It's Friday - Now What??

It was pitch black, completely quiet as I woke from one of the most strangest dreams I've had. Of course I could remember nothing about it as I lay there for the first few seconds. I did hear something familiar though ... that bloodhound whine just to the left side of my bed. Stella was standing next to it waking me up. How long had she been trying?

Then I heard another familiar sound ... her stomach gurgling. It was 4:13am.  :)

She returned from outside in about 5 minutes, walked in and went straight to her dog bed and went back to sleep. I was still awake but I wasn't going to get up that early and start blogging. I did that in December when I first moved my blog here on WordPress. Not today though.

Luckily the hounds let me sleep a little later than normal, just past 8:30am. The daily routine changed drastically and really, it already had at 4:13am. We took our morning walk before I made any coffee. I was active without my two cups of caffeine. That was strange.

You forget how nice things are until you don't have it, then it returns ... Warm Weather !!!

Since it rained all night, starting while I was watching the baseball game on tv, the path was pretty soft but it was not slick with mud and leaves under my boots. I could see how fast wild bushes and the grass is greening up. If the sun were to every get hot during the day, all of this would be growing much faster.

I wasn't sure what I had planed for the day but the only thing I could think of was some minor lawn mower repair. The mower old but runs great. There have been too many times of mowing wet grass, where I didn't clean it after I mowed. So here many years later I have a few small holes worn through the metal bucket. I might be buying a new mower but I want to try something I read last fall about repairing it.

An article from "Handyman" website, shows that I can sand around each of those holes, preferably to bare metal, then apply some Gorilla Tape. My choice whether to paint over it to match the color of the mower. That will be my one thing of the day to do. Then the first test to see if it works will be early next week after it stops raining.

It was good to feel that the 800mg of Ibuprofen I took right before I went to bed, sucked all of the muscle soreness out of me. I felt nothing this morning as I walked the path alone. I had let Stella go off on her own, thinking I would meet her somewhere on the way back home.

As I was on the last part of the walk home, you can barely see Stella just left of center.

No doubt she has found a fresh spot of deer scat.

She evidently was happy with the freedom I gave her this morning. She walked right over to our path when I called her name. She is only a stubborn bloodhound when she wants to be and hears me perfectly clear. She just chooses what she wants to hear.  :)

Shaking a little more of the ear cleaner out of her ears this morning. Yesterday was Hound Ears Cleaning Day. She has much cleaner ears than Heidi.

It was extremely quiet this morning has we walked. I knew it was a Friday but traffic noise from the highway sounded like a Sunday.

It looks like I missed one of my small raked piles of leaves and twigs the other day.

I haven't heard any ideas about what to do with this area along the back side of the house. Mulch, river rock or replant grass all the way up to the edge of the house? I have ground swell and I remember digging out that 'flowerbed' area about 5" deep before filling it with rock. The level was below the edge of the house.

Not only does she walk near the house when she finishes her walk but also as close as possible to the car .. every morning. As long as the rain is in the forecast for the next few days, washing the car will be on hold.

I love having the windows open again. Just barely above 50° but feels warmer. A hundred different birds are talking. Other than that it's quiet as I finish my second cup of coffee. There's that woodpecker again.

A month or so ago I read the latest book about Howard Schultz. After reading about who he was and what he was about I had a feeling that I could vote for that man if he were to run for President. Last night Fox News had a "Town Hall" with Howard Schultz. Of course I have no doubt that all attendees are screened as well as all the questions but once again after watching the show, I had a feeling I could vote for that man. I hope he chooses to run.

He has some good ideas on how to heal the country if elected. He has experience talking to world leaders as he expanded his Starbuck's business. His business was the first to give free health care to all employees, fulltime or partime. He can work with people from different backgrounds, have different colored skin, male or female.

As I sat there listening to him answer the questions fired at him, I kept wondering if it was even possible to have both sides of Congress work with him as President to finally get something done. I kind of leaned toward the word "no" ... I have no doubt the Democrats would be pissed even if he was elected because they didn't put their "chosen one" in office. I don't know who that is.

They will be very angry if he announces this summer that he is going to run. They feel that is handing another 4 years to Trump because Howard Schultz will NOT run as a Democrat. Like he said last night, "I didn't leave the demorcratic party, the party left me." He also thinks he can win those 8 states that determine who is president in every election.

It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out by November 2020.

In the mean time I will go back to watching my Cincinnat Reds, who are playing much better baseball this summer but still have a 1-5 reccored because they cannot score runs and cannot hit a baseball. Last year it was just the opposite they couldn't pitch but could hit. They started last year 1-13. It's a long season, the bats will warm up but it's never good digging yourself in a hole at the start of a season.

Of course they are ONLY YELLING a lot in Cincinnat with the poor record, a new manager with analytics but they are not JUMPING OFF BRIDGES like they are in Chicago because the Cubs are also 1-5, but they are suppose to win the World Series and not suffer through another bad season.

A perfect overcast day this morning in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

What A STRANGE Morning

For the second day in a row I am up and awake at some ungodly hour, sometime after 2:05am. The first question that came out of my brain was "can I transfer data from my food tracker MyFitnessPal to Cronometer. It was a program I used before and breaks down the food in much more detail. Although today I may have gotten up that early for another reason but I just didn't know it ... Stella. Within 15 minutes that I was up, on the computer to find the answer to my question, she was standing by the entry way of the computer room and her stomach was 'growling' ... not the hunger pain kind of growl but the upset stomach kind of growl.

So still in a t-shirt and gym shorts, I grabbed my GoLite jacket and put on my snow/rain boots with no socks, grabbed the flashlight and we headed outside. It was really warm at 36° and a light sprinkle of rain. She went right to the field to find tall wet grass to eat. She moved from spot to spot with my small LED flashlight pointed right on her. She never did get sick and after 10 minutes or so, walked calmly back to the yard, peed and came back inside. She wasn't finished though. I'm in the dark house again, on the computer and about the time I think she has gone back to the bedroom to sleep, I hear her stomach again and there she is ... standing in the dark looking in the computer room at me. She wasn't whining but when I got up to go back outside with her, she didn't move. She didn't want outside.

You guessed it ... she wanted to eat.

I thought, why not? That might settle her stomach. I had yogurt or cottage cheese that I could give her but I thought I'd try her normal dog food. It worked. As soon as she finished eating, she was in back in the dark bedroom sound to sleep on the floor, like nothing had happened.

So here I was, still not even 4am yet and I am wide awake. I didn't fix coffee because I had high hopes of going back to bed and sleep longer than the hour and 50 minutes I had accumulated so far today. I found out that Cronometer does not list my Apple Watch as a 'device' like it did with my Garmin VivoSport, but there was another way to do the connection. I did that by connecting it electronically to the app Apple Health, which pulls data from my Apple Watch. As of this morning it is doing exactly that, giving me more details on my food intake than the MyFitnessPal app did. What might those additions be? A breakdown of vitamins, mineral, and micro nutrients. I would have had to buy MyFitnessPal's monthly subscription to do that same breakdown.

Since I was still awake I kept doing my normal reading online that I do every morning plus I had a couple of more questions on my mind. I 'googled' them (with DuckDuckGo) and found out what I needed within two or three clicks. By this time it's 4:45am and I am still wide awake. I wanted to get back to bed for some sleep and not have to rely on a nap this afternoon to catch up. I was needing coffee but knew if I went in that direction, then all hope was lost of getting more sleep this morning. The free app SleepWatch I downloaded for my Apple Watch WILL TRACK the sleep time when you take a siesta. That is something the GarminConnect app would not do.

The hounds?  Both were sleeping soundly where they normally do in a very dark bedroom.

I thought more about waking up so early, extremely early today and what was the cause. Stella was not standing by the side of the bed, whining or nudging my hand with her nose when I woke up, she was sound to sleep. As was Heidi. THEN I REMEMBERED .... I was too hot and my sinuses were plugged!!!!

Late last night I felt it getting much colder when Stella and I stepped outside one final time. I wanted to try something different with the forecasted drop in temperatures. I closed all the mini blinds for each window but did a quarter turn more to close the steel mini blinds tight as possible. That is something I rarely do, not turning a quarter of a turn more to tighten them. I left all of the thermostats the same in each room. To my surprise just less than two hours later when I woke up, the whole house was much warmer than normal that time of night. The temperature outside was the same, low 30's but the thermometers inside were saying no less than 70° (way too hot) and in the living room it was 72°. My sinuses were plugged up too.

THAT was the cause of me waking up at 2:05am !!!!

For some unknown reason, by 5:30am I was tired, sleepy ... a welcomed feeling. With the house still quite dark and the hounds still sleeping, I went back to bed and didn't hear anything the rest of the morning. Finally at 9:05am I was awake, feeling much better but a little confused and wanting coffee. Of course these last seven hours have thrown the daily routines out the window. How would the hounds react?

I fed Heidi immediately ... of course that meant Stella wanted to eat too but she had a normal amount of kibble a little after 2am. I was happy to see she was more than satisfied with the two pieces of GlycoFlex Plus that she gets every morning. THEN we all went outside but with no walks planned. I could hear it raining very lightly. Heidi thought about it and then proceeded as close to the side of the house as possible for a full lap around the house. As you see, Stella took a different path but a familiar one for when she has to dump her tanks and knows the walk of the day has been postponed due to rain.

It was funny now that I remember it. Earlier when she and I were outside sometime between 2am - 2:30am, when she was finished eating wet grass to settle her stomach, then peed ... she followed the same path you see here and headed back to the side of the house as close as possible for her return back inside. I guess if I didn't mind getting Stella completely wet, we could do the walk this morning. It's not raining that hard but after 16 - 20 minutes of solid drizzle she would be drenched based on how wet she was this morning after the short time she was out in in the field.

All Heidi wanted was to get back inside, jump up on the chair that Sadie gave her, scratch her blankets in a pile, do three circles and lay down to sleep the morning away. I've mentioned it before, but I cannot wait to strip that green paint off the steps and then paint them gray with the floor sealant I am going to apply to the carport floor this spring. I'll have to retrain the hounds for the day or two it will take to dry that application on the concrete floor, and have them go out the front door when we go outside. That will really scramble their braincells as well as mine.

It was just last Sunday that the ~4" of snow was melting with temperatures hovering around 40°. Then today I have light rain all day that started last night and will spend the late afternoon and night into a drizzle, if the forecast is right. Yet by Saturday night we have more snow on the way and a 'front' behind it that will lower the temps into the teens and single digits after midnight. Back and forth. Up and down ... typical weather in Southern Indiana.

Just last Sunday.

And the plans for the next few days.

With the pantry and refrigerator full of good healthy food, a tv schedule of college basketball and NFL Playoff games, a couple of books, and enough coats and thermals ... the hounds and I will make it with no problems. After all it's only for a day or two. The hounds always sleep based on 'outside' temperatures NOT what it feels like inside ... otherwise it looks as if I am freezing them out of their house with them curled tightly in a ball to sleep as well as close to each other.

Can you tell which pictures were taken by each camera I have?

I've added another show about roughing it in Alaska to my DishNetwork DVR Timer ... a schedule of automatic recording of programs, movies or ballgames. A few things I have noticed among the two shows I've been watching about Alaska ... even if the sky is clear above their roof of their small houses or cabins, none of them have any kind of solar panel system to produce electricity. Why not? Also for the few people that have teams of dogs for their dogsled, used to either check traps or race ... they feed their dogs salmon that that they had caught just to feed their dog teams. One team of dogs will eat over 500 salmon during the winter!!!!

Compare that to all the different kinds of expensive dog food on the market, those dog survive in much more extreme living conditions on just the protein of salmon and at times meat organs. There isn't any fruit and veggies added, no added vitamins, no fish or meat meals, no rice, etc ... just straight meat or fish. I also noticed as a family or couple, they don't sit down to a meal type of dinner with everything on the 'food pyramid' ... they might only have some moose or caribou they shot that day or just some cooked salmon they caught that day. They rarely eat fruit because they live in the wilderness and few will grow a garden during the summer months to grow vegetables. I know they live a much different lifestyle but to me it's interesting to see the diets they and their dogs follow while surviving extreme living conditions.

I normally like to have all my window blinds open during the day, even in cold weather ... but after finding out just how much heat is retained with the additional quarter turn to close the blinds tight, I don't want to open them today or any day until it gets warmer. I can open them on sunny days I guess because the western sun really warms up the living room in the afternoons. I've turned the thermostats down and the house is staying at 65°, just like the hounds and I prefer.

I guess the question of the day will be ... do I add the widgets back to my blog footer instead of just showing a couple of bits of information. I am not sure with the current design if many readers get to the bottom to see the list of blogs I follow, or the top posts or pages, maybe click on a category or look through the archives back to November 2017 ... so they may not be needed. A big difference in this theme that I really like and is called the most popular theme on WordPress, is the 'sidebar' on the post page, is NOT on the side but below each post BEFORE the comment section. I don't like that arrangement after testing to see what it looked like a few days ago.

Between now and the end of the day Stella and I will still check on weather conditions to see if we can fit in a quick walk. IF that happens I will write another post like I did yesterday with only a paragraph of content and all pictures of the walk. Do you prefer that style compared to my rambling?

It's warm, foggy, overcast and wet this morning in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.