Tag Archives: Blazer

Playing Hide and Seek

6 Mar

We got a call from the vet at 7:45 this morning, saying that we could come up and get Blazer any time we were ready. We went to the Y and worked out, then swung over to grab the dog, who was mighty glad to see us. The tech said the vet had decided to close the clinic yesterday because of the snow, rather than risk somebody falling on the parking lot, and she had come over about noon to feed the animals. I must have just missed her, as she remarked “somebody had walked up to the door”.

Before we left for vacation, The Squire had backed up both computers and put the hard drives in a “safe place”, so now, of course, he can’t find them. I told him yesterday (after listening to him moan and groan all day) that if he thought about it really hard before he went to bed, the answer would probably come to him in his sleep.

This morning, he said he had been on an ocean liner, and had given the hard drives to the ship’s purser. When he got ready to leave the ship, he had asked the captain – who happened to be Jean-Luc Pickard – for his tapes. The purser had jumped ship at the previous port and taken the tapes with him.

So much for that theory.

Me? I hide the family silver. Him? He hides his Family Tree records. Just makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

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A Cascade of Minor Frustrations

20 Jan

I have been digging into the four tubs my mother left which I believe contain photos. I emptied one, and spent Saturday and Sunday working on a second. I addressed envelopes to several descendants, plus an 8 x 10 envelope for pictures of my mom, my sister, and myself. (Did you see that beauty of me on the 15th?) It has gotten to the point that I recognize members of certain families without looking to see what’s written on the back.  Battle Fatigue has begun to set in, so I’m taking a few days “vacation” from this project.

Yesterday morning I took a stack of bulky envelopes to the Post Office, only to discover they were closed, as was the library. Rats, and back home.

I also had a cranial MRI scheduled for 2:00, so the Squire and I went late to the Y, and then stopped for lunch on the way to Bel Air. I have to be sedated just short of a general anesthetic for this test, so once it was over we came home and I slept off what amounted to a royal binge. I was still so groggy when I went to bed that I don’t remember The Squire coming in, nor do I remember getting up in the middle of the night and apparently opening the door to the TV room, so the dog slept most of the night on the love seat.

This, by the way, is a brand new behavior. Ever since we got him, Blazer has slept on a pillow in the hallway, but all of a sudden he has decided he has the seniority to sleep “up” and has even curled up beside The Squire while he watched TV. That has only happened once, and I don’t think there’ll be a recurrence.

There was a fire in a motel in a town up the road from us, and at least one family has been displaced, so various churches are collecting clothing, toiletries, and housewares to help fill in the blanks. It’s bad enough when four people are reduced to living in a single motel room, without adding the insult of loosing everything you own. I did find two dressers and a mattress and box spring on Freecycle, but none of it would fit in our SUV (oh! How we miss that van!) so I had to ask the fellow if he could hold the things until today, so I could arrange transport. Then at the last minute I had the wits to ask about the bed; it’s a queen, which these people cannot use. I really felt bad about it, so asked The Squire if it was OK for me to offer the man the loaf of onion-dill bread I had just baked, as a thank you for being to patient.

We stopped on the way home so I could buy yeast, as I had used the last of it in the loaf  I’d just made. Aldi’s didn’t have any – they claim it’s a “seasonal item” – so we had to go to another store,  and after I had measured everything into the bread machine, I discovered that the carton of cottage cheese I had on the top shelf was actually a serving of potatoes from a church supper on the 10th – not cottage cheese, and definitely not fit to eat. Too late to go out at buy more cheese, so it will all have to wait until tomorrow. We’ll have hot, fresh bread for lunch, at any rate.

Tomorrow may bring its own set of problems. I work as a temp for a large company in Sparks, and the regular switchboard operator sent me an email asking if I might possibly be available tomorrow, as she may have jury duty. She has my email and my home phone, but I have not heard from her, and I’m getting antsy.

And it’s supposed to snow tomorrow.

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Just Like TV

19 Dec

This afternoon, The Squire had one of those circus acts going on. I was out, and he started dinner for us, and while he was at it, he decided to feed the dog, so he got the dish and put it on the end of the counter. The cat was sitting in the doorway, and as soon as Blazer heard the food rattle into the dish, he came racing in. The cat, of course, thought he was about to be run over and jumped UP out of the way. Directly into the dog dish, which flew into the air and scattered kibbles, like manna, all over the kitchen. Blazer, who acts as if he only gets fed on alternate weekends, started snuffling around the kitchen, gobbling up the food.

In the meantime, the cat was so startled by the dish and the mess that he jumped again – onto the stove. Hit a saucepan and knocked the spoon and the lid onto Blazer’s head. Cat and dog both yelp with pain. Cat hops down and runs into the backroom and Blazer starts running. Anyplace. Doesn’t matter. Except that he can’t get his feet going properly because he’s on the scatter rug.

The Squire was laughing so hard he had to lean against the wall.

 

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Let’s Not do That Again

12 Dec

I took Blazer up to get his nails trimmed last night, and it was not a rousing success, to put it mildly.

We got him in March, 2008, and he has never had his nails done. We tried it here at home once and he actually bit The Squire (first and only time) so we just let it go. I did ask at the vet’s one time when we boarded him, but they got things confused and gave him a bath instead. Or maybe they did try to cut his nails and decided a bath was safer. Who knows?

Anyway, the technician got one back paw done with “minimal” trouble, but ended up having to put a muzzle on him before she finished the second hind leg. He thrashed around dreadfully while she tried to do his front feet. Got one done, but when she started the other foot, he pulled away so suddenly – and forcefully – that he rammed her head and she bit her lip.

As soon as she removed the muzzle, he jumped down and laid in front of her to have his belly rubbed. “No hard feelings, lady, but keepa ya hands offa ma feet.”

Crazy animal.

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Another Birthday

29 Nov

The Squire celebrated his mumble-mumblety birthday today very quietly at home. Since yesterday was our anniversary, we did it up last night, and planned to take it easy today. It didn’t work out exactly as planned.

When I tied Blazer out this morning, there was a deer in the field and he took off running. Somehow, he managed to catch the rope on my license place and ripped it off the front of the car, flinging it across the yard. Great start to the morning!

After he got that taken care of, The Squire headed over to church to work on the printer network – one more time. The laptop the treasurer uses is running Windows XP, the rector uses something else, and the secretary is using a third system. Every once in a while, the printer just ups and throws a hissy fit, and while The Squire is no longer the Property Warden, he is still in charge of keeping the computers up and running – and trying to maintain his sanity at the same time. He came home to chicken soup, courtesy of the Thanksgiving Dinner, and then we began to work on our Christmas cards.

We have an Open House every year on the third Sunday in Advent, so our cards need to go out fairly early. I purchase cards from House-Mouse Designs, and we print our invitation on the inside. This year, we have a new printer, and I honestly thought The Squire was going to tear out what little hair he still has left.  That printer gave him fits. It wouldn’t allow for a custom size paper, printed double-sided on two cards (no, we didn’t tell it to do that) and then suddenly decided not to work at all. I didn’t know if I should stick around and “help”, or just try to keep out of his hair.

All is well, and we will address the cards tomorrow.

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A Few Surprises

20 Nov

The Squire and I went to a meeting last night, and came home about 10 PM. As our headlights swung around the bend in the drive, we startled a great blue who was sleeping in the middle of our back yard. Hard to tell which of us was the most surprised, to tell the truth. The poor bird started to fly away, got tangled in the clothes line, fell back to the ground and stalked off into the dark with as much dignity as he could manage.

Blazer likes to chew on his dish. A rawhide bone apparently has nothing on the delicate taste of a well-seasoned plastic bowl. Consequently, the dish resembles a small green colander. This is absolutely something I must remember when I pour milk over his morning kibble.  As a result of this minor flood, I staggered over to our local metropolis to purchase a new, sturdier, bowl and pick up some wrapping paper, so I can get a running start on the Christmas gifts, and then to the grocery for a few items Aldi’s doesn’t carry.

In the store, I ran into my girlfriend Karen, who came here from a northern European country. I don’t know if they are as enamored with ATMs there as much as we are in America, but she simply has no use for them.  She had gone into the bank to deposit a check, and there was not a single teller at any of the windows, so she marched up to the manager and asked him (rather forcefully, if I know her as well as I think I do) to take care of this for her. He allowed as how he didn’t know how to handle a deposit, and she would have to use the machine in the lobby.

“You’re the manager here?”

“Yes.”

“Well, suppose you tell me how you can be a supervisor when you don’t even know what it is your people do.”

And she stomped out.

I hope there were a dozen other people in the building at the time. I really do!

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First Time For Everything

15 Sep

Blazer is a Momma’s Boy, and he has always been a perfectly behaved puppy. He never takes food from the table – although if it hits the floor it’s fair game – is friendly to visitors, patient with children, and never gets on the furniture.

Until today.

The Squire and I went out to plant some mums in the planter by the mailbox, and since the puppy has no street smarts, we left him in the house. I could hear him barking while we loaded plants, tools and potting soil into the wheelbarrow, but I figured he’d settle down in a few minutes.  After we got the flowers planted, The Squire went back to the pond for a bucket of water, while I pulled some weeds along the driveway.

He came back chuckling. When he went to dip the water, the dog’s barking seemed awfully close. He glanced up and saw Blazer’s head above the window a/c unit. The dog had climbed onto the recliner to keep an eye on what we going on outside. The first time since I picked him up in March 2008 he has ever gotten onto – or into – anything that wasn’t his.

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Momma’s Boy

20 Aug

There is no question about who Blazer belongs to. He stays upstairs in the hallway, guarding the bedroom door until I come down in the morning, and if I am gone for any length of time, he either goes upstairs and stays there, or lays in front of the kitchen door, head on his paws, willing me to come through that door. He will not eat what The Squire puts out for him until I come home and give it my official “blessing”.

I’ve been working this week – will be until Friday, in fact – and the poor boy is wasting away. Monday, The Squire could not get him downstairs for love nor money. Usually, an invitation to go get the mail will have him racing downstairs, but he didn’t budge. The Squire went up with the leash in his hand, and Blazer ran and stuck his head under my side of the bed. Since The Squire was not about to crawl under there and drag him out, the dog was in the house until I came home at 6.

Honestly, you’d think my husband beats the dog or something.

I hate to consider what will become of the dog if anything happens to me, and The Squire worries about what will happen to me if anything happens to Blazer.  As Will Rogers once said, if there are no dogs in Heaven, I want to go wherever they go.

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Holy Smoke!

13 Aug

I had a doctor’s appointment this morning at the unearthly hour of 8 AM. Normally, the only time I have to be anyplace at that time of day is when I am working, so when I mentioned getting up at O:dark-ugly, The Squire assumed that was where I was headed.

When I came down at 5:45 this morning I could smell “burnt”. We had over 6 1/2 inches of rain yesterday between 8:30 and 5, and I figured the rain had come down the chimney and dampened the ashes.  When I walked into the kitchen I found four very well done eggs in the compost, and two others cooling in a pan on the stove. My usual breakfast is two hardboiled eggs and a cucumber, and The Squire, bless him, had fixed me some eggs to take to the office.  He told me that he had put the first eggs in the pan, brushed his teeth, etc., intending to come out and turn off the fire once the water had boiled and let them cook on retained heat. Instead, he had gone up to bed on autopilot.

About 1:30 in the morning, the dog had started to carry on, and he had gotten up to see what had Blazer all in an uproar.

Both the kitchen and dining room smoke alarms were going full-tilt, and the eggs were not only boiled, they had exploded.

Bless him, my husband cleaned up, and then fixed me two more eggs, which he stayed and watched until it was time to turn off the heat and put a lid on the pot.

Me? I slept through the whole thing.

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Old Dog: New Tricks

23 Dec

I have been trying for ages to get Blazer to “give paw” or shake hands. He always stays in the hallway until I come down in the morning, and I will sit on the step below him, grasp his right front paw and repeat “give paw” while I lift his foot and hold it for a few seconds. We do this five or six times. After a few weeks – months? – of this, he is no further along than he was when we started, so I decided this morning to try it with treats.

He was sitting beside me while I ate breakfast, so I got down on the floor with a bit of egg, grasped his right forefoot and said “give paw”.  He immediately flopped down on his side and rolled over for me to rub his tummy.

Somehow, I don’t this this is a battle I’m going to win.

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