Is it spring yet?

We’ve had a time with this weather.  Our driveway turned into a sheet of ice from the thawing, then freezing back.  Can you believe there’s still nasty weather coming every other day this week?  At least the temperatures are going to be more bearable.  Gabe hasn’t been for an outside run in days; I was afraid to try taking him to the pasture, since there are slick conditions even on the grass, and I’m at an age where I don’t want to fall.  I’m thinking I may have to stop letting Gabe run loose anyhow, after seeing this from a Facebook friend in Massassachusetts.  

I’m posting this for the Boxford Dog Officer who is not on the internet or a member of this group.

Over the last few months, coyotes have attacked over a dozen dogs of all sizes in our town.

Dogs that were just a few feet away from their owners, at various times of the day, were victims and only a couple were able to be saved after extremely large vet bills.

The survivor dogs and their families will never be the same after such a horrific ordeal!

Poultry and livestock are at risk as well, so are your guard type dogs that the coyotes consider competition.

This is not a joke and if you keep poultry make sure that they are in predator proof environment. THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS FREE RANGE, Because Really It’s A Free Lunch For Coyotes!

I’m not in Massachusetts, but Missouri has as many coyotes as any state, I’m sure.  Cliff and I often happen to look out the window to the north and see one loping across the pasture.  They are one of the main predators of chickens, but even when I kept chickens, I admired coyotes; I simply tried to make sure I penned up the hens at night.  However, I’m thinking I had better keep a leash on Gabe on our walks, as much as he loves running free.  He’s often out of sight, down in ravines, and it wouldn’t be hard for Wily Coyote to snatch him; he’s fast, but he’s no Road-Runner.  I’m trying to set up a plan, though, where I go to an area of the pasture where he doesn’t get out of my sight.  I’ll sit on the ground and read while he runs around and gets rid of some energy for fifteen minutes or so, then leash him and go for our walk.  Here’s hoping.  In summer, I can sit and read in the hammock with him running, and he doesn’t take off for parts unknown.  

Believe it or not, I’ve been having a problem finding a good book for the last several days.  I’ve returned several of them without reading past the first couple of chapters.  One book, “Cherry”, seemed to consist of nothing but a man and his girl friend staying high on injectable, illegal drugs constantly.  I went to a chapter about 3/4 of the way through to see if there was any redemption, but nope.  They were still doing drugs.  I don’t need that kind of negative hogwash, and I’m not patient enough to read the depressing stuff looking for the good in it.  It’s highly rated, but not the kind of thing I read.  I’m reading “The Hideaway” by Lauren K. Denton, but it turned out to be a love story, which has never been my favorite type of book, and pretty predictable (like most love stories).  I was struggling, about halfway through, and decided to see what was happening later in the book.  Yep, predictable.  However, lacking anything else, I decided to go ahead with it.  Next morning I began reading and realized some things weren’t making sense.  That’s when I realized I hadn’t gone back to my original spot, so I’d missed out on some elements of the story.  I backed up until I figured everything out (predictable), then went on reading from there, so I missed 1/3 of the whole story and still know everything that happened.  There are bright spots on the horizon, though.  A blogger friend in Arkansas mentioned the book she just read, “Inheritance”, by Dani Shapiro.  It was so good, she read it in one day.  I checked the Amazon reviews and immediately put it on hold at the library.  The estimated wait time for me?  Eight weeks.  By the time I get it, I won’t remember why I even wanted to read it, but that’s OK.  If it’s good, it’ll hook me by the second chapter.  And I’m sure it is good.  In other positive news, there’s a new book in the Chet and Bernie series coming out in July!  Chet, a big, black dog, is the narrator of these books, and does a great job at seeing detective work from a dog’s point of view.  That isn’t as silly as it sounds.  If you like dogs and detectives, you’ll like these books.

The grandson mentioned he had company coming for breakfast yesterday morning, so I jumped at the chance to make some cinnamon rolls, first ones I’ve made since July when our son was here.  I made a lot, so I sent one pan to his house and kept the rest here.  The son-in-law was in the shop working on a car yesterday afternoon, so Cliff took some out to him, with a carafe of coffee.  Cliff and I had a couple of them for breakfast this morning, too.  Still, there are about eight left, and I’m hoping the grandson will come and eat a few.  We don’t need them around tempting us every time we walk through the kitchen, and I’d rather not throw them in the trash.  

For my friends who have Netflix, I highly recommend the movie “Bernie”, based on a true story.  There are some great laughs in it, you get to see the main character talking to the man whose part he’s playing in the movie, and the people are so real, you will feel as though you’ve met them.  And it isn’t even R rated!  It might not be the best for children of a certain age, simply because there are some undertaker scenes and a death or two.  But Cliff and I don’t always like the same movies, and the grandson watches even different kinds of shows than we do... but we all three agree this movie is great.  Another one we enjoyed on Netflix was “Hell or High Water”, but there’s lots of killing in that one.  Can you tell I have cabin fever from all this being iced in?  I normally refuse to watch television during the day, but yesterday I found myself binge-watching “One Day at a Time” and “The Ranch”.  I can only force myself to watch “The Ranch” for two or three episodes at a time, though.  It’s pretty corny, most farm facts mentioned are off-kilter, and I get tired of a father and son yelling and cussing at one another all the time.  I actually found myself getting depressed yesterday, watching all that arguing.  

Well, that’s enough for today.  I’m doing my very best to do a blog entry at least three times a week.  If I go longer than that without an entry, I lose my mojo and don’t enjoy blogging any more.  If I force it (like most entries lately) and talk about trivial things, it keeps me coming back.

Life is good.  Spring is coming.  Global warming is real, but I don’t see anything we can do about it:  I don’t know how it works, but scientists say it’s the reason our winters are harsher.  Not to mention the hotter summers.  Scientists have made a believer out of me, now that I’ve finally read a little about it.   “You can’t tell much about the climate or where it’s headed by focusing on a particularly frigid day, or season, or year, even,” writes Eoin O’Carroll of the Christian Science Monitor. “It’s all in the long-term trends,” concurs Dr. Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.”

We have this day, this hour.  Let’s not spoil today by worrying about something we can’t change.

Peace.