August 22, 2007
Dare I assume a double, super-dog-day spent fetching sticks and running in circles after each other, would leave “Dot” and “Cash” sapped of energy and prone to the “sleeping like a log” syndrome.
And dare I assume that just shy of dusk on any given summer evening, my neck of the woods be a candidate for the quiet slumber of night, fragrant with the smell of fresh cut field hay.
Nope.
Instead, 30 seconds before the water boils for my cup of “caffeine-free sleep well” tea, and while the arc is high on the last doggie pee break of the night, “Pepe La Pew” is spotted minding his own business along the fence line.
While I understand the deep-seated canine instinct to chase anything that moves, could the “powers that be” please explain one more time, why my dogs don’t get it about skunks?
Like a scene from the movie “Groundhog Day,” did the same scenario unfold two consecutive nights last week, and four times in June and July, when after a spirited pursuit, both dogs slammed headlong into the scent glands of the white-striped varmint.
And once again there I was, standing outside on the porch step at 8:45 p.m., in the middle of a slow-motion movie shouting expletives at my stooges and watching in disbelief as Pepe stopped short to spray at the same time the tea kettle whistle blew.
And in a New York minute, as the sun went down and the wind shifted and brought the consequence to my nostrils, I wished I lived in the Big Rock Candy Mountains where the land is fair and bright and the wind “don’t blow” and the chickens lay soft-boiled eggs.
Dot and Cash should have used their supersonic hearing to catch the message from “The Duke,” who in the minutes prior to their odorous episode barked down the countryside to his canine colleagues the sage advice that, “Life is tough, but it’s tougher when you’re stupid.”
After legendary face-to-face consultations with Pepe’s backside, “The Duke” now concedes right-of- way and his food dish to “Mr. Stinky.”
But despite my canines being able to hear me open a can of dog food at 600 paces, they apparently didn’t catch that doggy memo.
Instead, ripe with skunk and soaked in my anti-toxin of “Febreze” plus hydrogen peroxide, dish soap, water, and baking soda, the stooges sit shunned at the backdoor puzzled as to why, once again, they are excommunicated from the farmhouse.
Not to mention me, having come into contact with a fresh recipe of “Pepe on dog” while trying to expunge it, carry fragments of the affair with me into the kitchen where the tea kettle has boiled dry and a husband shouts from his dent in the couch, “What’s that smell?”
Right then, I wanted to burst into flames like Nicholas Cage in “Ghost Rider” and scare the pants off everything that moved or spoke.
But instead I just took a deep breath and said, “Second hand skunk”—which immediately affected Pete to jump to his feet and run to draw me a bath.
(I guess the unexpected can have its rewards).
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Friday, July 6, 2007
'Paws' for thought
July 5, 2007
The anonymous author who penned “Raising teenagers is like nailing Jell-O to a tree” also should have added dogs to that discipline philosophy.
In my neck of the woods, I’m quite sure the few smart brain cells my canines did have, fell out and into the hole where they buried the last meaty beef rib bones I doled out to them.
That deduction would at least explain why “Dot” and “Cash” seemingly never can find their secret stashes again.
It also might explain why Cash evidently didn’t remember what happened the first time a skunk lifted its tail in his face two months ago—as he rolled around and drove his face into the grass 16 times Saturday night after a second ill-fated chase.
What I know for sure is that all the hours of my hard work under the sun were destroyed by the likes of two tomfoolery dogs not nailed to a tree.
Dot is a mix of fox terrier and border collie. In other words, a digger that understands 500 words—with the exception of “No,” “Come Here,” and “Stay out of my garden.”
Cash is all Labrador retriever and could outswim a fish if the prize was something to eat. If only he would just learn the meaning of “No,” “Come Here,” and “Stay out of my garden.”
Though I’d been gardening since early May, I was busy connecting again with Mother Earth over the long weekend planting orphaned flowers rescued from local greenhouses as they geared up to empty out their nurseries of the over-rooted six packs of plants bypassed by other green thumbs.
That’s when I saw Dot make a beeline for a small propane tank situated at the side of the house where I was gardening, her nose then jammed in a small air space underneath.
That’s when I heard it—the telltale squeak of a mouse that also had prompted Dot to crank her front paws into dig mode.
“No!” I scolded, thwarting the excavation of new ferns and flowers I’d just finished planting close by.
In my wisdom, I decided to encourage the little critter to exit his hideaway by poking a broomstick under there, which would send it scurrying onto the lawn and into whatever fate awaited.
Cash loped over, dripping wet from a swim in the creek to check out Dot’s mission, and joined the ridged and shivering canine with equal anticipation, forgetting to shake off his excess coat of water.
I poked the broomstick under the tank.
I had about a two-second warning, during which time my brain processed the impending swath of destruction of everything I’d just spent hours working on.
All of a sudden, a little brown body with saucer eyes, a furry tail, and the telltale signs of a chipmunk stripe bolted out from under the tank and down the flower bed.
Have you ever seen someone shouting in slow motion in a movie during a fleeting action scene? “Nooooooooo!”—three octaves lower than my normal voice—spilled out of me and my eyes popped out of my head as the dogs, in hot pursuit of the frantic chipmunk, trampled all the delphiniums that had been standing proud and tall in their transplant.
And as most any panicked animal would do, the little chipmunk took the closest exit from terror and ran at the speed of light through the open porch door and down the basement stairs, followed within a tail hair by two barking dogs—one of which was soaking wet.
If I hadn’t known where the trio had gone, I would have first checked the toilet to make sure “Chipster” wasn’t swimming in the bowl like his town cousin recently did while visiting Jack Elliott’s house in Rainy River.
(But then we put the seat down at our house, Jack).
Luckily for the chipmunk, it eluded the dogs altogether and in the end (though I’d assumed a successful escape back up the stairs and into the free world during the pursuers’ pit stop at the open bag of dog food in the basement), the chipmunk had, in fact, chewed a hole through a storage bag containing Christmas garland, where it was a stowaway for more than an hour.
I managed to haul the bag outside before the chipmunk shot out of the hole and across the yard—much to the dismay of two dogs, locked just then in their kennel (paused for thought) after I found them eating the uprooted flowers I could have salvaged from the chipmunk chase. Alas, the dogs days of summer are here.
The anonymous author who penned “Raising teenagers is like nailing Jell-O to a tree” also should have added dogs to that discipline philosophy.
In my neck of the woods, I’m quite sure the few smart brain cells my canines did have, fell out and into the hole where they buried the last meaty beef rib bones I doled out to them.
That deduction would at least explain why “Dot” and “Cash” seemingly never can find their secret stashes again.
It also might explain why Cash evidently didn’t remember what happened the first time a skunk lifted its tail in his face two months ago—as he rolled around and drove his face into the grass 16 times Saturday night after a second ill-fated chase.
What I know for sure is that all the hours of my hard work under the sun were destroyed by the likes of two tomfoolery dogs not nailed to a tree.
Dot is a mix of fox terrier and border collie. In other words, a digger that understands 500 words—with the exception of “No,” “Come Here,” and “Stay out of my garden.”
Cash is all Labrador retriever and could outswim a fish if the prize was something to eat. If only he would just learn the meaning of “No,” “Come Here,” and “Stay out of my garden.”
Though I’d been gardening since early May, I was busy connecting again with Mother Earth over the long weekend planting orphaned flowers rescued from local greenhouses as they geared up to empty out their nurseries of the over-rooted six packs of plants bypassed by other green thumbs.
That’s when I saw Dot make a beeline for a small propane tank situated at the side of the house where I was gardening, her nose then jammed in a small air space underneath.
That’s when I heard it—the telltale squeak of a mouse that also had prompted Dot to crank her front paws into dig mode.
“No!” I scolded, thwarting the excavation of new ferns and flowers I’d just finished planting close by.
In my wisdom, I decided to encourage the little critter to exit his hideaway by poking a broomstick under there, which would send it scurrying onto the lawn and into whatever fate awaited.
Cash loped over, dripping wet from a swim in the creek to check out Dot’s mission, and joined the ridged and shivering canine with equal anticipation, forgetting to shake off his excess coat of water.
I poked the broomstick under the tank.
I had about a two-second warning, during which time my brain processed the impending swath of destruction of everything I’d just spent hours working on.
All of a sudden, a little brown body with saucer eyes, a furry tail, and the telltale signs of a chipmunk stripe bolted out from under the tank and down the flower bed.
Have you ever seen someone shouting in slow motion in a movie during a fleeting action scene? “Nooooooooo!”—three octaves lower than my normal voice—spilled out of me and my eyes popped out of my head as the dogs, in hot pursuit of the frantic chipmunk, trampled all the delphiniums that had been standing proud and tall in their transplant.
And as most any panicked animal would do, the little chipmunk took the closest exit from terror and ran at the speed of light through the open porch door and down the basement stairs, followed within a tail hair by two barking dogs—one of which was soaking wet.
If I hadn’t known where the trio had gone, I would have first checked the toilet to make sure “Chipster” wasn’t swimming in the bowl like his town cousin recently did while visiting Jack Elliott’s house in Rainy River.
(But then we put the seat down at our house, Jack).
Luckily for the chipmunk, it eluded the dogs altogether and in the end (though I’d assumed a successful escape back up the stairs and into the free world during the pursuers’ pit stop at the open bag of dog food in the basement), the chipmunk had, in fact, chewed a hole through a storage bag containing Christmas garland, where it was a stowaway for more than an hour.
I managed to haul the bag outside before the chipmunk shot out of the hole and across the yard—much to the dismay of two dogs, locked just then in their kennel (paused for thought) after I found them eating the uprooted flowers I could have salvaged from the chipmunk chase. Alas, the dogs days of summer are here.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Tension over comprehension
June 27, 2007
“Yearn to understand first and to be understood second.”
Well, Ms. Beca Lewis Allen, I keep trying to get my husband to take this advice, but he’s not getting it.
Though I’ll admit I’m not following my own counsel— as I yearn to be understood and to understand second.
It’s a woman’s prerogative, right?
So around and around we go.
The sages believe that souls attract to those who are on the same frequency and that if you move out of frequency, or out of sync, life doesn’t flow and goes into gridlock.
Let’s put that into the context of Mr. and Mrs. If the soul be wife, and she supposedly attracts a soul called husband who be on the same wavelength as she, then why, oh why, is it so much work keeping said man on the same page about a myriad of things, including the toilet seat rule, doing the dishes, vacuuming, dusting, taking out the garbage, and the importance of choosing the Oprah Show over Battlestar Galactica?
I love my Pete and we are lifers no matter what. Yet, it still be hard work to keep him tuned in to the household facts of life that frequently slip between the cushions on his side of the couch or collect with all the whisker hairs behind the sink taps in the bathroom, where I invariably drop my toothbrush.
I was sitting out at my spot by the creek the other evening, listening for sage comprehension advice on the wind, when four male mallard ducks flew by chasing one reluctant female around the sky.
“Oh, brother, all males are alike. They have one thing on their mind,” I blurted out loud.
Suddenly, after nine years of marriage, I had the answer to the law of attraction and all the frequency problems with my soulmate. I quickened my pace back to the house and peeked around the corner into the living room.
In a sultry voice aimed at the man prone on the couch, and raising my eyebrows up and down, I asked, “Honey, would you draw me a bath?”
“Sure, dear,” he replied, moving to sit and get up. I went off to brush my hair, get undressed, and find that little black number I had bought in the city.
I was gone from his sight about five minutes and still hadn’t heard the rush of hot water running into the tub. I came out of the bedroom wrapped in my bath towel to find Pete sitting at the kitchen table with his reading glasses on, pencil in hand, and studying something in front of him. As I drew near and saw what his interpretation of my request was, even my best flat stare impression couldn’t express how sure I was that aliens had just kidnapped my husband and replaced him with a space cadet.
There on a piece of grid paper was his pencil sketch of the new bathroom he’d envisioned for our remodelling project due for construction in 2015.
“Is this what you had in mind, dear?” he queried, ever so unsuspecting to the immediate frequency static and gridlock being drafted in a stalled woman.
Yet I couldn’t help but smile because the moment was just too misunderstood not to be funny.
Author Christina Baldwin once said, “When you’re stuck in a spiral, to change all aspects of the spin you need only to change one thing.”
So I just dropped my towel.
“Yearn to understand first and to be understood second.”
Well, Ms. Beca Lewis Allen, I keep trying to get my husband to take this advice, but he’s not getting it.
Though I’ll admit I’m not following my own counsel— as I yearn to be understood and to understand second.
It’s a woman’s prerogative, right?
So around and around we go.
The sages believe that souls attract to those who are on the same frequency and that if you move out of frequency, or out of sync, life doesn’t flow and goes into gridlock.
Let’s put that into the context of Mr. and Mrs. If the soul be wife, and she supposedly attracts a soul called husband who be on the same wavelength as she, then why, oh why, is it so much work keeping said man on the same page about a myriad of things, including the toilet seat rule, doing the dishes, vacuuming, dusting, taking out the garbage, and the importance of choosing the Oprah Show over Battlestar Galactica?
I love my Pete and we are lifers no matter what. Yet, it still be hard work to keep him tuned in to the household facts of life that frequently slip between the cushions on his side of the couch or collect with all the whisker hairs behind the sink taps in the bathroom, where I invariably drop my toothbrush.
I was sitting out at my spot by the creek the other evening, listening for sage comprehension advice on the wind, when four male mallard ducks flew by chasing one reluctant female around the sky.
“Oh, brother, all males are alike. They have one thing on their mind,” I blurted out loud.
Suddenly, after nine years of marriage, I had the answer to the law of attraction and all the frequency problems with my soulmate. I quickened my pace back to the house and peeked around the corner into the living room.
In a sultry voice aimed at the man prone on the couch, and raising my eyebrows up and down, I asked, “Honey, would you draw me a bath?”
“Sure, dear,” he replied, moving to sit and get up. I went off to brush my hair, get undressed, and find that little black number I had bought in the city.
I was gone from his sight about five minutes and still hadn’t heard the rush of hot water running into the tub. I came out of the bedroom wrapped in my bath towel to find Pete sitting at the kitchen table with his reading glasses on, pencil in hand, and studying something in front of him. As I drew near and saw what his interpretation of my request was, even my best flat stare impression couldn’t express how sure I was that aliens had just kidnapped my husband and replaced him with a space cadet.
There on a piece of grid paper was his pencil sketch of the new bathroom he’d envisioned for our remodelling project due for construction in 2015.
“Is this what you had in mind, dear?” he queried, ever so unsuspecting to the immediate frequency static and gridlock being drafted in a stalled woman.
Yet I couldn’t help but smile because the moment was just too misunderstood not to be funny.
Author Christina Baldwin once said, “When you’re stuck in a spiral, to change all aspects of the spin you need only to change one thing.”
So I just dropped my towel.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Boost or no boost
June 13, 2007
If at bedtime you find your husband lying prone and beating his chest with a pair of drumsticks, it can mean one of two things—either he’s in the mood for more than music or the “Rock Star” energy drink is taking effect.
Knowing my neck of the woods, life’s like that, and you never know what you’re going to get.
I have yet to find the need to partake in the caffeine punch that, from time to time, makes its way home with my groceries, and that a certain someone (who shall not be named) says he’s just as surprised as I am to find in the bag.
Besides, with brand names that include “Venom,” “Dynamite,” “Go Fast,” “Flying Horse,” “Monster,” and “AMP,” I’m afraid to ingest the stuff for fear that I’ll grow fangs, blow up while speeding, sprout wings, neigh, turn green, or morph and become a sound system for any number of guitars growing in my living room.
Furthermore, and for the most part, I already have more than enough energy for the two of us anyway.
My energy is palpable, especially when a certain trip is looming on the horizon and into the heart of Minnesota for the annual community garage weekend.
Never mind the fact that the day before we left, I literally spent 12 hours pumping and hauling rain water out of my basement by myself since “Mr. Incredible” wasn’t home from work yet.
But even after that “slave to a soaker” affair, I didn’t crack open a energy drink.
I didn’t have to.
Although I scraped my skeleton off the floor to go pick up my beloved at the bus station, my energy quickly returned looking up at the full moon, pondering the distance, as I fed my flat stare with fire balls at listening to him lament how tired he was from the long ride from the city.
I returned to full throttle energy levels after my shower, but not due to the regenerative powers of the hot water.
A certain someone (who shall not be named) had snuck in to the bathroom to relieve himself and forgot to put the seat down when he flushed, wherein I dropped my toothbrush on the way out of the shower.
Energy drink-free, I blew out of the bathroom with my dripping toothbrush, hair askew and growling loudly at my husband to check his head and also take Jack Elliott’s advice about said seat in his “Squirrel Pie” column in last week’s Times.
Thankfully for all parties involved, there were more important things to focus on, like garage sale issues.
And because it is a fact that what you focus on expands, over the day-long spree of 18 garage sales in Minnesota cottage country, I managed to amass some of the best buys known to woman-kind, including an ornamental hedgehog that promptly drove “Dot” into a barking frenzy when she found it sitting in the screen porch.
And while I know that more junk is just what we didn’t need after down-sizing last year, at least we didn’t have to worry about importing a pathetic piece of sponge half-covered in fabric remnant like we tried to do last year.
But living here on an old farm has its benefits when you find treasures that rival even the best garage sale finds. Finding cool stuff, like an old car parts, gives me energy to do more yard clean-up.
René Panhard and Emile Levassor, who were credited with inventing the first automatic transmission in the late 1800s, were geniuses. But I’d almost bet they never guessed anyone like me would come along and tear apart an old one for innovative candle holders.
If at bedtime you find your husband lying prone and beating his chest with a pair of drumsticks, it can mean one of two things—either he’s in the mood for more than music or the “Rock Star” energy drink is taking effect.
Knowing my neck of the woods, life’s like that, and you never know what you’re going to get.
I have yet to find the need to partake in the caffeine punch that, from time to time, makes its way home with my groceries, and that a certain someone (who shall not be named) says he’s just as surprised as I am to find in the bag.
Besides, with brand names that include “Venom,” “Dynamite,” “Go Fast,” “Flying Horse,” “Monster,” and “AMP,” I’m afraid to ingest the stuff for fear that I’ll grow fangs, blow up while speeding, sprout wings, neigh, turn green, or morph and become a sound system for any number of guitars growing in my living room.
Furthermore, and for the most part, I already have more than enough energy for the two of us anyway.
My energy is palpable, especially when a certain trip is looming on the horizon and into the heart of Minnesota for the annual community garage weekend.
Never mind the fact that the day before we left, I literally spent 12 hours pumping and hauling rain water out of my basement by myself since “Mr. Incredible” wasn’t home from work yet.
But even after that “slave to a soaker” affair, I didn’t crack open a energy drink.
I didn’t have to.
Although I scraped my skeleton off the floor to go pick up my beloved at the bus station, my energy quickly returned looking up at the full moon, pondering the distance, as I fed my flat stare with fire balls at listening to him lament how tired he was from the long ride from the city.
I returned to full throttle energy levels after my shower, but not due to the regenerative powers of the hot water.
A certain someone (who shall not be named) had snuck in to the bathroom to relieve himself and forgot to put the seat down when he flushed, wherein I dropped my toothbrush on the way out of the shower.
Energy drink-free, I blew out of the bathroom with my dripping toothbrush, hair askew and growling loudly at my husband to check his head and also take Jack Elliott’s advice about said seat in his “Squirrel Pie” column in last week’s Times.
Thankfully for all parties involved, there were more important things to focus on, like garage sale issues.
And because it is a fact that what you focus on expands, over the day-long spree of 18 garage sales in Minnesota cottage country, I managed to amass some of the best buys known to woman-kind, including an ornamental hedgehog that promptly drove “Dot” into a barking frenzy when she found it sitting in the screen porch.
And while I know that more junk is just what we didn’t need after down-sizing last year, at least we didn’t have to worry about importing a pathetic piece of sponge half-covered in fabric remnant like we tried to do last year.
But living here on an old farm has its benefits when you find treasures that rival even the best garage sale finds. Finding cool stuff, like an old car parts, gives me energy to do more yard clean-up.
René Panhard and Emile Levassor, who were credited with inventing the first automatic transmission in the late 1800s, were geniuses. But I’d almost bet they never guessed anyone like me would come along and tear apart an old one for innovative candle holders.
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