I Woke The Hounds Up Early

Is this the new norm ? Blogging earlier ? No, the weather, is this the new norm. April is 2/3 of the way over and my iPhone weather tells me it "feels like" 28° as we take our morning walk a few minutes before 8am. The Farmer Almanac last fall predicted this winter, spring and summer to be wetter than normal and so far we have had more rain than normal. It did NOT say anything about "colder than normal" .... but again, after today we have 10 more days of close to normal temperature average ... high 60's.

Some have asked about Heidi and the lack of photos. She is well and in fact looks better than ever when she is awake. It's just not 70° every day, which is her threshold to be outside enjoying the weather. If it's overcast then it's questionable if she does anything outside her normal winter routine. She does get outside a few times per day and once at night to relieve herself. The bloodhounds have never cared about weather ... they just want to walk unless they feel rain on their backs.

The only thing different today was we started our walk about an hour earlier than normal because I woke the hounds up about 2 hours before they normally wake me up. That is what happens when you fall asleep a little after 7pm and get 10-11 hours of solid sleep for the first time in a very long time ... you wake up earlier.

They followed their normal morning routine though, of eating breakfast and all of them going back to sleep while I drink coffee and read the internet. Sadie then sits at my computer room doorway letting me know when it's time to walk.

I must say that I feel so much better than I did 24 hours ago. I will never eat another frozen pizza again ... ever. With my new reader called Flipboard, where you can join for free and then pick the subjects you want to follow, I read an article where they had rated all the frozen pizzas and even claimed they tasted as good as a carry out or one that you would eat at the restaurant. My curiosity got the best of me ... I had to try their highly recommended one.

To protect myself from a lawsuit I will keep the pizza I had nameless. All I know sometime around 3:30am after I had the pizza for dinner, I thought I was going to die. I didn't feel much better until right before we took the only walk of the day yesterday around 2pm. Yet this morning I feel great.

Stella had a bounce to her step again this morning and trotted a little faster than her normal pace to catch up with Sadie. No verbal herding was needed this morning as she was on her own. She made the complete walk with a lot of tracking instead of eating. Maybe spring really is right around the corner. This is Sadie leading the way.

For some reason I had a hard time keeping Stella in focus even while hearing the camera beep telling me it was in focus.

Luckily no wind to make it feel colder. I was wearing layered jackets, wool ski cap and gloves again and was more than warm. I guess it is a good thing I took the 30 minutes yesterday afternoon to mow the parts of the yard that needed it. I am mowing it higher again so the root system can develop in advance of the hot summer months.

Stella decided it was time to catch up just after we passed the first corner. Sadie was way up ahead waiting for her.

After she tapped Stella's nose with hers, they both took off for the back of the field to track the deer path.

As I made the final turn home I always tell them "let's go home" and they will run past me from the back of the field and choose one of the two different paths we take home.

You can see the portion of the backyard that I have mowed twice this year. This back half of the field toward the north has not grown enough to mow. In fact some of the wild flowers from years past when it was like the field and overgrown, are sprouting up.

The difference is, one half of the yard has had winter hound fertilizer and the other half has not.

Their tracking changes from the deer path to the path of the field cat that is rarely seen.

Then it's back inside for a mid-morning nap until lunch and afternoon walk. BTW, Heidi has not moved from that first photo and it's been almost an hour since that photo was taken.

My Bob Vila newsletter this morning listed some annuals and perennials that will do well year after year just by dropping their seeds onto the ground. That is what I am going to do to the bank around the old fence post and the bank along the driveway. Here are the ones he listed. I hope I can find these seeds at the local landscaping place within view of the house.

Sweet alyssum, gazania, bachelor's buttons, California poppy, cosmos, bellflowers, bleeding heart and butterfly weed.

Nothing planned today except to enjoy another day of retirement. That never gets old, no matter what happens. Freedom each day and good health are worth more than anything.

A cool morning here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Heidi Continues Hibernation

It was close that Heidi might declare "Spring is Here" yesterday as the temps approached 70° but that would have been too early and she knew it. It was "feels like" 28° this morning. She will leave her sleeping bag to eat, take afternoon naps on the couch and a few short trips outside to relieve herself but no sun bathing yet. The bloodhounds of course, don't care about weather.

A Day Almost Missed

It was going to be close to 70° today with plans of being outside doing things, and mowing the yard as a minimum. I figured we would take up to 3 walks today and even Heidi might spend some time out in the yard just laying around to enjoy the sunshine. Those photos look like overcast skies to me but it is close to 70° like they predicted and I did get the parts of the yard mowed that I wanted.

Some people say it's the definition of insanity when you continue to make the same decisions and get the same negative results over and over and over. This isn't the first time it has happened but hopefully it will be the last time it will happen.

Over the past couple of years I have tweaked what I eat to the side of being healthy. All in search for food that does not give me indigestion. So that means I have had to cut out things that I loved to eat or drink and the same foods the millions of other like. Consequently as your system gets used to eating fresh veggies and fruits (I have always ate these) followed by water instead of soda ... when those 'rules' are broken I am basically out of commission for 12 hours.

All of the hounds know something is wrong so they hang close to make sure I have a pulse. They do not beg for walks, food or pets ... they all sleep the same time I am sleeping, or trying too.

So we had a late start to the day. By the time we took off the sunshine was gone but it was warm. It looked like rain and I wasn't really sure if I could complete the walk or not but it felt like I needed to do something. I decided that if I felt okay after the walk then I would move half of the back and half of the front yards because that is all that was needed cut.

So far so good. I've been eating a little food other than the mostly green banana and slices of plain toast. I can feel things getting back to normal. I had a friend tell me the other night that lives alone, that he never eats full meals anymore but small snacks of good food only when he is hungry.

Maybe that is something to try.

Sadie and Stella were thrilled to get outside. Stella followed us with some of my verbal coaxing and Sadie ran to the far right corner of the field and covered every inch of it with her feet and nose. Evidently heavy deer traffic in that area.

Not sure why I took the time to blog this. It seems I am back in the daily routine again. It's all be discussed before so I'll not go into that.

I'll leave you with the rest of the photos I took today on our walk.

This is part of the yard that I have not mowed yet this year.

I'll be out tomorrow looking for a lint filter to put on my drain-hose ... I hope I can find that at the local hardware stores instead of driving 25 miles to Lowe's or Menards.

Otherwise it's a good day today in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Wash Machine Mystery Solved

I was within a click away from ordering a new washer and dryer with a delivery date of April 26th. Something didn't feel right. The only reason I had not tested it one last time to see where the excess water might be coming from was because I didn't want to pull both units out of the tight 60" x 29" space and clean up the floor again if it leaked.


Did that really matter? I'd still have to pull each unit out if I bought new and had it installed. So I decided to do a small test on the washer with a half load of the fleece blanks, not the Mexican blankets, that the hounds like to sleep on when the temperatures are warmer.

I also decided to continue to blog about this wash machine leak mystery because the story wasn't complete and besides, if I can take photos and write every day for a week when I pulled ever last weed out of my gravel driveway a few years ago why not blog about wash machines since I know all of you are hanging by a thread with this drama that is unsolved.

It was the cobwebs and dust I found inside the washer when I looked up from the bottom of it on Sunday night. They kept bothering me. The cause couldn't be the wash machine because I found no water stains. Both both hot and cold water hoses were dry as a bone at each connection ... no leaks there. Under the washer all the hoses were clamped tight, no damage and no signs of leaks. The only other place where water was a factor was the drain hose or drain tube.

There were no holes or cracks in the drain hose because it was covered in dust and under the washer the clamp was tight, hose was like new. So now I am down to one area ... the drain tube.

I grabbed my bright LED small camping flashlight off the shelf and once the washer started it's rinse cycle I had that flashlight looking down into the drain tube behind the washer and dryer. My other hand was on the lid of the washer because if I saw water backing up to the top of that tube I knew if I lifted the lid the drain process would stop and I wouldn't have water all over the floor.

The draining was going perfectly but then I had my answer !!!!  The water started approaching the top of the drain pipe that is about 40" tall. I lifted the lid of the washer, and the water stopped coming to the top and slowly started draining. I did this same process all through the drain cycle and had the same results.

So it wasn't my washer after all ... I admit I never thought of and never have cleaned out the drain pipe since living here. I have lived here 20 years. I never heard it over flow, never saw signs of a water problem until this past weekend. But my plumbing snake told a different story as I put it down into the pipe as far as possible or until I ran out of snake. I reeled it back in to see a ton of lint and dog hair at the end of the snake.

I cleaned it off and went back for another trip down into the drain pipe. I pulled more lint and dog hair than I did the first time. I did this until I could collect no more. I put a funnel on top of the pipe and poured in some very hot water to clean out any lint or dog hair that was left along the sides of the pipe. Then to test the drain pipe to see if it was still plugged somewhere, I took my garden hose and sprayed water down into the drain pipe to see if it backed up.

It drained perfectly.

With sales taxes I would have paid, I saved between $850-$900 by checking one last time and finding out I did not need to replace the washer. Since a washer and dryer is not high on my priority list like a computer or tv would be, I will use this old washer and dryer until they drop before I buy another. When I looked underneath the washer Sunday night all the other parts looked in great shape.

So that was the excitement of the day. It always feels good when I save some money. What a shock it would have been to buy and install a new unit and have the same leak ... LOL

Now back to Mahjong and the Reds game tonight ... As you can see the hounds did not do much right after lunch. Heidi definitely wasn't interested in staying outside long in 35°. By the time we took our 2nd walk of the day around 2pm it was up to 45°. Sadie may get her 3rd walk of the day around 6pm when it should be close to 60°.

Things are back to normal now in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Warmer Days Ahead

We got a late start this morning but that did not diminish Sadie's energy when she knows we are going to go on a walk any time of day. I let both of them out while I put my hiking boots on and by the time I reached the backyard Sadie was halfway to the first corner of the woods.

Once she saw me with camera in hand and dressed for 30° weather she sprinted toward me all the way and tapped my knee with her nose to let me know she was ready. Stella had not moved the during the time I was inside the house and was starting so slow I thought she might be hanging back today.

One one hound too far behind to go get and the other taking off out in front of me I decided to keep walking and let Stella go where she wanted this morning.

She decided she would rather go with us than disappear so in a slow trot she gradually caught up with us. I am pretty sure her hips bother her anymore, enough that she can no longer run in a full sprint that she did a couple of years ago. Hip supplements that I tried did not seem to help.

She is not like Sadie. She might run up to you but never stops and most of the time will step on your foot if you are in her way. She will run into you instead of going around you, even inside the house. That is what she did this morning and kept on going. LOL

There was just a little wind out of the southwest and the forecast shows it will be 60° tonight and it will continue that type of weather for the next 10 days. That's a great sign yet I know that as late as the end of May it can still drop back into the 50's like it did a year or so ago. A photos library is a great way to track history.

All of the yard need to be mowed. I might wait one more day before so it can dry out a little more. The Z4 might finally get washed this week and I might even apply a coat of wax. The 2003 car still runs like a new one. It is powerful, quiet and smooth going down the highway. It's even more responsive in the 'sport mode'.

Once again the scents seemed pretty strong this morning. Both bloodhounds were pretty detailed in their exploration with their nose.

I had to do a lot of verbal herding to keep Stella focused enough to follow us. She gets distracted a lot and wants to go in the opposite direction of Sadie and I. Sadie on the other hand always moves forward and is so focused she has no idea what is going on around her.

I am pretty close to making a decision on what to do about the washer and dryer.

I looked to the right and didn't see any deer in the vacant cut field but remember bloodhounds can hear 4x better than the human ear and their noses can smell scent we can't come close to. I am not sure what got Sadie's attention but I am glad that she continued the walk instead me having to run after her in the field to our right.

This is the path the deer take across the back of the either to or from the woods north of us.

I was able to get both of them headed in the direction of home and both of them walked at a slow steady pace with a few stops along the way.

After looking at all the angles I am going to go with buying a new washer and dryer at a good price and with the same or a little larger capacity of the washer I have now. It will be a top loader, both units on sale with good consumer reviews. I don't really want to 'test' my old unit again and then have to go through the same process of cleaning up water, pulling the old units out of their space and cleaning up the floor under the washer plus drying it out with a fan.

If the washer is borderline broke now it will not be long before it is broke beyond repair, so I'll replace it now. A friend reminded me last night that I wouldn't want to go out in the winter and bad weather just to do laundry. Then I remembered those single digit temps this past winter and knew that she was right.

The day of delivery I'll pull both units out and shut off the water at the meter in the front yard.

Not much planned today besides a couple of more walks. If Heidi comes out of hibernation and I take enough photos in the afternoon I might add another blog post later today or early evening. Heidi has not been out any longer than it takes for her to relieve herself first thing in the morning and after her lunch. She might go out with the bloodhounds at night if she wakes up.

A beautiful day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana today.