Not Ready for Prime Time Playas

If I hadn't messed around after I got home from work , Dogger and I might have gotten much more of a show than we did. As it was we saw Every Cop in Southeast Raleigh and crime tape and a Detective in a bad tan suit questioning a neighbor and I walked right passed the house before one of the cops even bothered to notice I was walking through their crime scene.! Well,  I think most of the crime took place either inside the house or in the driveway because that was where the cops were clumped together laughing and chatting and shooting the shit with each other as we approached. My tax dollars at work.

I spoke with a couple of neighbors once I saw the cop cars. The first group I spoke with was a group of guys hanging out on a porch about a block away. They said there had been an "accident" down the street. This sounded suspect to me, "accidents" usually don't come with that many cop cars and I could still only see some of them. I found another couple in bathrobes standing around on their yard and they came across with the stabbing news.

Me - What happened?
Bathrobe Lady - Some guy got stabbed.
Me - Shit.
BL - That's what I said!
Me - That's a lot of cars
Bathrobe Husband - There used to me more and an ambulance. They left.
Me- This is a nice neighborhood.
BL - It is. But the people in it aren't.
Me- They kept their yard so nice though.
BL - Yeah. The house looks great.

I went to our local news outlets and there was nothing about it. All those cops milling around and not a word. Well. I thought a stabbing might warrant a little more attention than that. ECiSER was standing around and no media attention? It looked pretty news worthy to me.The big news was a hit and run driver got arrested in Chapel Hill.  I was disappointed because I need to know if this was a domestic dispute or a crime of passion or if it was a more worrisome break in? And who got stabbed? was it the burglar or the home owner? It would be nice to know if I should be freaked out. I have my suspicions that it wasn't a burglary though, The cops always look a little more "cop-y" when theirs been a crime. I drove past a couple of hours later and all the cops were gone and the crime scene tape was taken down and the peoples cars were back in the drive way all ready.

If it was really bad and crimey  the cops would be there for hours and they would have the Mobile Crime Lab bus blocking the street and I wouldn't have been able to walk the dog past the house. Also? there would have been more looky lou's. A shooting always brings out a crowd, I guess a stabbing is less entertaining.

It had happened recently enough that I was around to hear the sirens and I went by there tops, twenty minutes after that and the cops were also not going door to door or checking through backyards or doing anything that smacked of police work so I gathered they already had their man or woman in custody. I better be able to read about it in the paper tomorrow. I'll feel all kinds of unloved if someone can be stabbed three blocks from my house and no one cares.

Super Model Vs. Adequate Model

I was a such a slug today I wanted to curl up in one of my flower pots and munch on a petal. So lazy! I did walk the dog like I was supposed to but I totally blew off the bike, I just didn't want to - which should be irrelevant. I should automatically finish my lunch time protean bar and get on the bike  and ride, which is what I did last spring and summer. I was so good.

I stayed away from my McDonald's so thoroughly that they tore the damn thing down and I didn't know about it! Imagine my surprise when I was tooling past and it was gone! How did they know I was so weak? I mean that's what I call corporate dedication to fitness.

This spring? Not so much. My McDonald's has been beautifully rebuilt. I do want to point out that I am eating my protean bars in my car like I'm "supposed" to but this year I sit in my car and say I should really get on the bike. Last year I was down right  compulsive about getting on the bike everyday.

Okay. I got tired of the self flagellation, thank-you-Gawd for the exer-bike! I did a couple of miles and now I don't have an appetite for flower petals at all. Maybe I should "do" a cleanse or something to get me in the right direction? I think they mostly push you in the direction of your bathroom but... I have that mini-reunion thing the end of June and I don't want to be as thick as I am now then, but on the upside I am practically a stick compared to how I looked at our twenty year reunion so I am ahead of where I was then and even then in comparison to a lot of my classmates I was borderline  Adequate Model. I don't need to be stressing over them.

Maybe if I exer-biked in the mornings before I left for work?

There is the summer issue and I want to go to the beach  and I don't want to look slubby at the beach but there also is the Adequate to oh-dear-Gawd comparison  too. In reality I don't want to show up on People Of Walmart.

Garden Update 7

As ya'll are my wittnessi : I am through planting*

* I reserve the right to replace dead plants. If something dies I will put a new plant in. One out one in. I don't think that's unreasonable. I also promise not to kill anything I decide I don't like anymore. That would be cheating.

I thought I was done. I had all my tomatoes and peppers and beans and flowers in the ground and all was right in the world. And then I remembered marigolds. You can't plant vegetables without marigolds. Its a rule. The plant changes the chemistry in the soil and renders it unsuitable for some grubs and certain fungi and rabbits don't like them. There are no rabbits in my neighborhood. Better to be safe than sorry.

 We have growth but we don't have photos. It took me 45 minutes to figure that out. It may be time to take Mr. Computer back to the computer store and have them do whatever it is that computer guys at computer stores do to computers to make them do stuff like upload images.

The plants are getting taller. Not fuller but taller, one of the tomatoes is getting a little leggy but it might be the variety so I'm not worrying yet, the peppers are as always lagged but the pepper I thought was going to be the runt of the litter has shown some improvement and seems to be gaining  slowly on the others. The Experimental Garden despite getting 23 hours of sun a day doesn't seem to be showing super growth as a result, in fact I think they are showing less growth than the plants in the less sunny garden - however, the EG were not planted until a week or so after the other plants and they might just be behind for that reason. I was really expecting a great deal more from them though and I feel less bad about the amount of sunlight the other garden gets - which is not enough but obviously, but not not enough to be lethal.

The beans are the real superstars in the garden being the first plants to begin making fruits! I have a multitude of teeny, tiny green beans! Yay!

The flowers in the front have gotten taller and prettier and I'm religious about dead heading them and I've fertilized and poisoned and slug -B-goned them. The plants I raised from seeds are still with us but still too young to make flowers. My honeysuckles are doing well, to be honest, two of the three or doing well, one is even flowering while the other just seems to be getting taller. Plant 3 doesn't seem to making any strides at all. In case one or more ultimately fails, I did make a cutting of a Japanese honeysuckle plant I found along Dogger and my walk today, to set on the bench and probably die because I don't know how to raise cuttings.

 I'm going to use it as a threat to make plant three get in line Get it together #3 or I'll bring Cutty in off the bench and you know whats going to happen to you #3 once Cutty is in the line up? That's right, you'll be benched or worse! What? you don't verbally assualt your plants? Really?

Dog Days

Last weekend when I picked up my glasses I was so excited I went into Crate and Barrel and bought an over priced cookie cutter in honor of the event. It is a very well designed ice cream cone complete with cross hatching on the cone and undulating lines indicating where the ice cream is located - all in all adorable and probably worth every cent of the $2 they charged for it.

There should be an asterisk next to the "adorable" and "ice cream cone".  It is adorable in theory,  in practice unless you are working with a very thick dough, which I do not with dog cookies, the cookie cutter makes a not adorable sperm cookie! The finished product looks like it should be staring in an animated after school special  about fertilization! I expected the cookies to break into song at anytime.

Can't you just hear the peppy little jazz inspired ditty about looking for the egg? and the challenges of out swimming the other spermatozoa?
On the upside, I rarely give Dogger treats out in public so there should not be an questions or shocked response on viewing. But if there was, I could always claim it is a tad pole. Why on earth I would feed my dog tad pole shaped cookies or why anyone would design and sell tadpole cookies cutters remains beyond me but it would be a clever "out" if I needed one. Although, I could imagine a very cute series of cookie cutters illustrating the life cycle of the amphibian. It would be popular among little boys I would imagine, they could make little tadpole cookies and little frogs with tails and the finally full on frogs! I still don't think any one wants spermatozoa cookies.

 If there were any witnesses to my sperm cookies, I don't think my explanation of wanting the dog to have seasonally shaped cookies would go over in any way that I would not end up looking disturbed. I could explain that  Of course my dog recognizes the change in season and of course she demands to have seasonally appropriate cookies! I mean, My Gawd, doesn't your dog? Well then your dog is just not very bright isn't it and you don't love it enough. Clearly.  Better to look like a bitch than a person who makes seasonally appropriate dog treats for her dog because she thinks the dog cares. Hmm, how about a line  of tee shirts that say My dog is a bitch and so am I!

I am so full of ideas. Why am I not rich?

Before I made cookies I gave Dogger a much needed bath and I was relived to discover that the conditioner I bought for myself that seemed to be of very good quality but didn't work at all for me (could this be why I was able to buy it at Poverty Barn?) did work well on her. If you want to buy doggy conditioner at the store you get charged a fortune for it. I think its a test. If you are gullible enough to buy dog specific fur conditioner then you are stupid enough to spend a lot of money on it and you should be charged accordingly and if you have the money to buy doggy specific conditioner you most likely would only respect the product if it was over priced. A discounted doggy conditioner would not sell because if you would  buy  discount doggy conditioner, you would not be in the market for doggy conditioner in the first place. The big box dog supply places know this and they never put it on sale.

HAPPY    SUNDAY    !!!!!

HAPPY    SATURDAY    !!!!!!

Friday Cat Blogging

Munchies

I fell asleep again but this time I managed to wake myself up sooner. So score! I napped and still had a chance to make dinner, water the plants and take time to visit with the neighbors. I was weak willed about the watering though. I just couldn't bear to do the rain barrel dance so I used the hose. I know, I know bad conservationist! Bad. Weak.

But. There is only so much water in the barrel and sooner or later there isn't going to be any water in the barrel so its inevitable really. In my own way I am conserving because I am saving the rain water by using the city water - which I pay for and now pay more for because they told us to conserve and then they shockingly lost money on the deal - Shouldn't they have known this? Or did they know this would happen and this whole thing is a conspiracy to jack up our rates? while making us second guess ourselves about conserving? Maybe waste is good?

We don't use water, we pay smaller bills and now the water company ups our rates to make up for it. Bastards. They probably sold the excess to some water starved community that doesn't believe in conserving. Bastards, bastards, bastards.

I ate dinner and thought I was done with it. Nice fish, nice broccoli some really nice raspberries and then I was full for about an hour and then I decided that I would be willing to eat anything that walked in front of me...Only to discover I had stocked my larder with  quadriplegic snacks!

Blah, blah

Okay. I stayed awake! But. Is it better to have spent the evening sleeping or shopping? I certainly spent less money while I slept the evening away but I wasn't stocking my refrigerator with much needed staples either or getting prints I had wanted to get. I'm going to say that  for the greater good, helping the economy is a better way to spend an evening.

Speaking of the economy, lets talk about  the virtues of  Buying Local, my neighbor the upholsterer came by and picked up my chaise and gave a thumbs up to my fabric. her was also very impressed by the deal I got on it. He thinks I'm a cheapskate but I since I gave him his check  he wisely decided he wasn't  going to say anything about my spending habits. He promised to have the chaise back to me in two weeks. I'm putting on my calender, we'll see if he can make the deadline or if I'm going to have to put him on speed dial.

I called Doggers pharmacy last week to get a re-fill of her meds. I do this every month and I do it about two days after I should have which is really playing with fire and its a risk I need to stop taking. Well. I'm still waiting, the risk here is coming into play. So I called them and reminded them about my refill and lo and behold they had electric storms in the area last week and it mucked up their phones. I called at the wrong time and now they have to over night my script to me. I have about a month of extra pills on stand by just for instances like this but  I would much rather have her new pills in hand sooner rather than later.

Sleeping

I came home and walked Dogger and fed her and watered the plants and walked the fence line and made dinner and ate dinner and then I sat down and watched some TV and somewhere along the way I must have muted the set and then I closed my eyes for just a second and the next thing I knew it was seven-something and I said Hmm, its seven-something and I closed my eyes again and then the next time I opened them it was ten to nine and I sad Oh Shit! its ten to nine!

I probably should not have muted the sound. I think that was my mistake.

Earlier, while I was walking Dogger and completely awake, I called my upholsterer to see when he was going to come by, I had understood he said Tuesday and here it was Tuesday and he had not come by and so I was kind of wondering and then I had to talk to his machine. I'm afraid this does not bode well for our relationship, it  just started and all ready I'm talking to his machine? It turns out I am much higher maintenance than I thought because he didn't get back with me and now I'm really concerned about his work ethic. I'm investing a lot with him and I kind of need to have him show up when he's supposed to and then I need to see results and appointments being kept and chaises being picked up and recovered and returned in a reasonable amount of time.  I haven't even given him money yet and he's all ready not calling back? this worries me. Mr. Upholsterer needs to step up sooner rather than later.

When I think about falling asleep, my first mistake wasn't  thoughtlessly pushing mute it was staying up late Monday night. And Sunday night - not directly my fault. About 11pm on Sunday night Dogger started getting dry heaves. Lovely. I took her outside so that she could "heave" outside . Fine. But she wouldn't, we walked around and around the front yard and I walking around and around in my bathrobe and bare feet while Dogger literally hoovered  up the entire yard (when I think about it, I could get some sort of farm credit because she ate all the grass...) and  I was not enjoying this and we had an audience! The renters had everyone they know over and they were in the yard watching me in my bathrobe and I thought that was rude. I mean really, show some ick, class and go inside all ready. But no. he's a dick. I'm totally going to get him arrested the next time the opportunity presents itself. Humph.

Eventually, Dogger ran out of grass to chew and I took Dogger inside where she continued to hack and heave while I hurriedly put on shorts and shoes and took Dogger to the back yard where she ate even more grass and heaved some more and continued to not do her thing. I really needed to go to bed!

I went back inside again and this time I brought out the big guns : Hydrogen peroxide! It can act as a purgative and I needed Dogger to purge. Dogger kindly drank the potion and after wandering around the back yard some more, dutifully did her thing. Finally.

She seems just fine now.

I have no good reason for staying up Monday Monday night was my fault. I stayed up too late because I stayed up too late.

The more you know...

I was leaving my office after work and I came to one of the little pretend intersections - if they were real streets, if they had real signage, if there were real cops around to patrol them - and I saw my friend the fox again. I said "Hello fox!" and then I looked again and saw her baby, her kit. I tried to take the kit's picture but he was further away and all I had was my phone and it's not exactly well suited for wildlife photography. I parked in the intersection and watched them watch me. Finally baby fox headed out into the street and away from me and Mama fox went after him  because surely she didn't give him permission to play in the street and went off to take hime home.  I went home and learned about my new friends.

The Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) is a small canid native to much of North America and Eurasia, as well as northern Africa. It is the most recognizable species of fox and in many areas it is referred to simply as "the fox". It was introduced into Australia in the 19th century.[2] As its name suggests, its fur is predominantly reddish-brown, but there is a naturally occurring grey morph known as the “silver” fox; a strain of domesticated silver fox has been produced from these animals by systematic domestication.

The red fox is by far the most widespread and abundant species of fox, found in almost every single habitat in the Northern Hemisphere, from the coastal marshes of United States, to the alpine tundras of Tibetan Plateau. It is capable of co-existing with more specialized species of foxes, such as Arctic fox, in the same habitat. The red fox could withstand and sometimes thrive in areas with heavy human disturbance. It is nowhere near extinction, and its amazing adaptiveness is driving many other less competent species into extinction.

Wikipedia

a fox kit. not my photo.

I learned about them and so did you.

2 days in the nab

I did my job this weekend. I flyered and or rang door bells on all the streets that I didn't all ready hit with the dog. I think I fulfilled my duty. I wish the damn headquarters would have sent me the list of registered Democrats like I asked but I held up my end. The election is on the 4th and the people around here can't say they didn't know about it or that nobody told them.

I gave out every single one I had. Now I don't have one for myself and I used one when I got a robocall from some judge. I learned he was a Democrat so I didn't cuss at the recording. The more you know.

I watered my little plants and fertilized and pesticided. Tomorrow, I scatter anti-slug as well as put out some beer traps for the little flower eating monsters. Don't dick with my flowers, one way or the other I'll have your slimy little flower munching ass.

Next year I totally grow the same peas that Alphagal has. Her plants are all ready producing. My beans are only just now starting with tiny, inedible fetal beanlings.

Oh! I got my fabric! It looks like it looked like online - practically a miracle as I was at the mercy of their camera and my screen quality . And even better, it seems like good quality while still being soft and nice. I had my fears that it was going to be the right color but the wrong texture. I ordered some swatches of other fabrics from another site and everyone of them was either scratchy or too stiff and not what I would want to curl up with. I'm also glad I said no to to a pattern. I am going to go totally nuts on my drape fabric though. Crazy pattern nutso. I can't frickin' wait.

 I called the upholsterer thinking that he would over joyed to hear the news and come flying to my place to pick up my chaise and begin work immediately! Yeah, about my job. He has some other chairs he's working on but he'll have them taken care of by Tuesday and he'll pick it up then. How dare he have other jobs? I'm supposed to be the only thing on his plate. The world is supposed to revolve around me. How often do I need an upholsters services anyway? Make way damn it.

HAPPY    SUNDAY   !!!!!

HAPPY    SATURDAY   !!!!!!!