June 12, 2013
-
Contemplating
There is a website entitled 10 Best Free Blog Sites. I have explored them because I am cheap and, at least for the time being, bitter. It is possible Xanga will survive, I gather, but my lifetime membership is a thing of the past (really, I have nothing to whine about: had I paid my regular yearly membership, I would have paid more; and forever after only occurs in fairy tales.) But, this new change requires...change.
I would move to Blogger but apparently you have to have Google as your default browser. My default browser is Yahoo! I just paid for the yearly upgrade to get rid of the annoying advertisements on the right last week. It was not a lot of money (it was TWICE what it used to be) but it seems a little pricey for a week. Also--because I already have Gmail in another form, all of the lovely promises Google makes about the Perfect Online Life I will lead, once I convert to Google, won't happen because if you already have a Gmail account, you can't sign in to blogger because someone else already has that name. Even if that someone else is you. I used to find these Kafkaesque adventures amusing. I don't any more. They make me mad and I leave the website.
I would move to Word Press, but membership to Word Press is a chunk of change which leaves me wondering...what do I get if I take the free one? Whatever it is, it can't be much, now can it? Also if Xanga goes anywhere it may go to Word Press...and once again we have tapped the 'go away' key.
In the meantime my Beloved is building a chicken house and yard out of reclaimed objects. Several doors. Part of our shed. A few posts, a couple of skids, some chicken wire... We are expecting to become the proud parents of four chickens. Which we fervently hope will not almost immediately become dog food. It became very quiet in the back yard last night, and eventually I wandered outside to find her, covered in sawdust, sitting on one of (the many) wooden boxes I have claimed and re-homed in my long life of collecting boxes. "I have the nesting sites worked out," she greeted me, and she rambled on about worm boxes sawed in half and bricks of coir that won't reconstitute any more and how we can cut them... My eyes glaze over during building projects. She seems to genuinely enjoy the whole 'found objects' and 'repurposed objects' aspect of this build. My mind really is more on the 'do you realize you're covered with sawdust?' level. I don't like sawdust. It messes with my asthma.
On the other hand, she has apparently never once in her life considered writing a book a form of self-amusement, so we are probably even.
This morning I found an object, and I have no recollection whatsoever what it was when I first acquired it, so I dedicated it to the Chicken House/Yard Cause. She was entranced by the limitless possibilities.
Right now I am waiting for the World's Worst Storm, which is apparently last year's World's Worst Storm only bigger. Why don't I remember last year's World's Worst Storm? There is a new Spanish word for us to learn to describe this storm, which is essentially a thunderstorm/hailstorm/possible tornado/with killer straight-line winds which (forgive me) we call "Michigan in June" around here... I am sure I will pay for that.
My house may blow away.
I am ready now to file my final report on The Little Gray Machine, which I will henceforth refer to as TLGM.
TLGM has no effect whatsoever on Riley, who weighs 52 pounds. (Apparently the larger the dog, the less like the machine is to work. They say.) On the other hand, Riley is not a rabid barker.
TLGM does not stop Annie from barking. Annie weighs 41 pounds. It did, in the beginning. That wore off. What it DOES appear to do is break her concentration just long enough to prevent that insane build-up of aggression and hostility that causes her to run like a mad dog around the house, barking at windows and doors and gates and fences and dogs barking five miles down the road. It stops the escalation, which makes it possible for us to say, "Annie, leave it. Come here, good girl. You don't have to bark at that, we know all about that and we have it under control." And she will leave it and she will come. She may start barking all over again 6 minutes later, but she won't sound like one of the Hounds of the Baskerville's. This is a measure of the progress we have made: Jetta lives on the other of one of our fences. Jetta is pure evil in a Weimaraner suit. We hate Jetta. When Jetta barks she goes from alarm to hysteria in 37 seconds. We used to really get worked up at that. We used to bark and growl and lunge at the fence and just come completely unglued. Now Cheryl or Nancy calls us, saying., "Come on, Annie, leave Jetta alone," and we sigh and we bark one more time (we have to, or they win,) but eventually we go see what they want (sometimes treats are available, and we love those.)
It has happened once or twice recently that Jetta went hysterical and we just plain ignored her. Oh, no. You're not getting US in trouble again! (We'll go bark at the chows now.)
Barking at the chows is not as rewarding because the chows don't bark which means Cheryl can't hear them so she thinks we have just randomly lost our mind and attacked the fence. She shouts, "Annie, stop attacking the fence!" and we can hear the little chows laugh to see such sport. We hate chows.
Chows wear clown suits.
They probably shed.
When we shed, it looks like eyelashes floating on top of the water.
Not even a Weimaraner can say that.
