Friday:) My Furry and Feathered Friends

 “All of the animals except for man know that the principle business of life is to enjoy it.”

-Samuel Butler

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We certainly can learn some lessons from animals, creatures great and small. I personally do not have any animals or pets right now, and to be honest, I did that take care of two big crazy dogs thing for so many years, that I’m tired of that part. Been there, done that.

But, I have been blessed and honored to help out some neighbors with their pets when they travel, and I seem to have furry visitors visiting on a regular basis. They Love Miss Toni.

I am watching Miss Kathy’s cats for a couple of days. I went in her house this morning and kept calling Sammi, but he was no where to be found. He usually comes running when I call. Low and behold, this morning, his majesty, Sir Sammi, was perched on his kitty thingy., too comfy to acknowledge my presence.

Later, both Sammi and Juno came out to visit me as I was pulling weeds in my front yard.

Juno was supervising. He asked if I needed any help. I said, “No, but you can go around my house and check for any mice or critters.” He complied. “All clear Miss Toni. No mice. Just a couple of birds in your tree.”

Mr. Bunny happens to live in my backyard. I took a picture from my window screen. I don’t have any flowers for him to eat yet, so he’s just hanging out, keeping warm by the bushes.

On my walk, I got to see mommy and daddy duck waddling around the pond. I think they left the little ones on the shore.

There was a happy little bird warbling a beautiful tune as I passed him by.

I am blessed to enjoy the creatures great and small. They seem to be quite happy and content, with very few creature comforts. Now, if man could harness that secret.

 “All of the animals except for man know that the principle business of life is to enjoy it.”

-Samuel Butler.

Easy Like Sunday Morning

I love Sunday! A cup of tea, the newspaper, and crazy dogs who don’t know what day of the week it is.

Pretty much every Sunday morning, I make a big pot of green tea and sip all day. After the sale section of the paper is checked, my coupons are cut, and my phone calls are made, I fry up a couple eggs for breakfast. That sounds pretty mundane, but not the way I do it. I see everyday things a little differently than most people, needless to say.

Yes, I love lazy Sundays. Hope you had a great day too! Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Wednesday: Words of Wisdom

They drive me crazy, but at the end of the day, they are best friends, and man’s best friend. We can learn a lot from our pets. Your pets love you unconditionally. They don’t care what you look like, or the color of your skin, your religion, or what language you speak. They always understand you and are always happy to see you. Yes, we can learn a lot from them!

A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.
Jim Morrison

Sick as a Dog Saturday

Saturday started out to be an amazing day. But now, I sit here with a debilitating migraine headache, so the highlights will wait for another day. To add insult to injury, the dogs are driving me nuts. So, I’ll leave you with the crazy dogs in my face all night.

HOPPY EASTER

Did you ever wonder what Easter has to do with a bunny, colored eggs, candy and baskets? There are a lot of theories and explanations. It really doesn’t matter much to me because, I’ll use any excuse to make cute cupcakes, dress up the dogs, and eat massive quantities of little foil wrapped chocolate eggs. And don’t forget that sadistic ritual of biting the heads off the poor little chocolate bunny. It’s all good.

I decided to do a bit of research on the Easter Bunny and share my findings. The most difficult part of this post was wrestling the squirmy 80 lb puppy in order to put the bunny ears on him for a quick photo op. Every time I managed to get the ears on, the two seconds it took to grab the camera, afforded him enough time to swipe at the fuzzy sequenced headdress and chew on it. This went on for fifteen minutes and about twenty failed blurry attempts. Old Prince was more cooperative, but his younger counterpart still wanted to rip up those ears.

“I’m not a bunny, Lady! Gimme those ears.”

“The things I’ll do for a little doggie treat!”

Wednesday: Words of Wisdom and Poetic Ponderings

Animals are creatures of habit. Our two dogs seem to magically know when it’s time to eat, even though they can’t tell time. Or can they? I understand that they wake up with the morning sun, but how do they know when it’s dinner time? Maybe they run over to the microwave and see when the big hand is on the 12 and the little hand is on the 3, and then they know it’s time for dinner. Perhaps with their super-sensitive dog ears and extreme canine intelligence, they can hear the tick-tick-ticking of the clock, and they have counted the 28,800 seconds since their 7am breakfast. This too may be possible. I know this because, it never fails, somewhere between 2:59 and 3:01pm, two big pointy noses get up-close and personal and start whining until they get their dinner.

So, the old saying, “Let sleeping dogs lie,” doesn’t really apply at my house. My dogs don’t lie around. One’s busy checking the time on microwave, and the other is counting the seconds till dinner.

What The Dog Perhaps Hears by Lisel Mueller

If an inaudible whistle
blown between our lips
can send him home to us,
then silence is perhaps
the sound of spiders breathing
and roots mining the earth;
it may be asparagus heaving,
headfirst, into the light
and the long brown sound
of cracked cups, when it happens.
We would like to ask the dog
if there is a continuous whir
because the child in the house
keeps growing, if the snake
really stretches full length
without a click and the sun
breaks through clouds without
a decibel of effort,
whether in autumn, when the trees
dry up their wells, there isn’t a shudder
too high for us to hear.

What is it like up there
above the shut-off level
of our simple ears?
For us there was no birth cry,
the newborn bird is suddenly here,
the egg broken, the nest alive,
and we heard nothing when the world changed.

Wednesday Words of Wisdom

“If your dog doesn’t like someone you probably shouldn’t either.” author unknown

There are many great quotes about dogs, probably because they are loyal, happy, and love you unconditionally. They are not pretentious and you always know what they’re thinking. If their tails are wagging, they are happy, and that’s good. If their shiny sharp teeth are showing and you hear a low pitched growl, you’re in big trouble. I guess dogs are smarter than we think, and they think we are smarter than we really are.

Here’s an oil painting I did a few years back. It was painted from an old family photo taken in the 50’s. The boy in the photo is my husband when he was about 5 years old, and the Weimaraner’s name was Prince. We have our own Prince now. It’s 50 years later, a different dog, but the same faithful companion.

“A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.”
-Roger Caras

“He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.”
– Unknown

Sunday: Saving Daylight or Wasting Time?

I HATE change, always have, always will. One of my biggest pet peeves is Daylight Saving Time. No, I didn’t forget the “s” in Saving… There is no “s”. Did you know that? (explanation below) I didn’t. I’ve been saying it wrong all these years. I learn something new every day, even on the stupid days when I’m spending all stupid day changing every stupid clock in the stupid house and in the car. Thank goodness the smart phones do it automatically. But, what if you have an old “stupid” phone that doesn’t change by itself? I’m sure you noticed the excessive use of the word “stupid.” Stupid stuff annoys me! Daylight Saving Time is STUPID!

The official spelling is Daylight Saving Time, not Daylight SavingS Time. (TMI)

Saving is used here as a verbal adjective (a participle). It modifies time and tells us more about its nature; namely, that it is characterized by the activity of saving daylight. It is a saving daylight kind of time. Because of this, it would be more accurate to refer to DST as daylight-saving time. Similar examples would be a mind-expanding book or a man-eating tiger. Saving is used in the same way as saving a ball game, rather than as a savings account.
Nevertheless, many people feel the word savings (with an ‘s’) flows more mellifluously off the tongue. Daylight Savings Time is also in common usage, and can be found in dictionaries.
Adding to the confusion is that the phrase Daylight Saving Time is inaccurate, since no daylight is actually saved. Daylight Shifting Time would be better, and Daylight Time Shifting more accurate, but neither is politically desirable.
Douma, M., curator. (2008). Early adoption in law. In Daylight Saving Time. Retrieved March 10, 2013, from http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/e.html.

Now that you are properly educated on this spelling peculiarity, and are equally annoyed with the day, I will leave you with a photo of our dogs enjoying a Sunday nap. They are exhausted from following me around while I changed all the stupid clocks.

HAPPY DAYLIGHT TIME SHIFTING DAY!!!

This is the one stupid clock on the bookshelf that I refuse to change.

Monday: The Mysterious Case of the Missing Avocado

Maintenance Monday rolls around way too quickly. Today was a glorious sunshiny day, and the temps got into the 80’s. 80’s in March? I didn’t want to spend the day inside doing housework, but none of my friends were able to go out and play. Drat! I needed an excuse to avoid housework. No going out to lunch for me. Double drat! So, I took out a frozen avocado to defrost on the kitchen counter for later. I learned that trick on Pinterest.

I opened the windows to air out the stale winter odors and dirty dog smell. Both dogs enjoyed peeking out the window, barking hysterically at every car, person and leaf that fluttered past. Before donning my rubber gloves, I decided to sit out back, check my emails, and grab a few rays. Well, that didn’t happen. I was too distracted by all the mounds of puppy poop dotting every square foot of the backyard. When you have two big dogs, ain’t no way getting ’round it. So, guess what I did for half an hour?

While the iron was hot, (I don’t really iron. That’s just a metaphor.) I decided to tackle the bathrooms. Buck followed me around, trying to grab every cleaning utensil and rag, leaping at me and stumbling around. He finally got tired of me spritzing him with vinegar and left to go harass old Prince. I cleaned and scoured and dusted my way through three bathrooms before collapsing on the couch.

I put my feet up, had a cup of tea, finally getting to my emails. After a couple hours of mindless surfing and television nonsense, I decided to make a couple avocado soft tacos. Where’s the avocado? It was in a ziplock bag right on the counter. I checked everywhere. Did I put it in the fridge? Nope! How did it disappear? I took the tortillas out of the fridge, looking a second time on every shelf.

That little (fill-in-the-blank…) Buck must have jumped on the counter and grabbed it. I walked around the house looking for any remains of the plastic bag. He couldn’t have eaten the bag too, or could he. After a long futile search, I decided to just warm up some soup.

Now, where are the tortillas? I looked for Buck. He was in the family room, and guess what he had clenched in his teeth? Yep! I guess the mysterious case of the missing avocado is solved!

Wednesday: Just Watching the World Go By

Did you ever have one of those days where you just didn’t feel like doing a single solitary thing? It’s 10pm, and if it wasn’t for being garbage day, I’d still be in my jammies. I actually contemplated taking the trash cans out in my bathrobe, but it was too cold out. I wasn’t tired, just feeling lazy. I did muster up the energy to set out some paints, brushes, and several glass vases on the kitchen table, but it’s all still sitting there waiting for inspiration and motivation. Maybe tomorrow.

The dogs and I watched a lot of TV, checked emails, and scanned the newspaper most the day. Well, the dogs didn’t check emails, although the puppy did try to grab my iPad a few times. Speaking of puppies, I did mange to get my cardio workout by chasing him around the house all day yelling, “Drop that! Drop it, now!” He steals everything, and he’s fast, and he’s big. Then, he scratches at the door every thirty seconds wanting to go out. Thirty seconds later, he stands up, pushing on the door handle with his front paws, and opens the door. He saunters back in, leaving the door wide open. This goes on approximately five hundred times a day. Really! At least five hundred times.

Maybe I’m not really lazy, I’m just exhausted from all the puppy shenanigans. The good thing is, he’ll grow out of this stage in a couple years. Yikes!

“In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.”
― W.H. Auden