Tag: Hail

Barking Dog, Yowling Cat

When I was a girl my grandmother had a little phrase to describe someone who was acting crabby (little me, of course) as having gotten up “on the wrong side of the bed.” You know what she was talking about. A person being constantly irritated by a never-ending series of triggers.

Today I woke up pretty sore, crawled down the stairs to make my morning latte, and once I had pulled myself up the stairs and back into bed I found a post from another blogger, NothingButKnit, on my phone called Things That Are Bugging Me Right Now: A List. Oh. A list of all the things that are bugging me right now. Wow. Where do I start? There are so many things that bug me. Yippee, I can do this!!

NothingButKnit had only 4 things on the list. Gee. She is kind of a light weight, don’t you think? I mean, there are so many things that are bugging me at the moment it is impossible to prioritize them, but I can certainly try.  Ignoring all the things happening in politics and current events, which are their own exhausting list that force me to call or write my congressmen EVERY STINKING DAY, and excluding my trifecta of autoimmune diseases, here is my own list:

  • Robocalls. Seriously. How many times do they think I need to be informed that this is their last attempt to contact me about my insurance. Especially since it is several times a day. This is why nice people can’t turn on their phone ringer.
  • Food packaging that I can’t open without dragging in the tool box from the garage. Don’t laugh. I have half of the toolbox in my kitchen drawer at this point. The big stars are the rose pruners and a pipe wrench.
  • Hailstorms! I bought a new car last summer and I’m pretty nervous about hail. A few weeks ago I got caught in a storm that dumped 4″ of hail; I was pumping gas when it started and was able to stay under shelter. Last week there was golf ball-sized hail. I don’t even want to think about baseball-sized hail…

    I grabbed a picture early in the storm. Those stones are 1/2 inch across. 
  • Bindweed. This plant grows at virtually the speed of light, swallows rose bushes overnight, and never dies no matter what I do. Stop bugging me, bindweed!!
Sigh. I’ve resigned myself to pulling weeds for 30″ a day. It’s best in situations like these to just keep chipping away at the problem without looking at the big picture.
  • Yowling cats. Cats that belong to my neighbors wander into my yard, roll in the cat mint, and sleep in the best cat sleeping spots in the yard. They also stop by the ground-level windows to chat with MacKenzie. How sweet. Especially at 4am. I love the sound of hissing, smacks on glass and yowling in the morning, don’t you?

    MacKenzie also yowls every morning to let me know that he wants to go out into the garden for a nap. He loves his garden. I can’t let him out unless I can supervise him because of the stray cats and the dog next door, so he only gets to go out while I’m pulling weeds and watering. “Stop yowling!” I tell him every morning. “Let me out now!” MacKenzie yowls back. It’s like having a toddler again.
  • Barking dog. Ugh. The neighbor next to me got a sweet little puppy three summers ago that grew up into a territorial barking, growling, fence-charging Pitbull nightmare. After months of work she no longer goes berserk when I go into the yard, but if this dog sees a cat… it gets scary. The dog has chewed a hole in the fence that she can stick her face through. All the better to watch and bark at the cats that come visit my yard and MacKenzie. When she sees a cat she growls, body slams the fence and barks furiously while tearing at the hole in the fence.

This week I was outside pulling weeds with MacKenzie (between thunderstorms with the phone ringer off) when the dog suddenly saw him through the fence. Oh, oh. The dog got her face through the fence, the growling and barking commenced and I started running towards MacKenzie to see if I could shoo him away.

Nope. MacKenzie snapped, charged the fence from his side and went into total feline fury mode. In stunned amazement I watched my geriatric cat hiss, slash, and crash into the fence in a frenzy I’ve never witnessed before. I’m sure there was yowling, too. Every time the dog put her face through the hole, he let her have it again. Just as I was heading to get the hose the dog broke off the attack and it was over.

Mr. Victorious

The dog’s face was slashed in several places and she hurt herself trying to get more of her jaws through the hole. Luckily, she wasn’t able to get a good bite on the cat.  MacKenzie, two claws ripped off and toe pads damaged by hitting the fence, stalked off to take a nap in a nearby (unweeded) garden patch. The dog’s owners now keep her inside to PROTECT HER FROM MY CAT and they repaired the hole in the fence that very night.

Be like MacKenzie, I tell myself. Don’t let things bug you too much. Defend yourself and smack down the things that you can, and spend the rest of your time sleeping in the garden.

Excuse me, I must head out to pull some more weeds, then it is knitting time. Maybe I will listen to an audiobook with my new sound-cancelling headphones while I knit. Outside, on my swinging garden seat, with my roses.

Robocalls, hailstorms, weeds, barking dog and yowling cat, begone!!