Tag Archive | dachshunds

Bears, Deer, Ants

May21

Imagine my surprise to enter the chicken coop to find the feeder pulled down off the chain and thrown out through the coop door; the Tupperware of chicken feed was opened and dragged, and plastic was torn from the wall in one corner. I emailed Calvin and said some crazy raccoon must’ve gone into the coop. An hour later I got the video taken by our outdoor camera of a black bear zipping in and out of the coop.

A chicken would come out, then the bear, then two chickens went under the coop followed by the bear. All chickens survived! It was quite a dusty ruckus out there, and where was I and the dogs? Right here in the house calmly washing dishes, listening to YouTube and napping (dogs). This was all going on just meters from the house and I had no idea.

So then I got a company to come in and build a fence to keep bears out, and that’s a topic for a psychiatrist’s couch. Very traumatizing to come home to something that resembles a high security prison wall and has all the charm of one used for a firing squad. And the thing is, it still won’t keep out a determined bear so whatever all of that was about I have no idea.

Then a few days ago I heard intense barking and came out to two deer just inches from the dachshunds. They were barking furiously and I know a deer can mess up a little dog, so I was screaming for them to come. Suddenly one got crabby and gave Lou a push with her foreleg, like, get outta here, dog. He wasn’t hurt and both dogs finally came in.

We have millions of ants marching into the house at all times. Calvin got big pails, filled them with borax and put them into the yard hoping to attract the pests, but no, nothing. Today when I was gardening I suddenly felt something in my ear, and sure enough, an ant. I think the entire attic of this house must be a giant ant’s nest, but whatever. They have to live too, I guess.

On the long weekend I went to Osoyoos as did my nieces and their families for a farewell to Mom. I stupidly didn’t have anyone take pictures for me on my camera, so I have none. I’ve begged the nieces for them but can only hope they take pity on their old aunt. I was going to ask our neighbour Lynne to come and take a group photo but neglected to do so.

All of the food I’d prepared was eaten with great joy. On Friday night we had lasagne, and on Saturday it was roast pork. Sunday’s dinner was chicken Marbella. I’d also baked (see last blog) and all of that except for a few muffins got consumed. Dinner for 11 twice, and dinner for 8 once was a challenge, but a very doable one.

You know how competitive I am, so I’m going to enter the Canadian Children’s Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators and Performers (CANSCAIP) writing contest. My books featuring the dachshunds as the neighbourhood crime watch is for kids ages 7 – 9. The very nice thing about this contest is that it’s super cheap and they also provide feedback which is the most valuable part.

I made the worst lunch ever for Mother’s Day for my friends Gitte and Roxanne, as I thought I could make vol au vent shells from frozen puff pastry. Luke’s coming tomorrow to help Calvin work on a car so I’ll make dinner for the three of us and will hope for more of last weekend’s successes.

Mom’s Property is now For Sale

May8

 Mom’s property is now listed, so please check it out: https://brandongrass.com/listing/10385279
I’ve spent days there fixing things up and trying to make it all as adorable as possible. When I describe it to people it seems most appropriate for dreamers. Because it has the larger and smaller homes, plus the 100 feet of private lake, the possibilities are endless. I feel embarrassed by the price, but this is what the realtor felt was the right one, so okay.

Calvin had another successful birthday party here on Hall Road. His friends are all so nice and I feel flattered they’d want an old bat to hang out with them. Of course I have much worse habits than any of them do so they’re probably all thinking ‘Jesus, can ya dial it back a bit, lady?’ Boomers – we’re still stuck in the 1970’s.

Calvin had ordered Korean chicken, half of which was delicious and the other half was so hot some people couldn’t eat it. I, however, had foolishly taken three pieces of it, and damn it, I was going to eat it if it killed me. It nearly did, and I’ll spare you the details of the following morning. Suffice to say Calvin also agreed next year more of the honey soy and less of the Incinerate Yer Esophagus variety.

I’m thrilled to announce I’ve found a wonderful, talented illustrator for my series of three kids’ books featuring Louie and Frieda. They imagine themselves the detectives of the neighbourhood and constantly misunderstand clues and do funny, damaging dachshund things along the way. The first one is being illustrated right now, and the second book is soon to go to my editor, so the series is coming along.

I never in my life imagined I’d enjoy writing kids’ books, but the dogs are naturals for hilarious hijinks. Many of the things the dogs do in the books are real-life experiences I’ve had living with the breed. They’re not called ‘the comedians of the dog world’ for nothing. If you have kids, I hope you’ll order The Low-Down on Crime when it comes out.

Louie’s now 13 and his teeth are in such bad shape the young gals who do the non-anesthetized dog cleaning won’t do his anymore. He’d have to go to the vet and go under to have them done, and at his age I wonder if it’s wise. He also went to the special eye vet, and she noted the little growth on his eyelid and said given his age we should probably leave it. Then added “of course if he lives to 18 we’ll be mad we didn’t do it.”

Sigh. Life’s filled with choices we aren’t able to make. Then we make a decision, and it’s wrong, so we become paralyzed. Did I say “we?” I meant me. You’ll recall I decided to sit on the stage for Guys and Dolls, which I then did, and it was non-threatening. It was fun to be sitting there and thankfully I wasn’t asked to perform a song or a dance, so it was the right choice to make this time.

Sylvie came for Happy Hour (actually dinner) and I made chicken skewers with pineapple and green pepper. I learned a trick for improving chicken breast meat which is to marinate it in a bit of oil mixed with a teaspoon of baking soda. It actually turned out very nicely; then a few days later I made the old Ina Garten panko-crusted salmon for Marie and I for lunch.

Cooking and baking are what I do to help me remain calm. When Mom’s listing first came out it had errors in it which caused a useful frenzy of pineapple upside down cake, cookies and brownies.

You Have to Love Pets

Jul24

I had a rodent-filled couple of days thanks to the tuxedo cats. A few nights ago, I heard one of the cats coming into the house through the pet door, making their distinctive very loud meowing that denotes they have prey. I got up and closed my bedroom door and got back into bed. As I was trying to get back to sleep, I heard Frieda fooling around, her nails clicking on the wood floor, and so I got up grabbed the dog, gave her a couple of slaps and threw her into her bed.

Frieda then remained a good dog in her bed until I woke up, giving both dogs permission to leave their beds, and as soon as they did, they started mad hunting behaviours in my room. Being dachshunds, they hate to waste energy on nonsense so when that hunting instinct hits, I know there’s a rodent nearby. I moved a piece of furniture, and a mouse ran out.

I screamed at the dogs, “over here, over here”, but by then the mouse had leapt into the drawer of my night table. I opened it for the dogs, but once again the wily mouse ran out and got into my closet. Frieda then spent the next three hours looking up, so I tried to lift her up high to see if she could get it, and I shook my clothes, thinking maybe it was hiding there, but nothing.

The next day I noticed something pink on my closet floor and peering closely I saw it was a baby mouse. Then I saw two more of them scattered about. I guess that was a pregnant rodent? No further sign of the mother, but I had to deal with the most disgusting hairless miscreants. Barf!

The following morning when we got up the dogs did the barking, scratching, panting at the chest of drawers in the entrance hall, so once again, I thought here we go, another mouse. I moved a corner and suddenly a rat ran out of the other end. I screamed at Louie “Sic Sic Sic!” and at that moment Louie turned, and the rat ran right into him whereby he shook it and bam, dead rat.

I just got back from Osoyoos where it was Frieda’s turn to vomit all over the place. Two weeks ago it was Louie, but this time it was Frieda. She’d spent hours scratching under the peach trees looking for mice so perhaps had found some and ate one that’d gone bad. You know a rogue mouse. First, she threw up in the night on the newly washed bedspread from the puke-out of Louie’s two weeks earlier.

Then all day yesterday she continued to throw up every few hours, and curiously only liked to do it on mom’s Persian area carpets. These aren’t the kind I would buy, you know the $300 jobs made from polyester, but the properly woven variety that cost thousands of dollars. Oopsies.

Have you heard of Folex carpet cleaner? It really works. I spent quite a lot of time with it yesterday and this morning, and can vouch for it being largely successful, though I have to say bile is a killer. Let’s just say we’ll always remember this visit when we look at those carpets.

It’s a good thing mom’s as far gone as she is, as those carpets were her pride and joy. But she’s now largely returning to babyhood, where she eats and naps, eats and naps. She says hilarious things like “I went downstairs to check on the furnace” to which I reply, “No, you didn’t.” She says, “But how do you know that I didn’t?” and I reply, “Because you can’t even stand up to walk from here to the bathroom.”

So between the pets and mom, not to mention Luke, there’s always some form of nerve erosion going on.

The World Is Too Much with Us

Mar4

Do you know that poem by Wordsworth, one of my favourite poets? It seems appropriate now to say the world IS too much with us given we’re all addicted to YouTube suddenly and any bits of news from the maniac south of us. As a result, I woke up at 3:45 and decided at 5:00 AM to just get up as it became obvious, I wouldn’t be doing anymore sleeping. I wonder if billions of us are feeling the disruption.

I look southwest from my dining room window, so I guess I’ll have an excellent view of any mushroom clouds. It’s awful to think of that but with a dangerous moron leading the country that’s trying to take us over, all kinds of dark things come to mind. Thankfully I’m able to distract myself with practicalities such as dying my hair, which I’m doing as I type.

Mom’s 100th birthday went well, and she enjoyed all of the attention. I made her favourite rum cake into which I was able to get the entire 26er of booze this time. Sometimes I simply cannot get the cake to drink the entire bottle but this time, working slowly, I was able to coax it in. We like to eat it with lashings of whipped cream.

I picked our pal Jim up at the airport and he immediately had two dachshunds plopped on his lap. As I say to people if you don’t like that, just sit in the back seat. But he was fine with it, and we then stayed at mom’s for three nights and had a lot of fun with Luke and Jan.

Jim was on and on about how he needs to lose weight, despite being the size of a stick, and I said to him I weigh the same as I did when I was 18 and actually am five pounds lighter than when I got married. He said wow. I said yeah, wow, nothing. The secret is being quite heavy at 18 and even heavier when you marry, and then if you lose weight, you can parrot that line and make people mad.

I’m now enjoying the hell of trying to vote for the new Liberal leader. I say enjoy as I imagine other Liberal Boomers with no tenant in their basement who have a bachelor’s degree in computer science. I had to call Calvin up here just to do the very first step, and even our friend Jim who’s very computer savvy was freaking out as he wasn’t able to do it but then figured it out. Can’t wait to see of the 400,000 Liberals, how many were able to crack the code and managed to vote.

I completed the draft of my memoir and sent the 49,700 word document to my beleaguered editor, Judith. It’s quite a lazy thing to do, which is to pay the poor woman to read this and then I’ll work on the edits she suggests. I could’ve done much more of that prior to sending it but trust me when I say one can only re-read a fruitcake memoir so many times, and no one is paying me to do that.

Bored? Watch the Honeymoon Crasher on Netflix, it’s very funny. Just 90 minutes and so easy to watch and doesn’t require a lot of thought. As you know I’m not normal when it comes to Love is Blind, so am now waiting for the wedding show which is on Friday. Who will say I do? Who will have their little heart broken?

And speaking of which, I guess instead of being heartsick over the world going to hell in a handbasket, one should probably try to find the silver lining in all of it. To whit: Canadians have never been more patriotic, and I certainly have no intentions of travelling south any time soon.