Mountain Mama's Point Of View

  I have been cutting my own hair for quite some time. A few weeks ago I went to a salon that was recommended by the nurse in the vascular surgeon's office. Her hair looked fine, but it was long and mine is short. I hated the haircut. Really hated it. I could do a better job and had been for some time. She didn't get the back short enough. Not length-wise, but she didn't cut it close enough to my head. When it started growing out, it was too bulky. The top and sides as well. So, this morning I had an appointment with a salon closer to home. I got up and got the day started and left for my appointment. I didn't wake The Patient, I knew the canine's opera would be sufficient. I had posted a question on the community page and got over 100 responses. I picked the one that had the most positive reviews. I was down the side of the mountain and on the main road when I realized I had forgotten my phone. I toyed with thoughts of returning to get it, but was afraid The Patien...

  Progress on my coffee bar is agonizingly slow. Since the sun was shining today and my house is too hot, I took myself outside. It was so nice with a light breeze. I had plenty of chores to accomplish that had fallen by the wayside due to the weather and The Patient. I decided to poop scoop the yard. It was as bad as a yard gets when it is too cold to maintain a schedule of picking up poop. Not the worst I have ever seen, you may recall that I once lived in the frozen tundra with two big dogs and two little dogs. All that aside, it had to be done and I am only one in my family who will do it with any diligence. Speaking of frozen ..... it is much easier when it is frozen! I picked and raked and picked again, taking note that the grass was starting to grow tall in some patches. I rolled the mower out and decided that if the battery started, I would mow. Mowing is one of those mindless chores that allows my mind to wander and I enjoy yard work. I mowed, then raked and mowed in the o...

  Eddie here. I am feeling much better since my unexpected surgery. My teeth are so clean they squeak. Mom says my breath is no longer disgusting, but I prefer not linger on the other procedure I was given without any warning! Mom told me it was for my own good. Can you believe she actually said that to me? I am sitting here with Mom while Bo and Dad are engaged in a game of catch without a ball. Bo prefers to have his wubbies tossed down the hall by Dad. He is a strange little fellow, our Bo. Why would you want to put all that energy into chasing the same thing over and over again?  Mom got a package the other day. There were 3 sets of clothes for the babies we went to see. She calls them "the twins". She also calls two of her own children "the twins". Apparantly these are children born on the exact same day. She has gone a little nuts over the newest twins, calling them delicious. I hope she didn't actually take bites out of them! I sniffed the outfits to make...

  Hi everyone! It is me, Mr. BoJangles, the cute one. Things are almost back to normal. I am happy to report that my Dad is feeling a lot better. Eddie is also back to normal after his recent surgery that I do not want to talk about. He is playing with me again and that means he feels better. The day of Eddie's surgery, my Mom came home with a gift for me! I am happy with this new program. Someone in the family gets sick or has surgery and I get a present! Nothing to complain about from me. She bought me a wubbie! This is what I call my toys. This wubbie was a cute little stuffed squirrel. It even had a long and fluffy tail. I was enchanted with my new little friend and grabbed him from Mom's hand. Then I shook it vigorously and tossed it to the floor. I wanted the squirrel to chase me, but it did not. None of my wubbies will chase me, so you would think that I would not want to play with them. But, I discovered that if I bring one to Dad, he will throw it down the hall and I c...

  I had a lovely weekend. Shopped for some live edge wood and found just what I wanted! I am making use of a 34" wide wall just inside the door. This is a lot of space, if you live in 350 square feet. I had an old record table there and it turned into a catch-all for HeWho is loathe to throw anything in the trash can if he can avoid it. Not that he is keeping his pocket lint and receipts that are useless, or the napkin he used. He just prefers not to walk the three steps to the trashcan. Along with his pocket debris are a plethora of hats, some tools, old junk mail. You get the picture. Also on this wall is the gas line for the portable gas heater. There was a quite useless cabinet in this space when we moved in. It had all manner of little boxed off areas on the inside and an ancient radio and speaker system. It was a catch-all as well. My idea is to put a coffee bar here. This free up some counter space in the kitchen. Also, the portable heater that is only used if the power is ...

  You might recall my recent battle with the grater and the frozen chicken breast. My finger is still healing and looks like I will have two small indents where the skin used to have a bit of flesh under it. So .... one would think that I would be a bit more careful in the future with the grater. I do have a food processor and should make more use of it. It would involve the stepstool and rearranging other appliances not used on a daily basis. I needed to grate a couple of carrots to make a small loaf sized carrot cake. I was excited to have found this recipe and went about preparation to get this in the oven. I did think about the food processor, but it was only two big carrots and I could have them grated before I could even get the processor down. I could be careful ...... Yes, you guessed it, I filleted the side of my pinkie finger, same hand, my right hand. This one went a lot deeper and really hurts! This time, it left the piece of flesh dangling from my finger, so I quickly ...

  A drab day here on the mountainside. Rain drizzling and fog hovering on the mountain top. I had to be at the lab for a blood draw early this morning. The Patient looked horrified when I told him I would need to be up and on the road by 8 am. "Do you need me to go with you?" he asked in a trembling voice. I didn't and am back already. He is still sleeping. The radio was tuned to the station we like to listen to. Oldies are played all day long. REALLY old oldies, some that I remember from my childhood, before I really understood the lyrics. Anyhoo, this early in the morning is talking about the news of the day and their take on it. One man was a self proclaimed Redneck and the other was the host of the show. As you can imagine, they were talking about UFO's and how "the government" was even changing the name of this phenomenom to make things "politically correct". Do what? This sounds absurd. I doubt the aliens are worried about political correctne...

  It is me, the cute Mr. BoJangles. You will not believe what happened today! I am still in shock. This morning, as soon as Mom finished her coffee, she got dressed and ready to go somewhere. Dad was still in bed and she didn't wake him until she had a leash in her hand. I asked Toni where we were going. She stared at me for a minute, then asked if I had noticed that Mom had just one leash in her hand. Now that she mentioned it, I did see only one leash. Who was she going to leash up? I was about to start to petition Mom to let ME be the one, but Toni pushed me away and told me that I did not want to go with Mom. I was baffled, how does she know what I might want! Mom buckled the leash onto Eddie's choke chain and shooed me and Toni back inside. She told us to go find Dad and she would be back soon. Dad actually got up and dressed and it wasn't even noon! I admit that I don't know why sleeping until noon is a bad thing, but I have heard Mom say that to him, so .... Mom ...

  We discovered a new place to eat the other day. They had all-you-can-eat chicken wings on a Tuesday night, so we decided to give them a try. They are tucked way back in a strip of other businesses and we needed Siri to find them. The name of the place is Crazy Eights. The name came from the size of their family. The parents, four daughters and two sons and they all work in the restaurant. The place was clean and they were friendly. We got there early and only refilled our wings once. Tried four flavors. I got the grape jelly bbq ones. They were good,the sauce was very tasty, but I told the man he needed to marinate them longer. Then I tried the garlic parmesan. They were a little too strong in flavor, but good. The Patient got the rotisserie and the buffalo. He liked them both. You know how you tire of eating the same old thing? I noticed a new recipe on Pinterest and it looked promising. It involved a frozen chicken breast and appealed to me because there was no need to thaw the...

  Dora, the turtle, in her habitat. She is wrestling a night crawler into submission. This is one spoiled turtle. She refuses to eat the pellets from the pet store. You know, the ones that provide her with all her nutritional needs according to the label. She wants what she wants, though. A sprinkle of dried shrimp and some moist mealworms, but no pellets. It makes me wonder about so many things. Shrimp? Seafood for a turtle? How do they get their shrimp in the wild? Who decided what should be included in the pellets that contain all the necessary components for a turtles survival?  Yesterday I offered a cabbage leaf, but she pushed it around like a pool toy. She ate a few bits of dried shrimp floating in the water, then mounted her fake bridge to bask in the glow of the heat lamp attached to the side of her habitat. I succumbed and washed a nightcrawler under the tap before I loosed it in her water. She pursued the worm around her pool. Toying with it, she finally opened her ...

  It is me, Toni Louise. My hair is growing back quite nicely, but I miss the long hair around my ears. I think it makes me look quite fetching. Lady Human will not catch me so easily next time I see those clippers in her hands! I heard her tell my Man Human that she planned to clip my nails. All I can say about that is "good luck"! Man Human (aka: my master) is beginning to act like his old self. He is eating all the time now, constantly snacking. Us dogs were happy about that, because he always shares. Well, unless it is something dogs shouldn't eat. So, life was great until Lady Human decided all of us dogs should have a visit with the Dog Doctor. She said something about needing to update our shots. I don't mind shots so much, and I do love to visit places.  But, they made us all get on the scales. Man Human was watching closely and when he saw that we all weighed more than we should he decided that treats will be limited to ONE a day! I would expect this reaction...

  Just look at us dogs! You can see that I am still the cutest one! It is me, Mr. BoJangles! That is our Dad holding our leashes and we are in a cemetary. A cemetary is a place where they bury dead people. I had to ask Eddie about that word. I have so many questions about this, but Eddie walked away after he told what a cemetary is. Why is this a good idea? We didn't bury Cujo or Martha, the boy cat. We have their ashes. Mom said they had come back home when she picked up the ashes. I am so confused. When Dad came home from the hospital, he had this bag that was hanging from his side. This was a mystery to us dogs. It smelled like something I wanted to investigate and maybe roll around in. Dad is not one to pay attention to things around him. Mom says he thinks the entire world is all about him. Nothing wrong with that, I feel the same way about my world! Dad let that bag lay on the floor on his side of the bed. I saw this, but didn't tell the others. I simply got into the bed ...

  Hi, it is me, Eddie, the voice of the canines here on the mountainside. Things have been a little crazy here this year! The year has just started and already things are happening that have never happened before. Our Dad was sick for such a long time and our Mom was gone a lot to see him in the hospital. It was a very stressful time for me! Mom asked me to be in charge everytime she left. No turns to take with my two siblings. I know it was because Mom can trust me to be the voice of reason, and I truly embraced my job to the best of my ability. It wasn't easy trying to reason with the other two, but I tried. Since Dad has been home from the hospital he sleeps a lot. Mom says he sleeps more than us dogs! Why that is a bad thing, I do not know. I think sleep is good for the soul, as well as refreshing for the body. We took a trip with Mom and Dad in the RV. Mom raved about holding babies. I don't get it. I thought I was her baby! So, we woke this morning, as usual. Bo stared Mo...

  Just when you are looking forward to a semblance of normal ..... I told you about our trip, leaving from the doctor's office in Gainesville, then heading south to Perry. The Patient drove the RV and I took my usual position in the back with the dogs. I could tell he was a bit rusty on the way to Gainesville. I like to have the window shade up enough to look out and I could tell where we were. We had come through the mountain pass, when I looked out to see scenery I was unfamiliar with. "Where are we?" I asked The Patient (aka HeWho drives). He told me we were outside of Helen, that Siri was taking us a different way. I am not a fan of alternate routes when we have an appointment, but there we were. He must have assumed that we were out of the mountain curves and he increased the speed. He took one curve so fast I was slung to the floor. He slowed and pulled to the side of the road as he asked if I was okay. Normally I would have carried on a bit about his criticism of m...

  In case you were wondering what I could be up to while The Patient was recovering ....... I searched online for containers for my dry goods that matched. Mind you, I was not prepared to spend a lot of money on them. I had lots of clear plastic containers I had harvested over the years, along with some glass ones. Glass would be preferable, as I think it might keep things fresher. On the other hand, my hands are not as capable as they used to be and when you drop one, it is more likely to shatter. That would mean losing a container as well as the contents. Not many of the ones I had collected were the smae size. Some were round and most were square. They took up more space than the new ones and space is at a premium here. I searched and searched. I found some likely candidates on one site, they were a little over $1 each and weren't exactly what I wanted, but I made a mental note and continued with my search. After all, it was a quiet activity and I couldn't very well leave th...

  The trip home began with a stop at Buc-ee's. In case you are unfamiliar with Buc-ee's. It is a place to gas up and shop and eat! It is like the Mall of America of fuel stations. The parking lot was full. We were there for fudge. The Patient decided he wanted fudge ..... from Buc-ee's. We didn't need fuel. They have a nice dog walk and poop bags in a dispenser. Unfortunately, my dogs did not take advantage of the facilities, preferring to do their business later in the trip. Inside was equally crowded and The Patient gathered things to eat. He got a couple of BBQ Brisket sandwiches and, of course, fudge. I wanted to take more pictures, but as soon as The Patient procurred stuff to fill his belly, we were on our way. The trip was uneventful and we made it home without incident. Trip over, The Patient was content to sit in his chair. Me? Well, there was much to tend to. Laundry is still going as I write this. Since we left so early, I had a bed to strip and everything Th...