Good Morning Mrs. and Mrs. America

Good Morning Mr. and Mrs. America

and All the Ships at Sea

This morning I took my recuperating dog, Smokey Joe, for a walk, just in time to catch a beautiful pink, yellow and blue sunrise. I love those morning highs!

Smokey is getting a his courage back after being attacked by the three pit bulls we rescued six months ago. He usually heels, but took the point this morning, and led me back to the scene of the crime. He sniffed his way all the way from the barbed wire gate, where my daughter was tangled in wire, to the place down the hill where I scared off the pit bulls when these deaf old ears finally heard the noise of the fray. It is a sad commentary that I have gotten so old and ugly, I can break up a pit bull fight just by stomping toward them in a pink bathrobe and baby-blue fuzzy boots, yelling in my best growling voice, YAH! YAH! YAH!  KNOCK IT OFF! and brandishing a hoe. But that’s last week’s news.

Smokey and I went down the mountain to town yesterday; town being El Cajon, which is inland and over a hill from San Diego on the coast. What a beautiful day it was! It’s hard to believe I was freezing just a week ago. The temperature was in the high eighties and I curtailed shopping, because it was too hot for Smokey in the back of the truck, confined as he was in the enclosing truck shell. He didn’t look too uncomfortable, ensconced on a double layer of dog beds, with a bowl of water available.

The purpose of the trip was a checkup for Smokey and grocery purchases for me, but when we drove away from home, I had a premonition that I had pushed my luck long enough by driving without a spare tire. I turned around and loaded the spare into the truck. The last time I had a flat tire, I had a new one mounted on the wheel, but the unpleasant guy I bought the tire from wouldn’t put it back where it was supposed to be under the truck. He said he was alone in the store and couldn’t move the 20 feet away away from the register that mounting the spare would require. He threw it in the back of the truck. Since then, when it got in the way of hauling bales of straw home for dog’s bed use, we pushed it out, and failed to put it back. Can you imagine the trouble and expense that would cause way out in the middle of nowhere if another flat tire event struck?  Yesterday, I loaded it back into the truck and made my first stop at Discount Tires where they pointed out a tire that needed replacing. I bought a new one and they did all the necessary balancing and mounting, and we were on our way again to the dog clinic. 

The vet noticed how much better Smokey Joe feels, but said the worst wound on the inside of his right hind leg is not knitting together as it should. We will give it ten more days, and then, if necessary, they will have to cut away bad flesh, and sew him up again. That means the expense of anesthesia.  I think it was inevitable because Dr. Tessler had sewed the wound loosely so that it would drain well, and now it needs sewing up more firmly to heal.  Aagh! Another $300 or more! Oh well, I love my dog and can only give him the best chance I can afford.

We went on to Vons grocery store, and I bought 20 TV dinners -  Healthy Choice, Marie Callendar, and Stouffers, and 16 cans of hearty soups, and a six pack of a substitute for Ensure at one third the price. (Excuse me, while I go get one right now!) Now, I won’t have to use that rinky-dink hot plate that causes each time to be a disaster waiting to happen. My dread of using it, and my delight in reading and writing articles at Gather, was causing me to lose two pounds a week. When I was down from 195 lb. to 135 lb. I suddenly realized I’d better curtail the trend or I would disappear. I had to find out why it was happening. My doctor said I either had cancer or I wasn’t eating enough. We opted for eating more first, and with the help of Ensure, and TV dinners, my weight stabilized at 137. So there it is, all you dieters, you will lose weight if you just stop eating! But you have to use the vitamins etc. in supplements, and keep in touch with your doctor to stay well.

Today, I must do laundry and go to the library in Jacumba. The library has a political book waiting for me there. I think it is called “The Looming Tower”. I requested it after seeing an interview with the author on a political talk show. There are several books I want to buy at Amazon. I understand my Gather points can help pay for them, but have not figured out how to make that happen. I asked the powers that be, and told them I had read the directions but they are not clear to me. Maybe I have been so distracted by dog happenings, I couldn’t get it, and I need to read them again. I almost ordered “Eleven Miles South of Half Moon Bay”, a true story by my second cousin, William Sullivan, about his brother’s death by drowning while he rescued another person. I also want a book by Allan Eckart, “The Dark Green Tunnel”, and I want hardcover, used copies of a regular dictionary,  and a rhyming dictionary, preferably large print. I need to know if my Gather points can help pay for them.

Getting on with my morning news babble, we have bought a new chain link kennel and two ends of another. We already have one kennel, so if we arrange things right, we can use a long side of each of the two kennels and the new end pieces to create three kennels; enough for all the pit bulls. The pens will be within Jane’s expanded fenced yard, creating a job we older women can’t do. Today I need to unload my two non-functioning chest type freezers of the canned and dried food that I store there, in preparation to move out the freezers, so we can move the kennel into Jane's yard, after we move her existing fence.

 For all this we need Man Power!  Jane has arranged to hire two guys from Freedom Ranch, a place in Campo where men go for a long time, sometimes a year or more either by court order, or choice, to kick drug and alcohol addictions. When they have been there almost until their release date they are allowed to do a few hours of day work. I think we have at least two days work for them. We have hired guys there before, and they have been high quality people. Some of them do volunteer work in Campo, such as cooking the Saturday breakfast at the Seniors Club, and cleaning the Stone Store Museum every Friday.

I named this article with a phrase used many years ago by a corny newscaster, whose first name was Walter. My old memory won’t come up with his last name. I was going to talk about the beautiful astronaut who has lost her marbles and threatened another woman because of jealousy in an imagined affair with a fellow space pilot. I hope they don’t treat her like a criminal, but like the sick person I am sure she is. And, I was going to comment on the continuing deaths of our troops in Iraq, and the dawdling congressmen who should be making drastic changes that will probably be stopped by that guy sitting in the Oval Office. Or I would bring up the weather, with freezing temperatures moving across the country, and the tornado in Florida killing people. But I won’t because I have to get busy. See you later.