Follow the bouncing ball

I want ya’ll to know that before I had to stir myself to write this, I was luxuriating in the ambient warmth of a big dog in the comfort of the soft chair and now the big warm dog is using that ambient heat to keep her bed warm and my desk chair is not all that soft... I am sad and I am cold. Brr. But I am dedicated. D-e-d-i-c-a-t-e-d. Sadly, dedication does not keep you warm. Wednesday I wore a short sleeved tee-shirt to the dog park and today I had to exploit my dog for her warmth.

While we were at the park, I decided that I was going to get Dogger a new tennis ball. She only has the one and it has a hole in it. It’s a real sad tennis ball, it has some waft to it but it doesn’t bounce anymore. I keep thinking I’ll just pick up the wrong tennis ball at the park and “forget” our tennis ball there on “accident”, but I feel bad about taking a new donated tennis ball and leaving the used, tennis ball in its place. It just seems wrong I’m having real tennis ball issues. I found a brand new one at the baseball field at the rec center but after Dogger was through with it, I threw it back over the fence so its owner could find it again. Tennis balls don’t grow on trees you know. They look like lemons but they don’t grow on tennis ball trees, as nice as that might be. They would resist bugs and disease real well too and they would be very drought resistant as well, I would expect, being tennis balls and not actually living things. But then they wouldn’t “grow” per say, they would just kind of “be”. They would spring out fully formed! Like baby flies only nicer and bouncy and not disgusting. Dogger would love a tennis ball tree though. She would especially like a tennis ball tree that produced pink tennis balls, that’s her favorite flavor of tennis ball. Even when they are kind of old and chewed on and not at all bouncy and with questionable wafting, she likes them as well as the brand new bright yellow ones that still bounce and have superior wafting. I haven’t had a chance to see what she thinks of the more orangy tennis balls. The dog park people who bring and leave tennis balls at the park seem to pretty uniformly favor yellow ones and a handful of the pink ones - And they may have been party favors or something because the few pink balls are baby pink. I’m not sure you could play at Wimbledon with them. But they are pretty and Dogger loves them.

Anyway. I have not one but two Tv shows on at 10pm so I have to keep moving. My plan for Thursday night was to go to Wallgreens and get some pictures then go to Wal-Mart across the street and get some dishwasher detergent and tennis balls. Wal-Mart must seel tennis balls right? Well, I never found out. I went to Wallyworld and obediently picked up some dishwasher detergent, phosphate free thank-you-very-much, imagine at Wallyworld, phosphate free dishwasher detergent. I didn’t think poor white trash really cared that much about water quality. I also noticed as I checked out the frozen desert isle ( trying to remember why I was still in the store post detergent scoring) that the cooler cases at Wallyworld have the cooler lights on an electric eye. The lights only turn on if you are directly in front of the case. When you walk down the aisle they all turn on as you walk past. It made me feel like a Disney princess.

I kept wandering around Wallyworld and I found a couple of things I really needed. One was even not edible. I congratulated myself at sticking to useful things and I got my stuff and went back to the car. No tennis balls! Damn it. Did I mention that it is not only cold but rainy? Have you ever been in a Wallyworld parking lot that was less than 45 acres? Have you ever been able to park within sight of the store? I couldn’t go back. Did I mention that Dogger was waiting in the car for me and that she somehow knew I didn’t have the promised tennis balls? Have you ever seen a grown dog cry? Okay, she wasn’t “crying” but on the way home she turned herself so she was looking out the passenger side of the car. This weekend? I get the tennis balls. 4+4=08!!