Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Well, it's about time...
It’s another couple of weeks later here, and IT. IS. STILL. RAINING!!! By now I’m sure most of the country has heard enough about the terrible flooding situation in Southern Alberta. I have to say, it’s really not that bad unless you live right against the river, which, if you do, well, sorry about your luck. If you don’t live right by a body of water, though, you’re probably alright, except that you’re probably also annoyed all to hell by this constant rain. It’s like the Chinese water torture thing, only not as sneaky. You don’t have to sit there, waiting for a drip, you just get soaked and are miserable because you’re wet and cold, and it’s the end of friggin’ June for crying out loud, and summer in Calgary lasts about three months, and we’ve already wasted one of them being RAINED ON!!!
So, again, I have to say this is just too much. We’re in the middle of another “system” and we’re supposed to get 50 mm of rain out of this one. Typically in June we can expect an average of 77 mm of rain. We have exceeded that by far this month, and in each system alone we have had more than 77 mm of rain. This is our third “large” system this month. Stupid rain.
And not only has it rained throughout June, from the very beginning now to the very end, it has been cold. Cold, cold, cold. Not being a meteorologist, I can’t tell you our average temperature this month so far, but today it is only supposed to get “up to” +15, which is colder than it should be for this time of year. Again, we only get a limited time for summer, and this month has been a total write-off so far.
On a cheerier note, my parents have returned from visiting The Mac and no one got too upset with anyone else while they were down there, so that’s a good thing. Plus, they brought me some Lands End mocs, which I love. So all is well on that front.
However, if I don’t post this now, I never, ever will. Work is insanely busy what with all the water leak calls. Let’s hope the end of June brings the END OF RAIN!!
So, again, I have to say this is just too much. We’re in the middle of another “system” and we’re supposed to get 50 mm of rain out of this one. Typically in June we can expect an average of 77 mm of rain. We have exceeded that by far this month, and in each system alone we have had more than 77 mm of rain. This is our third “large” system this month. Stupid rain.
And not only has it rained throughout June, from the very beginning now to the very end, it has been cold. Cold, cold, cold. Not being a meteorologist, I can’t tell you our average temperature this month so far, but today it is only supposed to get “up to” +15, which is colder than it should be for this time of year. Again, we only get a limited time for summer, and this month has been a total write-off so far.
On a cheerier note, my parents have returned from visiting The Mac and no one got too upset with anyone else while they were down there, so that’s a good thing. Plus, they brought me some Lands End mocs, which I love. So all is well on that front.
However, if I don’t post this now, I never, ever will. Work is insanely busy what with all the water leak calls. Let’s hope the end of June brings the END OF RAIN!!
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
More about nothing...
Well, it’s another week here. I’ve been extremely busy with work, because of all the recent rain causing all sorts of water leaks everywhere (although I’ve gotten off easy compared to some of my colleagues… heh), and Rob and I are working on some home improvement stuff (putting a floor in the basement – more on this in a moment). My main cause for concern these days is that I haven’t heard much from The Mac.
Now, my parents are down there, “visiting” him. Originally, my mother was just going to go down and clean his house, since the last time we were there, last summer, the house was cleaned, and it apparently hadn’t been cleaned before… like, ever. Or, at least since The Mac had moved into it. So when we were there last summer, she cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. The walls were washed. The carpets were vacuumed (The Mac vacuums, but not the way his mother vacuums…). The plants were tended-to. Windows were washed. In fact, in the kitchen, in between the window panes, we discovered an old abandoned wasp’s nest in several well-built honeycomb formations of that grey paper they create. It was almost a sacrilege to destroy something so well-built. But we did it anyway.
I suspect my mother fears that The Mac just sits down there in Indiana not cleaning anything, the filth growing bolder and bolder each day. In truth, though, I think The Mac probably does alright – no better or worse than most single people. When I was single, I could go, like, three weeks without vacuuming sometimes. Yeah, the fur would totally build up everywhere. But it was only me looking at it, and I totally didn’t care. At least, I didn’t care enough to get the vacuum out and tackle the little tumbleweeds of fur drifting across the kitchen floor linoleum whenever I went in there to get a Coke. Now, however, because Rob will see the tumbleweeds and will probably freak out, I try to vacuum at least once a week. More, sometimes, if I notice a buildup. The Cooter is shedding now, too, so we have to take into account his giant long hairs getting in the mix. Clumps of the stuff, people.
So my mother’s original plan was to go down there and visit and clean for a couple of weeks. She would probably have taken The Mac shopping and bought him all sorts of stuff, because she dotes on him. However, these plans were altered somewhat when The Grumpaw decided he could spare the time to go, too. The Grumpaw has been at the same oil company for about 25 years now, and has amassed a truly obscene number of vacation days that he is granted each year. Plus, for many years, The Grumpaw would only take a week to two weeks per year, and the vacation days at his company would just roll over and roll over and roll over. At one point, the company noticed that they would have to give him about six months off if he were to actually TAKE the vacation days he had collected, so they put a stop to the rolling-over. They forced him to take a bunch of time off a couple of years ago, and told him that he had until two years from then to use up his vacation days, or they’d get paid out. So he would take a day here, and a day there, and a week here, and a week there for a while, which is why we ended up vacationing together last year – he had extra time he was being forced to take. This year, it’s the same story – the Grumpaw has to take some vacation time, or he’ll lose it. He still gets over a month of vacation days each year.
When The Grumpaw travels, it usually involves going to look at cars. They flew down this time, and have an itinerary of car-related events going on in the vicinity during the nearly three weeks they are down there. This is a very good thing – it’s a good thing that the Grumpaw isn’t around The Mac’s house the entire time. Of course, when he’s there at the house, he’s probably gardening or shepherding the pets around the yard, so the intrusion might be minimized somewhat.
My real worry is that they’re driving The Mac insane. My parents are nice and all, but if you have to spend THREE WEEKS with them, you might snap. Sure, a dinner here and an afternoon there, or a day-trip to the mountains, great. A couple of days on the road, well, you can survive alright. Up to a week in close quarters? We’re starting to get into dangerous territory. Three weeks? No way, man. No way.
They’ve been down there for over a week now. About a week and a half. So either they’re really getting along and are doing a lot of fun things together, or The Mac has had too much attention and is hiding out in his study under the guise of working. I hope they are all alright.
As for us, still here in Canada, I have to say that I hate the rain even more now than I did before. I haven’t spun off the road in it lately, but the driving has been tense, and the water leak calls keep coming in, and the work keeps piling up. And because everyone is busy with water leaks or they just can’t work outside in that much rain, that means they don’t have time to do my regularly scheduled projects, which irks my boards, who then yell at me, and then my life is reduced to calling and begging trades to help me out. It’s not fun at all.
We have been working in the house lately. I say “we”, but I really mean Rob. I accompany him on trips to the hardware stores, and that’s about the extent of my participation in the project so far. We are building a floor in the basement – a sub-floor, I guess. It’s a rack of 2x4s which we will then put plywood or that OSB floorboards onto. Rob is screwing the 2x4s into the concrete, which is a lot harder than you’d think. The first day, he broke the two concrete bits that came with the concrete screws. This 30-year-old concrete is pretty tough stuff. We consulted with our friend, Tom, who does this sort of thing for a living, and he said we weren’t using a big enough drill, so he lent us his hammer-drill. I had planned on screwing the 2x4s down after Rob drilled the holes, but apparently, I don’t have enough strength or weight to force them to go into the concrete. My participation will increase when we are able to screw the floorboards into the joists (yay?).
I did get a chance to clean the house last night while Rob was working on the floor. I vacuumed and tried to put things away. There are a lot of things that have nowhere to go in our house. Small things, medium-sized things, large things. They all seem to pile up on the horizontal surfaces everywhere. I need to file and get everything in the office organized, but that’s a lot harder than it sounds because there are several boxes of stuff in there that have nowhere to go – I need shelving or storage or something to put the contents into… Basically, I’m still not 100% unpacked from moving into the house five months ago. Oh, make that five and a half months.
The animals are all well. We bought Cooter a toy at the local Wal Mart on the weekend – it is a half-foot in diameter, brown fuzz-covered plastic ball with a face pasted on it, and when you drop it, it “activates”. When it “activates”, it vibrates and jiggles around, and makes a bit of a racket with music and laughter and some guy yelling something for about fifteen to twenty-five seconds. Cooter took it when it was offered to him, and then dropped it on the floor. Of course, it activated. It jiggled and rolled around on the floor, and at first, he was taken aback, but then learned to love it. Now, he carts it around the house in his mouth by the fuzz, winging it against the floor periodically to activate it. He has also discovered the NoodleDog doesn’t like it, so of course he tries to put it on the poor guy.
At any rate, the weeks are going by very quickly, and it looks like we’re starting to get into summer here, complete with mosquitos, variable weather, too many social obligations and a lot of work keeping me from slacking off. Enjoy!!
Now, my parents are down there, “visiting” him. Originally, my mother was just going to go down and clean his house, since the last time we were there, last summer, the house was cleaned, and it apparently hadn’t been cleaned before… like, ever. Or, at least since The Mac had moved into it. So when we were there last summer, she cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. The walls were washed. The carpets were vacuumed (The Mac vacuums, but not the way his mother vacuums…). The plants were tended-to. Windows were washed. In fact, in the kitchen, in between the window panes, we discovered an old abandoned wasp’s nest in several well-built honeycomb formations of that grey paper they create. It was almost a sacrilege to destroy something so well-built. But we did it anyway.
I suspect my mother fears that The Mac just sits down there in Indiana not cleaning anything, the filth growing bolder and bolder each day. In truth, though, I think The Mac probably does alright – no better or worse than most single people. When I was single, I could go, like, three weeks without vacuuming sometimes. Yeah, the fur would totally build up everywhere. But it was only me looking at it, and I totally didn’t care. At least, I didn’t care enough to get the vacuum out and tackle the little tumbleweeds of fur drifting across the kitchen floor linoleum whenever I went in there to get a Coke. Now, however, because Rob will see the tumbleweeds and will probably freak out, I try to vacuum at least once a week. More, sometimes, if I notice a buildup. The Cooter is shedding now, too, so we have to take into account his giant long hairs getting in the mix. Clumps of the stuff, people.
So my mother’s original plan was to go down there and visit and clean for a couple of weeks. She would probably have taken The Mac shopping and bought him all sorts of stuff, because she dotes on him. However, these plans were altered somewhat when The Grumpaw decided he could spare the time to go, too. The Grumpaw has been at the same oil company for about 25 years now, and has amassed a truly obscene number of vacation days that he is granted each year. Plus, for many years, The Grumpaw would only take a week to two weeks per year, and the vacation days at his company would just roll over and roll over and roll over. At one point, the company noticed that they would have to give him about six months off if he were to actually TAKE the vacation days he had collected, so they put a stop to the rolling-over. They forced him to take a bunch of time off a couple of years ago, and told him that he had until two years from then to use up his vacation days, or they’d get paid out. So he would take a day here, and a day there, and a week here, and a week there for a while, which is why we ended up vacationing together last year – he had extra time he was being forced to take. This year, it’s the same story – the Grumpaw has to take some vacation time, or he’ll lose it. He still gets over a month of vacation days each year.
When The Grumpaw travels, it usually involves going to look at cars. They flew down this time, and have an itinerary of car-related events going on in the vicinity during the nearly three weeks they are down there. This is a very good thing – it’s a good thing that the Grumpaw isn’t around The Mac’s house the entire time. Of course, when he’s there at the house, he’s probably gardening or shepherding the pets around the yard, so the intrusion might be minimized somewhat.
My real worry is that they’re driving The Mac insane. My parents are nice and all, but if you have to spend THREE WEEKS with them, you might snap. Sure, a dinner here and an afternoon there, or a day-trip to the mountains, great. A couple of days on the road, well, you can survive alright. Up to a week in close quarters? We’re starting to get into dangerous territory. Three weeks? No way, man. No way.
They’ve been down there for over a week now. About a week and a half. So either they’re really getting along and are doing a lot of fun things together, or The Mac has had too much attention and is hiding out in his study under the guise of working. I hope they are all alright.
As for us, still here in Canada, I have to say that I hate the rain even more now than I did before. I haven’t spun off the road in it lately, but the driving has been tense, and the water leak calls keep coming in, and the work keeps piling up. And because everyone is busy with water leaks or they just can’t work outside in that much rain, that means they don’t have time to do my regularly scheduled projects, which irks my boards, who then yell at me, and then my life is reduced to calling and begging trades to help me out. It’s not fun at all.
We have been working in the house lately. I say “we”, but I really mean Rob. I accompany him on trips to the hardware stores, and that’s about the extent of my participation in the project so far. We are building a floor in the basement – a sub-floor, I guess. It’s a rack of 2x4s which we will then put plywood or that OSB floorboards onto. Rob is screwing the 2x4s into the concrete, which is a lot harder than you’d think. The first day, he broke the two concrete bits that came with the concrete screws. This 30-year-old concrete is pretty tough stuff. We consulted with our friend, Tom, who does this sort of thing for a living, and he said we weren’t using a big enough drill, so he lent us his hammer-drill. I had planned on screwing the 2x4s down after Rob drilled the holes, but apparently, I don’t have enough strength or weight to force them to go into the concrete. My participation will increase when we are able to screw the floorboards into the joists (yay?).
I did get a chance to clean the house last night while Rob was working on the floor. I vacuumed and tried to put things away. There are a lot of things that have nowhere to go in our house. Small things, medium-sized things, large things. They all seem to pile up on the horizontal surfaces everywhere. I need to file and get everything in the office organized, but that’s a lot harder than it sounds because there are several boxes of stuff in there that have nowhere to go – I need shelving or storage or something to put the contents into… Basically, I’m still not 100% unpacked from moving into the house five months ago. Oh, make that five and a half months.
The animals are all well. We bought Cooter a toy at the local Wal Mart on the weekend – it is a half-foot in diameter, brown fuzz-covered plastic ball with a face pasted on it, and when you drop it, it “activates”. When it “activates”, it vibrates and jiggles around, and makes a bit of a racket with music and laughter and some guy yelling something for about fifteen to twenty-five seconds. Cooter took it when it was offered to him, and then dropped it on the floor. Of course, it activated. It jiggled and rolled around on the floor, and at first, he was taken aback, but then learned to love it. Now, he carts it around the house in his mouth by the fuzz, winging it against the floor periodically to activate it. He has also discovered the NoodleDog doesn’t like it, so of course he tries to put it on the poor guy.
At any rate, the weeks are going by very quickly, and it looks like we’re starting to get into summer here, complete with mosquitos, variable weather, too many social obligations and a lot of work keeping me from slacking off. Enjoy!!
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Rain, rain, go away!
Wow. It rained here in Alberta. And when I say “rained”, I actually mean it rained like there was no tomorrow. It really, really rained. We got a whole month’s worth of rain in one week. It rained steadily from last Thursday to yesterday, and may rain a bit more today and for the next few days.
As you know, I manage condominiums, and people in condos like their grass to be green. We had an “early spring”, in that the weather warmed up and the snow melted in April rather than in May, and we never got our late May snowstorm, so by mid-May, the grass was nice and Alberta-Brown. I’ll let you in on a little secret here, I love the colour of our grass here in Alberta. It isn’t green at all. It’s kind of a nice neutral beige-y-brownish colour, and it looks warm and dry. Kind of like straw or hay, after it has been cut and sitting in the barn for a while. Nice. Comforting to me. But not to condo-dwellers, no. They like their damn grass virulent green. If their grass is not a deep, chemically-induced horrible green colour, they call me on the phone crying about watering. “Why can’t we water? We don’t care if there is a water shortage. We need LUSH GREEN GRASS OR WE WILL ALL DIE!!”
All these fool people were running around in May sacrificing chickens and pigeons and goats, and praying to the rain gods dancing and chanting like idiots. It seems that the rain gods heard all of this ruckus and said “Oh, you want rain, do you? WELL HERE!” and threw the stuff down in bucketfulls.
I have an issue with the rain. I don’t like it. The Tiny Car doesn’t like it. I have a deep-seated fear of driving in the rain due to a little hydroplaning incident in 2003. Due to severe tire wear (they were referred to as “slicks” after we looked at them later) I spun right off the road, and collected a large amount of grass in the Tiny Car’s undercarriage to the point where, as I sped off once I got back on the road, I thought to myself, “perhaps the poor Tiny Car will just spontaneously combust from heating up all this grass stuffed into every orifice in the car, and I will be driving down the road in a blaze of glory”. Luckily that did not happen. All that came of the event is that I now possess a blinding fear of driving in the rain.
And having survived that, I notice that whenever I hit large amounts of water on the road, the car doesn’t handle well, and all I can imagine is the Tiny Car spinning out of control into other cars, medians, cement walls, etc. So I do not like the rain at all. I’m not a fan of water in general – I don’t like getting wet in the shower, I don’t like getting water in my eyes at all. The only sort of swimming I actually enjoy (without goggles) is in those new salt-water pools where the water doesn’t sting the hell out of my eyes. I don’t like the cold feeling you get from being wet and having to dry off. It’s unpleasant, and it makes me uncomfortable.
I also do not like the rain because when it rains, stuff leaks. All those people who live in condos and were praying for rain now have leaks in their basements, windows and roofs, and who do you think they call about them? That’s right. Me. Not only do I have numerous basement leaks from all this water, several small roof leaks and a number of windows and frames leaking water, I had a fairly sizeable sewer main back up into seven units the other day. Those poor people, aside from being wet and miserable from the deluge of rain, ended up with sewage in their basements. YUCK. And the guy I have who does repairs, Tom, who is an excellent tradesperson and does knock himself out getting these things fixed, is swamped, both literally and figuratively. He was soaked to the bone during the rainy days, and also braved the sewer backups as well.
It has been busy in the office, which cuts into my slacking-off time. I have to actually answer the phone and do work and stuff like that, and it’s kind of annoying.
The other reason I do not like the rain and the grass being made green again is that the poor bunnies are all so visible now it’s ridiculous. They’re out there, all decked-out in their nice summer coats that are BROWN and CREAM COLOURED, and they stick out like sore thumbs in the middle of these insanely green lawns. I suppose this gives them more to eat, but they’re sitting ducks with no camouflage whatsoever. The only comfort is that the coyotes are all in the same boat, so theoretically, the rabbits would see ‘em coming from a mile off. And while the coyotes can see the rabbits now, the rabbits might have a chance of getting away from those jaws of death. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of the coyote, but I also like to see the bunny who lives one street over every day when I come home from work. He’s a lot easier to spot these days.
Additionally, in the rain, you cannot garden. And so the poor garden lies there, mostly finished but not quite, and although this is perfect weather for growing things because you don’t have to water them with the hose and the fancy new sprinkler we just bought, you do have to plant them first. Which I have not yet done. I’m told we can plant through June and still have things grow alright, but time’s a-ticking away.
The dogs don’t seem to mind the rain when they’re out there, but the house is a disaster zone because when they come inside, their clunky feet are all muddy and they have to sit and have ‘em cleaned off, which they do not like, and then they track dirt into the entire house anyway. They get pretty soggy, and cold, so we’ve kept them inside for the past week. Cooter is starting to lose his mind, and chases all of the cats around and even broke his fantastic streak of not chewing anything. He utterly destroyed Rob’s fake leather-bound notebook that matches the one Rob got me (so now we only have the one) and shredded the cover into teeny-tiny little bits. That was on Monday. Then, on Tuesday, he managed to get into a bag of potatoes that we had inexplicably left lying around, and he spread the potatoes all around the house. Every room had a potato in it. The kitchen, the bathroom, the living room… all with the potatoes everywhere. He did not eat them, he merely gnawed on most of them. I’m not sure if the NoodleDog was complicit in that – although the event involved food, it wasn’t food the dogs would eat, so he might have had nothing to do with it.
The NoodleDog isn’t feeling well. He had been a little sick after we got back from camping, and I worried that maybe he had ingested something bad out in the forest, but he bounced back for a couple of weeks and has been fine up until this morning, when he didn’t eat his breakfast. He usually eats his breakfast and will even eye up Cooter’s, but this morning, after they went for a walk with Rob, he just came into the bedroom and went back to bed. Poor guy, I can tell he’s not feeling well. He just looks sad. We are keeping an eye on him and will spirit him off to the vet tonight if he’s not his normal self. We left him inside, of course, but we left Cooter outside today since the rain has let up and he clearly needs the break from inside, as do the cats.
So here’s to some hot, dry Alberta-style summer weather. May all your grass turn a nice golden brown!!
As you know, I manage condominiums, and people in condos like their grass to be green. We had an “early spring”, in that the weather warmed up and the snow melted in April rather than in May, and we never got our late May snowstorm, so by mid-May, the grass was nice and Alberta-Brown. I’ll let you in on a little secret here, I love the colour of our grass here in Alberta. It isn’t green at all. It’s kind of a nice neutral beige-y-brownish colour, and it looks warm and dry. Kind of like straw or hay, after it has been cut and sitting in the barn for a while. Nice. Comforting to me. But not to condo-dwellers, no. They like their damn grass virulent green. If their grass is not a deep, chemically-induced horrible green colour, they call me on the phone crying about watering. “Why can’t we water? We don’t care if there is a water shortage. We need LUSH GREEN GRASS OR WE WILL ALL DIE!!”
All these fool people were running around in May sacrificing chickens and pigeons and goats, and praying to the rain gods dancing and chanting like idiots. It seems that the rain gods heard all of this ruckus and said “Oh, you want rain, do you? WELL HERE!” and threw the stuff down in bucketfulls.
I have an issue with the rain. I don’t like it. The Tiny Car doesn’t like it. I have a deep-seated fear of driving in the rain due to a little hydroplaning incident in 2003. Due to severe tire wear (they were referred to as “slicks” after we looked at them later) I spun right off the road, and collected a large amount of grass in the Tiny Car’s undercarriage to the point where, as I sped off once I got back on the road, I thought to myself, “perhaps the poor Tiny Car will just spontaneously combust from heating up all this grass stuffed into every orifice in the car, and I will be driving down the road in a blaze of glory”. Luckily that did not happen. All that came of the event is that I now possess a blinding fear of driving in the rain.
And having survived that, I notice that whenever I hit large amounts of water on the road, the car doesn’t handle well, and all I can imagine is the Tiny Car spinning out of control into other cars, medians, cement walls, etc. So I do not like the rain at all. I’m not a fan of water in general – I don’t like getting wet in the shower, I don’t like getting water in my eyes at all. The only sort of swimming I actually enjoy (without goggles) is in those new salt-water pools where the water doesn’t sting the hell out of my eyes. I don’t like the cold feeling you get from being wet and having to dry off. It’s unpleasant, and it makes me uncomfortable.
I also do not like the rain because when it rains, stuff leaks. All those people who live in condos and were praying for rain now have leaks in their basements, windows and roofs, and who do you think they call about them? That’s right. Me. Not only do I have numerous basement leaks from all this water, several small roof leaks and a number of windows and frames leaking water, I had a fairly sizeable sewer main back up into seven units the other day. Those poor people, aside from being wet and miserable from the deluge of rain, ended up with sewage in their basements. YUCK. And the guy I have who does repairs, Tom, who is an excellent tradesperson and does knock himself out getting these things fixed, is swamped, both literally and figuratively. He was soaked to the bone during the rainy days, and also braved the sewer backups as well.
It has been busy in the office, which cuts into my slacking-off time. I have to actually answer the phone and do work and stuff like that, and it’s kind of annoying.
The other reason I do not like the rain and the grass being made green again is that the poor bunnies are all so visible now it’s ridiculous. They’re out there, all decked-out in their nice summer coats that are BROWN and CREAM COLOURED, and they stick out like sore thumbs in the middle of these insanely green lawns. I suppose this gives them more to eat, but they’re sitting ducks with no camouflage whatsoever. The only comfort is that the coyotes are all in the same boat, so theoretically, the rabbits would see ‘em coming from a mile off. And while the coyotes can see the rabbits now, the rabbits might have a chance of getting away from those jaws of death. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of the coyote, but I also like to see the bunny who lives one street over every day when I come home from work. He’s a lot easier to spot these days.
Additionally, in the rain, you cannot garden. And so the poor garden lies there, mostly finished but not quite, and although this is perfect weather for growing things because you don’t have to water them with the hose and the fancy new sprinkler we just bought, you do have to plant them first. Which I have not yet done. I’m told we can plant through June and still have things grow alright, but time’s a-ticking away.
The dogs don’t seem to mind the rain when they’re out there, but the house is a disaster zone because when they come inside, their clunky feet are all muddy and they have to sit and have ‘em cleaned off, which they do not like, and then they track dirt into the entire house anyway. They get pretty soggy, and cold, so we’ve kept them inside for the past week. Cooter is starting to lose his mind, and chases all of the cats around and even broke his fantastic streak of not chewing anything. He utterly destroyed Rob’s fake leather-bound notebook that matches the one Rob got me (so now we only have the one) and shredded the cover into teeny-tiny little bits. That was on Monday. Then, on Tuesday, he managed to get into a bag of potatoes that we had inexplicably left lying around, and he spread the potatoes all around the house. Every room had a potato in it. The kitchen, the bathroom, the living room… all with the potatoes everywhere. He did not eat them, he merely gnawed on most of them. I’m not sure if the NoodleDog was complicit in that – although the event involved food, it wasn’t food the dogs would eat, so he might have had nothing to do with it.
The NoodleDog isn’t feeling well. He had been a little sick after we got back from camping, and I worried that maybe he had ingested something bad out in the forest, but he bounced back for a couple of weeks and has been fine up until this morning, when he didn’t eat his breakfast. He usually eats his breakfast and will even eye up Cooter’s, but this morning, after they went for a walk with Rob, he just came into the bedroom and went back to bed. Poor guy, I can tell he’s not feeling well. He just looks sad. We are keeping an eye on him and will spirit him off to the vet tonight if he’s not his normal self. We left him inside, of course, but we left Cooter outside today since the rain has let up and he clearly needs the break from inside, as do the cats.
So here’s to some hot, dry Alberta-style summer weather. May all your grass turn a nice golden brown!!
