Conversation with Hubby

Hubby:  "I think Chloe has been sleeping on my shoes."

Me: "How can you tell?"

Hubby:  "Because my shoes smell like dog."

Me:  "You sniffed your shoes??  Why on earth did you do that?"

Hubby:  "Doesn't everybody?  Besides, when I was driving home from work last night I had the heat set to window defrosters and feet.  The Element smelled like dog, even though there was no dog in it."

Me:  "That's a pretty good sign that Chloe really needs a bath, a rawhide, and a doggy biscuit for her breath."

Chloe: "Mom are you using four letter words again?  Stop that filthy language!  Please don't mention that word 'bath' again!"

Me:  "Yes Chloe, I foresee one of these in your future."

Wishing you a warm, clean, and cozy Sunday.

A Sad Day-RANT

The end of Top Gear as we know it.  Jeremy Clarkson is off the show.  He should have realized that once you don't own at least 50% of it, you become just an employee, subject to all those HR rules he is so fond of breaking.

That said, it seems a bit convenient for the BBC.  My suspicion meter is pegged, but I have no proof.  All three presenters' contracts are set to expire.  Two of them are over fifty.  They hire Clarkson to be an obnoxious - "gentleman's sausage" and then get all bent out of shape when he acts like a giant man-child.  Last time I checked, that's his job description.  Why was there another producer stuffed into the chain of command between Wellman and Clarkson?  Was it a setup, who knows?  If you intentionally don't provide a man his hot supper, he will get mean and grumpy.  Wasn't making the appropriate catering arrangements the responsibility of the same producer who got smacked?  As my husband said, if he had worked hard all day to find that there was no hot supper anywhere to be found, he probably might have hit someone or something too.

Perhaps the BBC needed to take a more creative approach to handling Clarkson.  Why didn't they get him a personal assistant to act as a buffer between him and the management, especially since his wife quit that job.  (Can't really blame her; it must have been extremely tiresome.)  This would not have been an ordinary personal assistant, I'm thinking more on the lines of a 6'6" mixed martial artist or professional wrestler who had a written waiver that if Clarkson got pesky and lashed out, the assistant was allowed to manage him by whatever means necessary.  

The BBC has done some other monumentally stupid things, like canceling Doctor Who (the first time) and canceling Primeval.  It is just sad that a hugely entertaining program will end because of political correctness, and a serious lack of meal planning.

And if you say, "But you still have Top Gear USA," I will be tempted to smack you.  It just doesn't work!  It is inanely stupid, without being snarky or funny at all!  It could just as easily be called the three tenors or three men with girly voices.  One sounds like a valley girl, another sounds like a Jersey girl, and the third one isn't worth the bother of trying to describe.  I have tried watching it twice, and have only managed to keep the dvd in the player for 30 minutes tops.

The only silver lining is that James May might actually get his backside in gear and make more episodes of Man Lab in a more timely fashion.

More Adventures With Alzheimers

God is great, he watches over the old and clueless.  His timing is perfect.  This afternoon I called mom & stepfather's house to ask them to stay put and not go anywhere while I ran an errand up to the IRS office to ask some questions about their taxes.  Unfortunately what happened when mom answered the phone derailed those plans.  If I had called even five minutes later, things could have been much worse.  She said, "oh, we're leaving to take stepfather to the chiropractor's office".  I reminded her the last time they tried going there together they got lost and came home 2 1/2 hours later without having even seen the chiropractor.  It didn't sink in.  She said she was going with him, so he wouldn't get lost.  Dejavu anyone?  I said, that they would just get lost again together.  She said, "we'll be late; we're leaving now, goodbye." Yeah, she was NOT listening.  So I grabbed my coat and purse, ran out to the car, drove across town, and managed to catch up to them and follow behind them.  There was no way to pass them in town.  They got lost twice.  The first time they managed to get back on course.  The second time, they missed a very important turn, and obliviously headed out for a drive in the country, next stop the western shore of Lake Michigan.  I pulled along side them several times trying to get them to stop.  After the fourth try, they finally stopped and agreed to follow me back into town.  They made it to the chiropractor's office.  I explained to the receptionist that they got lost - again, and she explained that stepfather had called the office and the chiropractor had answered the phone and scheduled the appointment himself without checking stepfather's chart which clearly states that he must make arrangements with me to take him to his appointments.  The chiropractor has been properly scolded by his receptionist, and a silver alert was narrowly avoided.

Last week another elderly gentleman with dementia was not so lucky.  He disappeared in his car with his dog.  A silver alert was issued.  Unfortunately, his car was found a few days later with the dog locked inside.  He was dead in the woods nearby, probably from exposure.

Stepfather has an appointment with his neurologist next month.  Perhaps I should see if it could be moved up.  Perhaps he shouldn't drive anymore at all.  We have been trying to limit him to driving only to familiar places like their favorite restaurant, church, and the grocery store.  But that only works if he acknowledges that he has a problem with getting lost.  If he is too oblivious to ask for help, what else can be done?

Conditioning

A term often used when training an animal to obey certain commands like sit, stay, up-up-up, down-down-down.  Sometimes however a dog can become conditioned to behave in a particular fashion just by repeating the circumstances over and over without really intending to do so.  Take this winter with the cold-cold weather.  As soon as Chloe saw that I had fetched her booties from their drying spot hanging by the pellet stove, she would jump up onto the bed and lie down on her side so that I could put them on her without having to become a contortionist.  I hadn't realized the deep impression winter had left on her until yesterday afternoon when I took her outside to do her business.  Most of the snow in the yard had melted away, and it seemed to distress her greatly.  She kept pacing around the yard sniffing; she picked a spot that was a bit too close to the garden and I told her no.  She paced away in frustration.  Then I realized that was the last patch of snow left in the yard.  She had become conditioned into going potty in the snow and saw the bare ground as unacceptable.  There was a little left on the terrace; I stomped on it, called her over and she promptly did her business in it.  Thankfully, today she seems to have gotten over her dislike of bare ground.  Has anybody else noticed this with their pets, or does my dog just have serious OCD issues?

We Awoke to the Sound of Harley's Rumbling

The temperature outside is a whopping 50 degrees!

We're having a heat wave!

It sounds like the bikers are out riding in groups,

which is not a bad idea with potholes and other road hazards reappearing from the snowbanks.

Oh, it is nice to hear the sound of motorcycles again.

The Harley Davidson especially seems to appeal

to the little boy in every man.

It must be the sound it makes,

which is a bit like an extra loud, continuous fart.

Knowing weather in Wisconsin, I doubt that winter is gone for good, but this is a wonderful break from the cold.

Too bad I have to finish our taxes and work on mom & stepfather's next.  Just call me the great procrastinator.  I am still one of those dinosaurs who doesn't do them online, and the IRS cheapskated out this year by not providing any printed instructions or schedule forms to local libraries.  Now that some deskspace next to the computer is cleared, I will end up printing the missing forms from their website.  The pdf markup tools come in handy for marking where I left off in the forms and making pertinent notes.  It just isn't practical to do the taxes online at least for mom and stepfather.  A finished tax form is so much more portable for them to sign, and snail mail is pretty much un-hackable.  I still find the easiest way to keep really personal information secure is to not put it on your computer in the first place.  And if you have to scan things for record keeping, unplug from the internet, do the work, save to external storage, and then erase the files from the hard drive - or store them on a computer that never connects to the internet in the first place.

Enjoy the sunny days!

I hope to do the same....tomorrow.

There Might Be A Good Reason

Why a new, never been seen before paint color is not a good idea.

Range Rover really should stick with earth tones.

I can only describe this one as what happens when someone drinks Pepto and Coca-Cola then vomits it up.

Can you imagine the conversation between the supplier and the dealership.  Ok, so we are sending you two blue ones, one black one, a tan one, a dark green one, a white one, a brown one... then the voice drops to a whisper... and a pink one.  The dealership asks, "Can you repeat that last color please?... Did you say PINK?"
The dealership has been moving it around the lot trying to hide it behind things so that it is not as visible from the highway.  They will proudly show off the electric yellow Corvette, the bright orange Jaguar, the red Jaguar, the electric blue Porsche, the blue Maserati, but the Pink Range Rover just doesn't seem to go well with the other colors.  I suppose if they dropped the price low enough, the new owner could afford to get it wrapped.

Missing "Summer"

The restoration shop doesn't let their beauties outside in the winter.

We miss seeing pretty cars!

We had a little warmish weather the other day so we took an "educational" field trip to see some local color.

The salesman at the dealership was a bit sad when we said we could not afford anything on his lot, but he was ok with us taking pictures.  Besides he was a bit busy finding the battery compartment in a Maserati so that he could jump start it and give an actual customer a test drive.  Lucky for him it was in the trunk because one of the air shocks on the hood was frozen solid and it would not open.  So here are a couple pictures of very colorful and lonely sports cars longing for a good drive.

For your viewing pleasure here are a Jaguar and a Porsche.

Hubby commented that if we fixed up our house and sold it, we could buy this beauty.  Unfortunately, sleeping in it would not be very comfortable, and would be seriously lacking in all the amenities that we find so useful in a house.

Ambient Sounds

It is rather interesting how the 4 year olds' Sunday school classroom with sixteen boys and one girl sounds like a roomful of purple minions by the beginning of second service.  But we exacted our own small revenge; we fed them a snack of Teddy Grahams loaded with sugar and gave them back to their unsuspecting parents when they were approaching critical mass.  Needless to say I will not be watching Despicable Me 2 this afternoon.