Broken

           Things are broken around here. Maybe not broken broken but not working the way they should.

          Do you remember the expensive five-tier artist cart Mike bought for me? About a month ago I got the cart. The box was damaged, the cart was lightly damaged, and they sent me two tops and no bottom.

          I contacted the company and they issued an order for the correct bottom piece and would compensate me twenty dollars for the damage. “From the photos, it looks like the issue should not affect the normal use,” they said.

          The screw that was torn from the bracket during shipping was in the bottom of the box. Before I agreed to anything I put the screw back in and made sure it would tighten. It did. I wasn’t happy with the dent in the wood but for twenty bucks, I could live with it. I agreed to the terms.

          After waiting eleven days, I finally got the new bottom only to discover it was milled wrong. The sides simply would not seat flush to the bottom.

          I contacted the company again and sent photos.

          They apologized and suggested that, “...slight deformation can happen during transportation or because of temperature changes,” and, “Would you mind trying once more by applying a bit more force while gently wiggling the part left and right as you insert it? In many cases this helps pieces fit properly.”

          Like I didn’t already try everything I could to make it fit, right? I even got Mike to try. But —just in case— I tried again. “Despite all the wiggling and gentle pounding on it, it just won’t seat,” I told them.

          Phoenix Art Supply apologized again and acknowledged how frustrating it must be for me. “Would it be possible to find a local carpenter or woodworker to repair the affected part?” they asked. “We would be happy to cover the repair cost.”

          You know, this upset me. Mike paid a lot of money for this cart, I accepted their first offer for the damage without quibbling, was very patient and waited for the replacement part, which turned out to also be wrong, and now they wanted me fix their mistake?

          “I’ll tell you what,” I told them. “You take the cart back and give me my money back.”

          The next day they issued me a refund, minus the twenty-dollar settlement.

          They never sent a shipping label for me to return the cart so I assume they don’t want it back. In a way, that’s good. I would’ve used two rolls of boxing tape to put their shipping box back together, but I totally would’ve done it.

          “Let’s wait a couple of days and see if it was an oversight,” Mike said.

          We waited a couple of days, then Mike went to work. He used the Dremel and a half hour of his time to make all four of the slots bigger.

          We put the cart together and I can use it.

          So can Tiger.

          I’d no sooner pushed it to my side of the table than he decided it was a good place for a nap.

          “He needs a towel,” this soft-hearted man I’m married to said.

          “No, he doesn’t. He’s perfectly happy to lay on my desk without one.”

          Mike went and got a towel for Tiger.

          “How’s Tiger doing?” you wanna know.

          And that’s something else that’s broken around here. He’s not broken broken and he is on the mend. I’m giving him pain meds twice a day and he seems to be adjusting to life with three legs. He goes where he wants, as evidenced by this photo. We came home from a shopping trip to find him laying in the sun in front of the lower barn door.

          The two pet exits from the house both dump into the dog run. The only way Tiger or any of the cats can get out is to go over the fence, either by climbing the chain link or using the ‘bridge.’ Two logs, one on each side, teepee-style over the fence. I’d just as soon he wasn’t climbing with his ruptured ACL and torn meniscus but short of kenneling him I don’t have a say in the matter.

          It’s not the first time I’ve caught him on the other side of the fence, either. He likes to check the perimeter and mark the spots that need to be re-marked then plop down and soak up the warm summer sun.

          I finished Bentley this week. I was at my desk/painting station adding details and finishing touches and thoroughly enjoying myself and wondered, Why did I put this off for so long?

          I did, you know. I found a myriad of other things to do rather than finish Bentley.

One of those “other things” was out in the yard. It was a beautiful day, too beautiful to sit inside and paint anyway, I justified.

I had some flowers I’ve sorely neglected. I bought them weeks ago and never got around to putting them into pots. I decided this was the day to take care of them. But first, I made a cup of coffee, took it and a bottle of water out to the patio, sat down, and called my beautiful little sister.

“The neighbor stopped by and told me she nominated me for the prettiest yard,” Phyllis told me.

“I’m not a bit surprised,” I told her. “You’re always out there doing something.”

“I was surprised. It doesn’t look all that great to me.”

Isn’t that always the way? We are our own worst critics.

“Then I started looking at all the other yards in the neighborhood and they were plain-Jane,” Phyllis said.

I hope whatever the prize is that she wins it.

After we chattered away for a while and my coffee was gone, I got up and repotted those flowers. They looked really sad. I guess I should’ve watered them once in a while. “They’ll live or they won’t,” I told my morning peeps the next day.

Still putting off Bentley, I played with the dogs. I was tossing Raini’s ball up onto the roof for her when I heard some birds making a heck of a racket.

Must be a cat, I thought. Maybe too close to a fledgling. I think robins typically fledge this time of year. I went over and leaned across the fence. Who do you think was laying there?

Tiger.

On my side of the fence sat my poor, neglected rose bush. But Phyllis inspired me. So I grabbed my scissors and cut away the tall grasses crowding the roses. They were too big and too tough to pull and I didn’t want to disturb the roots of the rose bush anyway.

And if those other things didn’t take me long enough I’d say, “It’s too late in the day to start it now.”

Why did I put it off for so long?! I wondered.

          It may surprise you to know that an answer to that simply rhetorical question popped into my head.

          “What’s that, Peg?” I know you’re curious to know.

          When I left the piece, it was because I was at a point where I didn’t know what to do next so I wasn’t anxious to get back to it.

          Then the day came when I decided I needed to finish it one way or the other. It’ll turn out good or it’ll be a mess and I’ll throw it away, I thought.

I have commissions stacking up behind it. Luckily none of them are time-sensitive because I don’t work very fast.

Once my mind was made up, I picked up the brush, figured out one thing to do, then another and another and this is what I painted.

          The first one is what it looks like scanned into my computer and closer to what it really looks like.

          The second one shows Bentley next to my painting, under my desk light, just so you can see how he looks. How did I do? 

     

          “I don’t like it.” Mike is ever honest with me and I appreciate that.

          I tried to pinpoint exactly what it was that he didn’t like but he didn’t really know.

That brings to mind something my cousin once told me. “I can’t tell you what I like but I know what I don't like when I see it.”

In the end I shrugged it off. You’re going to find as many people who don’t like something as you’ll find people who do.

          “Your brother likes it,” I told Mike later. His brother is the one who commissioned me to paint it. I shoved my phone in front of his face. “This is the picture I sent him.”

          Mike looked. “What did you do to it?”

          “Nothing.”

          “Let me see it.”

          I went out to my desk, picked up Bentley, and took it in to where Mike was sitting at his desk. He compared the picture I sent Cork with the painting itself. “That’s pretty close,” he said. And now he likes it. The only thing I can figure is the light over my desk must make it look different.

          Anyway, Bentley’s done. Except I’ll wax him before I send him off.

          I’ll be excited to start my next commission. It’ll be something like I’ve never done before.

          “What is it?” you wanna know.

          I’m not going to tell you. You’ll just have to wait and see.

          But speaking of painting...

          I did a couple more in my practice book, even though I said I was tired of practicing. I don’t even mind the dirty book pages. Gives it character, don’cha think?

          Something else that’s broken is me! I’m not broken broken but I’ve found something my body absolutely does not like and revolted to.

          “What’s that?” you ask.

          Sugar-free drink enhancers. Actually, it’s the sugar-free sugar itself that makes me sick.

          Mike’s been drinking the Great Value brand of clear Strawberry Watermelon for months, every since his PA told him to drink more water.

          “You should try it,” he said.

          I did and I found it too sweet. “I don’t have any problem drinking water,” I told him.

          But obviously I do. I like water, it’s what I grew up on, but I definitely prefer to drink my coffee instead. I’ll make a concerted effort to drink three of my water bottles a day. That’s sixty-six ounces of plain, non-caffeinated water. For a while I’ll achieve that goal but eventually I slip back into just coffee.

         Last week I decided to try his drink enhancer again. I kept sipping at it until I started to like it. That’s how I got used to drinking diet Coke — and smoking. Remember smoking? That bad habit that was socially acceptable in the 50s and 60s — when people kept fancy cigarette boxes on the coffee table and offered you one the minute you walked in the door. You’d cough and hack and really hated it when you first picked it up but eventually you came around to not only liking it but wanting it.

          It was that way with this drink enhancer. By the second or third day I was drinking all three bottles, sixty-six ounces, before the middle of the afternoon — and wanted more! It was making me feel full. Oh, wait a minute. I guess what I was really feeling was bloated. I didn’t especially care. Feeling full helped me to not eat as much.

          Then I thought, if three bottles is good, four bottles would be even better. Right?

          By Sunday, only three, maybe four days later, we were in church when I started to suffer some terrible dizzy spells. I took my glasses off and fanned myself. It seemed to help but they continued on and off all day long. By the afternoon I was feeling sick to my stomach as well.

          The next day I woke up feeling fine. I attended to my morning routine, which now included drinking a bottle of strawberry-watermelon flavored water while my coffee cooled. I’d only consumed about half the bottle when I was hit with a dizzy spell.

          Can it be the drink enhancer? I wondered.

          I did a search and as it turns out it can absolutely have that effect on some people. Not Mike. He’s been drinking it for months. Some days he only drinks two bottles, some days he drinks four, but it doesn’t seem to bother him.

          What can I drink instead? I wondered. A quick search suggested half a tablespoon lemon with two teaspoons of real sugar in twenty-two ounces of water. That’s barely flavored and barely sweet, but I did it for a day. I didn’t want to drink it but I made myself. Then I decided it was more trouble than it was worth and went back to plain water.

          Guess what happened?

          “You stopped drinking it again?” you answer.

          Yep. You guys know me so well.

          Just today I decided to try a tablespoon lemon or lime juice and a tablespoon of sugar. We’re getting closer to something I could learn to like. I’ll just keep sipping away it and if it gets me to drink more water, I’ll put up with the hassle of mixing it.

Funny how that works. Something I’d do in a heartbeat for someone else, I won’t do for myself. People are weird.

          

          Let’s end with random photos from the week. 

          Our newly repaired bridge.

          The yellow coloring of this tree stuck out like a sore thumb.

Then I noticed at least two more trees with the same golden hue.

          “What are they?” I know you wanna know.

          I think they’re Honey Locust trees, but maybe you knew that.

 

I thought the eagle’s nest was empty when we drove past. On the way home I saw a chick standing on the rim of the nest, but I didn’t get a picture. On the computer I think I see him just behind the front branch. See him peeking out? It appears there’s only one chick.

      

          Hay season.

          I tried to get a photo of the full moon.

          A yellow warbler.

          Raini laying in my overgrown flower bed.

My peonies are blooming. This is the first one to open fully and it’s covered in morning dew.

Forget-me-nots and buttercups.

          Speaking of flowers, I didn’t get any daffies, irises, or lilacs this year. 

          Let’s call this one done!

          Done!

So, Tiger

 

So, Tiger.

Tiger was limping. I didn’t see any obvious wound, he was getting around, albeit slowly, and we thought he’d get over it. We got through the weekend and the Monday holiday and Tuesday, Tiger was on my desk purring, for no apparent reason, and quivering.

          “Mike, I think Tiger’s in pain,” I said to my handsome silver-haired fox.

          I heard a long time ago that purring can be a sign of pain. Just to check and make sure I remembered correctly, I asked Copilot, my AI buddy. I was right. They believe purring is a method of self-soothing and the frequency cats purr at is known to promote bone healing, tissue repair, and pain relief. Some experts believe cats instinctively purr to help their bodies recover from injury or illness.

          I called the vet. “I think Tiger has a broken leg,” I left in a message. This vet office, this place of business, rarely answers the phone. They want you to leave a message and they’ll call you back, usually within two hours.

          “Why?” I asked them once.

          “Otherwise the girls are busy answering the phone all day and not getting any work done,” was the explanation I got.

          Personally, I think that’s bull. I’ve been sitting in the waiting room and maybe the phone rings one time. Every other vet or place of business in the area answers their phones unless they’re busy helping a customer, then it’ll go to voicemail.

          As much as it rankles me, I left a message. About forty minutes later they called back. “We can see him as an emergency as soon as you can get here,” she said.

          An emergency visit is an up charge and I didn’t care. No one wants to see their beloved pets in pain.

          The verdict?

          Tiger has an ACL rupture, patellar luxation (dislocating kneecap), and likely a torn meniscus. Surgery is recommended at a cost of four to seven thousand dollars. Without it he’ll have a limp, will never be able to jump as high again, and’ll develop arthritis.

          “I don’t care if he has a limp,” I told the vet. “Let’s just control his pain.”

          I don’t know how they feel about that, but this I know. We could spend all that money on Tiger and he could get hit in the road the next day. Maybe not literally the next day but you understand what I’m sayin’.

          “How did he hurt his leg?” is a question we’d all like the answer to. Unfortunately, Tiger isn’t talking. A guess? He was likely mid-jump and caught his foot. The force of the jump and a twist will do it.

“Strict rest is crucial to make sure he doesn’t re-injure it,” the vet said. “And here’s a sample of Cosequin. It’ll help slow the progression of arthritis,” she said.

Tiger likes the Cosequin Tidbits supplement so I’ll consider keeping him on that for the rest of his life, and for the gabapetin, I mix it in a small amount of tuna and he gobbles it right down.

          Tiger put up with being confined for exactly one day. Then he raised such a ruckus, yowling and pulling at the sides of the wire cat condo, that I let him out for the afternoon. At bedtime I gave him his second daily dose of gabapentin and put him in the condo.

          Tiger started meowing almost right away. I figured he’d settle down. An hour later I let him out, otherwise no one would’ve gotten any sleep. He followed me into the bedroom, flopped down on the floor, and he was still there in the morning.

          I can’t stop him from jumping, but he seems to have adjusted to the bad leg. He can manage a jump onto the kitchen chair pretty easily, then he gets on the table, walks across a bridge I made for him with a TV tray table, and onto my desk. Sometimes, though, he’ll ask. He’ll reach up and claw the seat of my desk chair. I’ll turn, pick him up, and put him on the desk. He eats a few mouthfuls of food, gets a drink, and lies down on my desk.

          I do kennel him some. All of the cat litter boxes are up high. Otherwise the dogs think it’s a treat box, and I worry Tiger can’t get to one. Cats don’t seem to eliminate more than a few times a day, and our cats mostly go outside. I rarely have to scoop a box. When Tiger heads for the door, or if we’re on the patio, the bridge to get over the dog-run fence, I put him in the kennel until I hear him use his box. So far it’s working okay for us.

 I only have one picture from our trip to the vet’s.

Speaking of owies...

          Mike’s fingers are healing well. His nail beds are dark so it remains to be seen if he’ll lose the fingernails.

          His eye is getting less red and there really hasn’t been any other change. After he gets the oil removed is when we’ll know how much vision he gets back.

          He has some pre-cancerous spots on his face that’s he’s putting meds on. That’s why they’re so red.     

         

          I spent hours this week filling out a survey.

          A couple of weeks ago I filled out a survey online. They sent me two dollars when they sent the papers asking us to fill it out. It didn’t take very long and afterward they gave us a fifty-dollar Amazon gift card.

          Cool! We buy lots of stuff from Amazon so there won’t be any problem spending that.

          “Since you filled out this survey,” they said, “you’ll get another one in the mail. This one has a five-dollar bill inside so be sure to open it. After you complete it, we’ll send you a seventy-five-dollar Amazon gift card.”

          Way cool!

          Holy cow! I couldn’t believe the size of the booklet! A hundred and twenty-four pages! Each page had several questions and multiple choice answers. They were picky about how you marked it, too. They wanted an X in the tiny little boxes and they wanted said X to be inside the box — no sloppy, out-of-the box Xs!

          It took me days to complete!

          “What is that, like six cents an hour?” my much-adored older sister asked when I was telling her about it.

          I laughed. "Yeah, probably. But it’s important. It lets companies know what we like and what we’re buying and our opinion on some things.”

          The survey was much more than what products we buy and how often we buy them and where we buy them and what day of the week we buy them and what time of day we do our shopping. They were interested in every aspect of our life.

How much TV we watch, and it listed TV stations and names of shows. Whether we stream, how we stream, what time of day we watch TV.

I could skip whole pages on baby products.

And I could skip whole pages pertaining to sports. We don’t watch many sports in this house.

“We watched the Superbowl,” I reminded Mike.

“Only because you wanted to watch the commercials,” he said.

“I’ve seen you watch the Olympics sometimes — and golf.”

“Only because I was channel surfing and stopped for a few minutes.”

About the only thing Mike really likes to watch is car racing and there was a page on that.

There were many pages on alcohol. What we drink, what time of day we drink, where we drink, how often we drink. Easy peasy, we don’t drink. I could skip like five pages there.

They wanted to know our political views, what party we belong to, when we vote. They wanted to know what we thought about the economy.

What vehicles we own. Are we thinking of buying a new one in the next two years. What kind would we buy.

“We’re boring,” I told Patti.

I know what I’m going to buy with the Amazon gift card.

“What?” I know you’re curious.

I’m going to get a Pet Vac, a Life Vac for dogs.

“Why?” you ask.

I worry about Raini. Every night we sit in the recliner, watch TV, and have our evening treats. For me it’s always air-popped pop corn. I have a bowl sprinkled with parmesan cheese and popcorn salt, my favorite.

“I thought you put cheese balls in there, too,” you say.

I do sometimes, and I love it that way, it’s just more calories and those I don’t need!

Raini and Bondi get a triple flavor kabob, a dog biscuit, and a piece of flavored rawhide. Every night  — well, maybe not every night— I watch Raini as she tries to cough up a piece that was too big for her to swallow.

 “Stop giving them to her,” you say.

That’s a valid point. Chewing the rawhide keeps their teeth clean and our dogs have clean teeth, so it works. It keeps them busy for a long time. And, lastly, they like it. I know! I know! That’s not a good reason. But so far she’s always been able to get it up.

Does the Heimlich work for dogs, too?

But it’s not just the rawhides.

Bondi loves these squeakies!

I mean she’s crazy for them! She expects one every time we come home from the store and enjoys digging all the groceries out until she finds them. I’ll either let her tear one off the card for herself or I’ll give her one. The rest I put on the counter. If I don’t give her a bag to dig through, she knows she’s getting one from the counter and she’ll stand there and stare up at the exact spot where I keep them. Sometimes, out of the blue she’ll ask for an extra one. Sometimes I give it to her, sometimes I don’t.

The first thing she does is makes it squeak — a lot! Then she’ll push it around the floor (and sometimes under the fridge where I have to get it out for her). She’ll scratch up the rug in the pantry and bury it, digs it back out and pushes it into the other room with her nose. She likes to pull the dog beds from the kennels and buries it. Then she digs it up and buries it again. Digs it up, buries it, over and over. She does this so many times that I’ll find the dog bed drug the whole way out in the other room!

She’s crazy for them — until she gets the squeaker out. Then the only thing they’re good for is to play fetch.

The one problem with these things is Raini loves them, too. She always lets Bondi have it first but sooner or later she’ll get it and chews on it just like bubble gum. When they’re coated with saliva they get slippery. These are what I worry most about. I worry it’ll slip into her throat and she won’t be able to get it out. It’s never happened, but...

Does the Heimlich work for dogs, too?

They paid me a hundred twenty dollars to tell them I buy store brand groceries, have pets, watch too much TV—but not sports, and don’t drink. That’s more than enough money to buy a Pet Vac.

“Peg, why haven’t you bought one already?”

Boy, you guys are tough! I have thought about it—many times in fact. I just never got around to it. But now I’m not going to put it off anymore! I’m gonna get one!

Speaking of pets...

Someone left me a gift. It’s remarkable only because it’s been a long time since they’ve brought me one.

We went grocery shopping this week and I found a couple of photos to take.

“They have a cannon in their yard,” I told Mike and I almost missed the shot.

One of the antique shops had an old wooden ladder on display on the sidewalk.

“How much are they asking for that?” Mike asked.

The wind was blowing the price tag around in circles and getting a picture of the price was a multi-shot effort. I zoomed in. “Eighty-five-bucks,” I told him. “See. People pay big money for old ladders to use in craft projects.”

          Coming across our little creek I spot a Great Blue Heron. Mike stopped and backed up so I could get the picture. He’s a good husband.

          Speaking of birds...

          I watched a little hummingbird sit on the edge of the jelly feeder. He didn’t stay there long enough for me to get a picture but here he is on a branch near his feeder.

          I’d gotten several packages of strawberries. The store had them at buy two, get three free. I don’t know how they can do that. I used Miss Rosie’s recipe for a sugar-free dessert. Strawberries and sugar-free Jell-O and a little corn starch. She puts it in a pie crust and it’s really yummy. Mike doesn’t want the crust so I put it in a bowl. I picked the bowl up to put it in the fridge and heard splat! I thought I’d overfilled the bowl and some came out from under the lid. Then I heard splat-splat-splatter! And this, my loves, is how you know you have a crack in the bottom of your plasticware.

          “How did that happen?” you wonder.

          I freeze in these bowls and sometimes push on the bottom of the bowls to get the frozen whatever to release. I didn’t know I’d cracked it — but I do now!

          I guess I can plant flowers in it, I thought. Nah. I threw it away.

          Mike’s been mowing with his new mower. He really likes it because it has a big mower deck and gets the mowing done faster. It’s also heavy and has bald tires. I’ve had to pull him out several times, all in the same day. “You need to use the other mower,” I scolded.

          He ordered new tires.

          My climbing vine is blooming so pretty this year. I’d only gotten one or two flowers at a time before, but this is its third year and there’s flowers all up and down the vine.

          I was telling my Miss Rosie how pretty it was.

          “What’s it called?” she asked.

          I couldn’t remember the name so I took a picture with Google Lens.

          Surprise!

          “It’s a clematis,” I told her. I thought I’d bought bougainvillea.

          Something else that’s blooming is my rhubarb. Actually, in rhubarb it’s called bolting. It’ll do that if it feels crowded and since it’s in a raised bed, he feels crowded. I want to transplant him before next year and maybe I’ll even harvest some.

          A spent dandelion with raindrops.

          The only thing I have left are road pictures from two weeks ago. Let’s get some of those out of the way, shall we?

          I kept seeing trees with upright cones of flowers. We didn’t stop but I asked AI.

          “The upright cone-shape cluster of flowers are called candles and it’s a Horse Chestnut tree,” he said.

          Now we both know.

          I took several pictures of the cows as we passed by.

          I laughed when I saw the face of one cow framed between the trees.

          “CLOSED UNTIL OPEN,” the sign reads. That tells me everything I need to know.

          The pond in front of the hospital. I talked about the geese there a couple of weeks ago.

          As many times as we’ve been to the hospital over the years, I never noticed the speed limit sign.

          “That car has our name on the plate,” I said. It’s true if you drop the U in Luby.

          The car next to it had a specialty plate.

          That reminded me of the song from the 80s by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. It had a catchy beat but the words were so suggestive that it was banned in many places and restricted in others. That made it an even bigger hit. People want what they can’t have.

Even here in the U.S. MTV refused to show the original music video and they had to make a second, tamer version, which is still racy and made me blush. It’s on You Tube.

I will admit that I never knew the lyrics to the song beyond the hook — Relax, don’t do it — until today.

          These bikes, all alone on an empty corner, no houses in sight, looked like they were ditched. Stolen? I wondered.

          The smaller bird was driving the larger bird away, swooping down and dive bombing him.

          A cute little egg shack.

          Oh gosh! A line of traffic as far as the eye can see. I sure was glad we were going in the other direction. It’s the only road through Wysox to the Veterans Bridge and into Towanda.

          Speaking of bridges...

          The Rainbow Bridge that connects us to Wyalusing is set to open next week, a full month ahead of schedule!

 

          And that gets us to the bottom of the missed-photos file as well as the bottom of this week’s edition of Peggy’s Jibber-Jabber!

          Until next time, let’s call this one done!

Done!