So today after the time-sucking faculty meeting, I’d planned to…
a) make a Costco run;
b) drag another stack of Medicare & Medigap checks to the credit union;
c) return something to Petco and get the dog vitamins I forgot while buying the useless piece of junk there;
d) do all the college tasks I’d listed during the meeting;
e) have a nice lunch/dinner (big meal happens at mid-day here…supposedly good for your diet);
f) write 16 weekly posts for the online 102 course;
g) write more of the current difficult scene in Fire-Rider II;
h) return strange beads I didn’t order to Fire Mountain;
i) write a post for Plain & Simple Writers;
j) write a post for Funny about Money;…
…and so on.
Welp. Got the Costco run done. That’s something. I guess.
At CC, I bought one of their wonderfully delicious (salt-saturated!!!!) roasted chickens. And some sugar snap peas. And some asparagus. And…well, you can’t have chicken without white wine, can you? A bottle of cheap white.
By the time I shot out the door, a stiff breeze had come up, bearing dark clouds from the west. Weather reports had threatened more storms this afternoon. The area up around the college and over where the Costco was hard-hit during the recent monsoon blasts, and it looked like another one was blowing in fast. Decided the checks and the dog thingies could wait until tomorrow. Besides, after two hours of cooling my heels and trying to look interested in the new chair’s every word, I was getting damned hungry.
So flew back into the central city, flew in the house, wrung out the dogs, and proceeded to saute those lovely peas, slice that nice hot juicy chicken, and tossed together an amazing salad with tender little raw asparagus spears, beet, tomato, yummy sweet mini-peppers, LGOs, and on and on. And, well…naturally, took a wrench to the wine bottle’s screw-on cap.
Decided to write a post on the baleful need for a wrench, a pair of pliers, and a heavy-duty pair of scissors or tin snips in the kitchen drawer.
Sat down to eat. And drink.
Yesh.
After consuming a half-bottle+ of that soda-poppy wine, I staggered back into the back of the house and fell face-first on the bed. Slept until five-freaking thirty!!!!!!!
Helle’s belles.
Wine is dangerous. I’ve learned, actually, that hard liquor makes a lot better choice of boozie-poos. Believe it or not.
I love wine. It tastes so good. And it’s so easy to dispense. Just tip the bottle over and presto-changeo! There’s another whole glassful! So when I’m eating that big meal in the middle of the day, I tend to merrily keep pouring enough to go with the food still on the plate…and to lose track of how much I’ve had.
I love bourbon, too. But…making a bourbon and water requires a process. You have to get up off your duff, walk into the kitchen, get the bottle down, get out the jigger, get out a glass, fill it with ice, measure the booze, pour it into the glass, and top it off with filtered ice water from the fridge.
That is what we call a hassle. Enough of a hassle to get one’s attention and say “that’s enough of THAT!” So as a practical matter, when I’m drinking hard liquor I don’t drink anything like as much as I do when I’m pouring wine.
You also have a lot more control over how much alcohol goes into a given mixed drink. Lately I’ve discovered that a half-a-jigger of bourbon mixed with the usual amount of water and ice is not a heckuva lot less satisfying than a whole jigger. Really, bourbon-flavored water is what we’re lookin’ for here. So that means that if I pour two drinks to go with a large meal, I’m actually only drinking 1.75 ounces of alcohol — the amount the gummint classifies as “one serving” of alcohol.
You can’t do that with wine. Well. You can. But who would?
It’s along about 9:40 p.m. now. I did manage to write a new post for P&S Writers. Fed the dogs. It’s raining, a much quieter, softer, gentler, cooler rain than we’ve had of late. I’m sitting on the patio watching the juice run out of this computer. The charge is down to 6%, and soon the thing will give up the ghost.
And so, to Netflix.
I’m very worried about Ruby. What did you decide to do?
Well, the Ruby predicament is improved, at least for the nonce. The answer to the reverse house-training phenomenon is a combination of a leash, an X-pen (a large wire pen that you can put in a room where the humans are hanging out, so the dog can be confined but still be in the middle of the action), her accustomed crate, and a door.
Ruby is now on a leash or inside something (X-pen, the office, her crate) ALL the time she’s in the house. This obviates the stealth peeing. With her right at my feet every minute, I of course am reminded to get up and take her out at least every two hours (sometimes more often). The result: she has stopped peeing and pooping on the floor.
The vet called this afternoon. When I described this strategy, he said it was exactly the right thing to do, BUT to figure it would take four or five weeks to have a permanent effect. He said this is a pretty common puppy problem, and that when they poop as well as pee, that usually indicates a behavioral problem rather than a UTI. And he said that many people are so encouraged by the turnaround, they’ll take the dog off the leash and go back to their old habits, thinking the dog is now re-housetrained, after about two weeks. Big mistake, he says: don’t trust the hound off the leash for at least a month.
And he suggested giving a doggy treat whenever she’s caught doing her business outside. Even though he’s not a fan of treats as a training tool, he said it’s crucial to reinforce the “outside” concept in every way possible.
So that’s very encouraging.
Yesterday afternoon it was steamy-muggy, and it rained all evening. And I couldn’t smell a SINGLE stink anywhere in the shack. So all that frantic scrubbing must have done the job.
I’m very glad to hear it. I thought poor Ruby was going to get her ticket back to the “big house.”
And by the way, you just have to really admire a woman who can work the word “nonce” into everyday conversation.
The bourbon problem would take care of itself if you just put a few rocks in the glass and go to town! Man up you are better than that lol jk
ah ah! That’s “person up,” Evan! heeeeeee!
Yes, it would have the effect of shortening the tippling sessions, since about one of those would cause me to fall over face-forward! 😆