MOMPERSON PLAYS THE MUSIK THINGIE

BY NIGEL, LLEWIS, CONLEY & COOPER:

MomPerson gots dis biiiiiiiig pakitch. Two of em. Really akshually.
She very scited. We too stannin onna couch barkin at da brown truk. BRAINS BRAINS!!
But noooo.
She opent it an it dat musik fing she ordert. What she say when she seen it in reel life was

"Oh my god whut have i done?"

It sumfin callt a KEEBORT.
It bin 3 daze now an she kin turn it on an off ok.

Sometime she sit an go plink plinkplink.

We gotta say she uh......she.....deetermint. Not good, mind youse, but determint.
plink plinky plinky plink. plonk. oops. (Lotsa dem "oops")

She got it plugged inna wall. We finking mebbe it time to hep mail da bills. Hep DadPerson put da nvelops in da mailthings. Or sumfin.
Livin ousside lookin possibull.

The End for Now.

I HAVE BEEN REMISS

I have not kept up with the blog or actually, it has not kept up with me. Not that I am so busy you understand, but that there has been nothing except 4th of July Terrified Dogs to report upon anyway.

So.
We have another meeting today with another person who is supposedly going to be doing something to the House. We are working on many decisions, which range from what to do with the floor to what to do about a furnace. Nevermind, it's boring, really it is unless it is your floor and your furnace.

Yesterday my new Yamaha Keyboard arrived. I say that as though it is in addition to the others but noooo, I have only the one, and what a monster it is! I expected something about 2.5 feet long but this!! Four feet, I would estimate with more buttons than a rocket launcher with foreign codes on them such as "database" and "split" and "p.a.t. on/off"------???? Never having even learned everything there is about my computer, I must admit when I opened it and looked at it my mind did a little "poof!" and a mushroom shaped cloud appeared above my brain.

And then the real crusher hit: as a kid, I could never read the bass, nothing below middle C made any sense to me at all. Guess what? Nothing has changed! Every Good Boy Does Fine may work above middle C but below it I am lost in a swamp of strange symbols and peculiar notes.
Time for lessons. Well in truth I had planned on that anyway.
I wanted to learn piano again, and knew even if I took lessons, not being able to practice was going to be a problem. This seemed like a nice way to replace a piano with buying into a Baby Grand and having to sell both the cars in order to get one. (Not to mention building an addition to the house in which to place it. Yes, I know how big they are: we had one.) (At 10 yrs old, struggling to play a highly diluted Dvorak, the Baby Grand seemed huge. I cannot imagine sitting down to a real Grand Piano and being expected to do anything besides whine "I caaaaaaaan't" which is what I said to Miss Smith, the ever-patient teacher every week.)

(Llewis shows his appreciation for Great Music. I had finally put the headphones on to reduce the irritation shown by other members of the family for "plink plink plink" repeated ad nauseum with slight variations in tempo and long pauses while I attempted to decipher the notes.)

Anyway Life moves on and here we are, nearly 6 weeks into living someplace other than our real home. The Garden is a shambles: I will have to start over next year, assuming we are back by then. We have made acquaintances with several neighbors and their dogs and gradually this house is acquiring the piled-up, lived in look of the other, pre-flood. And I know when we go back, nothing will really change. It'll be clean, and painted, and full of the same junk that we already have.
BUT that way lies madness.

         My totally ignored roses at the house, on the edge of the crumbling summerhouse

                   The baby Blue Jay we found in the bushes out back of the rental house.

                             One of my paintings I brough to liven up the naked walls.

                                                 One of the other paintings.

                              Waiting for DadPerson to come out of the bedroom in the morning.

HOUSE JULY 4

This will be short.
Walked over to the real house to take pics of the garden. It is solid weed. We hired a guy to mow the yard while we were gone and the back looks as if he did it with weedwhacker. Of course, it WAS rather long.

The house is totally depressing to be in. Empty and raw. No movement.
The yard was depressing.
The garden was extremely depressing.

I did find a replacement crate tray for Conley-- the one in the crate he is using is cracked and I was afraid he would catch his pads in the cracks and cut his feet to pieces.

Anyway it is a beautiful day and now I just want to sit and cry.
I miss my house. My garden. My neighbors. I miss my kids. (Like that's new.)

I guess what this says about me is that instead, I should be saying-- the house looks great, it's finally dry and ready to be rebuilt. The garden sucks but I can fix that with several days of work. The grass needs to be remown but by the time we move back in, the dogs will have been gone long enough that we will HAVE grass. And the neighbors say they miss us except for the one who doesn't speak to me.
And of course the most important thing of all: I don't have to worry about Conley catching his pads in the cracks under the crate pads.

Happy Fourth, I suppose.

CONLEY & THE STAIRS: A STORY WITHOUT WORDS

AND SO ON

NERVOUS DOGS AT THE RENTAL HOUSE

Well....I don't even remember when all this mess started. I know I have little short dreams in which I am standing in our house looking at the rain pouring in. I know the Bassets were unhappy in the kennel for 3 weeks, and I know they lost weight, and Nigel's scrotum suffered badly.

I know that this is much better than the motel, altho they were very nice, and I know Cooper was very upset the one time he set paws in the house after the...what--flood? Inner rainstorm? Invasion of the Elements?

So now, the house is finally dried, and whenever the Village gets going and looks at it and tells the re-habbers/re-builders/restorers what they need to do to get things up to code they can do that and start re-building. Eight weeks, they estimate. Four, they said if absolutely not one single thing goes wrong.
Eight, in reality.

Here we are at the rental. Yesterday I planted flowers in the front-- Marigolds. $2.99 for eight. Figured I might as well. My beautiful oriental lilies are starting to bud out at the Real House. I picked a broken one and brought it here; the whole kitchen smells wonderfuly.

We are adjusting. John spends as much time as he can away from the rental. We do not want to leave the dogs in case they start howling. They tend to do that at home I have no reason to think they wouldn't do it here. They are, after all, in a strange place, very nervous and edgey.

Here I can show you. You won't believe how jumpy they are:

Here's a series I took of them when they were at their worst. It has been a nightmare:

This is Nigel, obviously hiding in terror.

                    And poor little Conley, huddled in a corner of my bed

       Llewis---sad, disposessed, on his beddy from the other house

Cooper has adopted a crate. Safety in steel.


Actually, this is what the dogs do 99% of the day when they are not running around outside, begging for treats and snuffling into interesting corners. There is not a nervous hound amoung them.....

SON IN LAWS, BASEBALL STUFF

http://my.wgem.com/_John-Arguello-Cubs-blogger/audio/884130/29404.html

 

This is a link to an interview my son-in-law did on the radio:ESPN 1440, Quincy, Illinois.

John writes a blog about the Cubs and baseball in general, called The Cub's Den. I am unabashedly proud of him.

 

I confess I do not watch, listen to, or follow baseball, football, basketball (not since Jordan) or Hockey (no Bobby Hull or Stan Mikita? How can it be hockey?)

I watch horse racing.

But this doesn't dim my admiration for John and his singularly accurate memory and knowledge, and his enthusiastic and articulate interview. His writing isn't shabby either-- in fact he is an excellent writer.

 

I take time here to add that he is a wonderful son-in-law and as far as I can tell a terrific husband and all-round guy. I like him, can you tell? He is like one of my children.

 

I have used this before-- it is my favorite photo of John except for the one of him and my daughter at their wedding. Which I missed.

Serious John.

Ok I've put it out here. I am a big fan. I hope you take the time to listen to his interview if you like baseball, and read his blog THE CUB'S DEN. The guy has talent. This is of course an unbiased point of view.

 

NO PICS--ARE YOU CRAZY?

Dogs got me up at the usual 4:30. So out we go. I go with them now because they always find something to bark at in the morning. Actually I think our neighbor leaves their German Shepherd out all night, and she is still there at 4:30, our usual "outside" time.

So this morning was no different and I had the flashlight which has a narrow but very powerful beam. And they barked and I shushed them and we came in. Too early to eat, so back in their crates and I opened some windows to get air in before it heats up and as I am opening the front here come the Cops with their spots on, shining them on my side of the street.

And I think "Oh shit! Someone saw me with the flashlight and called in a prowler". But no, they go on a couple of doors and "knock".

Now I have once in my life been in a room when the cops "knocked" on a door due to a call. Susie and I were in Lexington, KY: at a motel that was a tiny bit seedy but close to where we wanted to be, and at 1 in the morning a drunk began pounding on the door and yelling for Crystal to come out oh please (sob) come on Crystal etc etc.

So we called the desk who called the Cops who, we think, thought we were hookers anyway, and they come and "knock". I don't know if they use their flashlights, their batons, or a battering ram, but nothing shakes a door on it's hinges quite like Cops "knocking". They wanted to come in and we let them. They found two old fat ladies clutching their jammies shut with eyes like saucers. They looked around, checked the bathroom and left. I still think they thought we were hookers, and really pathetic ones at that.

Ok so that is how they "Knocked" on the door down the street. Are you beginning to see why there are no pictures of this event? We actually live two walking blocks away but when you cross that street it is like crossing into another town altogether. Halfway down this street it begins to change into Section 8 housing: by the end of the street, it seems to be all of it. Some are lovely people and others are.....not.

I don't know if anyone came to the door but I heard no voices and the cops left.

Ok now I am a little edgy. I closed the windows again. Locked them up, laid down with Cooper and tried to sleep. No go. Wide awake now I got up and was kind of wandering around the house mumbling when I heard the loud and unmistakable sound of a large amount of glass breaking-- as if someone had been thrown through a window: then a man screaming YOU BITCH! YOU BITCH! and I saw a car peel out.

Ok enough. Called 911. They asked if it were a specific address and while I was not sure I thought that was right and said the Police had been there earlier. And back they came, two squads, vests on, hands on their guns....
The woman went to the hospital (no I do not know whether she was actually thrown through the window or not) but later I heard the quiet tink of someone picking up glass.....

Domestic violence is cross-cultural and cross-economic. I think it has less to do with many things than it does with alcohol consumption, but that is simply my opinion.
John slept through it.

Just as well.