Agates, Crossbills, and the Oregon Coast

Over the weekend we went to the coast.  It seemed to me that it had been a while since we had left the house, although Mark reminded me that we had entertained some friends the week before.  I guess last week's craziness with car keys and some not-quite-awake-yet bus rides have skewed my memory of successful ventures from the house.

Aoife came with us.  We managed to actually leave before dawn and thus reached the Muriel O. Ponsler Beach about 8:30.  This meant that there were virtually no other dogs there, and we could let Aoife be off-leash (there were also no birds or marine life, either).  I had brought my camera, but was only slightly tempted to take Yet Another WPA Concrete Bridge In The Mist shot.  

High tide was about two hours before our arrival, so we hunted for agates.  The weekend was sunny and clear, calm, and warm for a March Oregon Coast day: 65F. The day before had been a high surf advisory; the waves when we were there seemed normal, although a little erratic. 

Mark is very good at finding all sorts of interesting and unusual rocks in the surf.  This time around there was a lot of large, plain basalt; bright red jasper; banded rocks; quartz; and small-to-medium-sized agates.  Mark did find a mouse-sized agate.  At first I only found jasper, but later on I hung out at the end of a peninsula of basalt where the retreating tide would tumble all sorts of rocks and my agate count went up.

I'd forgotten the Chuck-It. Mark and I had to take turns throwing a ball for Aoife. For about two hours.

Afterward, we went north to Depot Bay in the hope of seeing migrating whales.  But we saw neither whales, nor pelicans, nor seal lions, nor coastal eagles.  We did see some Crossbills, which we didn't know were Crossbills until we got home and zoomed in on photos I took and saw their crossed beaks (used to extract seeds from pine cones).  In addition to wild fauna, I got some photos of Aoife as an "Irish Pit Bull."  

Autumnal Transitions

To misquote Oscar Wilde, summer has collapsed into autumn here in the Willamette Valley.  With the Autumnal Equinox, the unseasonably warm and bright days have been washed away, at least for now, by an atmospheric river.  The plants in the yard have gone from looking slightly withered to slightly faded but somehow more lush.  The yellow grass is poised to regain its Pacific Northwest winter verdancy.  The garden gate swings easily now that the clay in the ground has been watered and whatever shrinkage causing misaligned sidewalk and fence post has been undone.  And we've had bewilderingly dim days, as if the equinox acted like a wall-outlet timer switch that tripped and turned off the sun.

On the last day of summer, The Child went off to college. We've all been fairly laid back about it.  I asked him if we could take pictures of him moving into his dorm room for social media, complete with me, hand at my brow, clutching his knees, and wailing while the two of us were surrounded by moving boxes and laundry, but he declined.  We did have some moments on Move-In Day where I would wobbly sing "Please Don't Take My Sunshine Away," and we would both theatrically break down into fake boo-hoo-hoos. But then we'd both start snickering.  

It's not like we haven't been practicing for the last six months for this moment; he's spent a lot of time in the high school theatre rehearsing for shows or hanging out with his friends, so we really weren't seeing him much except for an hour before work and school or for a moment when he would come home for the night.   During the summer, we saw him even less, and it wasn't unusual for Mark and me to be in bed for the night before he'd come home.

Even though he was essentially only sleeping here these last few months, the first twenty-four hours after he was gone, the energy of the house shifted.  Now that he's gone his computer (and fan) are turned off, as is his air conditioner, which can account for some of the shift. But our small house isn't very sound-proof, and The Child is a dynamic person. I am pretty sure I was partially waking whenever he would come home, or get up in the middle of the night to eat the last of the pizza, or when he would thrash in his sleep and knock against whatever.  

Mark and I are not sure what the dog thinks of this.  She would trot to the front door to meet him whenever he came home. Mark thought she would be looking for him, but I haven't noticed her wandering in and out of his room or perching on the back of the davenport, forlornly sighing in a reenactment of Odysseus' faithfully waiting dog.  Although she does seem more clingy.  The cats seem to be more affected by the season's change.

At odd moments the last few days I've been struck by the weirdness of the shift.  I'm reminded of the time long ago when I had returned to Oregon and was crashing at my folks' house.  My mom said to me, "John, when you were in Minnesota and Arizona, I really didn't worry about you.  But now that you're here, I want you to know that I really don't get to sleep until I hear you pull into the driveway." Mark and I are going through something similar, but for us it's in reverse and it's a freeing up of cognitive focus.

We—or rather Mark—scoured out his room, which revealed the accumulated wear of the last fifteen years.  Most of the furnishings have stayed, and the plan is to turn The Child's room into a guest room / office.  We'll see how this works out.  Considering that Fall Term only lasts eleven weeks and he'll be back for about four weeks over the Winter Solstice, the changes we're making feel a little temporary.  

I expect on that December day when she first sees him, the dog will charge at him, barking and growling as if he were an Evil Trespasser bent on perfidy, but a split second before she's about to eat him and save us from Certain Peril and Property Damage, she'll recognize him and beg for belly rubs.

Holiday Break

The winter holiday is upon me!  I've taken a large swathe of time off with the vague notion that I will write and do various projects.  The first thing that I've discovered is that I'm going to be writing in the morning, I really need to wake up about two hours beforehand to get things like exercising, showering, eating, and generally waking up out of the way.  I also need to maintain a list of tasks to do besides writing.

Aoife has figured out what Postal, FedEx and UPS trucks sound like—apparently, it's pure evil.  Whenever one pulls up anywhere on our street, she goes into high alert, determined to kill whomever it is out there who is obviously a homicidal fiend in human form bent on deeds of depravity and trespass.  She's pulled the brass hood off of our door's mail slot twice since the holiday delivery season began, prompting Mark to replace it with a tasteful wood cover.  

Saturday was the last day of clear skies, and the grey overcast has returned.  I was able to take some photographs of Mars near Aldebaran and the Pleiades, and later the next morning the waning moon.  To my surprise, as I was crunching around on the frosty deck, one of the local hummingbirds came and visited the fountain.  Mark had been raking, and when he realized I was photographing them, he thoughtfully froze.  All I can say is that I am glad I'm not a little hummingbird sticking my bare bird feet into running water on a 30F morning. I don't know how the little things stay warm. 

The first weekend of vacation was taken up with holiday preparations.  We attended an in-person gathering of the cousins on the Burridge side of the family—out-of-state family stayed out of state, and various folks with children cancelled with child ailments; so while it was sad not being able to see everyone, the gathering was less boisterously overwhelming.   The Zoom Gathering was stereotypically Zoom, with a little bit of lag, odd camera angles, muting issues, thrown in to keep things hilarious.  We will have to host a outdoor gathering some time in the spring or summer when more folks can attend in person.

Sunday I went shopping at the local Holiday Market.  I enjoy shopping, much more so than Mark or The Child, and when I go alone, I'm able to do the reconnoiter-commando-raid style of shopping.   In addition to visiting with some of my vendor friends, I made several new best friends by wrapping myself up in a storybook glamour of the green and grey wool cloak, the Assassin's Creed hooded vest (with green shimmery paisley), a pewter Green Man pendent, extra rings, black KN95 mask, and my unbound hair.   Everyone seemed more interactive than I recall from previous years; I'm going to guess that the last two years of COVID has the extroverts overcompensating, myself included.  

The only downside of shopping at the Holiday Market is that I have to remind myself that I'm shopping for others and not myself.  And that I'm a solitary practitioner and not someone in a jewelry coven.  And I'm sure that I have enough ritual jewelry.   

Low Key May Day

We had a very laid-back May Day Weekend.  Saturday was rainy and damp; Sunday was drier as the day progressed.  Venus and Jupiter had a conjunction Saturday, but the mornings have been overcast the last week, which has made any early astronomy difficult.  

Sunday, May First, while it was still damp, I visited the Raptor Center and managed to photograph Parker the American Kestrel.  A little later, Dmitri the Eurasian Eagle-Owl, while apparently grooming some astroturf in his aviary, made high-pitched, chicken-like sounds—I've heard him make deep throated hoots and impatient sounding squawks, but never goofy-sounding, clucking squeaks.   The residents in general seemed to be more animated and vocal than I've observed in some time; I don't know this was related to seasonal changes or not, egg laying and nest building seemed to be last month.

By the time I got back home, the sun was showing more often than not and the back yard began to warm up and dry out.  The closest thing I had to a May Pole Dance was looking at pictures of friend's Morris Dances and the official Todrick Hall video, "I Like Boys."  

Mark's not a religious participant of any flavor, and he's really not into Beltane, so there was no jumping over fires, nor Great Rites at Dawn, or anything remotely like a bacchanal.  Well... okay, in the afternoon I laid out blankets and pillows and a small portable table and—after settling Aiofe on her corner of the blankets—read the opening chapters from "Book The Second" of C.G. Jung's "The Red Book."  I was struck by some similarities between it and part's of Dion Forutne's "The Winged Bull," and how Jung's imagery is filled with binary opposites.  She's obviously read a lot of his work.

Mark did house maintenance and re-painted the back door to our garage.  

Possibly as a result of reading Jung, I did have a quick dream image of a woman in a fuchsia dress, who did a handstand and as a result, her red dress fell over her head and shoulders, and her white petticoats and white stockinged legs were like the stamens and white petals of a passionflower (cue Tchaikovsky Waltz of the Flowers music from Disney's Fantasia...).

Birds, Movies, and the Dog

We're still in Winter: a cold snap, 15F, is predicted for the middle of the upcoming week.  

Meanwhile, we've been enjoying the comparatively balmy mid- to upper-forties.  Saturday, I went to the Cascades Raptor Center; the sun was direct and at a low angle, which always makes photography difficult.  I was able to photograph two resident birds outside of their aviaries:  Jake, a peregrine falcon,  and Taka, a swainson's hawk.  

The new thing I learned on this visit is that Eowyn, the ferruginous hawk, is aggressive about her food and is fed through the grating on her carrier.  Over the last two or so years that I've been visiting, the birds typically will alight on a perch or hover at a handler's direction for food; this was the first time I'd seen a bird strike at a falconer's glove.  It was yet another reminder that the center's residents are not tame pets. 

I suppose that some day I'll have to engineer a weekday visit to the center -- my intuition is that there's fewer visitors during the weekday, and a wider variety of resident birds are more likely to be outside of their aviaries for enrichment.  

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Saturday, Mark and I had the house to ourselves, so we watched the remake of "The Boys in the Band."  I'd seen and read excerpts of it way back in the eighties when I was at Reed, but never the whole play or movie.  It's supposed to be one of those things that Every Gay Man Should See.  We laughed at the witty repartee, especially at the beginning; but (most of) the characters became meaner (and more drunk) as the story progressed -- which did make me wonder why the characters spent time hanging out with each other.  I would have to agree with one review I'd read:  "a historic reminder of sadder times."  

While we were discussing the movie, Mark and I decided that "The Boys in the Band," "Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf," and to some extent, "The Lion in Winter," all have Dysfunctional Party Games in them.  We weren't sure if this was a reflection of party/cocktail society at the time, or if "contests as a means of self-discovery" was a theme of sixties culture.

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Sunday morning we took the Aoife out to Zumwalt Park.  The reservoir is still quite low; it feels like we could walk along the bottom of it all the way to the marina.  

I took my camera hoping for photographs of various raptors or waterfowl, but none put in an appearance.  So I took pictures of the dog among the violets instead (lightly lamenting that nature had pulled a mean trick on the violets and that in two days all the blooms would freeze to death).  

Dog Park Moon

Late December and early January nights were supposed to be good for watching the waxing crescent moon pass by Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn.  Since it's just after the Winter Solstice, the evenings and mornings have been cloudy and overcast, so I hadn't really seen much of the moon (or the planets, for that matter) for about a week and a half.

When we took Aoife to the dog park a few evenings ago, just before sunset, the sky cleared up enough to show a waxing half moon.  I surprised myself by managing to take an in-focus picture of the moon bracketed by tree branches.  

I think Mark thought I was particularly daring to bring the camera into the Very Muddy Dog Park (we'd had two inches of rain a few days earlier, on top of the previous week's eight inches of snow).   I was more worried that Somebody Else's Dog might jump on me with their muddy paws than I was of slipping or dropping the camera into a puddle.   I managed to get a few photos of Aoife, but the majority of them were blurry action shots of her chasing things.  

The fog, which had rolled back around noon, reasserted its dominion over the landscape as the sun set.   By the time we got home, the sky was a dark grey blanket, unspangled by stars, and the night was moonless.

Wrapping Up December 2021

  I envisioned myself blogging (and writing) much more this December than has actually happened.  Part of this is due to posting to social media more than actually blogging.  I suspect that I need to have add some time-keeping software to my apps to bring social media usage back into balance.    

To recap the last few weeks.   

Through a series of events, the Day Jobbe has expanded to full time.   It's mostly remote, and I drive in to work some days.  I am doing a combination of departmental intranet design and web site management.  It has been a reminder of how brutally insurance benefits are awarded (or not) to vested employees. 

 

Writing is going very slowly, which I find it tends to do this time of year.  

My extended family is doing mostly well and managing to stay healthy during the pandemic.  

The cats have crossed another threshold with the dog and are more likely to spend the night in the house (rather than the garage) with the dog.  The cold might have something to do with this.  They also seem more tolerant of the dog in general, and no longer zip out of a room whenever she appears.  

Smokey seems to have recovered from his earlier medical emergency.  He's still as fluffy as ever, but--whether through the medicine he's taking or through the touch of age--he is bonier than he used to be.  

On the design front:  last November I sat down and decided to see about reproducing an Islamic design I've always thought was an interesting interlocking of circles, triangles, and hexagons.  As is usual with these sorts of designs, one can make it tile infinitely.  Other design projects include designing this year's family calendar and paper projects.

Unseasoned Traveller Moments

We woke early.  The previous night we'd packed before we went to bed.  

We picked up The Child at Mark's Mom's house, and said goodbye to everyone.  

After we dropped off the car, Mark decided that The Child needed to navigate to our gate as practice for future solo air-trips.  He did fairly well getting us to the air train and the TSA Pre-check line.  I think we might need to work on reading signs, but I could be projecting my own inadequacies onto the situation.  

Several unseasoned traveller moments later we were boarding the plane.  We were the next-to-last folks to get onto the plane, with the result that all of the overhead bins had been inexpertly packed with Other People's Stray Items That Should Have Fit Under Seats.  The Child's carry-on had to be checked in on the concorse.  My carry-on started to be checked-in, but the flight attendent found some spare space in first class; then she forgot to tell me where my luggage was and I had to make inquiries.

There were a lot of families travelling with a lot of kids.  Large families.  And at least two Very Angry Babies.  I was surprised by how irritated I was -- I don't know if it was luggage arrangement, or the child behind me kicking my chair seat, or the random shrieks, or not getting enough sleep, or Covid anxiety, or a general combination of airplane travel anxiety -- I had to keep reminding myself that travelling with kids is hard and that I should thank The Child for being a good travel companion for so many years.  

I put in my (battery depleted) ear buds and cat napped for as long as the seat would let me.  

The Child had the window seat, but I did manage to take a photo of Mt. Hood as we were flying into Portland.  I know that it's late August, but Mt. Hood was looking brown and dried out as we passed it.  Ursula LeGuin had a prescient vision of Mt. Hood when she wrote "The Lathe of Heaven" nearly fifty years ago.  The haze smudging the other mountains and filling in the valleys was a sad reminder that forest fires were still burning and hadn't magically gone out while we were away.  I thought it had rained while were were on the East Coast, but I guess it hadn't.

We survived baggage claim, located the car, and I drove us south and home.  

Mark had promised The Child that we would stop about halfway home to get food at In-N-Out.  It should have been called "In-An-Hour," because from the time we entered the driveway to the time we received our food, it took us 70 minutes.  The food was fine, but I think I would have ordered ahead (not, judging by the line of foot-traffic folks, that it would have helped).

Probably the funniest thing about the wait was a discussion of 90's gay club music:  I complained that at one point, dance music devolved into a series of frantic boops with no melody, designed to tickle the limbic brains of dancers who required an extra hit to their limbic brains in order to dance.  "Explorer," by Clubroot was playing at the time, and I snorted because I realized it was only slightly more refined than the frantic boops of the '90's (but it at least pretends to have a melody).  

"It's your kind of boops," The Child said.

This led to a discussion of how most dance music in the 90's wanted to be Darude's "Sandstorm" and the realization that The Child was really into "Sandstorm" because it was good for gaming to.

We got home at 7 PM and fed cats who were grateful that we did not have the dog with us.

That was the next day.

Animals and Seasons

November is over a third of the way through and the dark season is upon us.  For real this time, although the ten days in early September when the smoke from the forest fires blotted out the sun were bad enough.  At least we can be outside without too much fear of breathing unhealthy particles... oh, wait, COVID-19.  Oh well.   

The damper, colder weather has driven the cats into a grudging acceptance that a dog lives here.  Some days are more grudging than others.  The other day, Cicero was sleeping on Mark while Aoife rested next to him; Mark slowly shifted his body until Cicero was resting, if not on, then at least next to, Aofie.  We think at this point Cicero realized how much body heat Aoife puts out.  I've noticed he's less likely to retreat to the bedroom window when Aoife enters since; and recently, Cicero ventured into the back yard -- something that hasn't happened since the Spring Equinox.

Mark and I notice how early the sun sets these days because all of the acres of the dog park we take Aoife are in shadow by 4, and the sun slides behind the hills by 4:15, and you can see Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn by 4:40, and by 5:00 it's too dark to see the Chuck-It Balls we fling.  If Aoife didn't have a mostly white head, we wouldn't be able to see her, either.   We used to be able to stay until 8:30.

The dog park hasn't turned into a total mud pit yet, but I expect the Big Storm that's supposed to hit us Friday the 13th will change all of that.  (The fist-sized gravel the city used to fill in some of the larger foxholes the dogs dug last spring is already dispersing into new geologic depressions.)

Smokey is more grudging than Cicero.  At least he has the next-door neighbors to run to (and they love him, so it's a win-win situation).  He's still likely to make a dash for the window when Aoife enters the bedroom, but there have been a few times where he's (noisily) tolerated being sniffed by the dog.   Aoife understands that the cats are part of our family, and unless she's previously wound up, she'll slowly creep forward to sniff them (instead of lunging at them) in an earnest attempt to initiate play.  

Smokey and Cicero had been sleeping in the garage over the Summer, but they've worked up enough courage to begin sleeping in our bedroom (and waking us up at 4 AM to be let out).  Sometimes Aofie sleeps in our bed -- when I'm feeling like indulging her -- but I find I sleep better when she's on the couch.  

Aoife Likes Bubbles

I thought it would be fun to take some early morning photographs of her with the bubbles.  Or some morning photographs.  Okay, early afternoon.  It was the afternoon.  (Checks photo time signature...)  Evening.

Mark took out his super-mix of solution and blew a exhalation of bubbles all over the yard.

I thought Aoife would go a little more crazy than she did, but she was more interested in Mark's bubble wand and bottle of solution than in the actual bubbles.

It turns out that it's difficult to get a good photo of a dog who is randomly lunging at bubbles as they float by.  I had a lot of blurry photos, or photos of a dog tail or foot, or a photo of a headless dog.

I'd hoped to get a majestic photo of her in mid-shot, teeth millimeters away from a soapy sphere.  At least I got one of her in mid-air.

Perhaps some other day.

Slo-mo Dog Video

Just dog tricks...

that's all.

I wasn't expecting Aoife's dog tag's jingle to turn into slow chapel bell sounds.   Also, I think it's really interesting to watch how the energy of her landing translates up her body and back.

Dog Park People

The other day Mark and I took Aoife to a dog park.   People there followed social distancing while the dogs froliced.  I thought this was a good action photo of the dog--Aoife's legs and tail have an action blur and her eyes are in focus--but Mark disagrees.





Dog park goers seem to come in a multitude of flavors:

• I brought my dog here to give them some exercise and to socialize with other dogs.
• (Gasp!) You're a Dog Person, too?  
• They made me come here.
• I'm going to shout directions at my dog as if they understood English.  
• My idea of controlling my dog is to laugh uncomfortably.
• OMG!  There's mud and filth everywhere!  
• My dog's breed is just misunderstood.
• I'm keeping half an eye on my dog while I have a very loud, long, involved, and deeply personal conversation on my cell phone.  
• I love all dogs everywhere.   
• What the hell are all of you doing here, can't you see you're stressing out my dog?  
• I'm too sexy for my dog.  
• What the hell are you eating/puking ? 
• My dog is the best dog in the world.  
• Dogs Are People, Too.   
• Sorry, I'm too busy fantasizing about being the pack leader of my six unleashed killing machines.  

I think we're mostly "I love all dogs everywhere," and "My dog is the best dog in the world," Dog Park People.  (Okay, there is a surprising amount of mud at certain dog parks....)

Surprisingly, I think the above list still works if you substitute "cat" for "dog," to describe cat people... although I can't imagine how a cat park could even be a thing.

Animals and Everything

Week four? of Shelter in Place.  We continue to work and study from home.    I drive the car some place once a week just to keep it moving.  We walk place or hang out outside when it's nice.   What I do notice when I drive, is that traffic is very light, but that there's two or three instances of loopiness from other drivers making interesting choices or random pedestrians crossing the street in random fashions.

Stuck my head out of the window this morning (Wednesday), thinking that I might see the Lyrid meteors, but it was raining.  The last few days have started out overcast, but have cleared by mid-afternoon.  The snow

Some time in the night, a bag of dog treats had spilled -- I suspect a midnight snack raid -- and there was about 2/3rds of a cup of treats on the kitchen floor.  If I had been more properly awake, I would have swept them up -- but the dog was happily hoovering them up.  Later, it crossed my mind that maybe the kibble wasn't proper dog food.

On the Writing Front:  did a final pass on a 6900 word story by having the computer read it back to me.  I've been polishing for a while, so the process caught only a few odd places where there was a missing "the" or some other word-o.

I should put more stories into the mail.  One of the last items, which I thought had been in the slush for 90 days, apparently had been rejected after 5 days and the reply was stuck in my spam filter or something.

On the Gym Front:  Did my Power Walk, only without music this time.  On the plus side, the music keeps my tempo up; on the minus (?) side, having the soundtrack makes me pay attention to the surroundings differently.  I am unsure if having the soundtrack makes me more engaged with the neighborhoods I walk through (because I'm compensating for not hearing soft sounds) or if the soundtrack engages the woolgathering part of my mind that pulls me out of the world when I walk.  Came home and did some free weight work; looped an elastic loop over a cherry tree branch and did some cable pull-downs.

On the dream front:  I haven't exactly been having the intense dreams that some folks have been having because of COVID19 lockdowns.  I did have an intricate "back at Reed, failing Physics, freshly-discovered missing attendance" anxiety dream, which I'm going to attribute to an unsettled stomach this morning.  I had an intense advising meeting with Del Rhodes--who in real life was the head of the Psychology Department, but in the dream was a perky Physics Professor.   I can't recall the conversation verbatim, but she said something ambiguous, which I took the wrong way, and replied with a pointed remark, but after some back-and-forth, we ended up on the same academic plan.

On the animal front:  Aoife and Smokey just now had a nose-to-nose meeting.  Smokey was in the windowsill.  There was no growling, barking, howling, snapping, or claw swiping.  Mark says Cicero made some kind of wailing noise from outside the window (which I think I heard from the next room) along the lines of "Oh, Smokey! You're gonna die!"   There's apparently a second meeting going on in the Cat Sanctuary, so I better go see what's going on.

Blurry Days and Animals

Isolating in place at home and working remotely has made the weekdays blur together.  It's an odd feeling working with less physical boundaries between work lives, home lives, and family lives.  I'm getting a touch of cabin fever, the treatment for which is physically leaving the house for a power walk or to get food.  Mark is working from home (most days), as am I.  The Child is attending his classes remotely.  Mostly,  we're managing to give each other enough space.

On the dog front, the cats have moved from fear and grief to anger.   Okay, and a little indifference.  Mostly.  Smokey was going to do something about That New Creature the other day when Aoife came into the bedroom while Smokey was on my lap, but I was able to negotiate a peaceful retreat with the use of a blanket.

I connected with a FaceBook group that watches a local pair of bald eagles (and their arch-enemies, the ospreys).  There's a nest that's visible (at least until the leaves come in) from a local Willamette River path, so I fled the house with my camera and managed to get a photograph or two -- mostly of eagle beak.  It's not quite as concentrated bird as The Raptor Center, but at least it's open.

On the writing front:  staying home means I'm actually at home before 1:30, so I've had lunch and I'm actually writing by 2.  Some friends have started up writing groups in Zoom, which seems to work as far as motivation.

On the gym front:  well... I've been doing power walks, so that's better than nothing.  Aoife makes doing mat exercises difficult.

Cats, Dogs, and Quarantine

Day something of self-isolation with the family.  We're doing fairly well, also I am a little stir-crazy.  I would very much like to go to a dance party right now.  Last weekend the sunlight made being in the back yard pleasant.   However, starting last Tuesday, the weather has been cold, wet, and overcast.  We need the rain, but I could do without sunless skies (and more rainbows).   I was also disappointed that the clouds hid a conjunction of The Moon and The Pleiades on Friday (and Thursday and Saturday) night.

Aoife, the new puppy, has settled into the house.  So far we've pretty much established that she's a stick dog, she's a car-ride dog, and she's a frisbee dog.  She loves us, and once social distancing isn't such a big deal, we'll work on socializing her.

The cats are still annoyed.  We've established our bedroom as the cat sanctuary, and Mark occasionally opens the door and stands with the dog while the cats furtively eat their meals.   Mark usually times some long-ish dog walks around meal times so the cats can come out of our bedroom to skulk and sniff.  The down side of all this is that that cats frequently want to leave the room at 3:30 AM and wake us to open a window.   If we're not stealthy enough, the dog hears us rustling around and wants to be let out of her crate in The Child's room.

It's slowly paying off.  The cat's aren't in a complete panic when they see the dog.  Aoife has always been mildly curious in a "let's play" kind of way about them, but is otherwise uninterested in the cats... unless she thinks they are intruders on the front porch, in which case they get an "intruder alert!" bark through the front window.   Smokey ventured out, took a strategic position on the table, glared with Great Glaring, then forgot that Aoife had fallen asleep on the couch while Mark and I were watching a Wooster and Jeeves movie.  I didn't see Smokey's face when Mark stopped him from jumping onto his lap -- which coincided with Smokey realizing that the brindled pillow was Actually A Sleeping Brindled Dog! -- but Mark said it was priceless.  Mark was also thankful he had avoided getting his lap shredded to ribbons.

Staying At Home With Cats and a Dog

Today is overcast and damp.  I had hoped that I might be able to write outside, but that's not going to happen--even with a deck umbrella.  Kate Brown, the Governor of Oregon, has issued executive order 20-12, which translates to Lockdown-Not-Quite-So-Lite-This-Time.  Still, pretty much everyone is being strongly encouraged to stay at home and not go anywhere if they can help it.

We're going on Day Three with a New Puppy Bull-Terrier Mix.   The cats have moved from full panicked “Oh My God, it’s a dog! Stand you ground! No—puff out to twice size! No—I’m outta here!!” to Irritated Bushiness (Cicero looks like a stereotypical Black Halloween Cat) and a low growled battle song (the lyrics of which are “When the Foeman bares his steel (ta-ra-tara ta-ra tara) We uncomfortable feel...").   Our bedroom is the Cat Sanctuary, and they've taken to fleeing the house through one of the windows.   Even Spencer, Cicero's brother, is on high alert, and performed his signature bound over the chainlink fence when I came out with Dog Smell on my Hands.  

Aoife pretty much wants to play with the cats.  She pretty much wants to play with other dogs.  She loves us, and is a leaner.  She's not quite so sure about other people, although she threw doggy heart looks at some guy in a Toyota muscle car and booming hip-hop (he actually pulled over, got out of his car, and said hello).   She has figured out the home is The Den That Must Be Protected, so there's some barking at the mailman.  When Mark commented on how cliché it was, I responded that Cliché would be a great dog name.  

In other animal-conflict news, there's a hawk or other raptor that's been hanging about and getting mobbed by the local corvids.  Just now as I was writing this, I saw a smallish--maybe a red-tailed hawk--be forced to land in a tree across the street by two crows.  I was too slow with my camera to get any photographs... although I did get a woodpecker in the same branches about fifteen minutes later.

 

Aoife

 We have a new, 40 pound, 8 month year old puppy, probably an American Staffordshire Terrier (i.e. a Pit Bull).  She's a rescue puppy from a Modesto, California shelter.  The name on her papers said her name was "Chanel," but The Chid mostly likely did not find this a butch enough name (I thought it was hilariously ironic).   After a few suggestions like "Bailey" and "Guinness,"  The Chid did some quick research of Irish names and settled on Aoife.   She didn't seem particularly attached to her previous name, and is responding to Aoife.

She's a total snuggle-butt; very sweet and curious; and will bark three short, sharp, "gruffs" at strangers at the door and gate.  She's been trained, as she understands "sit" and "stay" and has good leash etiquette.

This is the first dog we've had in fifteen years.  (Our old beagle, Pickles, succumbed to complications of a hyperactive adrenal gland.)  We'd been talking about adopting for a few months, with vague plans to do so this summer when The Child was out of school  COVID-19 fallout in Oregon prompted Mark to expedite the process.... so Saturday, we went to a pet shelter "just to browse" and (surprise!) came back with a dog (Mark started crying when he thought about the shelter animals in California being killed).

The cats are not amused.  Smokey is threatening to go live with our neighbors across the street (where he already gets kitty treats), and Cicero is hanging out with his brother, Spencer, two houses down and generally pulling the Great Disappearing Barn Cat routine.

The consensus so far is that Aoife is curious and wants to play with the cats--but we're going to let everyone get used to everyone else's scents for about two weeks before there are any face-to-face meetings.  The dog rescue foster mom we got her from showed Mark a video of Aoife pretty much ignoring her cats, which helped convince us she'd be okay with Smokey and Cicero.