Darkoshi

I thought Serena was too big to climb the fence or crawl under it anymore. She hadn't escaped the yard in the last 2 years. But she proved me wrong today. I found a hole dug under the fence, and Serena in the neighbor's yard on the other side. While trying to figure out how to get her back, I even caught Zorro in the act of trying to squeeze through to the other side. The hole wasn't big enough for her yet though.

The neighbors' yard is like mine. Fenced and with an unlocked but closed gate across the driveway. I had gone up to that house under similar circumstances a few years ago and rung the doorbell. There was music playing from inside, and a car in the driveway. But no one ever answered the door.

So I wasn't optimistic about better results this time. Furthermore, nowadays one has to wonder whether it is even safe to open someone's gate and walk up to their front door, much less wander into their backyard without permission, considering that people have been shot over things like that. I've waved to these particular neighbors a few times, but don't recall having ever properly met them.

So I made a note of the address on their mailbox, checked the county Tax Assessor page to find their names, and looked them up in the phonebook. Yay for listed phone numbers. Luckily, when I called, they answered and I got permission to go into their yard.

That was only the first difficulty. Once in their yard, I still couldn't get to Serena as she was under a pile of scrap metal, still barking at something and completely ignoring me.

I figured it was probably a turtle. Or maybe a snake.

Eventually, a bedraggled-looking cat ran out, and I was able to catch Serena when she came out after it.

Phew. Now I've used up my stash of 12-inch stakes refortifying that part of the fence. Must replenish the stash in case they manage to get through a different section of the fence next time.



Of course the moment I let the dogs loose again, they tested the sturdiness of my handiwork.



Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-rQqQQF2UE

Don't worry about that brick which Zorro got loose. The 2 underneath it are staked in. But if they attack a different section of the fence where the bricks aren't staked down, then I'm in trouble. I can only buy so many stakes at Lowes at a time

Both of our dogs have been spayed now. The little one was spayed 2 months ago. I was watching them play around in the yard. Then the small dog started humping the big dog, and making growling/yelping/whining noises which she wasn't making when they were just playing. It appeared to me that she was having an orgasm.

I had my camera out, so I could have caught it on video. But it didn't seem appropriate to do so.

So apparently female spayed dogs can still orgasm. If only the uterus and ovaries are removed, I guess there's no reason for them not to still have the sexual nerves which allow orgasm. But I sure hope the surgery worked. I don't want to have to deal with any puppies in the future. The little dog keeps on finding new ways to escape from our yard.

Our big dog was spayed at an earlier age than the little dog. I don't recall seeing the big dog do any humping. She might have done so when she was a puppy, but I don't remember.

The neighbors' female dog just had another litter again. I sure hope they get her spayed this time.

The neighbors on one side of me have 2 big dogs and a small dog. They're the ones who've had several litters of puppies and who've sold the puppies. At least they seem to take pretty good care of their dogs - they let them run free in the back yard, and appear to take them indoors at times.

The neighbors on another side have at least 4 dogs. The 3 older dogs always used to be chained up in the backyard, each with its own little area and own doghouse. The younger puppy-dog is not on a chain and wanders around. I don't know if those neighbors ever take the dogs off their chains. Now they've put one of the older dogs into a fairly small metal cage - only big enough for him to stand and turn around in. I saw him in there last week, and today I saw him in there again - now they've got a thin blue broken plastic sheet over the top of the cage. It's dang cold outside today - in the lower 40s. I felt sorry for those dogs before, now I feel even worse for that one in the cage. I have no idea why they put him in a cage... unless he's actually female, and they want the puppy dog to impregnate the other dogs but not her. I can't think of any other reason they'd do that. Gah.

When I came home yesterday, I was surprised by a cute little puppy sitting somewhat hidden in my yard. I talked to it a bit, got it to come forward and petted it, and it started following me around like it was starved for attention. I figured I should close the gate on my fence so that it wouldn't run back out into the street, so I did that.

I rang the doorbells on 2 nearby houses where it looked like people might be home, to ask if they were missing a puppy or knew anyone who might be. What bothers me about those encounters isn't so much the feeling that the people didn't trust me and didn't want to talk and wanted me to leave as quickly as possible - since if someone strange was at my door, I might act similarly. But with the one person I talked to, he answered no to my questions, and made it sound like he didn't know anyone around with puppies. Later I was talking to my next-door neighbor, the one who I've talked to before... she has a couple of dogs and a puppy, so I was hoping it might be hers... she said that it wasn't, but that the next house down (the one where I had talked to the guy!) had a puppy.... she looked at my puppy for a bit, and said that no, it wasn't his though. Why didn't the guy mention anything about him himself having a puppy when I talked to him?!

And then another house, when I asked the woman there, she said that she didn't know of any puppies, and the only dog she knew of in the area was the one in the yard right next door (pointing to him) which I could see for myself (he was barking at us at the time). That dog was blocking/guarding the pathway to his house which is why I hadn't been able to knock on that house's door. Then, while walking back, a puppy (!) on that house's porch started whining loudly. I couldn't see it well from my position... It looked and sounded like the puppy in my yard, so I thought they might be siblings, and that could be where the puppy escaped from. But why didn't that woman mention anything about there being a puppy right next door?! Maybe she was just oblivious to it?!

Unfortunately, when Q talked to that house's other neighbors, they said the puppy had been in their yard too, and they had asked the people at the next house with the dog & puppy, and that the people over there had said it wasn't theirs. :(

The house across the street was playing Mexican music for a while. But then it stopped and a woman was yelling and it sounded like she was... maybe breaking glass, or banging metal... knives? against each other? A guy is yelling now too, but it is not as loud anymore.

I made brownies. And baked the frozen apple turnovers at the same time, since the oven was on anyway. I ironed the new curtains I had bought for the red room. Perhaps this week I will buy a nice curtain rod for them. I have vacation. And I ironed the shirts I had washed. I stir-fried some parsley.

This morning I was hearing a song in my dream. A man's voice was singing "I've been missing you forever and a day.. for-eeeverrrrr..." From what I've googled, there isn't any song with those lyrics, so my head must have made it up. It surprises me, my head doing that, not just the lyrics but the actual music along with them, because my head doesn't very often do that when its awake. Before that part of the dream, a song was playing on the car radio, with the words "Stop it, stop it, stop it"... a sort of dancy song.

I cut the rest of the grass that I didn't get to yesterday, because the 2 batteries I have for my electric trimmer only last so long before I have to recharge them. I've got 2 shirts for which I plan to sew the sides in tighter because I don't like how they look when they wallow out behind me.

A movie I finished watching yesterday, "Nobody Knows", was macabre near the end. I wasn't expecting that.

Now the yelling is over. Someone was just signal-whistling; a kid probably.

I feel listless. What is life for?

Someone at a neighboring house started blasting music this morning around 2:45am, awakening me and keeping me from falling back asleep for at least half an hour. But the thing is, I really liked the music. It was in Spanish, and dancy, and neat-sounding. I might buy it for myself if I knew what artist/CD it was. So I lay there in bed, slightly annoyed but also choosing to simply take pleasure in it.

This morning I heard that there had been a lunar eclipse, and wondered if perhaps my neighbors had been having a lunar-eclipse-party?! Perhaps they were celebrating while the earth's shadow crossed the moon's disk? So I looked up the time of the eclipse, but they were a couple of hours too early for that.

.

I wonder how much of my gender identity has been influenced by the book-reading I did as a kid. Many of the books I read had male protagonists. Yet many of those books' authors were female. Therefore, perhaps the male characters whose personalities I identified with, weren't exactly masculine in a real-life sense, as they were written from an arguably feminine perspective. And perhaps that gave me somewhat of a not-quite-feminine, not-quite-masculine gender identity myself?

Well, shucks. :)

While I was in my basement, I had noticed a crack in one of the heating/air ducts which needs to be patched. So my logical conclusion was, "Aha! That must be what duct tape is truly meant for! I shall use some duct tape to patch it closed."

But in reading the Wikipedia entry on duct tape, I find out that "The name "duct tape" came from its use on heating and air conditioning ducts, a purpose for which it, ironically, has been deemed ineffective."
and that "Their major conclusion is that one should use anything but duct tape to seal ducts."

Who woulda thunk it?

I noticed that the neighbors have at least 2 roosters. They appeared to be tethered on either side of the front door yesterday. They were actually quite big and colorful-looking compared to what I had imagined. From the cute sound, I had envisaged a scrawny-looking thing. I didn't see any chickens around though, and I hope the roosters are not being kept for cock-fighting.