Snow Flurries Start The Week

I could tell by Stella's reaction after her Sunday lunch, that we were not going to do too much. The weather couldn't make up its mind if it wanted to snow or rain, so it gave us just enough of both to keep us inside for most of the day. I did make a run over to Super Walmart for some food. Stella added another day to her streak for not trying to break out of the bedroom that her and Heidi share while I am gone.

Heidi didn't hesitate after her Sunday meal to go outside and kept on the dry mulch which is covered by the roof overhang. Smart Basset.

While Stella and I waited for Heidi to do her lap around the house exploring some scent with light rain, I couldn't think of anything I wanted to do besides return a book about Howard Schultz to the library. Plus I was craving sandwiches, which I had stopped eating when I was trying to cut carbs. So right there was a plan, plus it would get me out of the house, a nice 12 mile drive over and another 12 miles back.

Heidi sniffing every inch of the way ... slowly ... light rain did not bother her. See that corner bank? I made the mistake a couple of years ago of cutting all of that back and planting grass seed thinking I would make it like the yard. For erosion prevention that was a bad move on my part. Last March on a warm weekend I planted more grass seed only to see snow the following weekend, killing the opportunity for new grass.

My plan is let it grow back to what it was. I am going to throw in some wild flower seeds this spring to add some color and a few other plants that I have read are good for preventing soil erosion. I will let the grass that is there grow think and tall, to keep that bank where it is. Of course I could also put in some stone or large rocks by hand to do the same thing.

I am also going to do something with all of the river rock along the back of the house. I am not sure yet but I'm thinking of digging it all up and either go back to the original arrangement of grass right up to the house foundation or fill it all in with mulch with potted plants scattered along the back. All I know is, I don't think the river rock will be there much longer.

It will not be the first time I moved it. Originally all of that rock was in the front before it was replaced by Cyprus mulch.

Stella was thrilled when Heidi showed up. She never got off the carport while I picked up new twigs in the driveway to add to the burn pile. After a few steps back inside, Heidi sprinted to the living room, did a few laps around the coffee table and then jumped on the couch for her afternoon siesta.

Stella has never played with her, nor had Heidi tried to get Stella to chase her. A little strange since I have always had bassets and bloodhounds attempt at some sort of playing with each other. Maybe it's because they are both nearing 10 years. Heidi's age is only an estimate since

After another night of poor sleep, numerous wake ups and some of the weirdest dreams imaginable, Stella and I had another late start this morning . After her breakfast Heidi ran to her dog bed that Sadie used and waited for me to throw the sleeping back over her for the morning siesta until lunch is served.

It's not the first time but I was dreaming again of writing blog posts. That is always a bad sign, especially since I could remember exactly what I was going to say in those blog posts after waking up. That reminds me of the days soon after I retired, where I was dreaming I was at work and could remember in detail what I was doing after waking up.

So as Stella and I stepped outside around 9:30am for the morning walk, it was freezing cold, light snow flurries and strong winds from the southwest. This was about all the snow I could see from last night. Between my roof and the roofs on the neighbor's houses it looked like it had lightly snowed for quite a while but none of it was sticking.

You would think with freezing winds and temps below freezing I would not feel the soft mud under the leaves on the path but I did. My only hope this morning on this walk was that Stella woiuld keep moving in the same direction as I did without a lot of 'verbal herding'. You don't understand just how much different these walks are now without Sadie leading Stella.

I could always count on Sadie moving in my direction, completing the walk while having the freedom to explore. As I have said more than a few times, Stella is totally opposite and if I didn't say 'come on' or walk over to lead her by the collar back to the path .... she would never move. A few summers I tested out that theory. An hour after returning home, I drove the Toyota FJ out into the field to find her .... she was still up in the far right hand corner of the field where I last saw her.

So I am admitting, with the way that Stella does this morning walk, many days it is almost like work. Basically a pain in the ass, but really she is just being a typical bloodhound. She is stubborn, ignores me and has to be lead by the collar or leash too many times to return to the path.

Days like the last two where she does complete the walk without a lot of words from me, are nice. I have no doubt that she would always return home if I were to leave her in the field but  with that high speed highway 80' in front of the house or a 120' in front of the field ... I just can't a chance of any kind, that she might end up there. She never has gone near that highway but it would only take one time, for a terrible result.

I continue to make sure she and I walked in the house at the same time after the morning walk.

I think you can tell by the photos today, no matter how cold the wind is blowing ... she is 'strolling' and is not concerned how long she takes to do the walk.

At this point in time it is just damn cold ... no other way to say it. She doesn't care.  LOL

After only one application of the Wounded Warrior first-aid ointment on Stella's ears yesterday, I could see improvement this morning. That stuff is powerful and works for anything dog related, from bare skin hot spots, cuts or other skin issues. No, I have not tried it on the two bare spots on her hips back by her tail.

I wanted to give you some idea how strong the wind was this morning, which in this area of the field, the wind was coming from the NE. It is supposed to move back to the 40's to 50's on Wednesday. It's been a much different winter this year compared to last, where over 30 straight days it was below freezing and half of those days were below 15° for high temps. I guess we have traded those extreme freezing temps last year for all the rain we have had this winter.

There are times during this morning walk when I wonder if we will get back to the house before noon or late afternoon. Yet after checking my watch stopwatch when we finish, we are never gone longer than 20 minutes. Some mornings it feels like a lifetime

The sound of the small yapping dog in the distance stops Stella in her tracks. While I walked all the way to the backyard, she never moved from this position. I always wonder when I hear that small dog if it is cold and wants to come inside or is it yapping because it smells another dog somehwere in it's environment?

The highway traffic or lack of, made this morning so quiet I almost forgot that it was Monday instead of a Sunday. I don't keep the 'holiday' box checked on my Apple calendar but I did click it today just to see if it was a holiday. See how out of tune I am with what is going on? I knew something was up since my working neighbor's truck was still his driveway.

I have followed Jon Katz's blog Bedlam Farm for many years. He is in his late 70s, and has millions, yes millions of blog followers. For him, his blog also had to produce lost income from his book business years ago. Maybe that was his motivation to write very open about all aspects of his life. He is not a farmer but a writer that lives on a farm in upper state New York.

I don't or haven't agreed with everything he has said over the years but there are things I have learned from what he has written. Even with millions of readers and probably thousands of emails he receives, he has always replied to the few emails I have sent him. We have had short discussions about certain things he has written. He too, has put a lot of dogs down over the years so we do have one thing in common.

His post this morning which is linked above, "Bedlam Farm" , is one I am going to have to read again in detail. He is explaining to a student in his writing class how he sees and gets through these days that some feel are total chaos. I'd like to hear some ideas on how to do that, so I'll read his post again after I publish mine.

If you do click that link to read his post or see his blog, you'll notice at the very start that he told his writing class: "I tell my students that if they want a successful blog, they must write often and openly, they must be authentic and share their lives as well as their work."

He does write multiple posts each day, sometimes very long ones or very short ones. He never has more than one photo with each post. He has had his blog professionally designed and it is not a WordPress blog but one that is a website and a server he has to pay for with the huge amounts of traffic he has.

Over the seven years I have blogged I have tried different ways. When I started I rarely had photos but at that time I was not writing so much about my hounds but more about my research on the RV lifestyle. In fact the first couple of years I didn't write more than 35 posts in a year!!!

There is one thing I have not done that he suggested .... writing openly. I have on this blog a few times since this past December. That is what readers wanted. At the time that is what I wanted. I didn't put any limits on foul language or subject matter. On each of those posts my blog traffic would triple in numbers. At the same time I lost some long time followers who let me know by email they didn't appreciate my cussing and a few others didn't like my political views. I knew before I wrote those posts, that losing readers could happen.

Jon has written more openly about his life than I ever would have. Just remember though he was needing to make income from his blog, I did not. I didn't want to be recognized walking down the street or in a store because of my blog. It took years before I even left hints of where I lived. I still don't know if I have ever mentioned the name of the town but some readers that are interested enough could have, or have figured it out by the photos I posted in recent years.

Jon had such a response that for a while he was having two open houses per year, fall and spring, Blog readers from all over the USA would come to his house to see in person what they had read about. I would never ever do that. I like my privacy.

I don't even like seeing people pulling into my driveway just so they can talk on their cell phones. They do that because there is nowhere on the highway to pull off on the side of the road to do that safely. I even feel a bolt of adrenalin when I hear tires moving across the gravel driveway while I am hidden back here in front of my computer. I have a window that looks out into the carport and the top of my driveway but it's closed most of the time during the winter.

So having hundreds of people showing up at my house twice per year for a day of sharing, where people have to come out and direct traffic .... just isn't part of my blogging plan.  LOL

I will try to write more openly but there is always that one little bit of hesitation tapping me on the shoulder when I feel like rambling honestly.

I wrote more at the end than I wanted but it's okay. As I glance up to the right hand corner of my computer monitor I see it's past noon already. What happened to those mornings in December when I was writing blog posts at 4am and posting them by 6am, right in time for you to read with your hot cup of coffee????

I have yet to hear from anyone that knows what happen to the blogger "RetroRoxi". Her blog is deleted on WordPress, her domain name is 'parked' at GoDaddy and the gmail address she had has been deleted from her Google account. Her disappearance is strange to me since he blogged regularly, made comments on my blog multiple times per day and we exchanged a lot of emails about coding, html, blog design, dog photos, music etc.

That happens sometimes. Bloggers disappear for some reason and never return. I just hope she is okay.

Well after reading the latest book on Howard Schultz, I do not see him being a serious contender in the next Presidential election, if he even runs. He has a lot of good ideas. He did some amazing things with Starbucks, admitted the mistakes he had made along the way such as selling Seattle's NBA team to an outsider and then watched the city lose their team as it moved to Oklahoma City a year later.

Joe Biden??  Really??

Whatever happens, it will be fun to watch these next two years. In the meantime I am going over to Jon's blog and read in more detail how I can help myself get through these days of chaos that at times piss me off more than I like. Luckily I live alone and I never take it out on the hounds. I do mumble to myself a lot, sometimes even outloud, but not at them.

Another week closer to Spring, here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Blog Is Backing Away From Chaos

With a new week starting with another change in weather, different internet browsers tried, and thoughts racing through my brain cells along with a delay in our morning schedule ... why not make some blogging changes also? No, not the design but the focus.
As you can see the weather yesterday was borderline freezing and neither hound wanted any part of it. At no time yesterday afternoon did they spend any time wandering and exploring in the yard. In fact by the time Stella and I headed out for a late afternoon walk, she was led by the retractable leash and our pace was swift. In out ... walk finished.

After a terrible night of sleep, getting in my normal 6 or so hours, I woke up dazed and confused. It seemed later than my watch was showing, I didn't feel good and Stella was standing by the bed whining ... in that tone where I know she needs to get outside. She's a good house dog, as is Heidi.

Backing up to the start of the walk this morning. Remember that Stella prefers to keep her paws dry if at all possible. She is not a fan of walking through water puddles and a path that has water rising to above ground with each step I was taking. So she walked along the edge of that wet path to stay out of the water. All through the walk she sidestepped the path or headed to the heavy grass to walk through, all her thoughts were keeping her feet dry.

The small screen on the back of my Canon G9 X was showing a light sprinkling of rain. It looks like those sprinkles are supposed to be going non-stop for the next three days. Just enough to dampen my coat and Stella's. Again I kept wondering where is all this water going to go.

Too wet for her ...

I want you to know that the late start of the day, the bad dreams, or the lack of excitement that it was Monday played no part in my change in direction for the blog. It's not really a change in direction but a step back ... backing away from all the chaos and noise in today's world. We all know what it's like. We all have different opinions on what to do, what's the cause or possible solutions. I don't need to drag you through that crap on this blog.

I know personally I follow blogs to get away from all the crap I see on tv news or see online. I DO read a few blogs that do a much more professional job commenting on today's political environment or news events here in the USA ... so I'll let THEM be the ones to do it ... I don't want to.

Just like Stella stepping away from the very wet and heavy saturated path I am going to step away from the daily comments about what is screwed up in this world. I am going back to being boring to some readers. I am going back to seeing my blog traffic decrease around 66% because I am not talking about chaos or politics.

Why should I care about how many readers I have when I am not into e-commerce or affiliate marking with embedded links all over my blog? Crisis, chaos, or bad news brings much more blog traffic just like slowed traffic passing a bad car accident. I just don't want to go and this blog, to go in that direction.

So the "Other Stuff" on the blog title is going back to the relaxed lifestyle here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana, owned and directed by two hounds and any excitement they generate in their daily life. Like the old blog I'll go back to posting photos from my house projects or house maintenance I will be doing in better and warmer weather.

For the fans of my "rambling" and going off track on occasion, posting my thoughts about anything in general ... I will keep doing that but like the 'old blog', I'll not touch the subjects of politics or religion. Readers that want that type of commentary will have to go somewhere else after today

When 9/11 happened they did tell us from that day forward our world would change. It has all over the globe but maybe not so much here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana where we are tucked in the middle of corn and soybean fields. About the only changes we have seen here the last 18 years since 9/11 are local business closing forever and leaving empty buildings, or the major repair work on the US Highway in front of the house.

Winston loved sitting out on the SW corner of the carport during that time and watching the road crew tear out the highway asphalt down to the bare dirt. He was really interested when they installed new rebar and then poured new asphalt a little bit further into our yard to widen the shoulder of the road.

The only other thing that has changed around here of any importance ... was me retiring in April 2014 and becoming a full-time professional doorman for the hounds. The could come and go as they pleased as they requested I let them out and back inside a million times per day. With only two hounds now instead of four, I am down to around 500,000 times per day instead of a million.  :)

9/11 did change my personal enjoyment of flying. I went from loving to fly to "I'll never fly again, screw this" .... when I retired from work, I didn't have to fly again unless I wanted to ... and I haven't.

What I did not realize at the time was that all the wars overseas would push people out of their home countries, and in some cases head to the USA from all directions. I didn't realize the effect it would have along the border south of California, a border that I use to cross every day sometimes as I would head downtown Tijuana to 'the book' to bet on any horse race track in America. Or the times friends and I would cross that same San Diego border to spend the weekend at the Rosarita Beach Hotel in Rosarita Beach or go further south for a beer at Husong's in Ensenada, Baja Mx.

We've had little change here in this small town based on all of that movement of people looking for a better life than what they had. Even in this small rural redneck town we have had a little diversity in our population. An Iranian family owns the Subway, an Indian family now owns the 'infamous' gas/mini mart, a Chinese family owns a great small restaurant downtown providing me with that buffet I blogged about in December.

We even have illegals from Mexico that work at the Mexican restaurant with some of the best food I have ever eaten, from Southern California to Ensenada Baja California. We have never seen or experienced terrorist activity yet the huge government facility nearby goes into severe lockdown at times based on what is happening in the world.

So that's the end of my talking and blogging on this blog about what is going on in the world and what I like or don't like in today's society. I am going to try my hardest to crawl back into my hole here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana and let the world decide what it wants to do. That doesn't mean I will not remain vigilant and aware but I will just not blog about it. I don't need the bullshit in my life, just like I no longer needed that from a job.

While the sopping wet sound came from every one of my steps on the path this morning and Stella in her own little world ignoring me when I said "come on" ... I thought about these past 18 years since 9/11 and wondered what would it be like today if the US would just stay out of other countries business and way of life.

Let them live they way they want to and all of those trillions of dollars spent on wars, could have been spent on a new rail system, new bridges, better health care and support for those in need right here in the USA. How many people could be led off the streets into a tiny home or an apartment with those trillions of dollars?

It's a complicated story on how far do we go as a country to help others in need outside of our borders but at the same time there has always been way too much focus on changing their governments to a democracy when they don't want that kind of government or our lifestyle. Why would they? Let them sort out their own problems.

After all, if I reverse the situation and ask myself if I would like a foreign country coming here in 'the tropics' telling me and the hounds we HAVE TO change to their way of life ... the hounds and I would basically tell them to get out of the neighborhood and leave us alone ... maybe not in that kind of nice tone.

So really Stella has it all figured out, as does Heidi .... stay calm, unattached, live in your own little world but keep an eye out for trouble or deer in the field. but be sure to get enough sleep time during hours and hours of sports on tv ... not the noise of the news. All we can control is what we do right here ... that's fine with the hounds and fine with me.

Many new readers don't know about the time I spent a week taking photos and blogging about me pulling every weed out of my gravel driveway and bank, while crawling around on my hands and knees back in August 2015. To read those exciting blog posts, dripping with drama and in a way chaos, you can click here, then scroll down through the different blog posts that are listed in order of the progress.

What I meant to say when I mentioned that ... was to show how weird blogging traffic is ... those four days of blogging about pulling weeds were some of the all-time busiest blog traffic days since it started in October 2011. The number of daily visitors were close to what I was getting just last week talking about politics and chaos in society !!!!

Isn't a story or link like that much better than a link about the refugees problems or the other faction of people trying to take over our country?

So I am going to get back to that type of blogging ... the boring daily life of the hounds and I then let the 'experts' write about the chaos going on.

The hounds, and life as it is in small town rural America with a an opinion from that angle, every once in a while. There is so much more to blog about besides chaos in society whether in our country or their's. Stella and Heidi doesn't care ... neither do I.

Stella spent the whole morning walk looking for something to make it a little more exciting. There wasn't a scent anywhere along the way for her to lock into, so her focus was just to keep her paws as dry as possible and enjoy the warmer temps, sprinkles and all, as she strolled through the field.

She gave the scents one last chance to show themselves but decided the best thing to do was to head back to the house and start her morning siesta that leads to lunch. In the meantime I am going to take the books on politics and government back to the library.

Then pull a couple of books off my self that I bought years ago but never read .. one about Willie Mays and the other about Mickey Mantle. Baseball season is just 43 days away and that is much better than paying attention to who announces they are going to run for President.

The free offer of Showtime over the weekend produced nothing as far as TV watching. It only confirmed why I don't pay the extra $10-$13 per month to get Showtime or HBO all the time. I had more fun watching the new AAF football league which brought in 2.9 million viewers opening night on Saturday, on CBS. It was reported those AAF games had a larger audience than ABC's NBA game that night with LeBron James.

See, I am not the only football addict in America.

I look forward to the 'new' way of blogging and back to the old stuff. I mean what could be more exciting than a good photo of Heidi sleeping through all the chaos not caring what happens. After all, it will not have any affect on her sleeping time or the two times to eat.

The hounds have the correct solution on how to live ... I just have to pay more attention to their suggestions.

It's wet but a bright overcast this morning in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana ... it's all good.