Dog among the sunflowers

I didn't take the dog for a walk tonight because I did fifty minutes on the treadmill and my legs really hurt and I didn't want to put myself through it.

Also I had a plan to take Rocket to check out the five acres of sunflowers on Dix campus. I had wondered how they had managed to hide five acres of sunflowers and they did it by putting them behind the soccer fields and below the cemetery. Very clever.

Here are the best pictures I got of him among the sunflowers

Weekend

Another weekend where I did nothing . Friday I didn't even go to the gym after work because I nasty storm was coming in and I didn't  want to walk anywhere in the deluge and there was the very real threat that we would lose power and everything at the gym runs on electricity.

I thought I would rather be at home if everything went dark. As it turned out, the lights stayed on but it did rain really, really hard for an extended time and I'm not really excited about being rained on. SO. I'll go Monday and it will be fine. I did get decent walks both Saturday and Sunday, so it's not like I was completely bedfast or anything.

But I did watch a lot of TV. I don't really remember what I did on Saturday, I know that Friday night I did my weekly shopping to get that out of the way, so Saturday I picked up one of the dogs meds and did something else but now I can't remember - I remember now! I bought cat food! OTC CD cat food for kitty, I learned about it online and it might be okay for Tinys urinary problems. I also finally bought the pricey cat bowls for the kitties so I can go back to feeding Ace grain free food and hopefully help him lose some weight. Sunday I learned a lot about the Galapagos Islands and sharks and took a prolonged nap with the pets.

They lie when they say when you lie down with dogs you wake up with fleas, what really happens is that you wake up two and a half hours later and wonder where your day went.

Friday Cats Blogging

TGIF

Do you know what happens when they move the cities yearly fireworks out of downtown and out to the fairgrounds? I don't see fireworks! , well other than that.

Everyone else decided to have DIY fireworks shows. E v e r y o n e . All night. The city show was fifteen minutes tops, twenty in a good budget year. Well, the DIY folks just knew they could go above and beyond that! and they did!  They put on shows that went on all damn night.

All damn night. A boom here, a bang there and pop there and shrieking sound here. All damn night. So much fun. So happy. And I am sleeping in a "new" bed so I am not entirely comfortable to start out and they have to add this concofiny .

The cats are also in a "new" environment and they were exploring, they had a great time. Little bastards. Rocket was my rock though. He hogged the bed and would not move and only let me  have a sliver of it and he was hot. Deep sigh.

This week had two Mondays in it.

How was your your big day off?  yeah, so was mine. I spent it boycotting 45s dystopian version of our country and the  ongoing  jailing of toddlers. I'm not going to celebrate Ameriaka or Putins little project to bring down the West so no thank you. Sorry not Sorry. I'm not going to celebrate a country that does that.  So Instead I started off the day in front of the TV, I watched a movie about cranky drag queen. It was fun. I totally suggest the movie, its called Hurricane Bianca and its on Netflix.
 
She is a hoot and she is also very talented. She won season 6 of  Rupaul's Drag Race and has gone on to fame and fortune.

Then I mowed the front yard with my old fashioned push mower because my gym was closed today and thought the workout would be good for me. The yard really didn't need a mowing but  that is the only time you can really use one of those old fashioned machines, if you do need to mow the yard, you can't use those mowers.

I discovered last night as I was moving my life from upstairs to downstairs, a tough project by-the-way, it takes a lot more than you would think to move from one bedroom and bathroom to another bedroom and bathroom. Its a work out on its own! all these little things and so many things to remember and to forget to take with you on this trip down to the other bedroom or bathroom!

 On my many trips back and forth  I discovered that the downstairs bathroom sink had a clog and I tried to get it unclogged manually and while that was somewhat successful in a really gross way, it as not completely successful so I needed reinforcements.

I went to Walmart and got the most poisonous looking sink unclogger I could find. And for as deeply treacherous as those products uniformly promise to be, do they really need to be on the bottom shelf where all the little children are? Is that wise?

I went home and out on the hazmat suit that came with the unclogger and signed the waiver and went ahead with the project. I successfully unclogged my sink and sterilized the soil in a four hundred yard circle around my dwelling. I should also not drink the hose water for six months and refrain from eating any squirrels that might have been on or near my house while I was unclogging my drain.

The water drains beautifully now. I am very happy.

Family Reunification Rally Raleigh June 30

I went to the Rally in Raleigh on Saturday, much as I am sure that you attended the rally in your city.

I took a lot of pictures. Here they are.

 We were not allowed in the streets, we had to stick to the sidewalks.

Friday Cats Blogging

TGIF

Sorry, no post yesterday. When I would have been posting I was sleeping. I was tired! OI was at the gym for an hour and then I came home and walked the dog for 2.5 miles!  By the time I would have been sitting down to write, I was laying down to sleep, I was exhausted. Lesson learned.

Today I also did an hour but I did not walk the dog, he seems pretty chill with it. He hates the heat and as long as I take him out to pee when he asks, he's fine. He went to daycare on Tuesday so he was completely useless Wednesday and I didn't have to walk him at all when I think of it.

Oops. I also lost my car briefly Tuesday, it was very briefly but I still got the thrill of not knowing where my car was and just kind of wandering around hoping that something would spur my memory.  I did know it was by a church - which is not as good a hint as it could be because there is a church literally on every corner downtown. I could have said "I parked it on a paved street". I did finally find it, so yay me.

Today I did the same routine, sans losing my car, I parked in a garage, never again though, that bitch was expensive! I'll park and walk thank-you-very-much. I also didn't walk the dog. I was okay with that. Please note that I am awake to write this.

Saturday I am going to a Reunite the Families- Get-Those-Babies-Out-Of-Jail-You-Bastards Marches that are scheduled around the country and  to what should be pour great shame, around the world. I will be getting up early for this and so should you.

Tuesday

Well, I didn't ask the chaperone again That's the  schoolmarm looking lady who watches us work out and shushes anybody who accidentally makes noise. I was going to ask her how to use the other machines but she left the space just as I was finishing up - possibly to go track down the girl who clapped everytime she went another mile, to tell her to stop such displays! Yesterday I listened to her tell a weightlifter to make less noise as he lifted weights, much to his consternation, he  thought he was being quiet but apparently he was grunting too loudly. Oh, and there is absolutely no dropping of the weights.

The gym is almost silent except for some YMCA approved light pop muzak that is piped in. You can actually hear yourself sweat. You can also hear the person next to trying to catch heir breath. I think the machines have some sort of radio setting and I am going to have to get some cheapo headphones and try it out, its better to work out with a good beat or duh! just bring my phone out and make Spotify do its thing! I'll go to Big Lots at lunch and get a pair of the clunky headphones and use those, I really don't like the little ones, they don't stay in my ears and they hurt. I'll just stick the phone in my  zippy new exerbra and away we'll go. Problem solved.

Today I walked through  either Ontario or Toronto or possibly parts of both and then ultimately through some national park . What I really wanted to be doing was walking through hills and dales the whole time, I already walk through a city and lets be honest, all cities look about the same. Onces you've dodged one tourist, you have dodged all the tourists, they all look the same! And its not like they take you through the most attractive parts of the cities either, For most of the trip its just city streets, and not interesting or visually compelling streets either! Does anyone really think this is fun? I mean if you are a runner or a walker does this help pass the time? I want to walk along a path through the woods, I want  nature. I do not want  other people or traffic or buildings or concrete, I can not possibly be the only one.

Today I went a little further, 1.59 miles. Still a nothing walk for Rocket and I, but I kept adjusting how steep the grade was so some of it was very up hill, but I got tired of that very quickly and put it down to a more reasonable grade, but today I had it set at a much  faster speed setting, so that was good. Yay me. Tomorrow I really want to learn how to make the recumbent bike work.

There is another setting where you can watch yourself run laps around a track and that looks very boring, even more boring than walking past Italian dumpsters which is what I did yesterday. Today was a fish market and a sea wall.

Monday

Well, that  was a weekend. Rocket is still exhausted and I finally got the soden blanket out of the car. Rocket and I both learned that there is no dog ball small enough to get out of the rain

FRiday night I saw the Mr. Rogers documentary and it is as good as they say it is but it is not the weeper that they say it is either. I wanted more details and behind the scenes information and those were missing, it was more of a hagiography, which is nice and Mr. Rogers certainly deserved such tender loving care but at the same time, how about something interesting about the show? I understand there is a book that I might read because it may actually be what I am looking for formation wise. The Tom Hanks Mr. Rogers movie is based on that book.

Earlier Friday, I joined the YMCA. I  am gaining weight and I am tired of it and I need to lose it and my current walking regime is not doing it. So enter gym. Today I went for the first time.

It is very shiny. I went to the bathroom to change clothes and I got lost. I found my way out and went to the first time I knew how to operate, the treadmill. It had a screen! If I had a pair of headphones and could remember my Netflix password I could have watched Netflix.

What I ended up walking to was a pre-set trip through various European villages. Lovely, but I walk through concrete every day. I don't want to walk down streets and dodge cars, I do that every day. It took a long time to get to walking through wilderness and that was the very end. I think you must be able to change where you walk. I need to have someone show me how to make things work. I need a tour.

I spent a half and hour on the treadmill and was soaking wet and needed to get home to the dog, I got lost in the bathroom again. I'm going back tomorrow and want to do something not the treadmill, I already walk I don't need more walking. Tomorrow I'm going to get someone to help me out and show me what I can do in a hour that will be helpful to me.

Friday Cat Blogging

TGIF

One of my neighbors said that he saw a "big fat woodchuck" the other day. And I said "really? on this street?" I have never seen one here, once on a walk I saw one downtown and it didn't belong there either,bit at least it most likely lived in the park across the street.

This morning I saw a "big fat" something that was most certainly not a woodchuck. I saw a big, fat raccoon and I and sure that that was what my neighbor saw and misidentified as a woodchuck. Woodchucks can be fat but they are not big. He saw a racoon and I'm almost positive he saw the same one I did. It was big and it was fat and it was most definitely a racoon. Not a woodchuck. Several years ago my coworkers and I wasted a lot of state time and resources researching woodchucks so I should know from woodchucks

Problem solved. Woodchucks don't eat your gardens either, they eat clover.

Anyway, this has been a horrible week, 45 has managed to not get forced from office or face impeachment and little tiny children are in cages and he is not. We had better pray for all those children and their families in Church this Sunday, did you see how they take their rosaries away from them? What kind of anti-Catholic bullshit is that? We should be doing lots of praying for them in Church and setting up vigils and pickets. Get on it Catholic Church! These are your people! Fight for them!


Deep, cleansing breath. I am going to go see the Mr. Rogers documentary and its suppose to be very good.

Here is a picture of Rocket.