Skip to main content

Get your goat

We had a scare with our Hoppsy last night.  She was in obvious pain, so sore she could not lie down.  She would try, move her feet an inch in that direction, then stand back up.  She even yelped when I lightly rubbed her tummy.  Not good.  This seemed to be something more than just arthritis flaring up, so I called the emergency number for the vet.  He listened to my description of her symptoms.  I had already given her some doggy pain medicine, which he said was good.  He advised adding a sedative to relax her muscles even more.  I didn't have any prescription stuff left, so I gave her the herbal ones.  It's a product called Mellow-Out by Oxyfresh and is the only herbal calmer I've used that works.  It's not as effective as Valium of course, but combined with the Metacam it did the trick for the night and got her to stop shaking and lie down.  I was worried that it was something internal.  I think the vet was confident that she was not suffering from abdominal torsion, which is very serious.  I will still take her in to have her checked out, but I am relieved that she's feeling so much better this morning.  I got up to check on her in the middle of the night.  Couldn't sleep worried about her. Poor Hoppsy

The kittens are officially tweens.  They are growing tall and lanky but still have their kitten faces and playfulness.  Ron gets upset when they, as he says, "Go after Lucy."  They don't go after her.  They just want to give her a little sniff and play.  She is not interested in getting to know them and just wants to be left alone.  So we do our best to keep the youngsters out of Lucy's personal space.  Meanwhile, Mr. Sox seems to dig the tykes.  They are his groupies, hanging around the big guy like he's a rock star.  Abby has warmed to them too, in much the way an icicle warms to a tepid ray of sun.

Yesterday afternoon, Ron spotted shadowy figures from the lanai.  
"Hey!  Goats!  They're eating my coffee trees!"
We ran out to shew them away.  They live at the neighbors, but jumped one sagging fence and found a big hole in another.  So we patched up the hole and the neighbor tethered them.  
"Shoot da fuckas," the neighbor told Ron when he went to tell the guy about the goats.  "Deya not mine."  They belong to Anthony, the man who used to live there and who recently moved to Hilo. This guy is Anthony's son-in-law (Ron thinks) so I guess he's caring for them.  But he really isn't.  As it turned out, the goats preferred the pineapples Ron had planted in between several keiki trees.  There was no fruit on them.  Just tough, sinewy fronds splaying out from the stalks.  They toppled three and nibbled the tips.  Hey, there's no accounting for taste. 

Good news at the winery.  We will be closed for Christmas Day.  YAY!  As much as I would like to earn time-and-a-half for standing around, I'd rather be home.  I'd rather be in Colorado, but here will do.

I mustered up the gumption to enter a short story contest this week.  You can't win if you don't enter, right? 

Not much else is new.  I'm reading James Joyce.  He's a genius. His stories are classics.  So far though, I'm not feelin' it.  

A hui hou.  Aloha!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mom

This is my beautiful mom. She died last Sunday. For those who knew her, my heart breaks with you. For those who did not, here's an introduction to the best confidante, role model and mother a girl could hope for in life. This is the obituary I'd planned to submit to the local paper, but have opted instead to publish here. Obituary: Beverly Todd Bev -- my mom -- was a longtime caregiver, advocate, and dear friend to countless elderly in South Salem. Hers was a kind and generous spirit. She devoted much of her life to the welfare of others, giving wholly of herself and doing so always with great affection and humor. She was born Beverly Marie Steinberger in Silverton, July 23, 1938, the first child and only daughter of Art and Marie Steinberger. Her brothers called her Bevvy Buns, a nickname she grew fond of and wore proudly within the family circle as an adult. Bev attended St. Paul’s Elementary School in Silverton, Silverton High School and Marylhurst Co...

Back at it

It's been some time since I've written. My mom died in February, and I haven't had the gumption to write much, other than a couple of feature stories for the paper and the occasional pithy email to a friend. Tonight, sitting in my favorite burger joint with a pile of fries in front of me, I dunk them into a deep pool of ketchup mixed with a hot sauce. That's how Mom liked 'em. My burger? The Spicy Hawaiian, a nod to my 808 connections. It's a brilliant combination of peppers and pineapple, a favorite on the Power Stop menu. I'm sure she'd have loved it, too. There's a bubbly beer with a lime in it. That's not a homage to anything. I just like beer. These past months, I've done little but work, search and apply for jobs. Two rejection letters have landed in my email this week. Search-and-apply has become a futile obsession. It's time for a break, at least until I hear back from all those applications still floating around out there. I am...

Goodbye Dan Fogelberg

Saturday started out as just another day to clean the house. Within a short time, however, I found myself on a mission; a mission of arachnid eradication. The spiders, for all their great bug-eating prowess, have a tendency to get a bit out of control in a place where there's no real winter. They're not only everywhere outside, but inside, too. I found webs with giant eight-leggers in corners, on the ceiling, hiding under window shades....everywhere! They were in places I vacuumed just two days before. Since the invasion of the beetles, the spiders have grown enormously fat and happy. So I sucked 'em all up. EEEEEEEEWWWWWW! I was none too keen on removing the vacuum bag. In addition to spider sucking, there was fun with fungi. What did the girl mushroom say to the boy mushroom? Gee your a fun-gi! Unfortunately, the prevailing fungus amongus was not shitakes or portabellos, but mold and mildew. Again.... eeeeeeeeewwwwww! I cleaned the top of the fridge, which was home to a n...