Tag: weekend

This is why We Can’t Have Nice Things…

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As most of you know, we just got back from a few weeks overseas. Evidently, while we were gone, we got a lot of rain, and the weeds, which seem to be the only things that grow easily in my yard, had taken that as their cue to grow thick and tall.

Basically my yard was overrun. And the fake grass, that seems to be the only grass that really wants to grow on my “lawn” was knee high.

So, I decided that this past weekend would be a great weekend to whip my yard into shape for the summer.

I decided that not only would I attack the weeds into submission, I would also plant flowers and shrubs to replace the ones that didn’t bounce back from last year’s hail storm, and give my yard a whole new face lift.

So off I went to HomeDepot after my coffee Saturday morning, to get supplies and plot out a landscaping strategy.

I added so much top soil, bark mulch, flowers, shrubs and vegetables to my cart, I actually had to make two trips to my car with it all. Every square inch of my car was full of my future garden.

It was a beautiful, sunny morning, and I was actually enjoying working up a sweat pulling weeds and digging holes.

And let me just say, I pulled SO. MANY. WEEDS. Enough to fill 3 extra large hefty bags.

My yard, as you my faithful readers know, is all on a hill, so I have many tiered beds, formed by the retaining walls, on all different levels up my hill.

I didn’t even mind hauling all the bags of mulch and dirt up my 28 steps.

Probably about 3 hours later, I had finished weeding, planting and mulching all the beds in the front of my house, when the afternoon showers forced a rain delay.

I wasn’t even upset by the call of the game, as it gave me time to run back to Home Depot for more bags of mulch and plan for the next day’s planting.

Bright and early, right after my coffee on Sunday, Auni (my faithful canine helper, who, by the way, is a great gardening assistant) and I were back at work, tackling the beds by my front door.

Another 3-4 hours later, my masterpiece was complete. I had planted beds of flowers, pots of flowers,  a bed of tomatoes and fresh basil (Hello, Caprese salads!), planted some shrubs around the fence line, and even strewn some wildflower seeds, hoping they might be more hardy for our Colorado climate. I had watered all the new plants, added root boost to give them the best start in their new homes, and done everything possible to help their transition.

I’m just going to say it. My yard was lovely!

And I was already looking forward to the coming months, when the plants and shrubs really started to flourish and I was eating fresh veggies from my “garden”

I took some pictures for posterity (and maybe a little bragging rites) and then poured some ice water to sit on my deck and enjoy my landscape for the remainder of the afternoon.

This was about 1 o’clock in the afternoon.

Around 4 o’clock I got ready to head to my hair appointment.

As I walked down the steps to my car, I smiled at how pretty my yard was, and what a reward those hours of work turned out to be, and took more mental pictures of the results.

If only I had known this was to be the last time I was to see that lovely yard.

On the way to my hair appointment, about a 10 min drive away, it started to rain. I’ll admit my first thought, was Good! This will be great for all my new little flowers!

By the time I pulled up to the hair salon, it was a torrential downpour. So much so, I sat in my car, literally right outside their front door, for 10 min, waiting for it to let up enough that I could make that 5 foot or so run, and not be completely drenched.

While it did let up long enough for me to reach the door, the torrents continued for a solid hour. The roads had trenches 3 inches deep along both sides as the drains struggled to keep up with the deluge.

People’s phones kept going off in the salon with weather alerts and flash flood warnings.

I’ll admit, I was a little concerned about what was going on at my house, partly because I had left all the windows open, and a little bit about the yard.

But I checked the radar and the weather alerts, and it appeared that the storm was just missing my area. Maybe we just got a lot of rain too.

If only that were the case.

As I drove home a couple of hours later, the closer I got to my house, the worse the roads and yards around people’s houses got. In fact, about a mile from my house, there was such a pile up of slushy hail, it looked like there was about 3-4 inches of slushy snow in the road. The rest of the road was covered in inches of thick mud and sand the rushing river that had run down it during the storm had left behind.

When I pulled onto my road and rounded the corner to head up my hill, I already knew I was not going to like what I saw.

Apparently the storm not only brought torrential rain to our area, but very gusty wind, and lots of hail. While the hail was not big enough to do any damage to the cars or houses, there was so much of it, it piled up literally inches thick.

My whole yard looked like it was covered in 4 inches of snow.

And not only were all my flowers gone, and plants completely crushed or literally razed away, but the leaves and debris from the surrounding trees and that the rushing water left in my yard, made the weeds that had been having a hay day just a couple days before, look inviting.

I couldn’t even really assess the damage until this morning, when the hail all “melted”. But it was basically as bad as I assumed.

So, I am very glad that my 6+ hours of work, allowed me to enjoy my pretty summer yard for exactly 2 hours. And the good news is, I have lots more projects to fill my weekend’s for the rest of the summer now!

I also have a feeling I will be putting that “unconditional plant guarantee” to the test in the near future, so stay tuned! You know there will be a story or two to accompany that!

I Think My Dog Is Broken

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My dog broke her leg a couple of weeks ago.

Maybe this doesn’t seem like it should be story worthy to most people, but it is my dog after all.

As anyone who has read any of my posts knows, we have a lot of steps in our yard. These steps are made of stone. Stone steps and ice don’t always mix that well.

Thanks to the “Colorado Cyclone” that occurred here a few weeks ago, the stone steps in my yard got very icy.

Now, I always make sure to keep the steps in my front yard, going to my front door salted and clear of ice.

Mostly, because I am accident prone enough without having any help from icy steps.

However, I do not take such great care with the steps to my back door. Which is where my dog goes out to do her business and chase her balls.

So, my best guess is when she tore out of the house and down the stairs after her ball, on this particular morning, as she is prone to do, she hit that ice and broke her ankle.

But I’m really just guessing, as I did not realize anything was wrong until she came back in the house and was one leg short on the ground.

She has come in in this 3 legged position before, usually when she has picked up a rock or one of the annoying little pine cones we have in our yard in her paw. So my first thought was to grab the leg and check for debris.

No debris.

Well, I’m sure she just stepped on something and it’ll be fine. She’ll walk it off.

And she did seem to over the rest of the afternoon.

But the next morning when I came down the stairs and looked at her leg, she had a golf ball growing on the inside of her ankle.

I used to be an ortho nurse, albeit a human one, so I had a sneaking suspicion I was going to find myself at the vet later that day.

Sure enough, that is where we ended up.

After x-rays and aspirations and palpitations, it was decided we needed to make an appointment to see the doggie orthopod the next day.

Sigh.

The next day we find ourselves at the doggie orthopod, where after more palpitations, a review of the x-rays and a CT scan, it is determined she did indeed break her ankle.

Which is how we find ourselves going home  in a hard splint and with strict instructions to keep her quiet and limit activity.

For any of you fortunate enough to have met my dog, you know that she was chasing squirrels the day the quiet gene was passed out, so quiet is not in her vocabulary.

I am already tired thinking about how fun this is going to be for the next several weeks.

When we get home, I also realize we have another problem.

Remember those steps in my yard?

Those all of a sudden become much more challenging with a broken ankle and arthritis in one of her front paws already.

I also realized that throwing my 80 pound dog on my back to get her up the stairs would probably lead to many more broken limbs.

We somehow make it, albeit slowly, up the stairs and to the door, but I realize we are going to need a better long term solution.

So I go to my life- hack partner, Amazon, to see what I can find.

Obviously, my dog is not the first one to have the combination of injury and steps, because I found this handy dandy “dog sling” that looks like the perfect solution, and quickly order it with Prime 2-day shipping.

I know I don’t need to remind you, my faithful readers, of all the fun I have with deliveries at my house, so I know you will not be surprised at all that this did not go as planned.

The package was scheduled to be delivered on Sunday with Amazon Prime shipping service. I get all the alerts that the package is out for delivery, the truck is in my area, and then that they are 5 stops away. Great!

And then I get the alert that my package has been delivered.

Hmm. That’s odd. I didn’t hear the truck or have anyone at the door.

Regardless, I go check outside the front door.

Nope.

I then open the tracking alert and see the delivery note “Handed to resident”

Imagine my surprise since I am the resident and I was not handed any package.

I call Amazon. They have no way to contact their drivers on the road (evidently cell phones are foreign concept to them) so they can’t ask him to come back and try again, or even tell me where he might have delivered it. The best they can do is re-order and re-ship in another 2 days.

Really?

I check with my immediate neighbors, but none of them were handed any package either, so I decide re-order and re-ship is my best option.

I mean it’s not like we really need this sling or anything.

Eventually, 3 days later ( I mean why would I expect it to be delivered on time this time??) it is delivered.

The same day that the person the first one was delivered to, finally decides they really should bring it to the person who actually ordered it.

At least now we have a back up sling. Which in my world, is not really a bad idea.

So, back to the dog, who, for as high strung and neurotic as she is, did a pretty good job of leaving her cast alone.

At first.

After about 6 days, however, I came down the stairs in the morning to find the top half of her cast shredded.

Which involved an emergent call to the vet and them squeezing us into their already packed Saturday schedule for a cast change.

The cast has rubbed at her ankle, so the on-call vet decides to forgo the hard cast and just put her in a soft wrap.

Which does not thrill her actual treating vet when we follow up with him 3 days later, since he really wanted her in a hard cast for at least 4 weeks.

Her swelling is going down and she seems to be doing okay in the soft cast, so he decides she can keep this regimen for the remaining 2 1/2 weeks and call it good.

Obviously, he is not well acquainted with our family.

Fast forward about 4 days later, to the next Saturday.

(Yes, just like with kids, these things always happen on a Saturday when your regular doctor is not available.)

Again, I come down the stairs in the morning (yes, I’m starting to get PTSD about that journey) and start to put on the nylon boot she has to wear over her cast before going outside, and stop.

What is that smell????

Yup, sure enough, on closer inspection, her soft cast is emitting a not very pleasant odor.

You have got to be kidding me.

Queue another call to the vet on a Saturday morning to be squeezed into their schedule.

It is about 8:45 and they want to know if I can be there before 9:30 when the vet goes into surgery for the day.

I am still in my pjs, haven’t finished my coffee, and it’s about a 20 minute drive. Not to mention the additional time it takes to get down the steps and in the car with the doggie sling now.

Sure, no problem. I’ll be there.

So, off we go again. I am considering asking them if we can just take up residence in one of the kennels for the next couple weeks.

This time, after taking the princess to the back for the bandage change, she and the vet come trotting back, this time with no bandage whatsoever on her leg.

I’m sure this is not in line with the treatment plan.

“So, it appears that she peed on her cast, and now has a “pee burn” on her ankle,(sure enough, there’s a good size sore on the front of her ankle)  so I can’t replace her cast”

Only my dog found a way to pee on her cast. Better yet, she found a way to pee on her cast while it was in the nylon boot that was always on when she was outside.

Gotta give her points for style.

We head home again with strict instructions that she needs to stay quiet since she is now without a cast, walking on an ankle that is still broken.

I decide not to review the fact that she missed the quiet gene, but do consider asking if they’ll just send her home and keep me in the kennel at least.

Or can they send me home with enough sedative to last the next 2 weeks? Whether that will go to the dog or me I can figure out later.

Today we were back for the follow up with our regular guy again. I was prepared for his eye rolling. And he literally threw his treatment plan in the trash while we were there.

At least he’s learning that the best laid plans rarely go as planned in our house.

And we are still without a cast until the custom made brace he had ordered to help her transition back to activity  (2 weeks from now when the cast was supposed to have come off) comes in.

Maybe we’ll have better luck with that.

 

 

Revenge of the Plumbing

My 30,000 foot view2 Comments

So I knew my “boring life” wouldn’t last. I did not travel this last week, but that does not mean adventures can not occur at home!

Evidently, the toilets and plumbing world did not appreciate my post about them eating my blow dryer.

Or perhaps that was my training for handling electric appliances while standing in water.

Either way, I have been spending a lot of time standing in water today.

No, I did not decide to spend the last official weekend of summer at the beach. I had contemplated this and am now thinking I should have gone with that whim.

But  I did not.

Instead,  I decided to welcome the beach into my basement- quite uninvited.

This morning I went down to my basement, which happens to house my laundry. There I discovered a small puddle in front of my washer. No big deal. Maybe the dog spilled her water dish. I cleaned it up with a couple of towels and moved on with my day.

An hour or so later, my son went downstairs to his room and yelled up the stairs, “MOM!! There’s water on the floor down here!!”

Again, another small puddle in front of the washer. Strange, as we had not been running the washer. So where is this water coming from?? Hmmm….

An hour later, and there is a handyman in my basement, checking out this water.

We run the washer. No increase in the water on the floor. We shine flashlights in cracks and crevices. No apparent leaks or running water. We do a little deductive reasoning. Possibly, the issue could be the water line to the hose sprocket on the outside of that wall?

Ah-hah! That must be it. We rarely use that faucet. But we have a couple times in the past couple days. Once, when my lovely dog decided to play with the cute little black and white kitty around midnight. And needed a very serious bath before re-entry to the house. (But that is a story for another time) And once to clean out a cooler that should have been cleaned out several  months ago.

This must be the problem. We agree that this hose will not be used for the remainder of the weekend, and this issue can be contained through the holiday. This sounds like a good plan in order to avoid the incredibly reasonable prices of plumbers called on a holiday weekend.

Whew! Bullet dodged.

For about an hour or so.

When I go back downstairs and discover, not only is the puddle back, but it has now expanded quite a distance across the floor. This is no bueno, and I am quickly running out of towels.

My incredibly lucky sister and brother-in-law, who chose this perfect day to visit, now get sucked into the fun of the Labor Day Basement Flood. I am sure my brother-in-law was not anticipating a trip to Lowes to buy me a shop vac to replace my now dripping towels.

But there he was none the less.

So, I found myself again standing in water holding an electric appliance.

At least this time I am wearing my cute rain boots.

We have sucked up about 7 vac fills so far.

And my water is now off.

Until those extremely reasonably priced holiday weekend plumbers make an appearance tomorrow.

I have a sneaking suspicion that getting zapped holding an electric appliance while standing in water would be less painful.