Meet baby Henry.

Don and I happened to look out the window and both Henry and baby Henry were chomping on food rather close to the house, and running back and forth under the car. At one point, Henry was in Scout’s little corral. Then they both got scared by something or other and ran back to their home under the shed.

About five minutes later, who did I see but Henry in my garden, dining on something that wasn’t on the menu we have provided for him. I opened the front door, went out on the porch, and of course, he scrambled for the shed. He stopped on the ramp and stared at me.

We had to have a talk. I firmly told him that he was welcome to dine on the grass and on all the vegetation in the woods, but that the garden was a NO. He continued to stare at me. NO, I repeated.

That scamp. Do you think he understood? All I know is that later in the evening, he was seen in what we call his ‘pasture’ eating the grass.

I’m going to have to keep an eye on him.

Yesterday was a sunny, beautiful day, very welcome after all the rain we’ve had. I weeded. I weed wacked. (I’m alternating the spelling of wacked/whacked because I’ve given up trying to figure out which one is preferred. Last time I wrote about it I used ‘whacked.’ Hence, ‘wacked’ in this post.) Later on, when the grass was dry, we mowed. I watered the plants on the porch.

It was just so nice to be outside!

I’m reading Disclaimer  by Renée Knight (scheduled for a book review) and it’s very good! Rather chilling, in fact. More on that in about 10 days or so. And it’s not at all like Gone Girl, thank goodness. In fact, when I grabbed it from my shelf, I noticed the blurb on the front is from Lee Child. Okay. Now we’re talking!

Don may or may not have purchased donuts yesterday. I may or may not have eaten two, which was one too many.

And speaking of language and communication, I really dislike this sort of thing:

“Do I wish I had done things differently?”

“I do.”

“Did I experience regret when I made that choice?”

“I did.”

Commit, for heaven’s sake. Don’t circle around the subject.

I’m rewriting the dialogue.

“I wish I had done things differently.” Or, better yet, “I was wrong.”

“I regret that I made that choice.” Or…”I was wrong.”

Asking the question and then answering it for oneself keeps the speaker one step away from taking full responsibility – just over the border from clear and unvarnished truthfulness.

I’m tired of people not taking responsibility for their actions and using language to dance around the subject, all the while bobbing and weaving, when a direct hit would be much clearer.

“I was wrong.” “I’m sorry.”

Simple, right?

“Don bought donuts. I ate two of them.” Nothing unclear about that.

Sigh.

McCoy reporting for duty and providing a nice little home for my rescued peonies.

Don’t forget to stop by Hanging Out With Bloggers: Enabling the Change – the post I wrote about a great discussion I had with four other bloggers. There’s even a video of us! If you leave a comment you will be eligible to win a $100 Visa Gift Card.

Happy Thursday.

Meet Henry.

We call all our groundhogs Henry, but this Henry is smaller than last year’s Henry. He lives under the shed. He likes our grass.

He’s frightened easily. This is what he does when he hears a noise. He’s listening, making sure he’s safe. If he feels threatened at all, he runs very quickly to the ramp on the shed and then he disappears. I’ve seen him peek out, head raised, waiting for an all-clear.

If Don or I see him out there, we will not let Scout out. We try to let Henry dine in peace. We’ve even stopped cutting a portion of the grass near the shed, so he can have more dining options. We’re thinking of making a sign that says ‘Henry’s Pasture.’

Are you ready for your close-up, Henry?

I have to take these shots from inside the house, of course. If I ventured out, I would scare Henry and that defeats the purpose.

I’m glad he’s timid, because it keeps him from venturing too near the road.

Much to my surprise, a recent conversation with Don about Henry revealed that Don always thinks of him as “Henri.” A French groundhog. But, I said, then it would be pronounced differently. Not Henry (HEN ree) but Henri (an REE), with a little French nasality on the ‘n’ and that French ‘r.’

But it didn’t matter. Don thinks of him as Henri but still says Henry. I think of him as Henry.

I just thought you’d like to meet him.

My back is still troubling me, but it’s certainly better than it was. I’m taking it easy, but as you can imagine, I’m itching to DO things.

We think the man who is tweeting about that scam is most likely an innocent person who is retweeting what he thought was a good cause. So I sent him a tweet this morning that thanked him for removing the tweet.

I’m sure that GoFundMe is a good site that helps a lot of people. As you can imagine, I’ve been looking at it a lot in the last few days. Bless them for immediately taking down the site that was using my nephew’s picture. But some of the causes seem questionable. Not questionable as in the obvious scam that would use an innocent child’s picture to raise money for a bogus cause; questionable in terms of what is a legitimate need and what isn’t.

It’s all subjective, of course. But I guess you can say I’m wary of the whole thing. Wasn’t it PT Barnum who said “There’s a sucker born every minute?” Be careful.

The winner of a copy of The Dismantling  is Kathy. Congratulations! An email is on its way to you.

New post up on Just Let Me Finish This Page.

Happy Wednesday.