Tag Archive | animals

Sneaky Yoga

Jul3

It’d be wonderful to be able to say one had been injured falling from a bike, riding a horse, water skiing, but no, my back is wrecked thanks to yoga. I’ve been alternating weights one day, yoga the next so imagine my surprise to find it was the yoga that injured me.  So simple, just kneel, put your left leg forward into a lunge, raise your right arm and bring it to the outside of the left knee and look toward the back corner of the mat. Just a simple twist, but for some reason, my body balked.

I’m taking advantage of it by doing even less than I would normally do, physically that is. I still have to work on my kids book as I want to complete the third by the end of this summer. Then I’ll have a nice little series of three featuring the dachshunds as the neighbourhood crime watch. You’ll be absolutely stunned when you see the illustrations an artist is doing for them.

It’s kind of insulting the way the dogs act when I clean or put on makeup. It’s like I never do these things, so when I do they think something’s up. And I suppose it must be true, as dogs are creatures of habit. When I put on makeup, I’m generally going out, or else someone’s coming. I always clean before a guest comes due to the mountains of cat and dog fur everywhere, so it makes sense.

But when I’m just at home, deciding to clean for the hell of it, no-one coming, I do feel the sting of the dogs’ quiet judgement. Alright, already, I’ll vacuum and dust more frequently if that’s what you’re on about.

Remember Joan Rivers’ old joke? You vacuum, make the beds, clean the bathroom, do the dishes, and why? Six months later you have to do it all over again.

Yesterday I made a very poor-quality roast for Calvin, Visini and their guest Dominic from Hungary. I stupidly decided I’d try something different and make a medium rare kind of roast, whereas I’m really best at the well-cooked pot roasts and stews. And of course it was tough as shoe leather, though I’d prepared for that with an immense number of fatty sides.

I’d also made my four-layer chocolate cake and distributed large pieces topped with ice cream. All of that seemed to take their minds of the dreck roast. I said to Visini the next time I say to you I’m going to experiment with something new, stop me.

Here’s something absolutely disgusting and terrifying: Calvin saw a very large rat in the storage room downstairs. About a month ago when Sylvie came to feed the cats as we were away, she said she heard a scrabbling sound. I said probably some half-beaten animal the cats dragged in. But no, it’s a healthy rat, enjoying all the Purina Cat Chow it can hold.

I wondered why I would have 7 empty cans of cat food in a day and now I know why. I’m terribly disappointed in the cats for not killing it and its kin, of which I imagine there are many given the endless supply of food. I’ve now removed all cat food and will get a few nice big strong rat traps and hope to Jesus I rid the house of them. Can you imagine?

By the next time I write, I will have celebrated the first birthday of my life without my mom. I had 71 of them with her, so that’s quite an extraordinary number. Mom being the kind of person she was, she always held large outside galas on her deck in the Osoyoos heat. This year I’ll be busy setting rat traps instead and that’s fine, too.

Trip to Leavenworth, Washington

Nov26

In the spring Marie suggested we should do something fun to celebrate turning 70, and said a cute destination is Leavenworth, Washington. I’ve never been but have heard a lot about it from friends who have, so said sure, let’s do it. We booked for two nights and drove down last week.

It was time for an early lunch when we hit Trino’s Mexican Restaurant in Oroville, then we proceeded straight to the Icicle Resort where we arrived around 3:00 PM. We were thrilled to see our huge two-bedroom condo where they’d basically thought of everything a person could need. Just outside the window we saw the pool and hot tub, both heated.

The person at the desk said it was about a fifteen-minute walk into town, and so we thought that’d be nice after our drive. However they’d had a huge dump of snow that morning so the sidewalks weren’t shovelled and in places we had to go out onto the highway to be able to make our way forward. By the time we arrived the cute little town’s trees and stores were all lit up and it looked magical.

We needed liquor so walked back to get our car and drove to the Safeway where it took forever to make up our minds given the vast assortment. I settled on a bottle of a pre-mixed margarita by a company called On the Rocks. We had a drink back at the condo, then drove to town and looked for a place for dinner.

Even though we were in a Bavarian town we decided to eat Italian food, and it was delicious. The place is called Visconti’s and is upstairs and felt all cozy. I ended my chicken and mushroom fettuccini meal with a delicious, strong Irish coffee.

On Thursday we started the day with an attempt at eating the breakfast, which was included, but it wasn’t good, so we just ate a bowl of raisin bran, then headed to Das Thrift Haus for a bit of shopping. I bought two tops for $4 each, and then we went into the cute town and looked at the price of chi chi items in the stores and laughed a bit.

We stopped in at a photographic gallery and admired the landscapes. The artist was there and so we chatted, and of course the topic of the election arose. We said yes what a strange result, and he explained no, not really as you know, Robert Kennedy has a lot of really good ideas. We said huh! He added Elon Musk is really going to clean up some of the bureaucracy, and we said you are probably right.

When we left, we said wow, we sure had that person pegged wrong. Of course we should’ve taken the hint never to speak about politics when we saw a huge, fat man in a T shirt decorated with the stars and stripes and Trump written across it. They are everywhere down there. I said to Marie never say “cream” just say “half and half” or we’ll be outed and shot. Ditto “sack” and not “bag” or “a fifth” versus “a mickey.”

After thoroughly browsing the town, we returned and decided to be brave and hop into the hot tub. We found two big white robes in the closet, donned our bathing suits and shoes, grabbed towels and ran out the back, tip toed through the snow, and unlocked the gate. We removed the bubble wrap cover and ahhhh! Lovely pulsing hot water and steam rising all around. We looked like those snow monkeys in Japan.

We ate German food at Andreas Keller that night and were thrilled to have an old German man playing accordion. He played the Chicken Dance, and we loved doing the clap clap clap clap at the appropriate places. It appeared he was happy with our participation. I’m sure some nights he gets nothing but duds sitting there.

The next morning, we checked out and made our way back, however in Wenatchee we missed a road sign, and then I randomly said “turn left” which Marie did. Later she asked why I said that, and I asked her why she listened when she knew I had no sense of direction. Suffice to say we were badly lost but found good Samaritans who drove ahead of us until we got to the right exit where they waved us on.

Thanks, Americans. We may not understand them, but as we see time and again, when someone needs help, good people step in.