Photos

I am still rocking the writer's block and nursing a deep-seated hatred of any time spent in front of a computer screen after the 40 hours I spend in front of one at work.  But I've been out and about and remembered my camera, so here are some recent pictures.

Feeding the new lambs on the in-laws' farm.  Ignore my double chin.


The mister competed in a mountain bike race and did fabulously right up until the bike broke.


You can't see where it broke because it was COVERED in mud.



My younger brother taking the mister's 30 year old moped for a spin.  He's single, ladies, and does his own laundry!


Artemesia in my garden.
 


The mister and I took a stroll at Minnehaha Creek.


We brought the dog.


We also brought him on a bike ride.




I learned to spin yarn on my new spinning wheel.  (I'm still learning.  I suck.)


And I knit.

Treat

Happy Thanksgiving

Charlie the pilgrim says, "Happy Thanksgiving!"



Charlie the pilgrim also says, "Please, please take this stupid hat off."



Charlie the pilgrims says, "Fine, if you won't take it off, I'm not speaking to you."



Things I'm thankful for: torturing my dog with tiny felt hats, two full Thanksgiving dinners in one day, wonderful family, fantastic friends, and the fact that while I have to work tomorrow, I don't have to work RETAIL. It's the simple things, people.

Please won't you be my neighbor?

Scene: my backyard. The mister and I are digging in a patio. And by “the mister and I” I mean “I” as he is mostly just standing there critiquing my shoveling technique, which makes me want to dig a big hole, shove him into it, and bury him, but that’s neither here nor there.

The mister takes a wheelbarrow of dirt and sod to the driveway and shoves it up the ramp into the back of his pickup. (This might be why I don’t bury him under the patio; every time I try the wheelbarrow/ramp/pickup thing, even after years of working on a landscaping crew, I either spill the wheelbarrow or fall of the ramp and hurt myself.) I have to stand on the bottom of the ramp to keep it from moving. The mister comes back down with the empty wheelbarrow and we stroll back into the back yard.

And there he is, Hans, our elderly German neighbor. He is recovering from having surgery two weeks ago, unblocking the blood vessels in his neck. He is wearing a bandana around his head. He is crouched behind one of his bushes and he is cradling a BB gun in his arms, commando style.

The mister and I pause. Is he going to shoot at us? Did he finally tire of hearing our squabbling as we (I) dug in the backyard? And then our other neighbor, the one who lives east of us, well, his small, yappy dog rushes the fence and starts doing its yappy, barky thing.

And we hear it. Pop. Hans fires off a round. The yappy dog, unhurt, but definitely surprised, turns tail and runs back to her house.

Hans cackles and grins at us, the scar from his surgery standing out against his pale neck.

The mister and I load up another wheelbarrow and take it into the driveway. When we return, the dog rushes the fence and barks again, and Hans cracks off another shot. Yipe! The yappy dog retreats again.

This continues for another two loads of the wheelbarrow until Hans’ wife calls him for dinner.

And, with his thick German accent, he looks at the dog, which is standing silent and bewildered at the fence and says, “I’ll be back.”

Camping

The mister and I spent the weekend camping on the shores of Lake Belle Taine in northern Minnesota.

It rained.

I mean, it was sunny for enough of the weekend that we didn't pack up the tent and head for home, but it rained. We're talking deluges of biblical proportions. It rained so hard that you couldn't hear the individual drops tap-tappitying on the tent. It sounded instead like someone was flinging five-gallon buckets of water at us.

The mister and I can end droughts when we camp. Desert hasn't seen precipitation in 6 months? Oh, well, we'll plan a trip and pitch a tent and fix that drought for you. Northern Minnesota facing drought? We'll roll out our sleeping bags and produce 3 inches of rain in an hour. No worries.

Despite the dampness of the weekend, we had a good time, getting in some fishing (the mister), some book reading (me) and a shameful amount of bacon consumption (both of us).




"Papa, I'll help roll up the tent!"

Pictures

He looks so disgruntled, doesn't he?




This used to belong to the mister's grandfather. I nearly killed myself tripping over it after the mister put it in the flower bed out front.






I'll stop drinking bottled water so long as I can do so with style.

Mille Lacs

The mister and I spent last weekend camping on the shores of Mille Lacs Lake with his sister and her husband.

And our three dogs.



It was bitterly cold and the wind howled pretty much the entire weekend. It was too windy to take a boat out onto the lake, go bike riding, or do anything more exciting than take a walk and huddle near the campfire. But we still had a good time. I found a yarn store in Isle and scored two balls of wool sheared off the yarn store owner's own sheep. I then wondered how quickly I could knit it up into something warm; could I make a hat before bedtime?

It was Charlie's first ever camping trip (we've dropped him off at someone else's house every time we've gone out of town), and he did really well. The only bad part came when he got cold and wanted in my sleeping bag. With me. That got crowded and I ended up booting him out and using my jacket to cover him up instead.


He begged shamelessly for food all weekend long.


My sister in law and her husband with their two dogs. You can see that my sister in law is wearing a lot of clothing. In fact, in this photo, I think she's rocking long johns, wool socks, jeans, 4 shirts, a jacket, a wool hat, and mittens. In May. Welcome to Minnesota.

Before and After

Before:


After:


I know it's mean, but I can't stop laughing at him. He looks so funny without all that hair; like he's not even the same dog. And he's so disgruntled, he's just cracking me up.

Charlie, Come!

It started out innocently enough. He was just hanging out in the backyard, kind of dirty, looking around.



Then, I called him. "Charlie, come!"



He started out slowly, but built up some speed. He ran so fast his floppy little ears caught the wind. "C'mon, buddy!"



"Who's my good dog? Who is?"

Dogs

Tiny waterfall in a little creek formed by the runoff and melting snow.

Yesterday, like every other person in the state, I went outside to enjoy the balmy temperatures and sunshine. We're lucky enough to live just a couple of blocks from the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge. There are miles of trails crisscrossing the refuge. The mister mountain bikes them and I, when the treadmill and streets get to be a bit boring, jog them. It's a lovely area, if one can ignore the constant hum of interstate traffic and the looming sight of smokestacks.

I took a little walk in the river bottoms, stomping through freezing creeks in my wellies, chasing sunbeams, and grinning with the sheer enjoyment of being outside without worrying about frostbite.

Right up until I met Boomer.

Boomer was a dog of uncertain breed. He was large. His tail was skin over bone and felt like a whip when it collided with my legs. He had big paws covered in mud. And terrible puppy breath. And he was unleashed.

"Oh, don't mind him," his owner called merrily. "He's very friendly."

Yes, I noticed how friendly he is when he leaped up to plant his giant, muddy paws on my chest, knocking me to the ground, the better to slaver my face with wet dog kisses.

Listen, lady, I don't give a shit how "friendly" your dog is, if he's going to jump on me, send me to the muddy ground, and put his mouth, with all those sharp teeth, anywhere near my face, I'm going to be pissed that you're letting him run around leash free.

She and I had a little discussion about the differences between a friendly dog and a well-behaved dog. Until a dog knows not to jump up and knock people down, it should be on a leash. I'm certainly glad the dog didn't go for my throat, but when I was tipping backwards with him planted on my chest, I didn't really know what the dog's goal was and I was prepared to be bitten.

She's lucky I wasn't carrying my pepper spray, because I would have sprayed the shit out of the dog and then gotten the owner once in the eyes just for good measure.

Leash you pet, folks, unless it's obedient and well-trained.

Wrestling

My sister in law and her husband have two dogs. One is a five-year old German Shepherd mix named Jada. Jada is a good dog, very sweet, very obedient, very gentle. I love her.

Their other dog is an English Springer puppy named Rocco. Rocco is currently the same size as my little dog Charlie, but if he grows into his feet, he's going to be enormous.

SIL and her husband stayed with the mister and I on New Year's Eve, and they brought their dogs too. Charlie and Rocco wrestled the entire evening. My house was a wreck. They careened into furniture, bounced off of walls, knocked over trinkets, and generally made a mess.

Notes about the above photo: in the background is a piece of paper taped to the storm door for our sliding door. We would open the big door and our dog, so excited to go outside and pee, would run smack into the storm door, so the mister taped a piece of paper to the door to prevent the dog from knocking himself stupid.

Also in the background is a group of bells nailed up by the electrical socket. Our dog rings those when he wants to go outside.

Well Trained

When the mister and I got our dog, we had a tough time potty training him because we just did not know when he had to go out. I had beagles growing up and when they had to pee, they’d stand at the door and howl until you let them out.

Charlie, not so much.

So we devised a method for him notify us of his need to go outside. We hung bells by the back door and trained him to bat the bells with his paw when he needs to go.

There were some bumps. He used the bells as attention getting devices when he just wanted us to play with him, and he used the bells to get food. We had to untrain him out of some of the bad habits he’d gotten into, but now he rings the bells when he has to go and we let him out.

The end result is that I’m like Pavlov’s dogs. I hear a bell ring in my house and I get up, go to the back door, and open it.

Enter Fitz.

My friend KVE is in Hawaii. I’m bird-sitting her parakeet, Fitz. The parakeet has a nice cage with lots of mirrors and beads and toys. And bells.

For the past week, while the bird has been in residence, I have gone to the back door dozens of times after hearing a bell ring, expecting the dog to be there, prancing in his eagerness to go outside, and the dog has been nowhere in sight.

And I don’t learn. Five o’clock this morning Fitz started playing with the bells in her cage and I got out of bed, walked to the back door, and was shocked when the dog wasn’t there.

The dog was sleeping in my bed, you guys.

Pooped Out

My dog, Charlie, leads a rough life. He wakes me up, gets fed, gets taken for a walk, sleeps all morning, howls at the mailman, sleeps all afternoon, gets take for a walk, plays fetch, snuggles while we watch tv and goes to bed. You can see why he looks so exhausted, right?