Backyard Dilemma

This is an artist's rendition of our dog, Maisy, in the back yard.  Okay, it's me, playing with a new app on my Kindle.  Fortunately for my artistic endeavor here, Maisy was very easy to draw.  That black worm-like thing?  Maisy's tail.  Maisy is a Lab mix(with German Shepherd, I'm starting to think),  but the grass has almost overtaken her.  It looks like it is growing at a rate about a half-inch a day.  I could be wrong about that figure, so don't quote me. 

It's not our fault.  We have good intentions of mowing the lawn on a weekly basis. Well, my husband does.  He's the one who actually knows how to turn the lawn mower on.  Very important.  He is usually very good with thinking about mowing the lawn.

"I think that I am going to mow the lawn," he tells me. 

"Okay."

I try to be supportive. 

Every single time my husband has made that statement this summer, it has rained at our house. 

Every. Single. Time.  One Sunday the sun was shining, and it was still raining.  (Aside: there's that old wives' tale about how when the sun is shining while it is raining, the Devil is beating his wife.  Where the heck did that come from?  And who the heck would marry the Devil?  Those old wives must have drank quite a bit. End of aside.)

You can't mow the grass when it is wet, because it does something wonky to the mower.  Oh, and interrupts the Space-Time Continuum.  Very bad.  So we have to wait until the grass dries out, and it is not raining.  Our neighbor is OCD, and he can't stand our grass to be taller than his, so he has been mowing our front yard for us when he mows his.  We are very grateful for this, but we still have the backyard. The huge backyard that we had to have when we moved in, because our dog needed to have a place to run about. 

We just can't have tall grass in our back yard.  Mice, snakes, and other critters love tall grass, and they will move right in and the snakes will invite the mice over for a luncheon.  Ick.  Also, Zane likes to play out in the back yard, and by the end of this week, the grass will be as tall as he is.  We will never find him in that mess.

Maybe we need to get one of those old fashioned mowers, the kind with the wheels and the blades, nothing else.  We would have to push it a little harder, but we also wouldn't have to wait.  Do they even make those anymore?  Or should I just go buy a scythe and get back to my farmer roots?

General Randomness

Let's see how this goes today.  My access to the internet has been a bit spotty lately.  The internet does not like to swim, apparently!  I guess if this doesn't publish on time, I will publish it when I can. 

It's that time of the year for me.  You know how there are "rolling blackouts" during the summer when the electricity usage is high?  Well, I have rolling surliness, random moments when I just want to shake my laptop like an Etch-a-Sketch and then chuck it out onto the railroad tracks.  I just want to growl and snap at everyone at least once a day.  My coworkers and I have termed this form of grouchiness our "Joe Pesci" moments, after the actor's turn at a Snicker's commercial, because that is what my little tirades look like.  I've even put the Orange Cones of Doom around my desk on more than one occasion. (What?  Am I the only one with orange cones?)  Does anyone else ever feel like this or is it just me needing way more chocolate than most people?  Of course, even with all these warnings, everyone will be completely surprised when I turn into Godzilla and start leveling Tokyo. 

I was looking through a magazine, happily oblivious, when I noticed this in the advertisement.  I was shocked.  I'm supposed to match my eye shadow to my nail polish?  When did this happen?  I got the memo about belts and shoes matching, and the white after Labor Day, but eye shadow and nail polish?  Really?  Since polish is supposed to last at least ten days, does that mean that you have to shellac the eye shadow on your eye for a ten-day-run?  Because I can tell you that purple eye shadow looks less "sexy" and more 'black-eye following serious car accident" 24 hours after you put it on.  And why would a person want to match her eye shadow to her nails anyway?  Who would notice?  Should a girl walk around with her nails strategically near her eyes so that people can comment that the colors match?  As the saying goes, ain't nobody got time for that. 

Two days after our fun with flooding, and already everything is back to normal in most places.  Especially in New Braunfels, where disasters typically are not allowed to stand in the way of a good time. The two rivers flowing through town would just have to deal with it. The tourists had already shown up for a weekend of Memorial Day tubing, and that is what the tourists got.  The water, and the things washed into businesses by the water, were all swept out the door as much as possible, and the "Open" signs were posted, and the fun got started.  People got on with their lives with as little fuss as possible, and there is something vaguely comforting about that. 

Maisy the dog got fixed last week.  She was not the best patient, unfortunately.  I had to drag her from the car and into the facility.  She growled at everyone, so they had to muzzle her.  As they brought her to us, she piddled on the floor.  Then there's the Cone of Shame, which she is expected to wear for ten days.  Poor Maisy can't do hardly anything without smacking the Cone against everything in sight.  She's not really very happy about it, and I can't say that I blame her.  But it's to keep her from ripping out her stitches and bleeding all over the place, so the cone stays. 

Has this sign, or a variation thereof, ever actually stopped a single person from taking a risk?  I can't think of a single person who ever saw such a sign and said, "Oh golly, I have to assume the risk for this ride, I'd better do something else!"  People don't even read such signs anymore, they just wave at it with a vague "yeah, yeah" and jump right into the risky activity without so much as a thought.  I guess that it is all about presentation.  Maybe these sorts of signs need to come with pictures from those Final Destination movies to add impact.  "See!  This is what happened to the LAST group that didn't pay attention to this sign!"  That sort of thing.  




 

Go visit Ms. Stacy today and give her some lovin'.  Not the kind that will get you arrested, of course.  The other kind. 

I Am A Cat Enabler

I have a calico cat named Pounce. Pounce came to us straight from a box; she was the last kitten in a box that an 8th grader had brought to school, and my husband is a sucker for a cute face. He brought her home about a month after we got married, and she has been living with us ever since.

And she is insane. Crazy with Cheez-Whiz. Cuckoo for Cocoa-Puffs.

Did I mention that she's crazy?

Pounce didn't start out insane. For a long time, she was just your average cat, but a bit more skittish than the others in the house. She wasn't all that keen about the outdoors, but she would head out there in the mornings with the other cats to eat some grass and check out the world.

Then something happened that was more than Pounce's brain could process.

She stopped coming downstairs at all. For two years.

She hissed at everyone and everything.

She spent days under the bed in our room, and only came out to eat and use the litter box.

Apparently Pounce's normal self is just plain crazy. We got used to it.

She still hisses at my son, Zane, like he's new to the house. Every day. Zane hisses back(I'm so proud), and Pounce runs and hides under the bed for several hours.

Pounce hisses, stalks, and chases Zena, our kitten. She randomly whacks Morris, my 16 year old cat, in the head. While she will come downstairs now, if there's any sort of strangeness, like a toy that wasn't there before, she will head back upstairs to hide.

And she will no longer go out onto the patio to eat grass. She will stand in front of the door and meow, but when I open the door for her, she just stands there, her pupils wide open with fear.

So what do I do, as a good kitty-mama? Do I get coax her outside with treats and reward her for her bravery? No.

I go outside and pick blades of grass and bring them back into the house. Then I hold them in my hand so Pounce can pretend that she is outside eating grass.

Yep. I am buying into her crazy.