December 7, 2012
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Your World, My World
It is a delightful world we live in. Two college roommates got into a fight over washing dishes, and one tried to poison the other’s iced tea by adding bleach. Motivation: the roommate is “mean”.
Because I have that sort of mind, I am tempted to go out in the kitchen, make myself a glass of iced-tea and douse it liberally with bleach, just to see if a.) it’s possible to drink it without realizing there is bleach in it, and b.) what bleach tastes like. My instincts warn me the roommate would have to be not only ‘mean’ but stone stupid to drink it, but I could be wrong. As a poisoning method, I give this plot a D-. In fact, it strikes me as so insanely stupid that at first I could not figure out why the police were taking it seriously. On the other hand, I’ve had an assortment of roommates in my lifetime. And I’ve had my share of fights over washing dishes. None of my opponents are any whiter or more germ-free than they ever were.
And I’ve never read the story of how this came to be, I have mostly studied the recovery photos, but: someone tied a puppy to the back of someone else’s truck, allowing this individual to drag the puppy for more than a mile before he realized he had an unauthorized passenger. Or drag-along-behinder. The puppy survived. So: did the tier not have a truck of their own to tie their puppy to, or did they not realize the driver might just…randomly drive away? Was it brutality, or stupidity? I suspect I would just as soon not know.
Enough of that.
In my own world, which is smaller and usually more pleasant than the big one, Annie is curled up on the couch taking a nap and Riley, I believe, has ventured outside. The cat is wrapped around my feet. Nancy is at work. The writers group has been cancelled due to trauma, illness and surgery, and I need to walk to another room of the house to retrieve my allergy meds or snuffle the rest of the day. These are the horrible issues that afflict retirees.
Next week (I think) Annie has an appointment with a trainer and a playdate with Folsom, Valentine and Belu.
Here’s an adventure we’re having. We live in an everything-on-one-level-ignoring-the-basement ranch house built in 1954. It is a particularly well-built house. I am sure it meets or exceeds all of the standards required in 1954 except one: the plumbing is ‘air-starved’. I have only a vague concept of what that means: the practical consequence is that every now and then the water in the tub next to the washer fails to drain on a timely basis, overflows and washes all of the adjoining floors. Or, Cheryl appears with a plunger and forces it down, plunge by plunge. This is a periodic event, perhaps–although I can’t swear to it–even seasonal.
Outside we have a little cap on a pipe which sticks up in the lawn and which may or may not be related to this problem.
When she first came to live with us, Annie ate the cap.
It has been replaced, but now it lives under an over-turned flowerpot to protect it from the dog.
The hole in the bottom (or top) of the pot is becoming choked with a particularly determined weed which WILL SURVIVE come hell or high water.
So it is possible–although not necessarily true–that I need to go outside and weed my plumbing.
While I’m out there, I could fill in the woodchuck holes growing under the shed. I can give you an approximate determination of the sizes of these holes: one will accommodate one entire 50 pound Golden/lab/chihuahua mix, and the other with accommodate a 40 pound black pound dog. When they first moved into their dirt homes I worried they might get ‘stuck’ and require yet another rescue. I was wrong. Surprisingly enough, dogs can dig dirt while laying on their sides. Now when they go outside to live in their outdoor homes, the only thing visible to the human eye is one wagging yellow and one wagging black tail.
Our back yard is beginning to look like a prairie dog farm.
