Yeller Dog

           It tickled me, when I got a letter from one of my readers. It tickled me because his questions reminded me of my brother Mike. He too would find things in my letter blogs to comment on, questions to ask or answer. So, this week, it’s J.D. that’s given me something to write about.

          His first question is, “Whatever will you do for company…?”

          I miss our little Yorkies. They gave me a reason to get out of bed. They gave me a reason to go for a walk. They always greeted us at the door when we came home. And they shared their love and snuggles with us.

          Whatever will I do?

          That question has been answered by one very special cat.

          Tiger.

          “He’s like a little yeller dog,” Mike often says.

          Tiger is more like a dog than a cat. He likes to be with us. To show you this I took my camera around the house with me as I went about the day.

          If I’m at the computer, he’ll often lay on my arm as I use the mouse. I think I love the contact as much as he does and hate it when I have to pull my arm away. I type much better with two hands than one.

          Although Tiger can often be found wherever I am, he’ll spend time with Mike too.

          “He followed me into the bathroom,” Mike’ll say as he comes back out carrying Tiger.

          He follows me into the bathroom too. He likes it when I flip him upside down in my lap and rub his belly two or three times. Then he’ll slide to the floor. It took me a while to train him to leave the bathroom ahead of me, otherwise he’ll get shut in.

          Tiger doesn’t greet us at the door but he likes to help me clean receipts from my bag.

          Tiger helps when I sort laundry.

          And he’s right there when I go to toss it in the dryer.

          Tiger loves to play fetch! Forget buying balls with bells in them, he won’t play with those. His most favorite thing in the whole wide world is a Starlight Mint in its little cellophane wrapper. He often brings it to me wherever I am and drop it at my feet. I was washing dishes the other day when he brought it to me so I gave it a mighty pitch into the living room. My pitches are wild and you never know where they’ll end up. Under a chair. Atop the coffee table. Behind the couch. He always finds them.

          Sometimes he drops the mint too soon and I can’t reach it. If I can’t reach it, I can’t toss it. He’ll lay down by his mint and just look at me.

          “You gotta get it closer bud,” I tell him and turn away. Well, this day, on his way to bringing it back to me, he took a shortcut across the bottom of the butcher block, and dropped it. It fell between the slats and onto the floor. Tiger entertained himself reaching through the slats and snagging the mint only to drop it before he could get it back up through. I turned back to the dishes. Later I find the mint in the water bowl, the red stripes dissolved away.

          Tiger is ever vigilant, always paying attention to what I’m doing. When he saw me fish the mint from the water bowl he came running, ears alert for a toss.

          “We’ll get you a new one,” I told him and tossed it into the trash can. Tiger jumped up, putting his front paws on the edge of the can to see where his mint went. “No,” I told him. “Get down.” He listens and obeys — when he wants to.

          Sometimes he brings his mint to bed with him. If he just lays there with it, that’s fine. But once in a while I have to take it away from him and remind him bedtime is not play time. Some mornings I get up to find his mint on the bed.

          I love oyster crackers. The ones from Aldi’s are my favorite! I’ve been doing pretty good portioning them out and only eating a few but the other day I caved and started munching right from the bowl. I love those things!

          Mike asked for my help with something on his computer. I set my cracker bowl down and guess who jumped up and helped himself to a cracker.

          Yep. Tiger. He picked one up — and dropped it back in the bowl. Then went for another.

          “Oh no!” I told him. “You have to take the one you picked.”

He ate most of it and left a crumbly mess on my desk — and I didn’t let him have another one. Too much salt isn’t good for critters.

          I’d just as soon he didn’t get his own cracker but I allowed him to this time for the sake of a picture.

          Tiger wanted to help as I worked on a little Valentine’s gift for my Miss Rosie.

          When I wouldn’t let him help, he settled down between my belly and the box that holds my soldering iron at a good working height for me.

          Tiger is used to my ups and downs and fidgets and squirms. I’m not still very often. I doubt I’m even still when I sleep! But he’s learned my habits and if he sees I’m just going for coffee, he’ll wait for me. If I go to the bathroom, he comes in for a tummy rub, if I’m gone too long, he’ll come and find me.

          When I came back to foil more glass, Tiger came up to offer his assistance again.

          Now vacuuming is a job he’s not so sure about. When the monster first roars to life he takes off. He doesn’t stay gone long and chooses a vantage point from which to watch.

           Tiger may not greet us when we come back from shopping trips but if I go out the kitchen door to check the mail or burn the trash or fill the bird feeders, he’s right there watching for me to come back.

          And the pièce de résistance? Tiger loves to sit on my lap and let me stroke his fur to my heart’s content.

          In conclusion, Tiger’s almost as good as having a dog and I don’t have to clean up dog poo from the yard!

           Speaking of checking the mail…

          I stopped and stooped to take this picture of winter flowers for you.

          It was a cold blustery day and the wind was trying to wipe out my tracks almost as soon as I’d made them.

          J.D.’s next question.

To answer, I don’t know anything about any of the houses in Mansfield. Oh, wait, that’s not quite true. Miss Rosie went to college in Mansfield and told me that one day, when her father came to pick her up, there was a car on one of the porches of one of the houses in my letter blog.

          J.D. asked about the covered bridge in Danville and Back. All I know is it’s located at Sonestown. I don’t really know what they’re doing. I assume they’re fixing it up as opposed to tearing it down. That’s my hope anyway.

          I’m glad Macchiato tickles you. Around here he’s becoming a real pain the rootie-patootie. He’s gotten so he yowls a lot and we’re not sure why. He’s been vet-checked and she thinks it’s because he’s all or mostly blind.

          The ‘green thing’ with daisies is a water fountain for cats — and dogs if they want. Cats sometimes don’t drink enough water which leads to crystals in their urine and can cause stones and blockage in the bladder. Males mostly. That’s what happened to Rascal and he died. But cats like running water. The fountain has a small pump in the bottom and a filter to clean the water as it recirculates and Macchiato is the one getting a drink here.

          J.D. asked if that was my mailbox with the flag. It’s not. I just liked the bright colors of the flag on a snowy winter’s day.

          J.D., answering your questions helped me to fill five and half pages and thank you for all your letters.

>>>*<<<

          Our sunrise on Monday morning. Different cameras see it differently.

          The sun started to come up and the oranges and reds faded to a golden glow.

          Coming back in, the first rays of the sun lit up the kitchen patio.

          I made — and lost a whole batch of yogurt this week. Nine servings down the drain. I like to smell my yogurt when I take it out of the cooker. I don’t know why, I guess I’m just weird like that. But this time I detected a faint aroma of sour. I knew it wasn’t right but I cooled it and tasted it anyway. I went running to the sink and spit it out. It was nasty!

          “Why did it go bad?” you wanna know.

          Good question. Making yogurt is fairly simple, especially with a yogurt maker. When things go awry it’s usually temperature or your starter. I’m guessing my starter was bad.

          Mike loves the baked beans from Sam’s Club. We buy it, separate it into servings, and freeze it for him.

The tubs are kinda cool and rather than throw them away I’ve been stockpiling them. I’ve got five now and this week I decided to try and get the labels off. I filled the sink with hot water and put them in to soak. The labels on the side are plastic so the hot water didn’t budge them a bit.

The label on the lid was paper and peeled off. The only problem is it left a thin sheen of paper and glue behind.

Maybe I’ll have better luck using a hair dryer. I saw someplace or another that the heat would loosen the glue enough to pull the labels off.

I melted the container.

Then I tried just peeling the label off and that worked best. How did I not try that first!

There was still some glue left behind so I got out the baking soda and some rancid oil I only use for these kinds of projects, mixed them in equal parts, and started rubbing it with my fingers. The glue came off and didn’t scratch the plastic. Then I set to work getting the rest of the paper and glue off the lids. The paper and glue came off, the ink didn’t.

Someplace along the line in this life of mine, I heard that lighter fluid will take ink off. I don’t have any lighter fluid. I wonder if turpintine’ll work. I broke it out and it did work — but it was kinda smelly. I can live with the black ink, I thought.

So the next lid I scraped as much of the paper off as I could then used the baking soda oil mixture to remove the glue and guess what? This time it took the ink off too! The first lid was wet when I tried it and this one was dry. I wonder if that made the difference.

Now I’ve got four tubs for food storage — or whatever else I wanna use them for.

 “Peg, that’s a lot of work. Isn’t it easier to just buy containers?” you ask.

I know, right! It is a bit of a bother. And while I can well afford to buy plastic storage containers, I don’t like waste and we don’t have a recycling center anymore. I wish more things came in pretty glass containers then people might be more inclined to upcycle. Gone are the days of jelly jar glasses, peanut butter dessert dishes, and pickle jar flour and sugar containers.

          Speaking of which…

          I made another batch of homemade laundry soap this week. I have a dedicated grater to grate my bars of Fels-Naptha and the first thing I do when I buy Fels-Naptha is take it out of its wrappers and let it sit and dry out for a few weeks. It’s easier to grate hard soap then it is soft. Talk about work, now that’s work. I’ll trade off between my left and right hands. They say it’s good to use your non-dominant hand once in a while. It’s supposed to make new pathways in the neurons in the brain or some such thing.

          The Fels is mixed with washing soda and borax and stored in an old pickle jar. I use two tablespoons per load and it’ll last me quite a while — and I’m not putting all those plastic laundry soap jugs into the landfills — no judgement here if that’s what you do.

          I saw someplace or another a new system of laundry soap that uses sheets of soap instead of liquid in bottles and I though it clever. That’ll keep tons of plastic out of our landfills and oceans too.

          We don’t like to think about what happens to our garbage once it leaves our house, do we.

>>>*<<<

          Andrew got his Valentine's box way ahead of the day. Yay for that! I was afraid he wouldn’t, as slow and backed up as the post office’s been these last few months.

          The first thing Andrew wanted to do (after popping a few candies into his mouth) was to paint a wooden truck plaque.

          “I think Mimi wants you to be a painter,” Kevin said to Andrew when they saw all the stuff in the box to paint.

          Actually, we have some very talented painters in our family but I don’t really care if he paints, or plays drums, or writes poetry, or weaves tapestries, or crochets like that famous football player and actor, Rosey (Roosevelt) Grier.  I just want to foster creativity in Andrew and hope to do that by sending him fun things to do.

          “Did you help him paint it?” I asked that handsome son of ours.

          “Nope. He did it all by himself,” Kevin answered.

          I think he did a fabulous job! Now I’m wishing I’d’ve made him stickers for the truck. What do you think, Ford or Chevy?

          Speaking of Valentine's...

          This is what I made for my Miss Rosie for Valentine's Day. I made two, one with opaque glass and one with translucent. I can’t guess which one she’ll like better so I’ll let her choose.

          “Peg! Won’t Rosie see it before Valentine's Day?” you ask.

          Yes and no. Yes, she’ll see it before Valentine's Day and no, it won’t matter. I gave it to her early so she could hang and enjoy it for a while. She might keep it up all the time and she might only bring it out for Valentine's, I don’t know. Either way, I wanted her to have it so I took them both down and let her choose. She chose the translucent one.

          Happy Valentine's Day, y'all!

          Let's call this one done!