A little bit of peace on earth

 The sun comes up on another day during the pandemic.

 It's peaceful and calm and the gang is all here, if only in spirit 

(that's Smooch's resting place under the rocks in the background).

 Look closely and you'll see Alex way back there at the gate.

We're getting a bit desperate for rain, but the yucca is in bloom...

...and the yard is looking pretty good.

This is the first visitor we've had in months. 

He was on his way to steal swallow eggs from a nest

but met the snake pole instead and was relocated far, far away.

Alex and I ran into this guy yesterday on our morning walk. 

Aren't you glad I started blogging again?

I'll end this on a better note. 

My bedroom has inadvertently turned into the Rug Room.

A girl can never have too many Navajo rugs, and I recently acquired my third.

The Navajo nation is being hit extraordinarily hard by the coronavirus.

In looking for ways to help, I came across a non-profit organization called 

Adopt A Native Elder.

There are many ways to donate to their efforts, but I went straight to the rug catalog.

100% of the proceeds from a rug purchase go directly to the weaver.

I could think of no better way to use my stimulus check.

Resting worried face

When I resurrected this blog early on in the pandemic, I had every intention of posting regularly.

You can see how well that's gone.

I can't focus. My thoughts are too scattered, worrying about any number of things 

over which I have no control. You know, things like 90,000 dead Americans, and

the 37 million who have lost their jobs, and a grossly incompetent, reprehensible, 

morally bankrupt president, and how much more damage he will do in the next 247 days, 

and oh my god what happens if he's re-elected? I can't even.

 No wonder Alex's default expression is "resting worried face." 

She is my mirror.

Locally, we've been worrying a lot about these holes on the side of the road.

We pass about a dozen of them on our morning walk.

 What if something pops out and bites us?

You know me well enough to know what's coming, right?

So this happened. 

He was pretty far up the road when we spotted him;

nonetheless, we beat a hasty retreat, praised the lord that we had cell service

and googled our fate.

Hmm. "...would not attack under any circumstances usually.."

There is nothing usual about anything these days,

so we'll err on the side of caution and give all of those holes a wide berth.

At least this snake had the decency to make his presence known long before we got to him.

He was pretty hard to miss, stretched out across the road. 

He appeared to be digesting a rather large something or other

and couldn't be bothered by us. One less thing to worry about. 

It's all the same, day in and day out

I know people are struggling with the boredom and monotony that comes from staying at home. 

I am not one of those people. 

As long as I can be around my animals, I will never be bored. 

We thrive on routine and do almost the same activities every single day...

...up to and including standing in the same place, 

pointing to Alex to leap up on the same chair, 

to receive the same reward.

It never gets old.

Indoor and outdoor grievances

 Alex likes the new couch. She has more room to stretch out, as do I, 

which was the whole point of buying a new one.

 The challenge now is to keep her dirt and dog hair on the covered side.

 This is Alex's "I reject the premise of the discussion" face,

 followed by her "I can't get close enough to you with this damned pillow in the way" face.

If it's looking extra bright outside the windows in these pictures,

blame it on the April showers...

 ...which brought snow.

 We all had some choice words to say about that.

Couch in a box

I have been shopping for a new couch for three years. 

I went into one real store and left feeling totally overwhelmed by the experience

and underwhelmed by the pushy salespeople.

My online shopping forays were equally terrible –

too many choices and contradictory customer reviews, and 

how in the heck are you supposed to decide if a couch is comfortable 

if you can't sit on it?

Then there were the delivery issues. All of the online retailers I tried

insisted on a physical address for delivery, which I simply do not have.

Finally, in mid-February, I found a couch that I liked 

and it could be shipped via UPS in a box.

  

Actually, three really heavy boxes.

But before I unload the whole adventure on you, let's back up a bit.

My UPS packages are usually delivered to a dropbox on the side of the highway. 

I figured it would rain on delivery day and didn't want my new couch to get wet,
and how would a couch fit into the dropbox anyway?

So I re-directed the delivery to a UPS customer center in Albuquerque.

Alex and I drove there on Tuesday to pick it up.

I stood by myself in this lobby for 10 minutes waiting for someone to appear at the counter.

Luckily, Alex could keep an eye on me from the truck because she has been known to 

jump up and down on the doorlock when she misses me, 

which sets off the alarm system, which causes much chaos and embarrassment.

Anyway, GrumpyUPSman finally shows up, complains about the size and weight of my boxes, 

shoves them across the floor and leaves me to my own devices 

to haul them and lift them into the truck. Oh well. 

It would be good practice for unloading them once I got home.

One last look at the old couch before I bring in the new one.

Alex: WTF? Where am I supposed to take my nap?

As I began unpacking the boxes, it occurred to me that 

it would be awhile before I could sit on my new couch. 

Assembly would be required.
Funny how I hadn't noticed much mention of that on the vendor's website,
but how hard could it be?

When I found the boxes of parts and instructions, 

I was incredibly impressed that the vendor included an electric screwdriver.

Then I was incredibly distressed to find the sheer volume of screws that had to be screwed in.

The instructions seemed clear enough until I got to step 1 and spent the next two hours

Face-timing with a very helpful customer service agent as we tried to reconcile a discrepancy

between the written directions and the accompanying illustration. 

Turns out the illustration was incorrect and no one had noticed it before.

Then I ran out of energy to finish the assembly and called it a night.

Alex was okay with that, having found her napping spot in the dining room.

Before I took a nap of my own, I re-visited the vendor's website to see how 

I missed the part about "lots of assembly and physical strength and patience required."

I was already five hours into the project and couldn't stand up straight.

Tomorrow would be another day.

Lo and behold, after a few more hours on Wednesday, I finally have a new couch.

It's very sturdy and comfortable, I love the color, 

and – most importantly – I can stop shopping for a new couch.

Now I have to start shopping for a new coffee table because the old one is too big and looks weird.

I'll be looking for something pre-assembled.

A few minutes with Alan and a lizard

Today's music is "Lizards Dancing on the Fence" by Gary Bowman.

Staying busy

Making up for lost time

Alex has gotten short shrift during my blogging hiatus. No blogging = not many reasons to take pictures = not many photos of the cutest ears in caninedom.

Hence, I'm trying to make up for some lost time.

Posing comes quite naturally to her, though how that leg bend can be comfortable is a mystery.

She has a wicked side eye and is not shy about using it.

Do you think she knows she's not supposed to be on this chair?

All is forgiven if it makes for a pretty picture.

Alex doesn't spend nearly as much time outside as Smooch did. She only wants to be where I am. We are absurdly, though unashamedly, co-dependent.

She's very alert and watchful. In this case, she's keeping an eye on the chickens on the other side of the fence. She loves chickens...for lunch. E Street chicken Clarence, who hasn't learned her lesson, likes to fly into the garden. Twice I've had to remove her from Alex's locked jaw and twice she has survived, which is a damned good thing because a steady supply of eggs is important in these crazy times. 

Some things just can't be explained.

Alex turns 2 on Saturday.

Long may she live.

The one where Smooch gets bitten by a rattlesnake

Spoiler alert: This story has a happy ending.

It was a dark and steamy night and we were getting ready for bed. I turned on the porch light and opened the sunroom door to let Smooch and Alex outside for the last time. They exited together, Smooch on the right, Alex on the left. Less than a split second later, we all heard the rattling start. M-fin' snake was right there, coiled up on the cold concrete pavers next to my shoe. We had woken him up and he was pissed.

Smooch and Alex began barking frantically, and the snake's rattling was ceaseless and absurdly loud. My brain was yelling at me to stay calm, but that signal didn't reach my mouth. Total pandemonium ensued. I was screaming and trying to catch the dogs, the snake wouldn't shut up, Smooch was running around sniffing sniffing sniffing and not paying the least bit of attention to my pleas to come, nor was Alex. 

Smooch would run a lap, then run over to the snake, Alex would follow her, and I kept running out of my flipflops trying to catch them. After what seemed like 20 minutes but was probably two, I finally caught Alex, picked her up and held her in a death grip against my hip while I put Smooch in a head lock. We were all in a pile at the opposite corner of the yard from the snake and, I kid you not, I screamed out loud "we need a plan!" a half dozen times. 

Then Smooch got loose, I threw Alex into the sunroom steering clear of the snake, then re-caught Smooch and carried her into the house via the pitch-dark driveway and backyard, where I was certain the snake's friends were waiting to bite off my toes.

Whew. The dogs were now safe and I just had to catch the snake, which turned out to be easy because he was still in the same place. This all happened last Wednesday night, by the way, starting around 9:15.

With the snake trapped in a tightly lidded trash can in the garage, I was back in the house by 9:30. I found Smooch sitting on the bed in the guest room and noticed a small drop of blood on the right side of her face. Crap crap crap crap crap. She had been bitten. Strangely, I wasn't freaking out. I was thinking, "It's okay, she's current on her snakebite vaccine, everything will be fine." 

I called the local emergency vet clinic, rather calmly explained that my dog had been bitten by a rattlesnake but she had been vaccinated, and asked what I should do. The person said they were out of anti-venin so I would have to go to the emergency clinic in Albuquerque. 

As I was dialing that number, I'm thinking, "Anti-venin? Why? She's been vaccinated." So I explain my story again and the person immediately gives me directions to the clinic and I'm like, "but it will be the middle of the night by the time I get there and she's been vaccinated, can't we just wait until morning and go to our regular vet?" The answer was an emphatic NO, so off we all went to Albuquerque. 

I had plenty of time on the way there to try to figure out what had just happened. For all 13.5 years of her life, Smooch has been very snake-smart, keeping a respectful distance as she would bark at them to alert me. I concluded she must have been bitten the moment the snake saw her. She didn't react to the bite in any noticeable way, but all the running back to the snake over and over again was either because: a) she was pissed off and wanted to bite him back or b) she was trying to protect me and Alex.

It was a quiet night in the ER and Smooch was taken to the treatment area within minutes of our arrival.

Alex and I waited patiently, passing the time by texting Danni, who was researching the snakebite vaccine and helping me figure out what to expect. All these years I had been living under the very false sense of security that, when vaccinated, a dog would survive a snakebite, the symptoms would be less severe, and it would be no big deal. I was right on the first two counts, but it was indeed a very big deal. I was about to learn that Smooch would be receiving a vial of anti-venin, she would need to be hospitalized, and there was mention of cardiac arrhythmias, ghastly infection, necrosis of the skin...I stopped listening after that.

Alex and I said goodnight to Smooch, as she drooled in her temporary accommodations. The vets would give her a vial of anti-venin as soon as it defrosted and call me in the morning...or sooner as need be.

When the call came Thursday morning, it was good news mostly. The swelling on her face had gone down, but they had found puncture wounds from another bite on her lower left leg. There was no swelling and it wasn't painful, so that one was likely a dry bite. She wasn't eating, but her mouth was bruised on the inside, so it made sense. 

This is getting boring so I'll fast forward to Friday morning after Smooch came home.

A cone was necessary so that she couldn't scratch her face with her paw.

 Smooch was sent home with plenty of drugs.

She rested semi-comfortably for the first 12 hours, then finally found her appetite and began eating with gusto, which is when I started breathing again.

 

We visited our regular vet first thing Monday morning for a recheck. She gave Smooch an excellent prognosis and gave me permission to remove the cone of shame. 

 Smooch: Can't believe that s-o-b bit my leg, too.

Meanwhile, there was still the matter of a rattlesnake in a garbage can in the garage. I was tempted to move the can into the sun and let him roast in his own juices for awhile, but I still believe in snake karma and thought better of it.

Monday night, Alex and I drove down to snake-release road.

 Five days trapped in a can didn't do much for this guy's mood.

Alex: Please be careful. I don't know how to drive this thing.

Having participated in every step of this adventure, I can only hope that Alex has learned some very valuable lessons.

Smooch assures me that she has.