Cooped Crusader

I saw this video on Dooce and had to share it. Thankfully, Henry and Lola are not nearly, by any stretch of the imagination, as crafty as this dog. Even his little friends in the cage are amazed in the end.

Daily photo

Like a deer foraging for food, Henry stands on his hind legs to reach the fruit on our persimmon tree. He carries his pickings to a safe location -- usually that location is under my dining table on my cream carpet -- and chows down. I know it's not a great shot but I had to show you his huge fuzzy paws stretched up on a tree branch.

Trying to salvage our Sunday

It's been one of those weekends where I've been to Lowe's three times, four times if you include Thursday into the conversation. Our hall bathroom had a slow leak that gradually became too annoying to avoid any longer. Thomas determined that some piece inside the tank was so old and corroded that it just wasn't functioning properly. Off to Lowe's we went to get a new piece, we replaced it but it leaked. Now we needed a new hose to connect the toilet to the valve in the wall. To the hardware store! We changed the hose and now the ancient valve that connects to the pipe deep into the wall was leaking. Guess where we went. Now, to fix the leaking toilet we have to turn off the water to the house.

Somewhere in the middle of all this I decided to unload the dishwasher only to find an inch of water in the bottom of it. I flipped through the manual and Thomas searched internet forums to troubleshoot our ailing dishwasher. We took apart all the plumbing to check for clogs and that wasn't the problem. So we took apart some of the dishwasher and discovered thick hard water residue and years of food goo. Gross! After cleaning the filters as best we could, we cracked out the CLR and ran that through. Twice.

At 2 o'clock Sunday afternoon we had one plumbing problem that required the water to be OFF and one that needed the ON.

We left and went to the beach.

Siesta

Doesn't a nap on a warm afternoon sound relaxing?

Apparently a crooked neck being choked by a collar that is hung up on an uneven door frame just so you can have the softness of carpet on your body and the coolness of concrete on your face is more relaxing. Who knew?

9 Reasons my dogs bark

1. A squirrel breaches the fence.

2. Someone approaches the front door.

3. Lola sneaks through the backdoor before Henry causing an argument about pack hierarchy.

4. The neighbors below are putting away their trashcans.

5. An opossum breaches the fence.

6. Hemi the boxer, another neighborhood dog, escaped her yard and is grazing in our front lawn.

7. No specific reason clear to humans.

8. One dog is barking for any one of the previous reasons and the other pup startles from an afternoon slumber, staggers bleary-eyed out of the bedroom and gives a couple deep puffs just to show they're putting in the necessary effort.

9. A coyote breaches the fence.