Archive for March, 2010

Musings of splattering poo…

Don’t ya just love yard work? I do when it’s finished, although I can’t stand doing it myself. But since my husband managed to leave it to me again this year, I had to grit my teeth and just do it. The front yard grass isn’t growing. No problem there, don’t have to mow it yet. Backyard looks like a beautiful field of knee high grass blowing in the breeze. And me without a lawn mower. (Both our mowers broke last season.) So, I dig out the old standby, my electric weed wacker with 2 billion foot long extension cord that always manages to somehow tangle around every tree and rock in my yard.

Now before I explain further, I’d like to tell you about our dogs. We seem to be stray central. We have six dogs, five of which we didn’t want but can’t get rid of. They like to eat…and dig…and bark all hours of the night and day…and especially poo. Yes, I said it. Big mounds from our big dogs, little tiny mounds from our little dogs. Too bad they can’t be taught to use a litterbox like our cat. That’d make life so much easier.

Back to yard work, the grass is about knee high in places, making it very difficult to see all the little surprises the dogs have left for me. So I jump right on in and find out that the grass is pretty wet nearer to the ground.  So as I am gently swinging the machine from side to side in a rhythm I can only hear in my head (mostly because the decibels of the wacker keep me from hearing anything else) I hit one of those lovely little surprises. Wet grass, wet poo, wacking machine with an RPM of about a thousand, you can start to see what I am getting at. As the poo comes in contact with the blades, they travel not out like I would have hoped, but straight up. Blah….I turn the machine off and wipe my face looking in disgust at the rest of the yard I need to get to. Can’t stop now.

My weed wacker buzzes on, I am still eager to get the grass hacked to pieces, only now, I make sure my mouth stays closed.

Happy Birthday Belated

My two oldest had birthdays at the beginning of the year, but because of issues, we had to postpone until March. Well, I thought we would have fun if we had an outdoor carnival type birthday party with carnival type games. Pop the balloon with the dart. Knock over the milk bottles. I even had a cotton candy, popcorn, snowcone, and hotdog machine all ready and waiting. The day was set for the first day of spring. It had been absolutely beautiful the weeks leading up to that day. Then what do ya know… it snowed. It was cold. It was windy. It felt like 20 degrees outside. Darn you Canadian cold front! We had to have our wonderful outdoor spring festival birthday party… indoors. Marshmallow shooters. Don’t ever buy them. Unless you want to spend a few hours after the party ends on your hands and knees scrubbing the squished marshmallows off the hardwood floors. Thank goodness we don’t have carpet. All in all, we had a pretty good time, now if we could just get my husband’s blood sugar below 500, we’d be groovy.

Death of a relative

My grandpa passed away today. He was 90 years old, but even then it was a bit sudden for everyone. He had gone to the hospital last week because of some issues involving his medicine, came back weak, but in good spirits. Then this morning, he started coughing and then collapsed. He died less then twelve hours later.

I was glad I could be there for him when he died, even though he didn’t know I was there. I squeezed his hand and kissed his forehead like I had my mom when she died of breast cancer six years ago. And like I had my dad after he died of a motor cycle accident a few years ago.  I am tired of death. Tired of funerals. Tired of crying for the people in my life who have to leave.

My son put a smooth wooden cross in his hand from the gift shop. I thought it was touching, even though we aren’t religious. He knew grandpa was.

Poor grandma. We all figured that she would die before grandpa because he was so much stronger. Healthy as a horse. He was supposed to be the one who could take care of grandma as her mind failed her, and he was doing a good job of it. We don’t know what might have happened unless he threw a clot. His heart was still strong though, even if the rest of him wasn’t.

We miss you already grampa.

grandpa

Portraits

My art computer broke…again and is in the shop. Hopefully it will be fixed soon. In the meantime I am working on a portrait for a woman at work. I promised it to her awhile ago and since I don’t have my computer, I guess it’s time to work on it. I’ve been out of practice because I just don’t do them that often anymore. I’ve been working mainly on illustrations and writing. It feels good to be able to just sit down and draw a portrait. (Or in this case four portraits.)