About my blog

spiritually speaking, anyway

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:09:30 -0700

I’ve been in the garden for two days digging, hauling, making an irrigation system, planting cactus, planting tree seeds, and getting up to my armpits in mud.
Still, after three weeks in Holland, three days with Kato-Sensei and my new European aikidoka friends, a trip to California and the mountains with dogs, two weeks hiding in my cave, and a week of finally getting organized before sch##! starts, I feel great.
Photos pending, There’s a lot to edit. Here’s a teaser, though.

In fact, it’s better that way.

Sun, 6 Jun 2010 15:58:25 -0700

Going to see Kato-Sensei and travel a bit. Eschewing technology until July. See you then with many more lovely pictures, hopefully.

Hell, no!

Tue, 25 May 2010 16:45:13 -0700

Irritated the Klingon, don’t know how.

Yorick laid on the kitchen floor near food he’d refused hours before, just to keep territory. Rozlyn walked by. Yorick growled. Rozlyn took his collar to bum-rush him outside where growling dogs go. He wrassled a little. I arrived and took his collar. He resisted. I put on my big-dog posture and aimed for the back door.

As we walked down the hall, Kamau attacked my calves. Bloody. Bruised. Scratched.

Even weirder: the exact same thing happened again later in the day, complete with more cat scratches.

What they don’t eat vanishes.
People first - food, doors, furniture, everything.
More power walks.
No idea what to do about the Klingon.

Nummy nummy.

Sun, 23 May 2010 09:30:54 -0700

First day sleeping in. No agenda.

I get peckish, and wander to the kitchen. Yorick is sitting at a polite distance in his best good-dog-begging mode. He shifts to remind his audience how good he’s being. The cat, hidden under the table, hisses.

I investigate.

The cat has a young prairie dog by the neck, bleeding. It’s still kicking. Kamau crunches, Yorick drools and shifts again, and the prairie dog stops kicking.

In a few moments, Kamau is licking his chops in the sunny spot by the back door, Bucky sniffs at the dining site, and Yorick snuffles for crumbs.

My cat is a Klingon.

That’s the agenda.

Tue, 18 May 2010 21:01:21 -0700

Besides aikido and wayfaring adventures, nothing to do but dig and wait for things to grow.

Finally.

Tra la.

Snake Adventures

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:42:57 -0700

Yorick goes off in his no-really-creature-at-bay bark.

He’s got an adolescent (about a meter) pale colored Western Diamondback rattlesnake threatening from under the lawn chair.

I get Yorick in the house, give the teen the cell phone, take a shovel and a bucket, and go out to consider.

I ask it to take what’s beyond the fence and get out of my yard. I throw a big shovel of dirt on it. I throw many.

It backs off, but just under the tree.

After reiterating my you-take-the-rest-of-the-desert offer, I put the dogs in the zap collars. I take them out one at a time. I let them get close enough to get the snake rattling, and I zap the crap out of them. I let them set the snake off again, and I zap them again. I praised Yorick while he was giving clear warning in my heartiest good-dog way.

Now we’re inside making breakfast bars and letting the snake go his way.

Hound dogs are amazing animals. They told me he’d
turn out this way. At the time, I didn’t believe the
experts. It’s true: hounds are hellish adolescents
and fine dogs.