You all know that Irish Setters are the first dogs in my heart. But the last Wednesday of every August, Golden Retriever Day at the Fair is one of my favorite days of the year. There is just something about a whole bunch of Golden Retrievers together, all fluffy and happy, wanting nothing more than to be petted and loved on by an adoring public.
This year I counted 29, although there might have been a couple more. There was an agility demonstration, an obedience demonstration, field retrievals and flyball. And more than just about any other breed, these Goldens are amazingly happy to strut their stuff. Most dog groups do their demonstrations and then bring the dogs over to the fence for the audience to meet and greet. On Golden Retriever Day, they START at the fence, then do demos, then come BACK to the fence. Because there is no such thing as too much attention for a Golden.
We probably spent close to an hour up at the Pet Pavilion and I have to admit that as we walked away, I felt a wonderful sense of release and peace wash over me; therapy dogs without any vests. I think I could have stayed all day.
Anybody know the names of the very first two Golden Retrievers (from 1889)? What name do you think is good for a dog?
The home health care team was pretty adamant that Nonny not go out while she is “convalescing”. She got permission for church and for her weekly shampoo and blow out. (While I was there, she also convinced them that she should be allowed to go to a 90s birthday party with her PEO group, where she is one of the honorees. She shamelessly used tears to get this dispensation.)
Wednesday morning, we got her out of the condo, down the steps and into the car. Her walker folds up easily so we were quickly on our way. The hairdresser is in a neighborhood called Old Orchard, which is located in Webster Groves but actually was around before it was swallowed up by Webster. When I was in the 5th grade, we moved to Old Orchard – we lived in the house on Sunnyside for five years – the longest of any of the houses I lived in until I was on my own. Since we were right there, we drove over to see how the house was doing. It looks just fine, although it’s white now; when we lived there my folks had it painted a deep gray and we had yellow trim. Then we went a saw my grandparents house which is 2 blocks away (they lived there before we lived on Sunnyside). Then we went looking for the elementary school I went to in 5th and 6th grade. We didn’t find it and an internet search shows when it was built and when it changed names but nothing about when it closed. I’m just curious enough that I might call the school district in the next couple of weeks and ask them.
By this time, we were on a roll. We found 2 of the schools Nonny went to as a kid, the house she lived in back then and then rounded off our trip down memory lane by driving by the house on West Cedar where we lived when I was five.
I learned to ride a bike when we lived here. Nonny had scarlet fever when we lived her. I played with Bobby and his matchbox cars and was just about to go into kindergarten at Bristol school when my dad got a job with Missouri State and we moved to Jefferson City.
When my sister Sally came over later on Wednesday, we regaled her with all the places of our past that we had visited. She was quite upset as apparently the permission to get Nonny’s hair done did not include joy-riding. In fact, the home health care team had specifically said Nonny shouldn’t be accompanying anyone on any other trips than her allowable outings. Oops.
Neither Nonny or I mentioned our gadding about when the physical therapist came the next day.
Based on my junk mail the last few months, I should now be the proud winner of at least 300 Makita Drills. I don’t open these junk emails but I do see the subject lines and the first few words of the messages; there are at least 2 a day. Occasionally it’s another kind of drill or a barbeque grill but for some reason the Makita just keeps showing up. If other folks are getting all these emails, then Makita would be bankrupt from all the giveaways.
I was thinking that if I actually accepted all these drills, I could open a drill store of my own and make a small killing. If my junk emails are any indication, I could probably get a cheap storefront for my new business at Camp LeJeune!
About 20 years ago I worked with a young woman who had a tattoo across her wrist. Turned out is said “I’ll always love” and was in memory of her mother who had passed away a few years earlier.
Since then I have always thought that maybe somebody I would be a tattoo commemorating the big love of my life – YA. I wanted flowers with YA’s name, preferably in her own handwriting. I’ve mentioned this repeatedly over the years and I’m sure that YA was sick of hearing about it. My questions the last year about who is reputable got next to nothing, although she did once mention Grand Avenue Tattoo over in St. Paul. I wasn’t sure if YA was embarrassed that her old mother was even considering a tattoo or if she was convinced I would never act on this and she didn’t want to waste her time.
A few months ago I decided I would make this tattoo my retirement gift to myself. I made my plan for while she was out of town; if she DID think I was pushing ahead, there might be lots and lots of questions and “in my face” stuff. When I called the shop earlier in the week they said my idea was perfect for a “walk-in” appointment and that sometimes folks start lining up an hour before the shop opens. I got there a bit after 11 with a book, an umbrella and my printed design, which included a couple of cards that YA has given me over the years that have her signature – I was the first one there and there was a bench! By the time the shop opened, there were at least 12 folks in line behind me – including another baboon!!!
It didn’t hurt as much as I was expecting – although having your skin pierced is definitely noticeable, it was in fairly short bursts (4-5 second each) and about half way through, the area was getting a little numb and it didn’t hurt much at all. (In all fairness, I do have to say that for the next couple of hours, it stung quite a bit.) And it didn’t take as long as I was expecting either – even with the different colors, it only took about 45 minutes.
My artist was a young man named Tony. He’s from the west coast and he has done art his whole life, including a lot of painting on his own; he started doing tattoo work a couple of years ago. He has 7 siblings who are scattered, including one living in Thailand these days and he just did a tattoo for his oldest brother two weeks ago. He was very pleasant and answered all my questions (and I had a lot). He did a great job… it looks just like my design. I knew going in that I didn’t want the design on the inside of my wrist and I let Tony guide me as to good placement – a little up on my air from the bend in my wrist. I love it.
They say July is corn month and August is Soybean month. Because July is the critical time in corn development, while it’s August for soybeans.
The corn has tasseled so it’s full height now, the silks are out, GDU’s, while down a bit this week with the cooler weather (which I love by the way) are 1714, 104 above normal.
I’m still mowing weeds, but I expect by the time you read this I will have finished. Or, if not exactly “finished”, given up and quit. The one area I’ve got left to mow is really rough and I will get tired of bouncing around in the cab.
All the crops are looking good, and while I was thinking I’d be cutting oats next Monday or Tuesday, looking at it Thursday shows a lot of green kernels yet so I may wait out next week yet.
The storms last Saturday knocked some oats down and in one field I saw some corn lodged on the edge of the field.
(“lodging” is basically stalk failure) Oats, As the plant is green and growing it has a lot of give. But as it matures, dries up, and turns golden, the stalk loses its flexibility, meaning it will break off in the wind. And it’s odd, how only certain parts of the fields will do that. Wind is very curious, as the songs from last week’s blog showed.
You can see from the pictures, only one part of the field went down, while the rest didn’t. And the green weeds still stand up. It’s all interesting.
We got nearly 2” of rain Saturday afternoon and then another .6” Saturday night. Kelly and I drove around in the gator checking on things after the afternoon storm. No trees down at least. And then we found a mama duck and 9 ducklings. Once again, Kelly is wrangling ducklings and I’m pointing and offering unsolicited advice.
Using a fishing net, she captured just about all the ducklings and I could get them in a box. But they’re tiny and a few escaped the net. She chased them down and we cleaned up a side pen for them. Now, just to catch mama. I remember one other year we did this; the mama could track the squeaking of the ducklings and we put up a ramp and eventually she got in there with them for a happy reunion. That wasn’t working this year and Kelly eventually captured her with the net too. Kelly and mama duck were in the pen and I was out in the gator. I heard some noises, and honking, and the doors wiggled a few times, and the mama got her head out the door once. But they’re all together now. We’ll keep them in here for a month or so. Until they’re big enough to survive outside… and we’ll see what happens.
A neighbor about ½ mile cross country from us said he saw two bear cubs playing on a log in his pond the other morning. Some neighbors have seen bears before, and we always assumed they were just passing through. But cubs… I don’t know, that seems like mama bear must be settled in here. Just what we need; another predator. I think it would be cool to see a bear. Long as it’s not eating the chickens. Do bears eat chickens??
CoCoRaHS – Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, And Snow network is an organization I heard about a few years ago. Cocorahs.org
Every day I report how much rain we’ve gotten. Some people report snow depth, and some people have full-fledged weather stations. I just report rain with some minor details like last Saturday’s amount in the afternoon and the evening. It is interesting to me to compare rain events in our area. There are about 14 reporting stations in the Rochester area, and three within a few miles of us. It’s interesting how the rain amounts can vary between us. I got a certificate for 250 reporting observations.
I’ve talked about the barn swallows outside our front door and the nest they’ve had for several years. Well, must be new residents this time around and they do not like us coming and going and they dive bomb us. Even at my car, 20’ from the nest they’re buzzing my head. We keep telling them “It’s us! You know us!”
ARE YOU A FALL RISK?ANY ISSUES WITH ANYTHING FALLING DOWN LATELY?
I can’t remember a summer when so much of my psychic energy is spent thinking about rain, or the lack of rain. Usually my “flowers not grass” protocol does just fine without much H2O intervention on my part but not this summer. I’m trying to use as little as possible but it’s been an issue.
So why is it, that the ONLY day of any precipitation in recent memory was also the one out of two days a year that a case of toilet paper is delivered and left on the steps.
Any ways that Murphy’s law is messing with you this week?
Last week when we were coming back from St. Louis, we got shuffled into a TSA line where they are apparently testing new equipment. No taking off our shoes, no pulling out our little baggies of liquid, no requests to dump water bottles.
At first I thought this would be great but was very shortly disabused of that idea. After your bags went through the scanner, anything that looked funny got shoved off to the side for additional scrutiny. In the regular line this happens as well but since our line had been specifically told NOT to pull out anything including liquids or toss water bottles, it meant that more than half of the bags going through got held up. Water bottles were opened and examined with some kind of test strips, bags were opened and rifled through; it was not a quick check.
Neither YA nor I had anything unusual but we were behind a few people who did. So we stood back and waited while watching everyone else’s problems pan out. The family who went through right before we did were a hot mess. Three kids, all under the age of five and already hot and tired after waiting in line. Four adults – it was hard to tell who belong to whom but they were clearly all together. Because they were told not to take things out of baggage, there was a plethora of sippy cups and water bottles. Every bag was opened and pawed through (sorry, my bias is showing here). Every sippy cup and bottle was opened and tested.
As the kids started to melt down, one of the adults started to melt down as well. She was angry – about everything. When her anger did nothing to make the situation better, she got angrier. Her voice got quite loud, she got in one TSA agent’s face. The folks with her tried to calm her down, but she was having none of it.
I’ve never seen anything like this in person but it was amazing how fast other TSA agents were in coming to their co-worker’s defense. And how MANY TSA agents came over. I was extremely glad right then that TSA agents do not carry firearms or any other weapons but there were enough of them that could have taken this woman down with ease. They did end up asking her and one of the other adults into a side hallway (six TSA agents for the two adults). When they came back a few minutes later, the distraught woman seemed a little calmer and she didn’t say one more word. I can only imagine what they said to her.
I asked one of the agents who was standing behind us how long this new process/equipment had been in place. He sighed and said “one week”. I wished him luck. Then our bags came through. All they did was confirm our little baggies of liquid/cream which was easy because we both had them in side pockets of our bags; off we went, plenty of time to get to our gate despite the delay.
When we were working on Nonny’s library loan issue, YA discovered a shelf of jigsaw puzzles right next to the desk. The St. Louis Library system loans out puzzles! (I immediately chatted w/ someone at the Hennepin County Library to see if puzzles are in our system – sadly no.) I love the idea of borrowing puzzles from the library. I only like to do puzzles once so not only do I have to find another home for a finished puzzle, the cost starts to mount up. YA and I could easily do a puzzle a week (except for the occasional killer puzzle like the polar bear last year).
We looked through the puzzles and chose a tiger in repose in a jungle setting with lots of tropical flowers and a waterfall – and it was a glitter puzzle! Since it was a rainy afternoon, YA and Nonny and I dived right in when we got back to the condo.
I learned puzzle-doing at Nonny’s knee so we do puzzles the same: edge pieces first and then tackling the inner part. YA doesn’t care about getting the edges done first, so she just digs right in. I tend to look for shapes that fit; YA looks for color/design. Nonny and I worked on the border while YA started with the tropical flowers.
YA is intense when she is doing a puzzle. She does NOT like to stop; we did the glitter tiger in 4 hours. Nonny sat back and watched for awhile and when we got toward the end, I gave her one of the pieces so she could finish the puzzle. She resisted at first, but then gave in. A very satisfying afternoon.
Two of the friends that I usually swap puzzles with have moved so I think I need to start a new puzzle-sharing co-op or something!
The Nonny Reading Program has been going swimmingly. Using the suggestions from you all, I’ve been sending her books and she’s been gobbling them up.
There are only two problems. The first (and most important) is that she has a VERY small condo with almost no bookshelf space, so the books are starting to pile up. Secondly, she’s starting to complain about how much money I’m spending and wants to pay for the books (this is SO not happening).
I solved the first problem when I suggested she donate the books to her church; they have quite a robust food shelf/donations program and I said they should start a little free library. Her church-mates ate this up.
The second problem was a little stickier. A lot of people who know both my parents think that I got my stubborn streak from my dad; this is absolutely not true. When Nonny digs in her heels she is all but immovable. We talked about the library (the closest branch is quite close to her place) but she said that whenever she goes, she can’t find the books she wants.
I know that technology could help her but unfortunately Nonny and Technology are not friends. And they are not likely to become friends. Ever. I suggested that I request the books she wants via the computer and when they came available, I would get the email and I would let her know and she could go get them. She said this was fine but she never gave me her library card number so I could get everything set up, despite my asking her repeatedly. I was starting to think this was her passive/aggressive way to telling me she didn’t want to do this.
I tackled the dragon in her den when we were there last weekend. I asked her directly if she really wanted to do this. Turns out that the library card issue was just Nonny forgetting about it as soon as we got off the phone. We drove up to the library, I explained my plan to the librarian and within minutes it was all set up. I can access her account from here and let her know when the books come in. Easy peasy.
I’m all set now and will be requesting the first couple of books this week. No new suggestions needed right now but if this system works out, I may need some soon!
Have you ever lost or destroyed (accidentally of course) a library book?
I was thinking about Ben’s question about stepping up as I was doing errands yesterday morning. My mom is also giving up some of the responsibilities that she’s been shouldering (some a little unwillingly) for quite some time. It’s not going as easily as she would like.
When I drove back up into my driveway, the neighbor girls were eager to tell me that there was a cat out front. The grandparents were visiting as well and it was clear that between the two girls, the two parents and the two grandparents there wouldn’t be anyone who did anything except report the existence of this cat.
So YA and I ventured out the front door to deal with the cat. It was a big white cat w/ black and brown markings, very happy to come to me and get scritched and petted, purring quite loudly. It allowed me to pick it up and that’s when YA said she thought it belonged to one of the houses across the street. We took it over and talked to the owner through the door – apparently it’s an outdoor cat; there was food & water there on the front step. When I put the cat down, it went for the food immediately so we headed home.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been elected as official “animal wrangler” in the neighborhood. I’ve been called to deal with bats twice. Once an obviously pet rabbit was found in a yard and I got a call; signs up at the vet and around the neighborhood didn’t result in owners coming forward but luckily we found a good home pretty quickly. I’ve rescued four dogs who have been loose on the street (all four had tags so got home to their owners). And for several years there was an escape artist two doors down (Duffer) that everyone was afraid of except me, so I had to drag him home repeatedly.
I’m not sure why I somehow have been designated the animal problem solver but it seems my lot in life.
