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Archive for April, 2010

Here There Be Demons

Posted in Lifes Observations, tagged , , , , , on April 28, 2010| 4 Comments »

My wife reminded me that Dorian was not the first time Sequoia was wary of a cat.

We went to Cook Forest State Park here in Pennsylvania.  Sequoia and I waited in the car while my wife went into the information station to find out where we could picnic.  My wife was taking a long time to get the information so Sequoia and I decided to wait outside the car.  Even though we were in a parking lot it was very rustic, very beautiful.  Amongst the people, cars and quaint cabins I spotted a cat a bunch of yards away.  The cat was watching us, watching Sequoia.  Sequoia for her part was ignorantly sniffing the ground, I did not particularly like the way the cat was watching us.  People would be walking between us, carrying canoes making all kinds of noises, cars would pass by kicking up dust and all the while the cat just stared. I started looking for my wife, where the heck was she? I’m about to enter a Stephen King story and my wife is taking forever getting directions to a picnic table…or did the cat get her?

Then the cat started to move, it started moving towards us.  It would stop to let a car pass, it would negotiate its way around a family, it would check out something on a stone wall but it was coming closer and while it would pretend to take interest in something else, clearly we were its target.  I was pretty confident it wasn’t going to approach a husky, where the hell was my wife?  While still some yards away Sequoia finally took notice.  She strained at the end of her leash whining as huskies do when being denied chasing pray, and the cat kept coming.  Then the oddest thing happened, Sequoia started backing up.  The cat kept coming and now it wasn’t walking around people, it wasn’t stopping to check out the bird, the cat was coming, and it was coming for us.  I was looking at the information place for my wife.  Sequoia was no longer strained at the end of her leash, she was standing by my side.  When Sequoia broke her stare from the cat and looked at me her expression was priceless and unmistakable, it said, Dad, perhaps we should wait in the car. And that is exactly what we did and it was only when we got back into the car did the cat change direction, still keeping an eye on us, but no longer approaching.  A few moments later much to my relief my wife emerged from the building.  Not knowing what had transpired my wife pointed at the cat so I would not miss seeing it.  To the horror of Sequoia and myself, my wife actually bent down and started calling “here kitty kitty”  Could she not see that this was no ordinary cat?  Could she not see that it was some sort of demon?  Lucky for us the cat (if that is what it was) paid her no heed, it just wandered off probably looking for another dog to terrorize.

My wife had her own tale to tell. While Sequoia and I were being hunted by a demon my wife was dealing with a hummingbird.  Some children had found a wounded hummingbird in the parking lot and brought it to the information station (yes I like saying information station) in hopes that the bird could be fixed.  A wounded hummingbird is not an easy animal to fix.  But you can’t tell children that, they were so hopeful, and the information people didn’t know what to do.  My wife as always, stepped up to the plate.  She told the children that we knew a lady who might be able to help.  They put the bird in a shoebox with a little towel and kept the bird in a warm quiet place inside the office.  My wife made an arrangement with the park people that on our way out we would stop by and pick up the hummingbird and drive it the two hours (with a prey driven tramatized by a demon husky in the car) back to State College where we would take the bird to a wild animal rehabilitator.

True to our word we stopped by the office on our way out of the park(amazingly the bird was still alive) and we brought the bird to Sparrow our local wildlife rehabilitator.  Sparrow tried her best with the hummingbird but its very fragile wing was broken and the bird refused to eat and didn’t survive the night.   I wasn’t surprised, first off it was a hummingbird, delicate to begin with secondly it was probably the victim of the demon cat that haunts Cook Forest State Park.

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Still Decorating

Posted in Lifes Observations, tagged , , , on April 25, 2010| 1 Comment »

My wife and I are still redecorating, still laughing and I’ve got one tip on how to decorate with your significant other and not be at one another’s throats.  Simple really, don’t do too much at any given time.  Give yourself a generous time line so there is not a lot of pressure to get things done now! While we didn’t fight, or even argue I could tell by the end of this particular day we both had pretty much reached our limit there was just a hint of that telltale tension in the air. 

Something else I’ve learned is try to have good lighting.  Our bedroom is pretty dark to make matters worse we had to remove two light sources so all we had was an overhead light and the light came through the windows.  Once we got everything back in order we did find a few issues that we will have to deal with, when we would have been able to correct them at the time had the lighting been better.  I know, sounds simple, but we don’t always do what sounds simple, logical or obvious. If we would keep to the simple and obvious rule we would have removed the three baskets full of laundry off our large, heavy king sized bed before we moved bed rather than after.

Overall everything is moving along nicely and we should be on target for our mid June completion date. The next big obstacle is going to be painting and that is only an obstacle because I don’t like painting not because I anticipate any problems. 

So I am sitting typing away with the TV on in the background when the show is interupted by a weather alert.  The TV goes to a black screen and those annoying beeps start. Seconds later the computer generated voice announces that, “There is a severe storm waring for the central paw region” My wife and I look at each other, “Did the tv just say central paw?”  In this day of modern technology you would think a computer would be able to interpret ‘Pa’ as Pennsylvania or at the very least, ‘PA’ but paw? Somewhow it is comforting to know that computers still have a little catching up to do.

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Dorian

Posted in Lifes Observations, tagged , , , on April 21, 2010| 8 Comments »

In my twentieth post I said I couldn’t write about anything I was unable/unwilling to part with.  I’ve thought about posting this when I first contemplated blogging, forty-seven posts later, it has finally arrived.  If I have to be honest, I’m still not sure about how I feel about sharing this, and I don’t know why.

I can’t quite remember when or how Dorian entered our lives but my wife and I won’t forget him.  Dorian was a big grey monster of a cat.  My wife thought he was ugly, I thought of him more as a bruiser. He never came inside, he would allow you to pet him, but picking him up was out of the question. He would disappear for weeks at a time and just when you thought he was gone for good he would show up on the doorstep waiting for his plate of food.  We suspected (and years later confirmed) he belonged to a neighbor, but except for forcing him to come indoors we considered him one of ours.

Dorian had no front claws, but despite this disadvantage he was king of the roost.  Truth be told, the world belonged to Dorian, the rest of us just live here.  Sequoia, our 60 pound prey driven, animal hating husky treated Dorian with all due respect.  Often Sequoia would be on our porch (secured by her zipline) ‘asleep’ in her chair and Dorian would saunter up the porch.  Normally if a bird so much as lands on the rail Sequoia would be trying to snap at it.  Slow chipmunks/squirrels don’t survive Sequoia, other dogs, cats, possums, skunks, raccoons, turkeys (you name it) that tread on land that Sequoia thinks is hers (any property within her line of sight belongs to Sequoia) will suffer her wrath.  Dorian however was a slightly different matter.  Sequoia would pretend to be asleep as Dorian sashayed within easy reach but once he reached the door which just happens to be out of Sequoia’s zipline range, Sequoia would leap into action, fur standing on end, ears back, teeth bared, growling, snarling, straining at the end of her leash.  This happened too many times for it to be coincidence and more than once I caught Sequoia feigning sleep (one eye open watching Dorian) only to leap into action once the cat was out of range. Dorian on his part would look at Sequoia without a care in the world.

When Dorian showed up one evening limping, with an open wound on his leg we risked life and limb and shoved him snarling into a carrier and took him to the vet.  After we described the problem and the cat, the vet and vet tech put on the Kevlar gloves subdued Dorian and secured a muzzle in place which Dorian promptly bit through.  

Dorian supervised a great deal of our animal releases.  He would follow us into the woods, sit well back while we released our charges and then walked back to the house with us.  Dorian, secure in his position as King of the world was at heart, a gentle soul.

One day my wife was standing in front of the house watching Dorian walk away, when he reached the top of the driveway he stopped looked back at my wife and then moved on.  My wife told me that this was the last time we were going to see Dorian.  At the time I didn’t think much about it, of course we never saw him again.  We later learned that he did indeed live across the street.  His name was actually Smokey and he came home one day and for the first time stuck around the owner said Smokey was obviously ‘feeling his age’ then one day he left home and never came back.

I choose to believe that Dorian found a quiet spot in the woods, went to sleep peacefully and never woke up.  It would be just like him, making his own decisions in his own time and in his own way.  Whatever his finals days were I certainly miss that big ole’ bruiser.

Dorian EatingRelaxing

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The Mall

Posted in Lifes Observations, tagged , , , on April 18, 2010| 4 Comments »

My wife’s cousin made the following statement on Facebook a few weeks ago:  “I am officially THAT guy who waits for his wife in the nail salon while his wife gets her eyebrows done.” I just had to laugh, is there anybody who has been married for any length of time who isn’t that guy?  

One day my wife, (not my current wife, my ex-wife) and I were perusing through the mall. She was shopping for who the heck knows what and as she headed into yet another store I found a bench.  The elderly gentleman who was already sitting there looked up from his paper as I sat down and we had the following conversation.

Mr X. “Welcome to the bench club”

Me: “Excuse me?”

X: “The MetroTown bench club, which store is she in?”

Me: (pointing) “I’m pretty sure that one over there.”

X: “my wife went in that one over there 2o minutes ago”

Me: “Twenty minutes?  I certainly hope she will show up soon.  My wife won’t take that long.”

X: (giving me an odd look) “If you say so, mine shouldn’t be much longer after all I’m holding her purse (he reached down and raised her purse a little so I could see it) and she will be needing it soon enough.”

Me: “So, you sit on the bench holding her purse reading the paper while your wife shops”

X: “Thats the truth of it son.  Mind you I started off just like you, sitting on the bench while she ran into the store…just for a minute eventually I learned to bring a paper to read. I’m not sure when I started holding the purse that just happens”

Me: (starting to look around for my wife and thinking, the last thing she said to me was, can you wait out here for me? I’ll only be a minute).

X: (grinning)  “Yes son, I was once like you thinking that it’s not going to happen to me.  Yet here I sit.”

A few minutes later my wife came out the store, and as I got up to leave Mr. X said to me, “Next time bring a paper, you will need it”

Well I’m not married to my ex anymore (which is why I refer to her as my ex). And my current wife likes to shop about as much as I do so I never find myself sitting on the bench waiting for her except for two weeks ago while she was having her hair done.

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Only in a small town

Posted in Small town life on April 14, 2010| 4 Comments »

We were grocery shopping the other day at Giant (a large grocery store chain here in Pa) when we got to the cashier the nice young man, (Anthony) checking us out asked us what we were up to today?  The following conversation unfolds as I wait to pay three days worth of earnings for three bags of groceries.

Wife: “Not much going home to relax, we just finished eating at Denny’s where we sat in our favourite waiters section.”

Anthony: “Oh, you must be talking about Mark, he’s a good buddy of mine”

Wife: “So you know Mark?”

Anthony: “He is one of my best friends, he’s helped me out a lot”

Me: Blink, blink

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Remembering The Important Things.

Posted in Lifes Observations, tagged , , , , on April 11, 2010| 13 Comments »

Friday was a bad day.  I bent down to tie my shoe and my back went out.  During the week we hit temperatures of  80 degrees , Friday it was snowing  and the heating system took a dump.  In the end however, our problems were not so bad.  Bear, a dog that had been lost for 7 weeks was found, We called the repair guy and our heating system is up and running.  I went to the doctor on Saturday and I’m  now on Vicodine and Flexerol, (yes this is going to be a short post) and while my back still hurts it doesn’t seem to matter as much.  In trying times you just have to remember things could always be worse and you have to remember whats important.

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Blue Blazes

Posted in humour, Lifes Observations, tagged , , , on April 6, 2010| 1 Comment »

A few weeks ago we were sitting down at Denny’s to eat with the usual Tuesday night crew. I ordered a chopped steak, smothered in mushrooms, cheese and onions. When my new-found friend Airplane, (I call him Airplane because every time I see him not only is he holding an airplane, he can tell me the make and model, and if pressed, probably the maximum air speed and altitude as well) turns to me and says, “What in blue blazes is that?” I almost choked on my mouthful of food. Really, it was the last thing I expected from a four-year old.

I guess I’m pretty impressionable and children should watch their language around me because now I try to work the phrase ‘blue blazes’ into almost every conversation. To make matters worse we recently saw ‘Clash of the Titans’ so on top of ‘blue blazes’ I also manage to work in ‘Release the Kraken!” What makes things even more interesting, (in my mind anyway) is that my favourite word is Australopithecus.

“What in blue blazes… is that an Australopithecus? Release the Kraken!”

Am I the only one who finds this entertaining. I bet when Airplane starts to read more he would get a kick out of it. In the mean time the rest of you can help out a great charity. Thanks to those who have helped support the cause.

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Giving Back

Posted in Lifes Observations, tagged , , , , , , on April 4, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Pets don’t have many choices, they are completely at our mercy, I know it doesn’t always feel that way but they are, and we are responsible for them, every last one.  They are bred, for the most part, with little or no thought for the thousands of other dogs and cats who don’t have homes, don’t have anyone to look after them.  Most people don’t understand that when a dog is purchased from anywhere but a reputable breeder or some sort of humane society we are supporting puppy mills, supporting back yard breeders who out of ignorance are producing dogs that are probably going to end up with temperament or medical problems if not both, breeding dogs that are statistically going to end up on the loose living a miserable existence, or living in a shelter.  Either way it’s no way to live but at least at the shelter they have just that, shelter, food, people who care about them and with any luck, eventually a good home. 

Animals in our society don’t rate for much in any legal sense, they are simply property and not just property but the lowest sort of property.   In an emergency (such as a fire) the rule of thumb according to Emergency services is you save people, property and then animals (the last is usually optional).

Our pets give us so much otherwise why would there be so many of them?  No matter what we do to them they love us unconditionally, they help us in so many ways. How many times on the news do we hear about the pets that alert their owners to a fire and end up saving the family?  They are our constant companions, they are our eyes, there are alert dogs, rescue dogs, dogs that help us find criminals, find mines for soldiers and the list goes on.  

clicking on this link will enable you to donate to the Clearfield County SPCA where every bit helps.  Plus if Sequoia is one of the top donation earners she will be featured on their 2011 calendar.  Raising money is not really what my blog is about and I promise this won’t be a regular theme, but every once in a while you have to give back.  So thanks in advance, thanks to those that have already given. 

As always thanks for reading, and next post we will be back to our regularly scheduled programing.

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