Too darn early!

Sunday we went to a friend’s house for lunch and an afternoon playing in the creek.  It was fun!  We got home around 5:30 or so, and all of us tromped upstairs except Matt, who was looking in the freezer to see if we had any more stick butter.

Monday afternoon, Larry went down to the garage to leave for work.  I heard the garage door open and shut, open and shut, open and shut, open and shut.  Just as I started down the stairs to ask him what was going on, he stuck his head in the door and said, “Laura?  The garage door won’t open!”  Great.

I pushed the button to see what was happening, and sure enough, the door would open about an inch, and reverse itself back down to the floor.  I watched carefully, and the rail was bending dramatically - not something I’d noticed before.  I popped the handle that disconnects the door from the opener, and Larry and I tried to lift the door.  Usually, that takes relatively little effort, one person can easily open it.  I thought both of us were going to blow a gasket trying to lift the darn thing.  There was something bad wrong with the door itself.  I had to stand under the door, holding it up while he backed his car out.

Once Larry got out, I let the door down.  Let is probably not the right word - it was all I could do to keep it from crashing down like an out of control rocket! 

I took a few minutes and did the yearly lube job on it, that should have been done several months ago.  It didn’t help.  I didn’t really think it would, but the last time the door wouldn’t open, and I called the shop, they lubed it and it worked perfectly.  I didn’t want to have to pay them $80 to tell me there wasn’t enough grease.

Anyway, I engaged the opener again, and pushed the button.  This time I watched the door itself.  As the opener tried to pull the door up, the entire door was bending inward, pulling the rail down as a result.  I said, “I’ll be darned - I think the door is actually broken!”

Matt piped up (they had come down by this time to see what all the hubbub was about) and said, “Doesn’t surprise me - it made a horrible noise on Sunday when it closed.  Sort of a loud cracking-banging sound.”

I looked at him and said, “You didn’t think to mention it at the time?”

“Uh, no.” He blinked.

So yesterday I called the local Overhead Door company.  They told me they’d call this morning between 7:00 and 7:30 to let me know when they’d be here.  Argh.  They called at 7:06 to tell me they’d be here sometime between 9 and 11.  Argh, again.

Too darn early!

 

LATER:  9:20am

The very nice (very good looking, but who’s noticing?) fella from the door company arrived.  He took one look at it and said, “The spring is broken.”  He pointed up to the spring at the front of the door, stuck one finger in and showed me the break.  Yep.  It’s broken!  I guess that explains why it was so heavy, huh?  He’s going to replace both springs.  Thankfully, we won’t need a whole new door this time, but even so, this may put a serious financial crimp in my travel plans for later this summer…

Goodbye

Today at 10:45 am, the vet and I helped Ziggy cross the Rainbow Bridge. Now he’s running and playing tug with Piper, Sheena, Sasha, and Ariel. We’ll miss him.

Ziggy
12/30/1997 - 06/30/2008

Bee monsters

Matt was outside, doing a video documentary of our blooming plants for his YouTube account, when he suddenly came crashing through the front door, breathless.

“Mom!” he panted, “You gotta come see this funky bee thing!”

How could I not go look after that introduction?  Sure enough, there was the weirdest looking bee I’ve ever seen.  Matt managed to capture it on video, and on a closer look we noticed the antennae - not quite right for a bee.  I said it looked like a moth, but you couldn’t see the wings in his video.

Larry googled “bee moth”, and sure enough, there it was!  I’ve never even heard of a bee moth, but now we have at least one raiding our bee balm. 

Matt came back in a few minutes later to announce that the bee moth was back, in case I wanted to try to get a picture.  Here are the results:

Not too bad, for a girl, huh? 

Reprieve

Last night I thought Ziggy was done for.  He couldn’t even stand up.  I carried him out to the front yard to do his business, because earlier in the day I let him out back, and he fell down all 14 wooden steps from the deck to the concrete pad in the yard.  That was not a pleasant sound.

Anyway, I carried him out to the front,  and the poor thing couldn’t stand up long enough to pee.  He fell over while he was still peeing.  He turned to come in, and fell on his face before he could get a whole step.  I picked him up and carried him back into the house.  When I set him down, he simply collapsed, and could not take even a single step.

I moved him to his favorite sleeping place in the living room, and left him there while I finished my chores and got ready for bed.  I decided to go to bed a little early, and take all three dogs with me.  I texted Larry and asked him to wake me when he got home so I could let the dogs out again and crate them for the night.

I had to carry Ziggy to the bedroom, and lift him onto the bed.  He tried to put his feet down when I set him down, and flopped over on his face.  He rolled over onto his side, and looked at me as if to say, “help”.  I felt so bad.  He was not in any pain that I could discern, he just could not walk.

I bedded all of us down - Ziggy where he had scootched himself up to one of Larry’s pillows (and Larry wonders why his pillows are always furry.  Well no, he doesn’t really. ;)  ), Puck practically hanging off the end of the bed, and Angel up against the other stack of Larry’s pillows, with her face right up in mine.

When Larry got home, Angel alerted me with a muted “oof”.  I got up to let everybody out, and Larry came in just in time to see Ziggy throw himself off the bed onto his head.  Fortunately, we have a padded couch at the end of the bed, so he didn’t fall far.  Larry just shook his head in concern.  I said, “I think tomorrow may be the day.”  He nodded agreement.  We discussed it a couple of months ago when all this started.  We agreed that the day Ziggy could no longer walk would be the day we helped him pass on to the spirit world.

This morning, I expected to have to lift Ziggy down from his place on the bed, but he jumped up and bounced down to the couch, then to the floor, with only a little stumble.  He trotted a bit unsteadily to the kitchen for a drink while I uncrated the other two dogs and let them outside.  He wanted out too, but I’m not sure I trust him on the stairs again, so I made him wait.  Once the other dogs were out, I carried him down the stairs and we went out the basement door into the yard.  He ran out into the yard and managed to pee without falling.  He’s figured out that if he just stretches out to pee instead of lifting a leg, he won’t fall over. Then he made a circuit of the yard, sniffing everything.  He even “moof”ed at the guy working in the neighbor’s yard.  He did stumble a few times, but he didn’t fall.

The rest of the day has been encouraging as well.  He’s still dragging his front feet a bit - you can hear his toenails hitting the floor - but he’s not fallen on his face so far.

I know it’s only a temporary reprieve, but believe me… I’ll take what I can get!

Hey, Mom!  Wanna play ball?
(Ziggy in his younger days.  He was only two when this picture was taken.) 

Ziggy today.
I asked him to sit, but his front legs started sliding, and this is where he ended up. ::sigh::
He’ll be 10 and a half in 5 days.

Brown water

I got tired of looking at my dirty fountain.  So yesterday I decided to clean it up and revamp it.  Next time I say I’m gonna do that, slap me, ok?

The fountain was set up with the pump down in the pool, a wood and wire framework on top of the pool, and rocks and a pretty vase on top of the framework.  That worked great, and was very pretty, until a couple of winters went by.  Then the leaves, flowers, grass clippings, feathers, bird poop, and other accumulated detritus finally formed a slimy brown coating on all my pretty rocks.  I could not think of anyway to clean them without blasting all that goop down into the pool, which would eventually clog the pump.

I subscribe to “The Family Handyman“, and in a recent issue they had instructions for making several different fountains.  I thought they all looked better than the one I had come up with, so I combined a couple of different ideas, and came up with a setup I thought would work for me.

Rob did the heavy work, and moved all the big rocks off the framework into the wheelbarrow.  Then I helped him lift the framework and dump the rest of the littler rocks in with the big ones.  This exposed the pool.  Ick.  The landscaping stones had all settled and shifted, leaving gaps between the stones and the pool.  Of course, many of the little rocks had tried to escape into those gaps, which meant I had to move all those big stones and fish out the rocks.  Before I started that, I set up the pump to squirt the water out of the pool, so I could drain and clean it.  So there I am, sitting in the puddling water from the pool, digging in the mud, trying to retrieve little rocks from behind the big stones.  I got a little bit wet.

I figured while I had the big stones out, I might as well reseat the ones that were off-kilter.  There were only two, and they were off kilter because they were sitting on top of another, larger stone.  I moved them back, and got them mostly level.  Then I replaced the next row of rocks.

I refilled the pool part way, to stir up some of the dirt and gunk so the pump could get it out.  The pump clogged once, but otherwise the emptying/cleaning went pretty well.

A few days ago, in anticipation of this project, I had purchased a two and a half gallon bucket, with lid.  I got them out and drilled a one inch hole in the center of the lid.  Then I drilled several holes in the bucket itself, with one big one for the pump plug.  I put the pump into the bucket, set the bucket on a stepping stone I had placed in the bottom of the pool, and snapped the lid on.  The pump riser poked up about 8 inches above the lid, and the pot slid nicely over the riser, resting on the bucket lid.  So far, so good!

The vase, stitting on the bucket in the dirty water.  I just noticed the kewl splashes caught by the camera on the right side of the picture!  Neat!

I partially filled the pool, to make sure the pump was still working.  The water was bubbling up so high in the pot, it was splashing out of the confines of the fountain!  That was a simple fix, though.  I just had to push the riser tube down so it sticks up just a couple of inches in the pot, instead of half way up.  Now it’s burbling nicely, with just enough splashing to make a nice, soothing noise.

Then the hard part started.  What I didn’t know until we had already dumped the rock in was, the wheelbarrow was half full of dirt.  Rob said, “Mom, there’s dirt in the wheelbarrow.”  but I thought he meant a little dirt in the bottom.  I ‘tskd’ at him, and said, “It doesn’t matter, just dump the rocks in on top.”  That’ll teach me to ignore my kid.  So I had to sit next to the wheelbarrow and sort through every single rock, swoosh it clean in a bucket of water, and throw it into the pool.  I thought I was NEVER going to get finished with that!

It was getting late by the time I finished sorting.  The pool was only about half full of stones, and the goal was to get it mostly full - leaving only two or three inches of space at the top.  So a trip to Lowe’s was planned.

Matt’s friend had come over for the afternoon, and when I told them it was time for him to go home, they begged to have a sleepover.  I couldn’t think of a good reason to say no, so I agreed.  This meant adding a stop at the grocery, as well.  I wasn’t sure I could handle both by myself, so I roped Rob into going.

We got our 5 bags of rocks (I can’t believe I’m paying for ROCKS.  I have so many rocks in my yard, I could fill several fountains.  But, they aren’t pretty rocks.), the chips and sodas and other stuff, and got home before dark.

The fountain was actually looking quite nice - the water had cleared, and didn’t have anything floating in it.  Then I dumped the new rocks in.  Along with the rocks was sand.  That I was expecting.  The silt, I was NOT expecting.  Now the water is all brown and yucky looking again.  I left it over night to see if it would filter out and settle, but no suck luck.  It’s better, but not good.  That means I’ll have to attach a hose to the pump, and drain and refill the whole thing - again.  Not to worry, I’ll save the water in big buckets to use for watering the other plants.

I’m sure it will be worth it once I’m done.

Pretty sure.