Wow I’ve been having technology adventures! I talked about the printer already, or maybe I have yet to. Then there’s the phone. I had to switch to Verizon, and my Galaxy A11 wasn’t compatible. Long story and a couple hundred bucks in fees for the new free phone, I guess it’s all settled down now, and my data works better. We have cell service only when we plug in the signal booster.
We were so leery about that “WE Boost”, since we’d read so many bad reviews, and we unpacked it carefully, keeping all the material for the return we fully expected, but then plugged it in et voila, five bars! It works great, but boy, it sucks the juice. My little folding solar panel is enough for our needs if we’re very conservative and if I’m out there babysitting it all day long, moving it to wherever the sun’s shining, but I can’t run the booster for very long. The idea is plug it in, download a bunch of stuff, unplug.
We have to work for our communication, here. That’s part of why I needed “Playground” set up with the Postie plugin so I can post by email with pictures. I can compose offline at leisure, then upload everything efficiently. It’s good! At least it’s better than writing by hand and then waiting for your friends’ reply to come around the Horn.
It’s not really 1840.
Question for self. “If you COULD suddenly be in 1840, would you?”
What on earth caused this? Who could have poked these holes in our water jug? Maybe a woodpecker? I couldn’t imagine any dog that could reach up that high and make just those two distinct holes without any damage from the other teeth.
We puzzled over it for a while, then looked at the other side of the table. Our visitor left tracks.
With bears in mind, here’s a video I’ve been thinking of making for a while, about a poor bear that sang on the day it died.
I’ve looked a bit on the internet but I don’t see much about bear song. Only “singing bears” in variety shows.
I looked it up later and found that bears croon to comfort themselves when they are stressed. Wouldn’t they do it in a zoo, then, and someone could capture it on video? If you know where there might be a recording of bear croon, do tell me about it. I couldn’t find anything.
Well, I’ve heard it, and if that’s really such a rare thing, then it seems like I should share what it sounded like. I can’t mimic it exactly. The intervals were not like ours. It was four notes over and over, high down somewhere between a fourth and fifth lower, then up a bit then again, even lower.
I want to add a funny detail. It was after the bear was dead and its body being winched up onto a trailer. My goodness but it stank!
Only little Cindy had been free earlier in the night and treed the bear by herself. Now all three dogs were loose and they danced around the dead bear, growling fearsomely. You should have seen the silly things, with their hair standing up all over their bodies; not just their hackles but all over, so they looked like one of those “Here’s a cow that’s been washed and blow dried” pictures.
I would also like to mention fear of bears. Somehow my darling is under the impression that I am scared of bears. I’ve heard him say it a few times, for instance when neighbors talk about a bear coming through their backyard, and he’ll say, “Don’t let her hear that!”
I eventually addressed it. “Do you mean ME?”
Then he tried to use logic to prove to me that I am afraid of bears.
Am I afraid of bears? Have I said so?
He says I have.
Hmmm. Well I do say things sometimes and not remember it later.
Apparently in Washington our chances are one in two million of being killed by a bear. Our chances are one in one hundred of being killed in a car accident, that is ONE PERCENT which is terrible, and yet we all hit the road without a second thought. If we ever saw a bear munching on a person we’d call ourselves traumatized, but we’re used to seeing ambulances driving away from car crashes.
The video shows me jump when a branch snaps behind me. But I am sitting where there was a bear less than 12 hours earlier. I think some caution is reasonable. At least as much caution as if I was filming on a lawn chair in the middle of a county road. Is there a car coming?
At the end of the video I said I’m CHECKIN’, with an apostrophe rather than a G. I didn’t say “I’m chicken.”
After all, there might have been a person behind me. The chances of being killed by a male human age 18 to 24 whom you randomly encounter in the woods are far greater than when meeting a bear under similar circumstances. Hundreds of people are shot every year by hunters in this country, and a dozen or so killed, while bears average three. That last statistic seems the most relevant since there, at least, we’re limiting by people who were out in the woods.
But I have fewer stone hard opinions than I used to. I might be wrong. I might be afraid of bears.
Wolves, now. I tell ya what, the idea of wolfies kinda creeps me out. I don’t like the thought of the whole pack of bad doggies circling around with their hungry, glowing eyes, waiting for the fire to die down so they can crunch up my amazing hands for the calorie value. I read about that in Jack London when I was too young.
What did I do with the water that was in that container? Water is a precious commodity, so I didn’t waste it, although I did set it apart, labeled appropriately.
P.S.
There. Just came across what happened to the poor creature all those years ago.
Nothing says “ancient times” like a bear skin on your bed, and I wanted that. But I was fourteen. Some adult paid a bunch of money to have that poor creature made into this. It’s only a poor joke, if you ask me, as the bear didn’t look like that at any point, only hummed sadly all night and then died. A waste of money and a waste of a bear. What use is making its skull into a trip hazard? It was on the floor very briefly, then went into a box, and eventually was sold.
Kind reproducing after kind, is that even allowed these days?
It’s a lovely, wholesome concept from a game!
Just like me and my sweetie 🙂
That’s us! That’s exactly what it feels like!
I haven’t gotten over being grateful that I get to experience a lovely relationship with a sweet, understanding man of my own free choice. I married him because I wanted to and because I thought it was a good idea. Everybody should do that at least once in life!
My mother would let us pick our birthday cake. My sister always had Bonbon Ribbon Torte (layers of thin cookie with raspberry sauce and whipped cream), my brother liked pineapple upside down cake, and I wanted chocolate chip cake. The recipe was something my sister clipped out of a magazine back in the 60s.
Here we are.
Chocolate Chip Cake
2 eggs 1/2 cup butter 1 cup sugar 1 tsp vanilla 1 cup sour cream 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp baking soda 2 cups flour 12 oz choc chips
Cream soft ingredients together, combine dry and mix.
Bake in greased and floured cake pan at 350° for 45 min or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Long ago when I first read books about dogs, the standard advice was to give your new puppy a hot water bottle and a ticking clock, so it will miss its mother less. As if any baby mammal would not be able to tell the difference between a mother and a clock.
I just checked, and they’ve upgraded the standard advice to at least putting the dog’s pen in your bedroom so it won’t be so lonely, “and if the dog cries, comfort him briefly but don’t make a big deal out of it.”
Still sounds like baby dog abuse to me.
It’s about instinct. A dog on its own is a dead dog. They need the pack. If they find themselves alone, their crying is for survival.
Can you make a human go to sleep in a hammock hung from a steel cable ten stories high? “GO TO SLEEP, stop whining, you’re perfectly safe.”
I say the humans should put their spoiled human self down there on the floor and comfort that poor critter. Here’s my baby dog’s first night home. We had a lovely night.
I slept on the floor with her for the first week, and after that she was comfortable and didn’t mind sleeping in her bed.
Here’s how to tell it’s going to be a grand day!
Here’s the baby dog having her first ride home.
Now she rides on my lap to everywhere!
If she isn’t allowed in my lap for some reason, she’s sad. It’s baby dog abuse 🙁 It doesn’t happen often since my wardrobe now is chosen for how it will look covered in black hair and paw prints, but still, sometimes…
That’s the baby dog’s idea of staying in the back seat.
“Why don’t you love me any more Mommy :-(”
I didn’t pose this one, but here she is along with the shopping bag I made out of her dog food bag!
I had a butterfly apron I couldn’t use for an apron because I don’t like the shape. I was waiting for some use for the butterflies as motifs. Finally, the first use! Patching a hole in a screen. I zigzagged around the butterfly, then tacked it to the screen by hand. When the sun comes through, it looks intentional!
