animals — Page 15

Bunnies, Henry & the TSP

May 9, 2016 at 8:44 am by Claudia

I took the day off yesterday. Frankly, I was having a very hard day, which started the night before, as I anticipated the arrival of Mothers Day – the second Mothers Day without my mom and the first in 21 years where I was not a mom. It was also marked three months to the day since Scout left us.

All in all, a very hard day for me, with tears the night before and lots of tears in the morning. My extraordinary husband was there for me throughout, surprising me with flowers and cards in the morning and a lovely book of essays on Beautiful Older Dogs.

He understands. He will go through much the same thing on Fathers Day – his first without Scout.

I simply wasn’t up to writing about my feelings yesterday and I know you understand.

The rain has stopped. We are supposed to have a very nice week ahead, so that means mowing and planting seeds and fixing up the porch are on the docket. I need to get outside and do something, to get my mind off loss and heartbreak and just do something physical.

5-9 deck

I painted the TSP’s deck. (I’ve told Don not to check out the blog for an indefinite period of time.) It’s gray with two coats of varnish.

5-9 birdseyeview

Thought you’d enjoy a bird’s eye view of the TSP.

Henry (our groundhog/woodchuck) has been back in business lately. (Whether it’s actually Henry, or Henry II or III, we don’t know.) No babies spotted yet. We also have several bunnies on the property.

5-9 henry

Henry (from the living room window) likes dandelions. We watched him come up to the house and deliberately, yet delicately, eat each individual flower. He has apparently signed on as my personal weed whacker.

5-9 bunny

One of the bunnies.

The other evening, I watched Henry nibbling on grass over by the corral. He kept eating as he slowly walked toward the ramp to the shed. In the meantime, a bunny appeared, having come down the path from the woods, blithely hopping toward the same ramp. As the bunny stopped, he looked up and saw Henry and did that thing that animals do – he froze in position. Meanwhile, Henry kept moving toward the shed, eyes downward as he nibbled on the grass. He was less than a foot away from the bunny when he suddenly looked up and discovered that bunny smack dab in front of him. He did a double take. The bunny did a double take.

And they both ran off.

Better than television.

I’ve posted a book review on Just Let Me Finish This Page – another winner from Robert Dugoni, In the Clearing. Please stop by.

Happy Monday.

ClaudiaSignature140X93

Curses, Pat Conroy, and Instagram

March 6, 2016 at 9:53 am by Claudia

3-6 sunset

Beautiful sunsets make me smile. This one graced us with its brief presence last night.

I told Meredith we were planning to leave on Tuesday. Hopefully, that’s still the case, but I tweaked my back (which was SO much better) yesterday and I’m hurting again. In fact, I had to get up during the night and come downstairs to the den where I used some Tiger Balm, turned on the heating pad, and proceeded to sleep sitting up for the rest of the night.

It amazes me that I actually pulled that off.

May I take a moment to say how frustrated I am with this whole thing? Just think of all the curse words you can and you have a pretty good idea of what I’ve been saying.

I actually like the smell of Tiger Balm, but I’m getting tired of both it and my heating pad. But ever grateful for them because they’ve really helped. (I always run these things by Mer, since she’s a therapist and my brother-in-law is a chiropractor. They know their stuff.)

Anyway, I’m going to be positive. I’m determined to get on the road sooner rather than later.

I briefly wrote about the passing of Pat Conroy yesterday. I truly loved his rich and beautiful writing style. He was an artist with words. One of my favorite blogs has a tribute to him today, which includes a short video of Conroy speaking to a group of his readers. What an amazing man he was. It’s here at Jungle Red Writers.

I need to read some Conroy ASAP.

I’ve been meaning to share two of my favorite Instagram accounts with you; both of them have to do with animals.

Black Jaguar White Tiger – Run by an incredible man who rescues animals, including lions and tigers. He is based in Mexico and the work he is doing is of the utmost importance. He posts lots of videos of these incredible creatures – the latest is of a baby tiger drinking milk from a bottle. Oh, heavens. Beautiful. The Black Jaguar White Tiger Foundation does essential work for the protection of our wildlife.

Pumpkin the Raccoon – a Bahamian raccoon that was rescued by a family and now lives indoors with his dog buddies, Toffee and Oreo. I love this feed.

I find Instagram intriguing. Most of us post brief descriptions of our photos, but then there are those who treat it like a blog, with long descriptive passages. Some of those IGers have blogs as well and they’ve, for whatever reason, turned predominately to IG. Others have never had blogs, so IG seems to be their version of a blog. Since Instagram is meant to be something you can scroll through rather quickly, I tend to avoid paragraphs of writing. I’ll look at the photo and continue on my way. Maybe because I also read blogs, I don’t have too much patience with lots of words in this particular form of social media. But I am equally sure that a lot of people tend to spend most of their social media time on Instagram, so they have no problem with that.

It’s free. It’s fairly quick. Maybe that’s the attraction in this time of short-attention spans. A blog post takes time to craft. IG is much faster. Though yours truly, not especially a whiz with a phone keyboard, finds it takes time enough with lots of curses along the way as I retype words, correct auto-correct and insert the dreaded hashtags.

By the way, whenever the heck we leave for Florida, I may not post everyday but I will do my best to post to IG as we make our way South. So follow along on my IG account.

New post on Just Let Me Finish This Page: Gone But Not Forgotten: Harper Lee and Pat Conroy.

Happy Sunday.

ClaudiaSignature140X93

Sunday. That’s the Best I Can Do for a Post Title.

January 31, 2016 at 7:42 am by Claudia

To say my sleep patterns have been erratic since I arrived in Hartford is putting it mildly.

Today I woke up at 5 am – too early for the long day that lies ahead.

Sigh.

It isn’t the bed, which is quite comfortable. It isn’t the noise because it’s fairly quiet here. All I know is that sometimes I wake up and it’s still dark, but I’m sure it’s later than it is – maybe around 6:30 – and my brain starts going or I get up to go to the bathroom and I look at the clock at it’s not even 5 yet. I try to go back to sleep but it’s too late, usually, because I can’t turn off my brain.

So I get up and make some coffee.

I wish it would all even out, but I don’t think it will, so I simply have to go with it.

We start early today, working through some key scenes, and eventually do our first stumble-through of the entire play. A mutual friend of ours from the Old Globe days is in town and we’re all going to dinner after rehearsal.

I’m not going home on my day off because there’s really not enough time make it worthwhile and I’m tired. I think I’ll be able to grab a couple of days back at the cottage at the end of the week, when we move onstage.

1-31 hartfordlibrary

The Hartford Public Library, taken last Saturday, right before the snow arrived. If you look closely, you can see the café. I’ve never had the time to dine there, but maybe I will this time around.

1-31 hartfordlibary2

There’s a Jazz series every Sunday afternoon.

Oh, and I wanted to share my new favorite hand cream with you.

1-25 TJhandcream

Inexpensive and really lovely and smooth. And no animal testing. I really want to eliminate any products that are tested on animals from my life. It might take a while, but that’s my goal for 2016. I saw a photo recently of cats being tested and it sent a chill down to my very core. There’s no excuse for using a living being as a test subject. And I’m very firm on that one and no amount of debating will change my mind.

So I haven’t picked a ‘word’ for 2016, but I am vowing to do as much as I can to research the products I routinely use and throw them out if there is any animal testing involved. It’s time for me to step up.

That’s my goal.

I’m not preaching, except to myself.

Happy Sunday.

ClaudiaSignature140X93

Bunnies, Henry & the TSP

Curses, Pat Conroy, and Instagram

Sunday. That’s the Best I Can Do for a Post Title.

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

Archives