Some changes at home

The weather gods are taking a little longer than expected to get us some rain, but this time, if one looks at the radar, it definitely seems to be on the way. In fact, by the time you read this, it’ll probably be here. Should be a good gully washer overnight and tomorrow, I guess. I’m not complaining. My yard needs that nourishment badly. The 11 or 12 drops we got yesterday did precious little.

Dogs sometimes can be very funny. While ours was visiting her sister for a couple of days, my wife and I dismantled for the final time our fish tank. We’ve had a tank for, oh, I’d say 40 years. Not the same one, mind you. We haven’t added any fish to it since we moved to our present home some 15 years ago. Not one fish, yet the tank was teeming with “feeder” guppies and one bottom feeder. All a dull gray, as any of you with fish know, and really nothing to look at.

So, with a little sadness, the tank’s place in our home came to an end. I must say we don’t miss it, but it did leave a void along one wall in our den that we now need to fill. My wife hasn’t decided just how she’s going to do it. She’s seriously thinking of moving her sewing machine to that now vacant space; or, since she loves doing puzzles and things like that as well as sew, she might want to put a table there. And Yes, Sheepish Annie, she loves to knit, too. But I’m not sure how she could fill the void with knitting needles and yarn.

We had another “near death” over the weekend, too. Our TV, another 15 year old super-when-new model, has decided it is getting too tired. After all, it has been on a good deal of the time since I retired, even though it’s mostly just noise in the background. But up until very recently it had a great picture and sound. It certainly wasn’t HD, but we subscribe to Time Warner Cable and had been assured our TV would still work after the changeover to all digital next year.

We have funds set aside for such contingencies so our decision to buy a new TV over the weekend had nothing to do with the perhaps-coming stimulus check. I don’t even know that we’ll get one or for how much, so we wouldn’t plan on it. In fact, we had already decided that if we get one, it’ll be banked and used towards next year’s oil supply. Nevertheless, the timing looks suspicious, doesn’t it?

I started all this by mentioning how funny dogs can be sometimes. We had moved her toy box out of the den into the living room along with a rack on which we keep a quilt and used to keep a cloth to cover the fish tank when the sun was streaming into the room. When we brought the dog home yesterday afternoon after her two day stay at our daughter’s house, she ran down the long back hall and turned into the living room.

It was a sight to see. She put on the brakes and all four legs locked up as she spotted the toy container and rack in the living room. The hair on the back of her neck bristled, she gave out a little growl and backed out of the living room. I thought my wife was going to fall down with laughter at the antics of the dog. After just moments, though, Momma Gator gently led the dog back into the living room to show her everything was really OK and then into the den where the dog immediately saw the void. Another funny moment for us as the dog carefully examined the emptiness.

Our gentle Golden simply doesn’t like change and she stayed as close to us as she could for the rest of the day.

And so it goes.

GiM