A Walk in the Woods of Augusta

It's early morning and we're going on a walk behind our house in Augusta. Care to join us?

It's very important for you to dress properly if you walk in the Maine woods in July.

The gear, modeled here by DP (with Cooper), begins with a mosquito net for your head.

A long sleeved shirt (this one is a special mosquito proof shirt), long pants, water proof boots (DP wears Muck Boots) and light weight gloves to cover your hands. Dogs and leashes are optional.

For additional ammo against the 30 odd deer flies and innumerable mosquitoes which will surround you during this adventure, a dabble of Buzz-off ecofriendly insect repellent is a must (okay for dogs, too)!

We'll steer clear of the bogs and swamp areas as much as possible today.

The area was recently logged by the owner (our land lord).

This is my favorite shot from the outing and is now my wallpaper. I love the mix of rich textures and lush greens against the starkness of the fallen tree with a misty background.

That's Buzz in the lower left.

This is where some turkeys slept the night before. 

We didn't see them, but the dogs enjoyed a bit of turkey scat (yuk)!

All sorts or wildflowers sprinkle color here and there (this is where most bloggers will name the flowers in the picture...um, I think there are some clover, hens and chicks, no, butter and eggs...yeah, well never mind that).

 Hey, I know these are daisies and little yellow things!

Anyway, this is our destination, a boardwalk courtesy of Central Maine Power.

They are replacing the power lines and poles. 

The boardwalk makes a temporary road with a lot less destruction to the environment.

Cooper, still on leash, Stanze to the right and Buzz and Rex on point.

 Okay, here is a picture of me...It's okay, I laughed when I saw it too :). This boardwalk is the reason why I'm able to make this trek, as it makes it easy on the ankles. 

See the turkey feather sticking out of my breast pocket?

It's a souvenir for the kitties.

The boardwalk is very simply constructed.

This is a fledgling osprey in his nest, watching us carefully.

...and here is his mommy.

A smidgen of red breaks through the greens.

Oh, look! These are cat-o-nine-tails!

Although not the best looking ones I've ever seen.

Here is the end of the road! 

DP usually keeps going and takes a left into a clearing through the woods and loops around. She makes this trek almost every day.

Today, we'll just turn around and walk back.

Thanks for joining us!

~Lisa

Comfortable Shoes for Not

All my life I’ve worn comfortable shoes. I’m 5’3” tall but I have never felt the need to buy high heel and pointy toed shoes to be tall and stylish. I do own two pairs of “pumps” that I wear with certain business suits. They are not spiked heels (one is an inch and a half and the other maybe two inches at best) and again the toes are moderately pointed and tolerable for a few hours of wear. I’ve probably worn them less than two dozen times total over the last 15 years – always to a job interview or “dress-up” party for work. My daily wear shoes are blocky-toed, stocky flats or barely an inch off the ground.

I thought I’d be safe.

I was wrong.

For the past couple of months my big toes have been hurting me (my right more than my left) and mostly at night when I’m laying in bed. I finally did some research and a self exam with my glasses on (don’t laugh) and have come to the sad conclusion (and self diagnosis) that I’ve got…bunions.

WHAT…THE …F#@K?!!!!

Me?!  Bunions!?

In my research I learned that if it wasn’t caused by tight fitting pointy shoes, it was hereditary. Oy! Since I don’t recall my mother complaining about having them (and she wore heels), it has to have come from my father’s side of the family.

Joy and thanks, Dad! Please have Aunty Mary give me a shout to tell me about her feet issues (btw-they have both passed on to the afterlife).

I also have to add that I find it ironic that a week ago, DP and I went out to lunch and sat nearby a woman with crutches and a special booty wrapped around one foot. We could hear her talking loudly to her companion about bunion surgery.

My eye rolling days are over.

Me and my humble bunions are out of here…

This Blogging Thing

So I've had a reprieve from daily blogging, although I've kept up my cat blog (which is much easier for me to do), and I realized I don't know where I found the time to write a daily essay/blog!? I know I haven't been doing it long, only 50 something days, but jeepers creepers! I thought I'd have time to be writing other stuff, but I've been so busy I haven’t written another thing!

Anyway, I really wanted to spend more time with the cats too, playing with them and focusing on my bad boy, Snafu. At this point I don't think the herbal remedy we are giving him is doing anything anymore. His behavior (off Amitriptyline) really depends on how much one on one attention I give him and how much exercise he's gotten.

That really proved out a couple nights ago when I came home from work late. I'd gone to get some groceries right after work so by the time I got home, it was the dog’s bedtime (7:00) and all the cats were starving for dinner (they usually eat about 5:30).

Instead of going into Snafu’s room and giving him his ten minutes of one on one and play time, I just let him out (like I did in the not too distant old days) and tried to engage him while I put groceries away, and then I fed everyone.

What a nightmare!

After he ate dinner, he never, ever slowed down. He kept going after Penny and BJ and pacing back and forth from the kitchen through the living room and down the hall and all the way back. He'd pick fights along the way and then Angus decided to block him from coming down the hall, which always ends up in a fight. I had to keep stopping what I was doing and extract him from situations or try to redirect him.

Even when I settled down to eat, he kept going. He had to explore all the cabinets in the kitchen and kept meowing and meowing…until he finally wanted to go back into his room.

I was still trying to eat my Chinese take-out dinner after 9:00 that night!

I felt really bad for him and vowed not to do that again anytime soon!

Last night he was a lot better. DP was home during the day and the sun was out so he got to spend a lot of time outside in the cat enclosure. I spent extra time with him when I got home from work, too. He was good and napped some, but he still wanted to pace, but was just too tired.

Finally he got himself over-stimulated (like a four year old human does when they get over tired) and started being aggressive towards me, so I suggested (by the shake of his food bowl, because I wasn't going to pick him up), that he might want to go to bed early. After he nibbled a bit of kibble in his room, he conked right out!

Here is a sample video of him when he doesn't slow down. This was recorded a couple weeks ago. It doesn't seem to be much, but it's after 9:00 at night when everyone else has found a cozy spot to nap, and he's been going on like this for hours - just wanting my attention.

Anyway, I need to spend more time with the cats and with Snafu especially. So I’m good with blogging when I’ve got time and something to say.

So my next blog post will actually have a subject and not be about blogging!!


Thanks for stopping by.

Everything Dogs Hate

Yesterday was everything dogs hate day.

First off, it was Saturday, my cleaning day. When I vacuum the carpets, the dogs go outside or in their crates depending upon the weather. While they enjoy being outside, I don't play with them like DP does when she is here, and so they wait for her to come home from work…and they wait - outside or inside, they wait.

Second, it rained. So it was an in the crate day. It's only for 2 hours maximum depending upon my laundry schedule and other projects that may come up. They waited for DP to come home in their crates.

Third, it thundered. To them it was indeed the apocalypse, jolting them into a tight fit of barking when the boomers rang overhead. A sharp "that's enough!" pretty much quiets them right away. But when they are full of anxiety, like during a thunderstorm, they go in their crates, so even when I finished vacuuming, they stayed in their crates and waited.

To ease their predicament I gave them frozen peanut butter bones I found in the freezer. They were licked clean in ten minutes. Then the thunder boomed again and they were abandoned altogether in favor of panting.

Dogs in crates, waiting and panting…

Sorry puppies. Today is road trip day. I hope you have more fun today.

Stir and Repeat

I have realized that writing for this blog is a little like writing in my journal. It’s only “a little” like my journal because I’m certainly not writing everything in a post I’d write in my journal. I don’t edit a journal entry (much).

Another thing not so similar is that I usually don’t read back over my journal entries unless it’s a year or more later. What I’m seeing and learning about myself in reading back over blog posts (before I write a new one) is that like everyone else, I deal with the same issues over and over again. On a blog, they are topics that I do not want to keep repeating unless I have a fresh new take on the old issue.

Therefore…I’ve decided that, like my journal which I do not write in everyday, I am not going to post daily.

Yay!

Whew!

I get myself into some crazy self imposed promises, but luckily it is only me this time who really cares if I break this one.

From this point forward I will post when I feel I have something new to say.

Thanks for reading!

The Suffering of Wants

Every once in a while (okay, usually every 28 days or so), I go through a continuous craving and wanting stage that I have to talk myself down from.

I get this bubble of discontent that bursts with a varied list of wants and just recently it went something like this:

I wish we had a bigger house, if we had a bigger house I could get another kitten. I want another kitten. I’m supposed to have nine cats for Cat of Nine Tales, but Snafu couldn’t tolerate another cat unless we had a bigger house. I wish we had a bigger house.

Once I’ve awakened from the suffering of wants, I counter this kind of thinking with this kind of thinking:

You can’t have a bigger house unless you have a lot more money. If you had a bigger house, you’d only need to spend more time cleaning it and you wouldn’t have more time, because you’d be working more hours to earn more money to pay for the bigger house.

AND YOU DON’T WANT TO WORK MORE HOURS.

If you worked more hours, you’d be miserable and you certainly wouldn’t have enough time to spend with a new kitten (never mind writing!).

Be grateful and enjoy the cats you have! Enjoy the small manageable house and work less hours so you can enjoy life and have time to write.

Most of the time I understand this choice, because it was a choice DP and I made to live simpler, smaller lives with no debt and as stress free a work life as we can manage.  But, the suffering of wants can get to me sometimes. 

Yes and Hey That's Enough Now

So when I told myself to say yes more often, I didn’t actually mean yes to ice cream every night after dinner, or yes to those incredibly delicious gourmet chocolate chip cookies from the Hannaford (our local supermarket chain) bakery. Nor did I mean yes to Cheese Doodles or Cape Cod Kettle Cooked Mesquite BBQ chips (I don’t care that they have 40% reduced fat) or Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies or Butter Snap Pretzels.

But somehow (oh, I know how) they made it through the gates of No and I’ve got the tight pants and shirts to prove it. I don’t have a scale because I gave them up a while ago along with a few other things, so I’m not going to stress over numbers.

However…

It’s time for the NO gates to come together just a little bit. Denial doesn’t mean for ever, it just means, “hey, that’s enough for now!”

I’ve got to leave room to lose so I can have available “space” to fill come the winter holidays!

No more!  Just as soon as I finish the Cheddar Bunnies and Pretzels…