Life in West Virginia: THE FIRST PART IS NOT FOR YOU SQUEAMISH PEEPS

Friday, June 23, 2006

THE FIRST PART IS NOT FOR YOU SQUEAMISH PEEPS

Well, first the dead animals. If you are squeamish, skip to the blue section. Sheesh they stink. Except for the groundhog under the truck in the yard. Yup. Just casually walking outside yesterday and happened to glance down under Dad's truck that we had used to haul water, so it's sitting right by the sidewalk and it was there. Or rather, what was left of it. I knew the dogs had gotten ahold of something, we heard them barking, saw one of the dogs get up in the tree to get ahold of it. Yes, my dogs climb trees. Well, two of them do. Badger is to old for that anymore, so, like the typical male, he leaves the hard work up to the Girls. Nonetheless, they eventually got it down and all three of them proceeded to kill it. In case you didn't know, groundhogs being killed sounds like a cat screeching. I had previous experience, therefore, I knew after that sound, what it was that they had caught. My previous experience came first hand, after hearing the commotion outside one afternoon and saw them all three "pulling" (for lack of a better word) of the thing in three different directions. Mom was scared that they had her cat but I reassured her that it was a groundhog and well, they couldn't corner a cat, let alone her vicious "pet" that we can't groom. We could see the three of them surrounding it and just couldn't make out what kind of varmint they had surrounded, but the screeching sealed the deal for me. So, the proof was under the truck. They must have carried it back down over the hill, as it is gone and turkey buzzards are swarming over that part of the holler. Yes Linda, it was your dogs' Mom that climbed the tree this time . . . (although, she probably scrolled through this part, so she won't know) LOL

This morning, Mom walked out on the breezeway and looked down and saw a paw. Just the paw. No animal, no blood . . . just a furry paw and she says that it was not a claw (like from a groundhog) but a paw. It disappeared sometime this afternoon as mysteriously as it appeared.

Went shopping after physical therapy this morning and bought marked down plants at Lowe's. Oh, we have a Lowe's in Mineral Wells now! Its been there since last winter and I love it. I loved Lowe's before this one was built in Mineral Wells but HATED to drive 45 minutes to Vienna to go to the closest one to us. So, I digress again . . . since it had rained last night, they really didn't look too bad like they usually do when they are on the clearance rack, which makes it hard to differentiate between ones that need water and ones that are dead. So, I got 10 plants for the price of 1 or 2 . . . 5 dollars. I am just going to plant them over at MY house after the people over there now get moved out. Mom gave them until the end of the month after seeing the hay situation in the yard. I want to wait until they get moved out because my porch has no railing around it and if they are moving stuff out, the new flowers might get trampled. Plus, they have a five year old that is a constant blur of motion and he jumps on and off the porch since there aren't any flower there now, except my iris, which needs cut back anyway.

Charleigh-Anne is starting to crawl. She has about 6 or 8 "steps" under her belt but then she gets frustrated and does her "soldier crawl". . . . scurrying quickly from one spot to whatever it is that she has spied that she wants. Joey says that she is faster than him. LOL She can probably last longer too. She will get up on her hands and knees and rock back and forth trying to figure out "how did I do that?" but within 30 seconds or so, does the stop, drop and "soldier crawl".

Most of yesterday was spent on the computer. I spent about 12 hours editing the photos from Grandma and Grandpa's Anniversary Celebration and at 2am, could no longer hold my eyes open with 5 pictures left to go. I will finish them later today though and hopefully start burning CD's for everyone over the weekend. The rest of the time I spent teaching myself a little about HTML. I changed some things here on blogspot, to customize my appearance some . . . I had done little things here and there but was afraid to "experiment" too much more. Of course, there is no need to worry, if the preview doesn't look right and your posts are skewed or your profile at the bottom, just remove the edits. LOL I learned quite a bit after finding a free site with all the basic information that you need to learn about HTML.