Somebody Moved My Cheese

I played around with the settings a little bit...even added a picture!

May do more later.

Hugh

Fun With Wildlife

School starts tomorrow and we decided that it might be fun to grill some steaks for dinner.

Now, while I haven’t actually used my larger grill in well over a year, I do in fact own two grills. Don’t ask why, because I’m not actually sure what the reasoning was behind getting two, suffice it to say, I’ve have, or rather I used to have, two grills.

I usually use the smaller, newer of my two grills. It just works a little bit better. However, we decided that grilling some corn sounded good, so I went out to see if I could even still fire-up the big grill. We moved to this house in May, and I hadn’t done anything more than push the large grill into a corner on the back porch and forget about it.

I pulled it out from the corner, opened the top and was greeted by not one, but two hissing opossums!

Slamming the lid shut, I did a ten-foot, standing long jump. After I landed I’m sure I looked like Fred Sanford as I stood there holding my chest and panting.

They scared the crap out of me!

In my defense, opossums are really ugly! And even if you were expecting to be face to face and six inches away from one of these little guys, I dare say you’d be on pins and needles. So, when it’s completely unexpected you’re lucky if you don’t need to change your pants.

Being the loving and concerned wife that she is, and thinking I had just blown myself up, Melissa started outside to check on her husband.

When I told her what had happened any concern for me flew right out the window, and the new object of her affection our were newly discovered grill squatters. Carefully reopening the grill, we found that the two opossums were actually babies who seemed not only extremely frightened, but also somewhat malnourished.

This is the point at which Melissa begins talking about, only kind of in jest, us keeping them as pets. I don't think I ever even responded.

We called animal control and explaining that we had two opossums in our grill. A somewhat perplexed operator explained that animal control doesn’t actually provide grilling instructions. After a hearty chuckle on our end of the phone, we did our best to help her understand that, while lighting the grill did cross my mind, varmint extraction and not food preparation was the actual reason for our call.

It was about then that we noticed, as we peered through the window, that the sicklier of the two youngsters was actually beginning to venture out. After comically breaking several laws of physics, she somehow managed to move from the grill to a nearby bush. Seeing this, we started rooting for the second of our grill’s residents to move out as well. However, he didn’t seem to be ready to leave the nest. At this point I rushed to the garage and found a stick about four feet long. I came back and poked a now very irritated opossum until he finally got the hint that he had worn out his welcome.

As soon as both were out I closed the lid and pulled the whole grill around to the front of the house for tomorrow’s scheduled bulk trash pick up.

I know what you’re thinking…we still have two baby opossums under a bush in our backyard.

Let me tell you that that is the least of my worries. You see, behind out house is a creek that is surrounded by all manner of plant life, not to mention snakes, armadillos, opossums and who knows what else. We’ve found snakes in the pool and seen both armadillos an opossums roaming the yard. So now that these two trespassers are free from their grill prison, I’m sure they will have no trouble finding their way back to their real house, or their mom, or their whatever it is they have out there. At least not after it gets dark.

While I’m on the subject, how in the hell did they get inside my grill in the first place?

I couldn’t find any openings large enough for them to fit through. If they did happen to somehow squeeze in from the bottom, then they would have to lift the grill rack and then climb up through a small gap to get on top. I know they have opposable thumbs, but come on…that’s a bit much!

In the end, the opossums are gone, I didn’t get bitten and we still grilled steaks!

I guess we can say that in the end a good time was had by all!

Well, maybe not the opossum I poked with a stick…but he as being stubborn!

Watering less really does pay...

Our old house didn’t have a sprinkler system, so I really didn’t know anything about setting the zones, or setting the watering days, or setting the watering times. Basically, I knew nothing.

Our controller is a Toro, (a brand I’ve heard nothing good about, but that’s for another story) so I read the book and figured it out. However, I had no way of knowing how long to set each zone to “sprinkle”. In my old yard, I would set the sprinkler in the yard with the hose and leave it on for about 30 minutes, but for some reason this seemed too long for each zone to be on. So I decided to cut that in half and set it to water for 15 minutes per zone, seven days a week.

Then I got the first water bill…$569.27!

What I failed to take into consideration was the fact that my yard has eight zones. 8x15=120. That means I was watering my yard for two hours each day. Something had to be done.

Thanks to the rather rainy summer we’ve been having here, and the early settlers in Dallas we rarely ever have any real watering restrictions. Back in the 1800’s, evidently, the Dallas city or county leaders had the forethought to buy or trade for all the water in the surrounding lakes that is below 30 feet. (This number could be wrong, but you get the idea) This means that in the summer when the lakes levels drop and all the surrounding cities are limiting the watering days and times, because they have to buy most of their water from Dallas, Dallas city residents are leaving the faucets on while they brush their teeth, they are watering whenever they want to and basically just pouring water down the drain.

But I digress…

My mother-in-law, who lives in one of those surrounding cities, told me that she is allowed to water on three days a week and she does so for 10 minutes per day. Her grass is always green and her yard looks nice so I decided to alter my watering plan.

I was watering 15 minutes per day and seven days a week for a total of 840 minutes per week. Now I’m watering four zones for 10 minutes and four zones for five minutes, but only three days a week for a total of 160 minutes. That’s a difference of 660 minutes a week, or 2,640 minutes per month.

Yesterday, I got my new water bill and it was 400 dollars lower!

That’s when I realized watering less really does pay…

And my yard still looks good!

My Dog

I recently noticed a skill my dog has that I am extremely envious of. And no, I’m not referring to places she can lick, or her ability to eat things straight out of the cat box.

What I envy is her ability to completely trust somebody.

I’m forced to assume, simply because I’ve not seen any evidence to the contrary, that there is no “maybe” for dogs. For them it’s either yes or no, black or white, wrong or right. There’s nothing in the middle.

I believe that, because of this dichotomy of emotions, she is able to completely trust someone. At least until that someone does something to change that and then she will be completely unable to trust this someone.

It’s all or nothing.

In our house we have tile in the hallway. Maddie, my dog, likes to lie there because it’s cool. If I’m walking down the hallway, I can step with my foot landing two or three centimeters (about ½ inch for you non-metric folks) away from her nose and she doesn’t even flinch. I believe that until I bop her in the nose once or twice, which I don’t plan to do, she will continue to trust me not to hit her, and therefore simply lay there without moving.

Maybe it’s the result of caution, maybe it’s result of fear, maybe it’s result of having an older brother…I don’t know. What I do know is that I could never have that kind of trust in a person. Not even a really good friend.

I think it would be wonderful to be able to trust that way, but alas, if I’m lying on the floor and somebody is walking in my direction…I’m getting out of his way.

Yep, for me life is all about NOT having someone’s shoe that close to my face.

Ever!