Feel Like Complaining

We haven't had a new dog with us in a long time! Lucy is a 3 year old Plott Hound and her family booked her almost 6 months ago. In that case after the first meet and greet, I have them come back closer to the stay so the dog will get more familiar with us. Being young she has so much energy. The first night she almost did us in; we couldn't figure out what to do with her. I proclaimed to the family that from now on we can only host dogs over 10, ha. It takes a few days to understand what a dog wants and what their cues are. The second day was better though; Tony took her for a short walk and even though he uses a walking stick she did pretty well. But by evening she gets revved up again so I take her outside and run her around. If she played with toys it would be a lot easier but they sit in the basket untouched. I found an old frisbee that she enjoyed and she will also chase a ball for a bit, but that's it. Being a hound, she does love to sniff and chase sparrow...

Last week we took some time off for a little vacation. Since we enjoyed our brief drive through Walla Walla a year ago, we decided to stay there for a few days. We stayed at a family owned motel that had a lovely garden to relax in. But dang it got hot there, 95 degrees. There are dozens of wineries but that's not really our thing so we went to this really cool old park to walk around. If you want to see the pictures, you can  CLICK HERE . We would do our activities early in the day, then go back to the motel to take a nap and cool off. It was really difficult to walk, for me and Tony. That's why we pick things to do where benches or some kind of seating is always available. I have the pain and his feet go numb; aren't we a pair? One cool thing we saw on our way back from a museum were goats-a-plenty clearing an area for the bureau of land management. I've never seen so many in a group! They work, but it's not even work to them. They probably see it as an all ...

Every night before I turn off my light for bed, I turn on an app on my old phone to play nature sounds for an hour. Then I thought back to how long I've been doing it. I bought my first sound spa/machine about 20 years ago. It still works and Tony uses it for himself. The old ones have only about 6 different sounds and he just uses the ocean one. Faith  has one built into her clock radio and listens to the ocean sound all night, then sets an app with a combo of river/crackling fire for 2 hours.  My app can do three different sounds at once. I usually go for the nature sounds as well, rather than mechanical ones. There are some odd ones that I can't imagine anyone listening to, such as lawnmower, train, thunder, highway, urban noise, and snoring. Snoring, really?  I am currently using ocean waves, babbling brook, and wind chimes. Each sound's level can be set differently and I just imagine myself in a place that would have all three around me. Recently I ...

I'm sure we've all had those toe cramps in bed at night where you move a certain way and your toe attacks you. Maybe even possibly you've had calf cramps which will surely make you move out of bed quickly to walk it off. But have you ever, EVER, had a cramp in your inner thigh!? I've had a few, and it will truly take your breath away. It only happens when I have an itch on my foot and I draw my leg up to scratch it. If my leg is up one second more than it should be, the cramp hits me. This last one was horrible. I jumped out of bed but just couldn't move. It is not something you can walk off. I was howling, moaning, and sweating, and have never felt such pain. It's like your muscles are being ripped off of your bones. I had taken a prescription pain med before I went to bed so as I jumped up I got lightheaded and almost passed out. I'm trying to cover my mouth so my family doesn't think I've snuck a man in the basement with all the noise I was ...