Ball has returned. I found it while sorting the pile of stuff that accumulates under the coffee table. Harriet was overjoyed, and much hilarity ensued. Alas, I was too busy laughing to take pictures, but it looked a little like this. Harriet is an enthusiastic jokester, but her sense of humor does not extend to Ball. Ball, she takes very, very seriously. Do not mess with Ball, pleaseandthanks. Of course, that didn’t stop me from torturing her. That’s what dogs are for, right?
Category: Pets
From the “My Dog is Weird” Files
I brought cucumber chunks for my mid-morning snack. As I was peeling, coring, and chunking away, Harriet sat intently at my feet, twin slingers spouting from each side of her mouth. The damned dog was drooling for cucumbers.
Good, um, Morning
I’d really like to be sleeping in right now. I had fully intended to do so this ayem, and stayed up extra late onna counta that. So being wakened at 6am by a Beagle in full bay was not my idea of a good time. Not even close. He’s been trailing something in the woods behind me, and has been barking and baying for the last two hours. I am not amused.
I’ve been able to catch glimpses of him out my kitchen window, and I recognize him. He’s the same mostly white Beagle who was dumped here a few years ago. He attached himself to my landfolks’ pack o’ Bumpass hounds, but later took up residence at the Silver Mullet’s house. He nearly got hit by me last Fall as I drove past. Luckily, I’d seen movement in the tall grass and weeds by the side of the road, so I’d slowed way the hell down. He careened onto the road and ended up bouncing off my front tire, unhurt and, hopefully, a little better educated on the laws of physics.
Anyway, he’s having a grand time hunting on this gorgeous morning.
Friday Cat Story
Speaking of cats…
Pandora, my old cat, is a little strange. She’s lying under my feet, with a wadded up wash cloth between her front paws.
Pandora has two odd habits. First she compulsively washes anyone who pets her. I’m allergic to cat saliva, so whenever she sneaks in a stealth lick, I break out in red bumps. She also washes Rory. He doesn’t mind. In fact, he sometimes hunts her down and makes her wash his face and ears.
Second, she carries bits of paper and cloth around the house. I have no idea why she does it. During the night, she gets into the trash and the laundry hamper and digs out wash cloths, socks, and bits paper. Every morning, I wake up with a pile of her thievings outside my bedroom door. She doesn’t always bring them to me, though. Sometimes she sleeps on top of them. Sometimes she plays with them. And sometimes she just carries them around the house, trying to meow.[1] Because her mouth is stuffed full, what little sound there is comes out muffled and garbled. At that point, about all I can do is point and laugh. Luckily, she’s weird in many ways, and is one of those rare cats who enjoys being a clown. She’s totally okay with being pointed and laughed at.
I would worry that the fabric/paper fetish was a sign of an age related cognitive disorder, except she’s been doing it for more than ten years. The same with the compulsive people licking. They’re odd behaviors, but they’re normal for Pandora.
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1. Pandora has never been able to meow properly. Instead, she makes a little chirping noise or a whispered “mah.” When she was a kitten, my roommate had one of her littermates. The only way we were able to tell the kittens apart was that Pandora would open her mouth and no noise would come out. Luckily, Pan has an excellent sense of humor and doesn’t mind in the least being laughed at. I’ve known cats who were mortified when they were laughed at, but not Pan. She’s a ham.
Thursday DogBlogging
She’d just woken up from napping in a sun spot. She was sitting and staring off into space, so I thought I’d play with the macro setting on my camera.
Note the way her front feet are propped up. How on earth that could possibly be comfortable is beyond me, but she seemed perfectly happy.
Ides of March Photoblogging
Sunset
Miss Harriet Brown knows that real ladies cross their legs.
Over It
Okay, that little taste of spring was quite nice, but I’ve suddenly reached my limit. You see, I found a wee baby tick last night. There is no creature on God’s green earth that is more loathsome than the tick. Ticks are repulsive, disgusting vectors of disease and they have no business bringing themselves within a country mile of me. I want a restraining order.
So, I broke out the Frontline and have place an order for a Preventic collar. Just the one. And, wow, did that ever feel weird. I’m used to stocking up by ordering 4-6 tick collars at a time. There’s no need to do that now, though, since I’m down to one nekkid dog. A tick collar will last Harriet a full three months, instead of the usual 30 days for the Chowy dog.
Potato-Tomato
Happy Monday! I woke up this ayem with a stiff shoulder and sore back. I hate it when I get a sleep injury. It’s really not a good way to start the week, I think. It could be worse, though. One of my coworkers got a speeding ticket this morning. I know the area where she got it, and it’s only a fluke that I haven’t gotten one in that spot, myself. The speed limit goes from 45mph to 35mph to 45mph, so it’s easy for your speed creep up without realizing it.
So, here’s a question. I do a lot of journaling, of both the arty and just text variety. Journaling, by definition, is a personal activity. Intensely personal, at times. Twice, though, I’ve come across folks selling pages from their journals. The thought gives me brain ache. It’s one thing to share select pages from a journal by posting them on-line, but to tear pages out of a journal and sell them? It seems to me that what is being sold, then, is not in fact a page from a journal. And, why would someone want to buy a page from someone else’s journal? Maybe if you’re some sort of Leonardo, it would be understandable, but that’s not the case with the journalers in question.
I realize this may just be an issue of semantics, but there are days when I feel like semantics is the only thing that really matters. If we cannot communicate effectively, there’s not much point in communicating at all. Hrmph.
Happy Saturday
Blech. I feel like I’m wading through Jello this morning. Or, what’s left of this morning, anyway. I stayed up way past my bedtime last night, so I slept in, which was perhaps not as good an idea as it first appeared to be. Have you ever gone back to sleep, then woke up later feeling even groggier, and with a headache? Yuck. I’m all for sleeping, but this hardly seems worth the effort.
Last night was fun, though. It was a friend’s birthday party (hat themed, WTF? I wore a tin-foil beanie). Parties at her place are sometimes a craps shoot for me, because her house is small and I get claustrophobic when it gets crowded. I managed to score a chair at the back of the living room, though, so I stayed put. Let the entertainment come to me, was my theory. It worked well, too. There were all sorts of people I didn’t know–again, a craps shoot–but everything was fine right up until I left. At that point, some drunken shithead tottered up the stairs to the living room, taking pictures, which I’m NOT OKAY WITH, ASSHOLE! I told her not to take my picture, to which the only acceptable response is “Don’t worry, I won’t.” Instead, she said, “Why would you care, you don’t know me.” Grrr.
It’s weird to not drink at a drinking party (I was driving). I always get self-conscious when I drink, because I’m sure that anyone who isn\’t drinking must think I’m acting like an ass. I’m relieved to find that I’m not at all irritated by my friends’ inebriated behavior (I was mightily entertained last night, in fact). Rude, drunken strangers get on my last nerve, though. I guess that’s why I always preferred to go to parties instead of bars. Far better the drunks you know than the drunks you don’t, right?
I’m also, I fear, working on some sort of respiratory disease. I suddenly lost my voice yesterday afternoon. It came back, but faded in and out. Now, it’s fading out again. I’m sure sitting in a room full of smoke last night didn’t help. Nor did getting full-on coughed on by someone who is getting over some sort of respiratory plague. He’s probably not contagious at this point, but if I come down with the plague, I’m blaming Wayne. Just because.
And now, I have to get ready to go to another birthday celebration. This one involves Mexican food, though, instead of drunks wielding cameras, so it should be thoroughly enjoyable. Mmmm… Veggie fajitas… Chili rellenos…
Miss Brown says, “Bring home a doggie bag, pleaseandthanks!” (Actually, she was drooling for tater tots, but I’m sure she’d drool for Mexican food, too.)
Speaking of Math…
I may be math challenged, but my dog is likely some sort of math jeenyous. According to this article, Miss Brown can run and do calculus at the same time. I am uber impressed.
When running from A towards C, the ball at B appears closer and closer as the dog gets closer to C, but its speed of approach to B diminishes (reaching zero at C). At some moment of its run, its speed of approach while running on the beach equals its speed of approach when swimming directly to the ball. If the dog jumps into the water at this moment, the strategy yields the same y value as that provided by the travel-time minimization model (where r is the dog\’s running speed, and s is its swimming speed).
I get a brain ache just trying to figure out what that means.
In art news, I worked on a bunch of ATC-sized mini-collages last night while I flipped between The Amazing Race and Independent Lens. I’m not a drama or theater buff, but the documentary on Oakley Hall III on Independent Lens was fascinating. I hope they re-run it, because I’d like to see the whole thing.
I haven’t scanned/photographed the collages yet. Hopefully, I’ll have time to do it tonight. I think I did 9 or 10 of them, and all but a couple are completely finished. Not a bad evening’s work, I think.
red paper boat 