat anchor dragging behind them.  I’m always on guard for any possible intruder in the dark just to make sure I don’t become a casualty of the charge.  As we came over the top of the hill a bluish light shining at the top of one the utility poles caught my eye.  There has never been a light there before.  I looked around turning a complete circle looking for the source of the light but saw nothing or no one in the shadows.  The light went out then came back on causing me to look around again looking for the source.  No luck. 

I considered all of the possible solutions to this and came up with three possible answers.  Option A – some creep hiding in the dark trying to scare me.  Option B – an extraterrestrial from some other world making first contact on earth.  Option C – a great big honkin’ lightening bug.  As much as I believe that there is intelligent life out there in the universe, I really don’t think that ET would make first contact with a woman and three dogs in the Midwest.  All I could offer him would be directions to someone who could help him.  And even though I believe that we have worked extra hard at screwing up our planet, I just don’t think that I saw a great big honkin’ lightening bug.  That leaves the only logical explanation for the light.  Some creep hiding in the dark trying to be cute.

If he is trying to scare me, guess what?  It didn’t work.  But I can tell the little creep this; if he does it again and I figure out where he’s hiding, I might just let the dogs off the leash.  I really don’t have time for this in the mornings.

Just a Routine Visit to the Vet?

Even a routine visit to the vet to get the dogs their six month bordetella vaccination is never dull.  People can call dogs “dumb” animals if they want, but those that do evidently don’t actually own dogs.  Our three love to go with us everywhere and when we can accommodate them, we do.  Before Orso that was easy for us.  AJ and Charlie were always happy and content just to be in the car with us.  When we got Orso, dog rides became arduous to say the least.  He will howl and bark at us when he doesn’t get to get out of the car to go in when us.  Getting to ride in the car being out and about isn’t enough for him, he wants to get out of the car and go inside the store with us too.   Now he has succeeded in getting the other two to bark and carry on along with him.  Very painful on the ears, plus the looks from other bystanders are very embarrassing.  We’ve even been paged while shopping at Cabelas, that “the station wagon with the barking dogs, has left your lights on.”  I made Mitch go and turn off the lights on the car; I didn’t want anyone to know who owned the heathens.

A trip to the vet, no big deal, right?  Wrong, Orso remembers where places are and how we get there.  Once we start out on our treks, he gets his bearings and depending on where we are going he starts howling and barking at us, even before he knows whether or not he gets to get out or has to stay in the car.  Very annoying, makes me crazy having a dog bark at the back of my head to yell at me.  Coincidence, no,  because he doesn’t bark at us at the gas station or when I drop Mitch off at work in the morning, he knows that we’re not staying.  Not so dumb, huh.  He knows the road to the vet and starts barking and raising hell as soon as we pass the grocery store. 

Today we had the added bonus of road construction.  Yay.  Lane and road closures, oh goody.  The road to vet is closed and the only way in was to take the roundabout and go through the very exclusive golf course and housing addition that the vet’s office is by.  Here we were driving a seventeen year old station wagon with three dogs sticking their heads out of the windows barking at golfers and residents as we snaked our way through the detour to get to the vet.  We looked like the poster child for chaos.  Thank god no one holding a golf club was within throwing distance to our car.  Though I’m sure we caused a few muffed shots. 

After today I think the city may rethink their detour route after all the nasty phone calls they will probably receive.

Demons and Dreams

Imagine being sound asleep blissfully dreaming about exotic locales with a handsome dark stranger, when you are rudely awakened to the sounds of a vicious dog fight in your bedroom.  There was growling followed by whimpering, then more growling and snarling followed with more whimpering.  It sounded like one of the dogs had gone off the deep end and was about to rip the head off of the poor victim.  I sat straight up in bed scanning the room ready to leap out of bed to stop the impending melee.

But none of the dogs were awake.  Once again, Orso was sound asleep dreaming of what I’m not sure, but doing battle with himself in his sleep.  He was like an actor in a play, playing two roles, the hero and the villain.  He was lying at the foot of the bed twitching and growling, then jerking his head back and whimpering.  It must have been an epic battle in his dreams.  I watched him for a few minutes fighting with his demon and crying because the demon was hurting him.  It was spooky and comical at the same time.  I stroked his back to calm him and hopefully save him from the demon in his dream. 

Orso finally stopped the fight, I wonder who won.  Now the real battle begins.  Will I be able to get back to sleep before the alarm goes off at 2:30am?

I’ve Been Acclimatized

I’ve been acclimatized!  It all started last winter.  We had a very mild dry winter, no complaints here.  That weather pattern carried on into spring, delivering a warmer, drier than normal spring, still very few complaints.  I was able to get my garden planted earlier, did a bunch of dividing and transplanting plants.  I even fertilized and spread weed killer on the yard.  That’s when the rain officially stopped here.  Finally we have had the summer from hell, literally.  This has been the driest year on record and one of the hottest in history.  Absolutely miserable.  We’ve had to water, water and water constantly, driving to me consider getting a second job just to pay the water bill.

Finally the sweltering heat dropped down from the hundreds to a more normal realm of the eighties and low nineties.  Yesterday I walked out of work to go to lunch and was greeted with eighty six degree temperatures and thought it felt very comfortable and mild.  Can you believe that, eighty six degrees and I thought it felt very comfortable and even a little cool with the wind blowing?  I had to look at the thermometer just to confirm the actual temperature.  This morning we took the dogs on their morning walk at 4:30 and it was sixty five degrees, where was my jacket?  This does not bode well for me when we revert back to our normal freezing winter. 

I may have to start wintering in Florida.

What A Day – Is This An Omen?

Do you believe in omens? Most of the time I don’t, but sometimes there are days. I believe you make your own karma. You make a conscious decision to be happy and look for the positive in your life or you choose to be miserable, it’s your choice. But there are times when I wonder if there is a greater power at work and just for some galactic grins and giggles, picks some hapless soul to screw with that day. If this is truly the case, then I must have drawn the black marble today.

For starters, it started to rain this morning, a good thing with this drought, but the weather forecasters had predicted rain this evening and I had planned a Walmart run on my way to work. Walmart is open twenty-four hours a day and going at six in the morning and missing the crowds is a bonus. No big deal, but with the thunder and lightning, AJ makes a trip to Pete and Mac’s for doggie day care, because he is terrified of thunder and lightning. His terror turns outward and he leaves a swathe of destruction in his path. Pete and Mac’s doesn’t open until 6:30, so no Walmart trip. That means weekend crowds for me. Yay.

Because of the aborted Walmart trip, I was ready to go early but couldn’t so I decided to make a side trip to the bank and deposit a check I had received. Guess what, the ATM is not covered, so my left arm and side of my head got wet pushing buttons, inserting deposit envelope and retrieving the receipt. Lovely. My next stop was Pete and Mac’s to drop off AJ. Of course, AJ wanted to stop and pee on the way in, so now I have matching wet arms and head. The day is just getting better by the minute. I got AJ dropped off and got to meet a really sweet large Bloodhound, a plus.

I hopped on the highway to go to work or at least tried to hop on the highway. Some jerk decided he needed the right lane and wouldn’t budge, even though no one was in any other lane. Where is my bazooka when I need it?  Driving down the highway I decided to turn the knob from air conditioning to vent and the knob jumped off and dropped to the floor board somewhere on the passenger side.  Super.  Halfway to work and the windows started fogging up from the humidity and I can’t adjust the temperature control because the frigging knob is somewhere out of reach.  I guess I’ll know when I hit something by the sudden deceleration. 

After a miserable day at work with a pounding headache, I come home to try and relax after taking the dogs for a walk.  And the crowning achievement to my day, AJ charged after a flock of geese jerking the leash, dislocating the little finger on my left hand.  My consolation for the day was my sacrifice saved some other poor soul from a torturous day.

Life in the Slow Lane

AJ with that look of total devotion and love.  You can’t buy that anywhere, you have to earn it.

When it’s too hot to wrestle outside, our bed becomes the perfect soft spot for baring teeth and showing how “tough” they are.

Orso standing on the bed sticking his tongue out at AJ just like a little kid saying, “Come and get me, I dare you!”

And The Heat Goes On

The heat and the drought just keeps coming.  It’s like a blast furnace each time you walk outside.   Taking the dogs on walks is short and slow.  They don’t want to be out in the heat anymore than we do.  Of course this is the year that we’ve added two raised beds to grow more vegetables.  Two more beds means two times more watering, which translates to a much higher water bill.  This is a double edged sword for me.  I love the taste of home grown tomatoes, nothing like a big juicy home grown tomato.  With this drought we have to water almost every day just to keep the plants from withering. 

I’m also the utility police at home.  I walk around turning lights off, raising or lowering the thermostat and turning the faucet off in mid tooth brushing.  I am just plain cheap when it comes to wasting electricity, gas and water.  I rant on about saving energy, conserving water and recycling everything we can possibly recycle.  Mitch made and installed three rain barrels around the house so I can water the gardens with rainwater.  This year all of the rain barrels are bone dry, no water to even dribble out. 

We decided to use soaker hoses to accomplish watering more efficiently.  The problem was that the three raised beds were too far apart so we were wasting a lot of water in between.  Mitch solved this by cutting up the seventy five foot hose into three sections which he snaked through each bed then connected the spaces in between with regular hose pieces.  This has worked out very well for us.  Now we’re only watering the vegetable beds and not everything in between.  Of course the yard has gone dormant and I’m hoping will recover next spring. 

Whether you believe in global warming or not, this weather pattern sucks and I’m ready for it to be over.

We Were Not Alone

Our normal morning walk at o’dark thirty, 4:30am actually, started as always.  Me trying to get the dogs and leashes under control.  AJ will only walk on my left, Charlie and Orso don’t care which side they walk on as long as Orso is on the outside and Charlie is next to me.  Orso and Charlie will switch from the left side to right multiple times during the walk almost always by crossing behind me causing me to have to juggle the leashes around to keep from getting yanked around from behind.

On this particular morning, the walk started off with our normal chaos, sniffing, peeing and snatching grass to munch on during the walk.  But when we got to the long stretch of road that has no houses on either side, a ravine on the left and a wooded hill on the right with houses on the hilltop, the dogs discovered we weren’t alone.  Something was keeping pace with us.  The invisible stalker was up on the hill to our right.  Orso discovered our stalker first, stopping and sniffing the air with his head held high, straining at the leash to get a closer sniff.  Charlie soon caught a whiff and joined Orso straining at his leash too trying to get closer to whatever “It” was.  I looked around in the gloom, but couldn’t see anything, I listened intently to try and catch any rustling sound to try and determine where and what was out there, but I didn’t hear anything.  I tugged on their leashes to pull them away from the area and hopefully leaving the thing, whatever it was alone and hopefully leaving us alone too.

But no, our invisible stalker stayed with us, keeping pace staying high on the hill and being quite stealthy.  The only giveaway was his scent which evidently was tantalizing to the dogs.  Me not so much.  I couldn’t smell, see or hear the stalker, so I was getting pretty unnerved trying to keep the dogs under control and alert to a possible threat.  The rest of the walk was uneventful when we got past the dark stretch of road and back into the glow of the streetlights.  Of course that was until Orso shook his head and I about jumped out of my skin.  Just a little jittery, silly me.

Flashcards

I think I’ve come up with the perfect solution to our groundskeeper’s good plant vs weed recognition problem.  Flashcards.  Very simple yet elegant as a solution.  Flashcards work for kids in school.  Math and alphabet flashcards have been used for decades.  So maybe plant flashcards would work.  I would take pictures of all the different plants growing around the lake and laminate the photos to plastic cards.  I can draw a circle with a slash through the middle of photo of a weed and even type a description below the photo.  Something like, “kill on sight” or maybe “wanted dead and decimated” for a weed and “diplomatic immunity” or “endangered species” for a keeper plant.  This may slow down the weed eating process around here, but eventually hopefully the groundskeeper will get it and maybe some poor plant souls will be spared the weapon of plant destruction.   Especially the ones I’ve paid money to put in the ground.

The flashcards could be put on a ring and hang from his belt for easy plant recognition access.  The groundskeeper would walk along flip up and peruse the flashcard to scan the photos searching to determine if the plants are public enemy #1 or keepers.  Who knows maybe flashcards will catch on for gardeners everywhere.  I wonder if I should apply for a patent.

Definitely Not A Botanist

Sunday the temperature was around ninety nine degrees and it felt like stepping into a blast furnace when you walked outside.  A great day to sit inside a dark movie theater, munching popcorn and watching the latest movie, or visiting a museum, anything indoors out of the heat. 

But the heat didn’t deter one man, our local groundskeeper.  A very nice man that works hard to mow and maintain the city grounds.  One of his tasks is to weed whack the weeds along the road edge to keep the weeds from growing too tall.  I couldn’t believe he was out in the middle of the day wielding his weed eater attacking the straggly weeds on the other side of the road.  He either doesn’t feel the heat like the rest of us or he has a death wish.  Or maybe I’m just a sissy.

I walked outside to get the burgers off the grill and saw him walking up the road away from my boulder, weed eater in hand and thought surely he didn’t use the weed eater on my ornamental grass that I had just planted a month ago.  Surely not.  Just to be sure I walked down the yard, burgers in tow to check on my grasses.  Sure enough he cut the grasses down all the way to the nubs.  I wanted to chase him down, rip the weed eater out of his hands and club him with it.  All I could think of was the hard work I’d done, digging up the grasses to replant, digging holes in the gravelly ground and replanting the grasses.  Not to mention having to listen to the diatribe from the neighbor, that I placed the granite boulder in the wrong spot.  I carefully watered the grasses until they were growing and looked like they would take hold.  Now the grasses were mere stubs in the ground. 

How could anyone mistake the tall graceful clumps of ornamental grass to common everyday weeds?  Was he blind, using the weed eater as a seeing cane to clear his path?  No, he just has no clue between the difference of a keeper plant and a noxious weed.  The only reason our local groundskeeper is still walking without the need of a cane, was the look of horror and regret on his face, and his comment of “Oh s***” when I explained to him I planted the grasses on purpose that he just mowed down with his weapon of plant destruction.

He’s definitely not a botanist.