Musings - 20251222
I just have to keep reminding myself that the puppy is cute, fuzzy, and will eventually grow out of it.
In other news, I’m going to be buying a new pair of hightop sneakers come next payday, along with new shoelaces for several other pairs of shoes.
Also, the custom embroidered dog collars I get with the pet’s name and my phone number take two to three weeks to arrive now.
A temporary collar from the pet store and an engraved tag cost as much as the embroidered collar did, but Ellie needs something until the new collar arrives in the mail.
Did I mention that the puppy literally chewed the collar right off of Ellie’s neck? Hey, at least she didn’t chew up and swallow the little carrier attached to the collar. That contains the little tracker thingie, along with the rather large battery it requires. That would have gotten expensive a lot faster, what with the emergency vet visit and the surgery and all that.
When you buy a new collar to replace the collar that the puppy chewed right off her sister’s neck, you will be tempted to buy a container of super-de-duper strong bitters to spray on the new collar and several other things the puppy thinks make good teething rings.
When you buy said anti-chewing spray and are applying it to a few things, you may be tempted to taste it. You know, just to see how bad it is and whether or not you should expect it to work.
Trust me, it works. Do not taste the spray designed to make a dog shrink back in discomfort when she tries to chew on something. Coffee, water, ice cream, and toothpaste still haven’t gotten the taste of what I imagine skunk spray tastes like out of my mouth. I may wash my mouth out with grain alcohol before this is all over.
Yeah, good times, good times. She’s sixish months old, so we’re about halfway out of the worst puppy months.
There are few phrases more happy-making than “Yeah, this is a gnarly job, and it’s gonna take a couple of days, but you’re still covered by the drive-train warrantee.”
Irish Woman’s obsession with not leaving any wall with original paint continues. Tonight, it’s the baseboards and other trim, along with the walls in the hallway that are being slathered in tinctured goose grease. She did a few test areas last night and asked my opinion. Imagine her disappointment when I looked, considered, and announced that they all looked like slightly different shades of green, and whichever she preferred would be acceptable.
She insists that at least one of them is ‘cream’ and not green, but I know green when I see it. I’m currently locked in my office with the dogs while a roller is aggressively run up and down the walls outside. It’s kind of like those horror movies where the good guys can hear the monster right outside the door, and they dare not open it.
Holiday season drawing to a close means sweet potatoes going on sale.
Sweet potatoes going on sale means I can buy a whole bunch of them.
Having a while bunch of them means five quarts of frozen sweet potato puree in the freezer.
Five quarts of frozen sweet potato puree in the freezer means sweet potato pie or casserole or bread or whatever over the next few months.
Everyone who scoffs at asperger people obsessing about trains and the details of Marvel characters versus DC characters has never sat in the back of a track listening to two MI geeks argue about the road wheels on a T-62 versus a T-72, or which aspects of the Polish AK are better than those on a Soviet AK.
It's important to be able to tell a 1/285th scale T-62 from a T-72, partially hidden under lichen, at a distance of 4 feet.