dog manor's photostream

Earlier this week we were hit by an ice storm and a dusting of snow. Caitlin and Crow had enormous fun racing up and over the hill in the back yard. In fact, they had just a little too much fun. Caitlin tore the top off of one of her toenails, and now, after a trip to the vet, she is thumping around the house like a Star-bellied Sneetch (see inset).

During the time that Eileen and Emma were away in Louisville, Crow mostly moped around and sighed and acted like a drama queen. However, he did manage to take time out of his hopeless misery to eat some grapes off the vine. Fortunately, he didn't do what he commonly does after eating unripe grapes, which is throw them up in the living room. I guess he wasn't feeling happy enough to do that.

We’ve started packing for the move. Since it is such a long-distance move, getting rid of stuff has become a hope. We’ve been carting boxes of books over to the local library, where they add them to their collection or to the book sale table in the lobby. Still, we will be left with an abundance of books, all packed neatly into book boxes weighing fifty or sixty pounds apiece. Movers love huge book collections, because they love to have their trailers groaning along the interstates like eighteen-wheeled coal barges. Probably the only thing they like more than mountains of books are mountains of other loose, heavy objects, like iron free-weights, for example -- which we also have. What else? you might ask. Well, of course, there’s our collection of decorative concrete slabs...

We're moving to Kentucky!

Blogged on February 4, 2008...

It’s the season when the pond at the foot of our property fills with water. The frogs inhabiting the grassy hills can somehow sense the water, and they are drawn to it in the way that free spirits were drawn to Haight Ashbury in the ’60s. And the analogy doesn’t end there. Here in the Sierra Foothills, the frog summer of love happens in February. The din at night is ear-splitting, as the amphibious multitudes get their groove on.

The pond is dirt dry in the summer; so having this much water on the property is a bit of an event. I was thinking that I might “dress up” the pond each week to honor some other, more famous body of water in America. This would be for the entertainment and edification of the riders in the few cars that motor past on the adjoining one-lane road (highlighted in the photo). So it would be sort of a driving game. If you drove by and the pond had some 50-gallon drums floating in it, you might guess “Lake Erie.” If there was a dead body: “East River.” If the pond was on fire, you might exclaim “Cuyahoga!”

Well, you see how it would go. It’s just an idea that I probably won’t have time to implement. In the end, the neighbors just might be happier driving by and seeing only Canada Geese (“Lake Wobegon!”). And, you never know, maybe someone from Disney will read this and want the idea for their theme parks.