Old Dog Project - Phase One.

The stairs off the back deck at my place are rotting and have been on the brink of falling off for a few years.  I have to get them replaced before I run out of luck and they fall off.  I figured that since I was putting in new stairs, I might as well make them more accessible for a certain aging and almost blind dog.

I'm having them made with as short a rise as code will allow, and doubling the run, so they'll be much longer, but at a much lower slope.  They'll be old dog friendly.

The company that makes them does only that - makes and delivers the stairs- so today my dad and I took the first step; we put in concrete blocks to make a landing at the bottom of the stairs.   First we had to remove the 5 inches of pea gravel that was there, and then dig out the clay and replace it with compacting gravel, tamp and level that out, and then an inch of sand.  Finally, four hours later, we had level patio blocks, upon which to set the bottom of the new stairs.

I think today was the hottest day of the year, so I was exhausted when we finished.  I decided to leave the big pile of pea gravel (that needs to be spread out throughout the rest of the dog pen) and the tools, and go inside.  The dogs, who hadn't been allowed outside all afternoon, quickly went outside to use the facilities and were pretty surprised when they got to the bottom of the stairs.

Both are absolutely convinced that they can't pass over the new concrete blocks.

If anybody would like to volunteer to come lift them over the evil obstruction until the new stairs are in place, please speak up soon.  Until then, my dogs will be crossing their legs.

Best. Fundraiser. Ever

The lady who grooms my dogs also raises chicken on the side.  This has become a passion of sorts, and she's a big supporter of humanely raised chickens - ie - they don't live in little tiny cages all their lives.    She's become active with local groups in the area and is helping to organize a big poultry show.

They need sponsors for the show and were thinking of ways to raise money, and I think they came up with a great idea.

It's called "Pass the Rooster".

One of her roosters is particularly chatty  loud obnoxious.   They'll be working with the local radio station, and dropping off the rooster at places of businesses first thing in the morning.  The radio station will give them a call (on the air) and they'll be informed that the rooster has to stay until they raise $300 to have him removed.  Until they do, it'll be nothing but cock-a-doodle doo.  People can then call or go in to the businesses to make donations to help remove the rooster, or they can call into the radio station, who will be checking in with the business regularly during his stay.

They plan to do this every day for a week.  Obviously, they'll have the approval of the big-wigs at the business, to make sure that nobody gets into trouble, but I think it's supposed to be a surprise for the rest of their staff.  In the meantime, the poultry club makes some money, the businesses get free advertising on the radio, and the radio station gets some laughs.  I think it's genius.


Moosepants - do you know of a medical clinic that might enjoy a rooster for a few hours in their reception area?

Finicky Feline

Winter's kidneys are borderline.  They don't cause him problems, but tests have always come back so close to the problematic line that vets are surprised that he's as healthy as he is.  So, last week when the vet asked me what he eats, I hung my head in shame.  He eats a popular brand of kibble that isn't great for him, especially with his kidneys.

I excused the poor nutrition by explaining that He Won't Eat Anything Else.   He won't.  He has his fairly healthy canned food, of which he'll eat *one* flavour.  But, he's eaten the same kibble all his life, regardless of how many other brands I've brought home and begged him to eat.  He'll eat what he likes, and that's it.

So, when the vet said to me that I should try this other food because it'd be better for him, I scoffed.  No way he'll eat that, I said.    Just try it, she said... see what he thinks.  I really thought (and said) that taking home a sample was a waste of her food.  It was just going to go straight into the garbage.

Keeping in mind that Winter refused to come out of the crate for the entire vet visit, and wasted $50 of my money, you can understand that he wasn't in my good books.  I cleared his feeding station of his kibble and his canned food, and left him a few morsels of the new kibble.

The damn cat ate them all.

Then he went on a hunger strike and refused to eat anything else but the sample food..

Today, I finished off the last of the sample kibble, and he wouldn't even look at the food he used to eat. So, I begrudgingly drove across town - during rush hour - to buy him some more.  They were out of the smaller bags, so I had the choice of driving home empty handed and letting my cat starve, or dropping another $50 on a 10 pound bag of kibble that will last 6 months.

Guess who turned his nose up at the new food once I got home.

We are not amused.

Trying Something Different

You just can't win a battle against the sun.  I tried for a while, but short of tinfoiling the room, I wasn't making much progress.

My office former office is a sun trap.  It's hard to complain about a plethora of sunlight, but that's what I'm going to do.  It's hot, and the glare off of the computer screen is really bad.  It has worked fine in the past, but now that I'm in there for 8+ hours a day, that glare is headache inducing.

This morning, I started off in the office.  I ended up moving into the dining room, but as the sun moved west across the sky, light started pouring into the dining room windows too.  That's when I had an Aha! moment.  My spare bedroom - a room that I barely use - is on the north side of the house.  It never gets direct sunlight, regardless of the time of day.

And so, I present to you my new office:

Don't judge me for my phone.  Mickey never runs out of batteries.

It comes with its own problems.  That's a tight space, and there isn't room for my two monitors and docking station that I usually use for work.

Making room for the desk meant displacing the armoire and leaving the bed with no side tables...   I suspect the armoire is going to end up being moved down to the basement.  This setup also gives the cat the opportunity to launch himself onto the armoire, which would be fine if he didn't use his claws when he doesn't *quite* make the jump.   The armoire may be going to the basement for now, but it's a nice piece of furniture that I don't want to see covered in scratches.

It also leaves the other room without a purpose, although that might be more a positive than a negative.  I'm thinking a Nest Chair, a few shelves full of books across the back wall and a tiny desk to hold the Mac could make that room into a nice library.

I hope this works

I continue to rejig the front office, while trying to find the still-elusive location for my desk without sunlight and glare.  One thing that I was stumbling over was the plant in the room, which has grown so large that it had to remain in a corner so that the walls could support it.

Old picture.

This plant is one that I picked up while I was in college, and it was 6" high.  It didn't have flowers at the time, but started blooming a while later.  It hasn't stopped growing or blooming since.

It's gotten so big that even the longest stakes I could find were too short, and it was in danger of toppling over.  I've been waffling about what to do for some time, and putting off what I thought was going to be the inevitable - throwing it away.

While trying to make room in the office, I ended up propping the plant in the dining room corner, had an idea and jumped on it without much thought.  A few minutes later, I had teacup hooks screwed into the wall,  and the plant had found a new home.  I suspect it'll look better when it grows large enough to go up and across the wall.

Or not.   I keep getting flashbacks of the 70's.  It reminds me of when people had ivies hanging in macrame hangers with big wooden beads, and the branches of the plants stretched out across the room.

I also think the light fixture looks too busy in front of it.  

It'd look better with a simple hurricane lamp, but new fixtures aren't in the budget.

   

Either way, the cup hooks screwed into the wall make this little experiment something of a commitment.  I'll live with it for a while, and if I decide that I hate it, I guess I'll take it down... and repaint the wall.

Randomosity

These are the things rumbling around in my brain

• It blows me away that, years later, Cotton Dog's Story still averages 5 hits a day.  
• I just hired somebody to spray foam the top part of my basement walls.  No, I didn't hire this guy.   The next guy that came around was intelligent and respectful.  And his quote was 25% less.  I like him.
• I need to hire somebody else to build new back stairs onto my deck.  The original builder placed the stairs directly on the soil, so in addition to rotting, they have sunk significantly.  Currently, they are held in place with three screws, and I'm afraid that they're going to snap off every time I go up or down.
• I was hoping to go back to California again this Christmas, but all these expenses are interfering.  It's times like this when I wish I was in a rental.
• I could probably do the stairs myself.  My goal in early August was to rebuild them with a lower rise and a deeper run to accommodate a certain little white dog who is growing old and going blind.  Then the house flooded, and I ran out of steam.... and I'm not going to get it done.  
• I know three people who know people who would like the job, but now the decision about who to hire is slowing me down.  Whichever guys I don't hire for the job, I somehow feel as though I'm insulting the people who introduced them to me.
• Back in July some time, I decided to get serious about weight loss.  I gained a lot of weight over the last couple of years, but now that I don't feel sick anymore, I don't have any more excuse.  So far, I've lost 15.5 pounds.  
• I met a friend for lunch today.  We sat at one of three active tables in the restaurant.  Normally, this restaurant chain has about 50 active tables, but they had no staff.  There was one cook, one waitress and a hostess, so they shut everything else down.   It seems really odd to me to live in a place where it's not unusual for businesses to close or limit their available services because of staffing shortages.  And yet, I know people in Eastern Canada or the US who are struggling to find jobs.
• I have to rearrange my office again, because of plethora of sunlight and glare in the mornings.  The desk is going to be facing the window again, but I don't want to rejoin the neighbourhood watch.  The current curtains are too sheer to block my view, so I've jigged up my own version of redneck window covers.  Yep, the lower windows are now covered with waxed paper.  I'm such a class act.

Cranky Old Man

Winter had an appointment for his annual checkup at the vet today.  I stopped vaccinating the pets a few years ago (personal choice, and with the support of their vet), so the annual checkups involve them going to the vet's office, being weighed, being checked for unusual lumps or soreness under the guise of getting pats and cuddles, and then me answering questions.  Not so stressful you'd think, eh?

Himself had other thoughts.  When I put the crate at the front door, he climbed into it on his own as he usually does (it's really Cotton's crate, so that was a little underhanded on my part).  He didn't cry or meow on the car ride.  He didn't make  peep in the waiting room.  But, when we went into the exam room and opened the crate to take him out, he drew the line.  Winter would not come out of the crate.

He hissed.  He spat.  He swatted.  When we reached in to pull him out, he bit.  When I tried to take the lid off the crate, he did all of the above.

I'm sure we could have donned ourselves in chainmail and forced him out, but neither the vet nor I wanted to do that. She reminded me that he had been in for a checkup in March when he'd had a bladder infection, and said that she'd done a fairly thorough exam then.  We decided to leave him there.

Winter got a free pass, but I didn't.  I spent $50 and 90 minutes on this little adventure.