This Morning

This is the first thing I woke up to this morning:  Walter asleep on his back on the sofa.  Can you see why there's hardly any room on the sofa for me or my husband?

And here's the second thing I woke up to:  flamingoes on my lawn.  There was a note taped to the front door announcing we'd been flocked!  It's a fundraiser for a youth group.  I love these flamingoes so much I would have them on my lawn year round.  There are 50 flamingoes, in three different sizes.

The third thing that happened this morning is that I got scheduled for knee surgery - again.  The doctor said the meniscus in both knees was shredded.

It's been an eventful day so far.  I think I'm going to relax now!

Walter's Weight

I brought Walter to the vet just to use the scale to find out how much Walter weighs.  He's 52 pounds now.  He was 29 pounds when we first adopted him in January.  The vet technician said she didn't think Walter would get any bigger, now that he's almost a year old.  He'll be one year old next month.  Then I can register him as a visiting pet, and we can start the process to have him be an official visiting therapy dog.

In the picture above, Walter looks like he's smoking a cigar, but it's his rawhide roll-up.  It cracks me up when he runs around the house with his "cigar."

I just noticed today what he does when the phone rings.  He's sitting right by my feet when I'm on the computer, and when the phone rings, he gets up and trots in front of me into the other room so I can answer the phone.  He's probably been doing that for a while, but it's just taken me until today to realize it.

He started doing something else that I noticed today.  When Harry, one of our "inside cats," sees the "outside cats" on the patio in the backyard, he lets out an awful scream.  When Walter hears Harry doing that, he runs to the window to see the "outside cats," and he starts raising a ruckus, too.  He barks and whines so much, that it makes you think something terrible is happening in the backyard.  Three of the "outside cats" don't even let Walter's barking and Harry's yowling phase them one bit, but poor Sally goes running for cover when she hears them.  Moneypenny, James Bond, Jr., and Linus just make themselves comfortable on the chaise lounges we have.  They only run when Walter blasts through the back door.  Sometimes they stand their ground, fluffed up like Halloween cats, hissing and growling enough to make Walter pause.  I tell him, "Leave it!" and that makes Walter back off a little bit.  Then he's distracted by whatever else is in the backyard, and he's off and running again.

Mash Potatoes & Ice Cream

I came home and found two huge boxes of mashed potatoes on the counter.  I asked my husband what they were for, and he mimed that they were for him.  He also got out, "ice cream," so I went to the freezer and found three gallons of ice cream there.  Yay!! I love ice cream.  He got two gallons of his favorite, Dutch Chocolate, and one gallon of my favorite, Mint Chocolate Chip.  We try to stay away from ice cream because I have no willpower to resist it.  But today Wayne had oral surgery to remove a tooth, so he is on soft foods.  He has an ice pack on his face and gauze packing the space where his tooth was. The up side of all this is ice cream!!!!

New Sign for Your Office

For those of you who are still working, here's a new sign.  It cracks me up.  I have it taped to the door of my study.

Bless His Heart

Walter stays right by me wherever I'm in the house, or he's right by my husband.  Bless his heart, Walter even stays right by me when I practice guitar.

The first time I played, he whined a little, but then, he never did it again.  He didn't even whine when I sang, and believe me, I don't have a good singing voice.  But just the other day, when I was practicing,  Walter came very close to the neck of the guitar and rested his whole face on the strings to mute them.  I hope that's not a commentary on how I sound!

Wild Kingdom

In addition to the one dog, four cats inside, and four cats outside, we are visited by raccoons and possums.  We live next to a swamp, so it's really not that unusual.  We are also visited by snakes and alligators, and those have been unwelcome visitors, but that's a story for another post.

We feed the "outside cats" in the backyard - we caught them in "Have-a-Heart" traps, had them tested, vaccinated, and neutered, but they aren't tame enough to bring inside.  Three of our four "inside cats" go outside, but they stay inside most of the time.

Whenever someone asks me how many pets we have, I say, "We have one dog, four cats inside, and four cats outside."  I've always thought that we have five pets, since the "outside cats" are feral - they let us pet them, but they freak out if you try to pick them up and bring them inside.

Recently, a little girl asked me the question, and when I told her my answer, she said, "You have nine pets?????"

In all this time, I never thought I had nine pets, but I guess I kind of do!

LED Collar and Leash

Since I've been retired, I've had time to explore the Internet.  I discovered Groupons, Saveology, and No More Rack.  These sites post daily offers - kind of like the Home Shopping Network.  Anyway, one of the offers was for an LED collar and leash.  It was only seven dollars, and it came in red, blue, or green.  I thought that would be very cool, especially when walking Walter at night.  It came in the mail last week, and I was so excited.  Walter was excited when I put it on him, but he's always excited....
I thought that was the best seven dollars I'd spent in a long time.

As it turns out, the collar LED stopped working, so I contacted the company, and they said they would refund my money if I sent them a picture of it.  I really have been learning all kinds of new technology, and I was able to take the picture of it with "Photo Booth" and upload the picture onto my e-mail.  The leash still lights up and even blinks, but that could give someone a seizure, so I won't use that, but still, Walter looks great, don't you think?