Big Box Stores

I’ve heard a lot of bad things about these so called Big Box stores but I for one am glad they exist.  I mean really… without a store to make and sell big boxes I wouldn’t be able to have such a great time playing with the scribe.  Not to mention, how would Amazon deliver all my treats, toys, and bones?

Unfortunately, my parents took the big box out to the recycle bin so I couldn’t build a fort with it.  Luckily I am a resourceful girl and built a fort out of the couch which was perfect for protecting me from invaders (like Sammy) who might try and steal the cheese and beef filled bones I found in the closet this morning.

So in summary, big boxes provide both fun and inspiration and getting rid of them would be a travesty.  That’s just my opinion, but it just so happens that my opinion is as close to “right” as anything I know.

The Tempest.

Note: the fact that the air mattress in our couch needed replacing had NOTHING to do with me…just poor craftsmanship – and many years of usage.

The Masters

If you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time there is one thing that you’ll no doubt know about me:  I give credit where credit is due…to ME!

When last I corresponded, via the blog I took over from Montana when she went to college, I told you how I was going to combat the bad attitudes and crappy weather we are having around here.   Lo and behold, the next day on our morning walk we came across this springtime delight:

Then a few days later these started popping up around our yard:

I even inspected a few new growths in the backyard to ensure that spring was indeed here as I speculated would happen once I posted my last interactions with Snowy:

Yep.  I did it.  Call me the Master of Spring!  No, I didn’t get a green jacket like those golfers get when they are crowned the winner of The Masters, but that is fine with me…I am not a big fan of jackets.

Then as I predicted, the sun came out today and with it some modestly warm temperatures.  This gave Sam plenty of time to warm up his old bones in the sun and provided the opportunity for my parents to begin their spring cleaning of the yard which included bringing out the umbrellas and chairs for our tables.   In fact, it was so nice (thanks to me) that my Dad even brought out the TV so we will be ready for the Stanley Cup playoffs and the Triple Crown of horse racing.  Here you can see part 1 but for some reason (maybe because they didn’t really do anything) there are no pics of part 2:

You may notice from the bottom of this pic that I have been busy distributing my toys in prime locations around the back yard.   These are some glorious times!

Hopefully the azaleas will realize soon that I coaxed spring away from the lingering fingers of winter and will flower for our annual picture come derby day – which this year just so happens to be on Cinco de Mayo (also known as the anniversary of my mom’s PhD).  Looking forward to the party hats.

And for those of you who are thinking… “when did they get a deck?  How is Tempi on wood?”  No worries.  I am on the table.

The Tempest

You are all welcome that I brought the real onset of spring!

April (snow) Showers, Bring…

A bunch of bad attitudes from the people around here.

Sammy, on the other hand, is seeming to relish in the colder temps that have engulfed the whole upper Midwest this “spring.”  He said he could do without the snow on the ground which gets caught in the hair of his poor old man toes.  I’m pretty agnostic to the temperatures since I am a pretty awesome dog and nothing bothers me…but I must admit I am not a big fan of days and days of rain.

The fact that the snow showers and cold temperatures continue to frustrate the local humans made me sit down and give a great deal of thought as to what I might be able to do to remedy the situation.  I found chewing my new leather toy to be especially conducive to productive thinking so I also spent a good amount of time gnawing on these delicious treasures from Amazon.

As it turns out, the thought came to me rather soon after sitting down but I continued working on my cow as I worked through my course of action to accomplish the real onset of spring (sometimes I have to make things look more difficult than they are so my parents feelings of inadequacy don’t rise to the surface…again).

The solution is really quite simple.   I have been delaying sharing a video capturing my last interaction with my cousin Snowy when we visited Michigan in March.  Therefore, the weather stayed cold and the snow showers continued as a reminder to me (or rather my scribe) to get to work on showing you our good times.

So with no further ado, here is the video and hopefully Mother Nature will recognize my attempt to quell the cold spell and return us to warmer temps so the April showers will produce some beautiful May flowers!

The Tempest

Disclosure:  Sammy picked the music for the video and I am not sure if he was having pronoun problems (“They need to be sedated” instead of “I wanna be sedated”) or if he truly wishes he had been sedated so he could have avoided the whole scene.  He is a man of mystery…

Dreary

This weekend was not my favorite despite the fact that my parents were home and I didn’t have to spend any time in my crate.  The Problem?…rain, rain and more rain and sleet and snow and more rain.  This almost made me wish I had to spend the day in my crate because looking outside from my perch on the couch was just so depressing.

The only good thing to come from all this rain is that we have our lake front property back!  Although this is a big bonus for me (Princess that I am), Sammy isn’t too keen on getting his feet wet and if it was really up to me (Awesome as I am) I’d send most of this water to the southwest to douse those awful wildfires and prevent any new ones from starting – especially around my Grandparent’s place in the mountains of New Mexico.  I don’t recall when the place was filled with evergreens that were actually green and not burnt sticks but Sammy assures me that I would have preferred it the old way so I don’t want another fire to storm through ’cause I love visiting when I am invited.  (aside note:  I am glad that my musings help distract my readers from the true tragedy of local fires…I know from my Mom how bad that can be…).

Despite the rain I still found some time to enjoy myself.   First, Sam and I still got a walk each day although we all returned home pretty wet.

Secondly, the rain did not stop the Amazon delivery folks from coming to our house and bring us a number of awesome presents.  The first of which were those yummy leather toys my new best friend MF told my parents about.  As you can see, once I got rid of that annoying stuffing fluff from this racoon, I went to town on it until it ended up looking like an un-stuffed turkey.  Unfortunately, this led to it being taken away from me due to my parent’s concern that eating the entire leather “skin” of the ‘coon would upset my stomach…they have no idea.

Around this time, my parents came back with more toys and treats for me and the rain abated for a minute or two (see chapter 1 of the following video – good times).

Then, even more leather toys arrived for me from the good people at Amazon.  This time it was the replacement for the iPad cover for the new iPad I gave my Dad the opportunity to buy earlier this week.  Unfortunately, they put it out of my reach this time which I was obviously unhappy about (Chapter two of the video).  Looking forward to the time they forget how long my legs are and I get to munch on that tasty blue leather!

The Tempest

–

 

The Case of the iPad

As you may recall from last night, my scribes iPad had to be replaced with a brand new one for only $49 as a result of me not being able to get past the home screen (which, by the way, I am prominently featured!).

In addition, I may have mentioned that the case was made of leather.  This was and is true but for some reason my Dad ordered another one tonight which was fine by me – the more leather the better if you ask me.   A co-worker of my parents who reads MM told them about some “tough” dog toys made of leather…but with the iPad cases do I really need something else made of leather???  YES!!! Thanks MF for the idea!

As you can see, this toy is no good any more. 🙂

But if the title of the blog made you think there was going to be some mystery in this post, well it turns out you are right!  This particular iPad cover had a sleeve which attached to the case by the magic of magnetic forces which were both in the case and the sleeve which held an apple pencil.   After my parents discovered I got to the iPad and case, they searched the whole house for the pencil.  But the pencil had completely vanished.  My Dad hypothesized that given it is the same white color as our baseboards it was probably sitting along side one and they just hadn’t looked in the right spot.  My Mom was pretty sure I had swallowed the thing whole and even found a hard spot on my tummy she thought was the pencil (or at least a part of it).  I did find this slightly offensive since just because I have a 6-pack for abs doesn’t mean I ate a pencil.

Anyhow, they are still debating who is correct.  But I have a secret for you.  I’ll let you in on it if you promise not to tell them since they love a good mystery.  TV series.  Movies.  Books.  Possibly even blog entries!

Okay?

So, in my never ending brilliance, I put the pencil in a place they would never think to look.

I bet I have you all on the edge of your seats now.

First I have to distract the Scribe with the hockey game he is watching on TV and commandeer the MacBook so he is none-the-wiser to the location of the pencil.

Okay.  He is adequately distracted:

The pencil is still on the desk under some papers.   See I left it right were it had been so they didn’t even think of looking there!  HAHAHAHAHA!  I wish I could pull off the evil scientist laugh at this point…but to be honest, that is really more Dad’s thing 🙂

The Tempest

-before I go, I thought I should leave you with a good impression of my true personality.  Not the evil science dude like dad but the lover of pigs…a true naturalist…earth mother…

(again, no editor tonight so excuse any egregious or gregarious errors)

A Bloody Mess

Not long ago my parents noticed that one of Sammy’s toenails on his back paw (the one he is always tapping and not putting pressure on) was growing off on an angle and jabbing his adjoining toe.   Since trimming this nail, he has been a little less gimpy but this mutant nail seems to grow faster than I can get into trouble.  Anyhow, this has led my parents to routinely check that nail and if warranted, get the clippers out and reduce its length.  This occurred last night but this time Dad decided to get a couple of his (Sammy’s) other nails.  This is important since: 1) he walks so slowly (and naps so much) that his nails don’t get naturally worn down like a dog like me who is so active, and 2) he has pretty much given up on grooming and hygiene so he doesn’t even take the time – or is no longer flexible enough – to chew his nails like I do.  As I was saying, last night Dad clipped his mutant nail and a few others that he deemed too long.  Unfortunately, he too is getting long in the tooth and his vision – especially in low light – is not what it once was so instead of just trimming the nail he got into the quick which obviously led to Sammy springing a leak.  Instead of staying on his bed while Dad retrieved the Styptic powder, he made his way through the living room, past the kitchen and into our dog room.   This created quite the bloody mess.  Sorry there are no photos of this to share but I found myself a bit queasy and everyone else was too busy tending to the situation. Mom and I took care off while Dad stopped Sammy’s bleeding.

All good.

Right?

Well it was from everyone else’s perspective until Sammy demanded his evening walk. From my point of view, it reinforced my opinion that nail trimming is nothing but bad news! Apparently, since he drags his feet…literally…he knocked off the scab/Styptic clot which resulted in yet more bleeding, more powder, and more mopping up of the blood droplets scattered throughout the house.   Boy, I certainly hope CSI doesn’t spray that luminol stuff in our house any time soon or they’ll certainly conclude that a massacre on the order of the Alamo had recently taken place in our abode!

By the time we went to bed an hour or so later he was no worse for wear:

As a matter of full disclosure, Sammy’s blood on the floor was not the only mess that could be found in our house on this evening…and before I continue with this side of the story, let me give my Scribe a big thanks for diverting the evenings’ focus from “the iPad incidence” to the “bad trimming assault on Sam”.

Before I start the second part of this entry let me say in my defense:

1) It has been well established that nothing is safe on the desk.

2) I love leather.

3) My blog has been ignored for quite some time.

4) Sam and I were not invited to the frozen four despite the fact we had the best game faces EVER while we were wearing our sweaters.

5) My actions resulted in Dad getting a new iPad Pro for only $49!  That is better than those websites, that advertise on TV, which claims you can get really cool stuff for bargain basement prices…just saying.

6) Who wraps an iPad in leather anyhow?

I guess the items I presented in my defense pretty much spell out what happened.  Dad left his iPad (enshrouded in a leather case) on the desk within reach of my arms.   Did I mention I love leather?  Well I do, and although I was most interested in the covering of the iPad, I also wanted to work on a blog entry about my last visit with Snowy.  Unfortunately, my toeprint was not sufficient to unlock the darn device and when I tried my teeth it sort of shattered.  Did I mention we were not allowed to go to Minnesota?

Like Sammy, I was not adversely affected by the whole evening of drama and am back to my old antics today – like carrying in fencing from the back yard – with Sammy at my back.

The Tempest

OOPS – this was supposed to be sent out last night but for some reason it didn’t post – which is fortunate because I forgot to mention that if there are more errors in grammar, logic or spelling in this post it is because my editor is out of town for a few days.

Best – Tempi

BTW – I am now well armed with this silver knife in case Dad comes at me with those nail clippers!

I Hated Monday

Two days ago was a day I won’t soon forget…especially after looking at my Scribes activity data (shown below).  Generally speaking, I totally smoke him when it comes to meeting our goals which are logged by my Whistle and his iPhone.  I usually double my goal of 55 minutes.  On the other hand, Dad barely makes 50% of his goal on most days (10,000 steps).  He claims this is due to the fact that he is not always carrying his iPhone  – which I think is crazy since he is almost always catching me in the act of my antics by taking a pic of me with that particular device.

Anyhow, my point is that on Monday (indicated by the red arrow) the activity trends totally got flipped – head over heals.  In fact, this trend started on Friday…which in fact was the day they (our parents) left us (Sammy and I) alone and made a trip down to San Antonio for the men’s basketball Final Four with Sammy’s favorite aunt and her husband.  Well, “alone” might be a bit of an overstatement since we had one of our favorite pet-sitters spending the nights with us and taking us for some awesome walks more than once everyday.  However, shortly after my parents left I got into the “Tempi Disaster Kit” and was relegated to my crate when Sammy and I were left alone.  This obviously adversely effected my activity numbers – despite the numerous walks.

This – in part – is why I hated Monday.  The second was that us Pups were not in Texas to cheer on the Michigan team which is no doubt why they were not able to win the championship game.  My extended family may have thought they were a bit far away from the court – from a sight perspective, but from a scent perspective, I would have felt right next to those sweaty athletes and could have given the Michigan players a few hints as to who to guard particularly closely (hint: it was #10 – Donte the Inferno).

Hopefully my parents have learned their lesson (for the sake of the Michigan family) and will bring us along if they go to the Frozen Four in Minnesota.  Look at us!  We already have our sweaters on.  And our game faces!

Go Blue!

The Tempest