This, That, and Dogs

The thaw has set in today, just in time for the next round of winter storm to kick into gear tomorrow. About noon-ish, they're saying.  That means we need to get to the Krogerville in the morning to re-stock the wine rack.  No Sunday liquor sales in Arkansas.  Stupid, archaic Blue Laws.

We had a case of Kamikaze Birdies yesterday! A Cardinal, a Junco, and a little Chickadee were chasing one another around the deck and feeders and all 3 smashed into the windows. Really hard -- I heard the impacts from the other end of the house! Pepper went out to see how they were, got them uprighted, and petted them a little to calm them. A few minutes later, he found a box and brought the Chickadee and the Junco inside. Inside the house! On the kitchen table! He said he didn't want them just sitting out there, shivering, while they tried to recover. (At least he covered the box with some newspaper.) The Cardinal managed to fly up to the rail outside, so he left her alone. Some 15 minutes later, I heard a commotion in the next room and went to check it out. The Junco had come to his senses and flapped out of the box toward the window! Remember, we have 2 large, very interested bird dogs. Pepper managed to catch the little guy before Bouie and Mysti could, and I opened the door so he could go to  set the little guy free. He flew away, along with the Cardinal, gratefully. The little Chickadee, unfortunately, didn't make it. Pepper gave him a dignified send off. My big, bad husband is such a softie!  No bird casualties today.  Yet.

We were able to get up the hill last night, so we were also able to make it downtown to a beautiful wedding reception for a young woman we raised along with our girls, held at one of Little Rock's prettiest hotels (The Capital Hotel).  She was radiant!  I know no one particularly wants to read about the wedding of some total stranger, but that's beside the point.  This is what's important:  while we waited for the bride and groom to make their appearance, there was an open bar (always a nice thing), and passed hors d'oeuvres were served.  Oh. My. Gosh.  I now have a new favorite -- baked bacon on a stick!!! A little piece of piggish heaven -- on a stick!  The bride is a big bacon fan.

And now, to make me smile, a few dog pics:

 Our Mysti Girl, all grown up and "helping" me with my lunch.

 Sweet old man, resting up from a puppy hassling him.

 Bouie and the sunbeam -- his new favorite nap spot.

 Mysti, performing her version of "cute" on her birthday.

 More cute.

 Bouie apparently likes this spot, too.

 Ol' Bou is growing more and more gray hair.  Pepper calls him "Graybeard."  Talk about pot and kettle . . .

 Mysti like to play with the neighbor Border Collie pup through the fence -- can you see the Border Collie snout and paw poking through at the corner?

 Bouie has a raccoon.  And, apparently, a little anxiety.  Look at those ears!

 More cute and perky.

 Mysti is what we like to call a "leaner."

 Lunch companions.

 Christmas duck (that we had to hide from them before they drove us nuts with the quacker!)

I love this grin!  Baby fox, seen on the floor, is now a baby Fox-cicle since Miss Mysti took him through the doggie door and left him in the snow.  Big Fox is now just a fox torso since he was the biggest loser in a game of tug-o-war.

 Watching "The Life of Pi" and hating on some wild hogs (in the previous scene -- I know that's an elephant on the screen now).

Life is good when you're off the leash.  Happy Sunday!

D-Day + 68 years

Honor Flights is a national organization that transports WWII Veterans, free of charge, to Washington, DC, to experience the WWII Memorial erected in their tribute.  It has been my pleasure to be amid the crowds welcoming home several Flights returning to New Orleans.  We're losing The Greatest Generation so quickly.

It's D-Day + 68 years.  Thank you, Soldier, Sailor, Marine, Airman, Coastie, Merchant Marine.



Here's a post with a little more information about the "flash mob" that greeted an Honor Flight to Reagan International on May 23, 2012.

A Day in the Life of Home Ownership

Something mystifying and wondrous happened to me today.  Its like may never occur again, so I need to record it for fear that I'm losing what's left of my mind and somehow made it up.

But, I swear, I didn't make it up.

We've had so much work done on Moogie's Mansion the last couple of months that it's hard to remember everything we've done.  We're still living in chaos, though, because most of the Laura Ashley bathroom (everyone needs a full bath decorated in busy, dark mauve Laura Ashley-esque floral prints off the kitchen, dontcha know.  We never got around to re-doing that bathroom.) is currently located in the kitchen and dining room while new tile is laid to replace that hideous pink carpet.  "Currently located" includes the toilet, which currently peeks out from under the kitchen table.  I have managed to get the contents of the laundry room out of the bathroom and dining room back into the new, much more spacious laundry room, though.

Have I mentioned that we've taken in a tenant?  Moogie's Mansion is zoned as a multiple family dwelling, there being 2 water and power meters, and several entrances from outside.  Pepper actually lived in the apartment upstairs before we bought the Mansion and before I moved down here full-time.  When the house went on the market, he had fallen in love with it and didn't want to risk having bad new landlords, so we just bought the old girl.  He had one tenant, a work colleague, before I moved down, and we haven't had one since, using the apartment as guest quarters instead.

Moving in a tenant meant packing up and moving a quarter of the house from one side to the other!  At least a quarter of the house is now culled and packed away, ready for the next move.  But what a nightmare!  And the remainder of upstairs looks kinda like a used furniture store, with stuff stacked and leaning up against other stuff.  We're gonna have to get a storage unit.

Anyway, another improvement we made was to replace the master bathroom toilet.  It was probably medieval vintage.  Long story shorter, when our wonderful Kerry Luminais Emergency Plumbers installed the new one, they cut off the water to the upstairs, too, by mistake.  And after they turned it back on, the water pressure to the apartment kitchen slowed over a period of days to something that might be generously described as a trickle.  Pepper, Tenant's dad (who is a work friend of Pepper and occasionally stays here with her overnight when work calls him to New Orleans -- Tenant is a cute young female twenty-something), and I all agreed -- using our best plumber's intuition -- that something was clogging the ancient pipe and that it would need to be replaced.

Thank goodness for Kerry Luminais Emergency Plumbers! 

The guys got here this afternoon, checked out the problem, cleaned out the filter on the kitchen sink faucet, and left a tool for Cute Young Tenant to use should the problem recur.  All in the space of about 5 minutes, water was flowing freely.

But, here's the miraculous part.

As we were walking down the exterior steps, I remarked how painless that had been and asked what I owed him.

Are you ready for this?

He said, "Not a thing.  My pleasure. And I'm still looking for a girlfriend for Bouie."
I nearly fainted (especially since the stove repair guy had nicked us for a hefty repair bill to fix the apartment stove earlier in the day.)

I mean, when's the last time you heard of a plumber doing something like that?!?!

I'm really gonna miss Kerry Luminais Emergency Plumbers.

And, I promise I didn't make this up.

My Family, the Dog Lovers

Elder daughter has become a woman on a mission. 

Since she took a teaching job in North Little Rock she's been a much happier person, overall.  But now I think the "nurturing" -- and keeping up with 9th and 10th graders -- part of being a teacher has spilled over into her personal life.

Before school was out for the summer last week, she noticed two black lab pups on the loose in her neighborhood.  She didn't know where they lived, but she fretted about them being out on the streets in the heat, so she left a bowl of water on her front porch before she left for school, vowing to find their home if they were still around when she got home.

They didn't reappear for several days, so she relaxed a little about their welfare.  Until yesterday evening.

Then, there they were, back on her front porch.

She knew they were someone's pets because they would sit on command and were fairly well-behaved, but they didn't wear collars and you can't call a Vet on Sunday to check whether they are chipped, so she did the logical nurturer thing -- she took in two four-month-old Labrador puppies. 

Bear in mind that she and SIL#1 have two dogs of their own (an "active" young boxer and a chiweenie -- chihuahua-dachshund mix -- a rather bossy little thing who enjoys the sound of her own voice), plus they are keeping Younger Daughter/SIL#2's very needy lab-golden retriever mix during YD/SIL#2's Honeymoon.

They do not live on a farm with lots of acreage.

It was apparently a wild and crazy scene at Elder Daughter's house last night.  All night. 

She left her bedroom window cracked so she could sort of keep tabs on them during the night, having bedded them down on the deck outside the window at an ungodly hour.  They are apparently part night-owl because there was not a lot of puppy-napping going on.  A lot of puppy playing, yes, puppy napping, no.  SIL#1, needing to sleep a little so he could be functional at work today, decided to shift to the guest room so as to be sheltered from puppy noise.  And, I doubt he was very happy about that.  But it was probably the right move on his part.

Elder Daughter awoke from a restless sleep around five in the morning to spy through the window their very heavy barbecue grill slowly moving across the deck in fits and starts.  Yep.  The puppies were having a tug-of-war with the grill cover, and the grill was losing.

Then they were hungry.

After gulping down enough coffee to keep her conscious, Elder Daughter went to work on finding the pups' home.  Sherlock Holmes would have been proud.

Long story shorter, a nearby neighbor told her that the pups belonged to his next-door neighbor, a college student who often threw raucous college-student parties, and whose lease had therefore been non-renewed.  He put Elder Daughter in touch with College Boy's landlord, who in turn gave her College Boy's name and phone number. 

It seems that College Boy had gone out of town on a little vacay, leaving two bored, 4-month-old lab puppies who like to dig, unattended, outdoors.  College Boy's grandmother was allegedly coming by to feed them.

A rather terse text-messaging session ensued, followed by a call from College Boy's mother.

College Boy's mother came to Elder Daughter's house to pick up the pups, driving a Lexus (Elder Daughter fixated on the Lexus part, expecting instead to see something like the Beverly Hillbillies' truck roll up in front of the house.  She still can't believe that CB would allow his Lexus-driving mother, not to mention his grandmother, see the appalling state of his house and yard.).  Elder Daughter recommended that CBM board the pups until the prodigal son returned to take up the responsibility for those precious little souls he had assumed.  CBM assured Elder Daughter that she was going to do precisely that.

Elder Daughter called me as CBM was pulling away with the precious cargo, and noticed that the car had stopped.  She was livid, fearing that CBM had simply slipped the pups back into the yard.  So, she did the logical nurturer thing -- she stormed over to CB's fence and started calling the pups, ready to sic the authorities on the CB family if need be, giving me the play-by-play every step of the way.

Fortunately for the CB family, the pups were not in the yard.

Now Elder Daughter worries what will become of the pups when CB has to find new digs and she's not around to look after them.

I doubt it will be a problem.  And, I suspect that CB should just bend over and accept the fact the Elder Daughter is likely to be stalking him henceforth, in full-blown puppy-lover mode.

At least until school starts in the fall.

I wonder where she gets it?

Weekend Frenzy

Wonderful house guests in town, and Zurich Classic PGA tournament plus Weekend 1 of Jazzfest are going on this weekend, so there's little blog time. But, be prepared and forewarned -- a food porn post is coming that will knock your socks off!

Hummingbirds are SOOO Cool!

I saw this on Facebook.  I've only watched it about ninety-eleven times so far, and it mesmerizes me every single time and freezes my face in a smile.  Can you imagine?  The happy followup story is in the comments here.



Just.  Simply.  Wow.