Our little ratbag has surprised us twice in the last two days.
- Sunday was the two year anniversary of The Fielders accepting our offer on the house. Might not seem like much to you lot, dear readers, but it means a lot to us because we love this house. Anyway, I bought a bottle of champagne to celebrate, and, as those of you who have been in the house when we’ve opened a bottle of champagne would know, our two-year-strong tradition is to stand on the back balcony, squeeze the cork off and try to clear the back fence. When we don’t clear it, Max usually finds the cork and eats it.
Well, Maxy boy has obviously watched and learned because when I picked the bottle up off the kitchen bench to open it he bolted out the door, raced down to the lawn and stood look up to wait for us to let the cork go from balcony. We were so amazed that we deliberately popped the cork so that he’d catch it.
The cool thing, we reckon, is that he doesn’t do that at all with normal wine bottles. Our almost-4-year-old dog can tell the difference between wine and champagne. Some humans can’t even do that.
- Last night the thunderstorms were pretty severe down here. They don’t usually bother Max too much, he doesn’t bark or go silly, but last night he went missing in the house. It took us 15 minutes to find him - he had taken himself into our walk-in-robe. The big softy.
Our friends James and Lou bring their puppy Ellie down to the beach most weekends and she has learnt to enjoy the water, but she’s never actually swum - it’s risky letting her get out of her depth in the surf.
So this morning we walked all the way up to the Barwon Heads bridge so that she could swim in one of the small channels in the river. James picked her up, walked out to the middle of the channel where it was thigh deep, and dropped her in. Naturally she swam to the side like she’d been doing it all her life. I guess it’s hard-wired into a dog’s brain - particularly a Golden Retriever’s.
Swimming like a champion
Happy to have reached the water’s edge
Max showing her how it’s done
The channel at Barwon Heads - perfect for a dog’s first swim
So. I haven’t sprayed any more Poss Off since the first time I used it, but we’ve been leaving the spotlights on, the sensor light is still up there working, and we’ve had tarps down for a week to protect the boards.
The good news is that, for whatever reason, he hasn’t been back for six days. Well, I suppose he might have been back but he’s not wizzed all over the boards, and that’s all that matters.
However, today Jayne sanded back the stains and oiled the boards (one of the MANY jobs we’re trying to get done over Easter), so I decided I’d put some flat head nails up there too. I can’t see that they’d hurt him, which obviously we want to avoid, they’re just designed to be uncomfortable and make him decide to stay in the tree.
Fingers crossed. Jayne will be so disappointed if he comes back tonight.
I moved “the office” back downstairs today. Since late 2006 I’ve worked from the ballroom on Fridays, but for some reason I was finding it increasingly difficult to get in the zone up there. It never really felt like an office/den/study, but we were using the downstairs room first as storage for all of Peter & Christine’s boxes, then as a fifth bedroom at Christmas time when everyone was here. Well we don’t need 5 bedrooms anymore so on Tuesday night I moved the bed and other bits of furniture into the garage (I’ll put them away properly at some point), and brought the desk, laptop and monitor down so that I could work from home on Wednesday. Then this afternoon Jayne and I lugged the bookcases down and I brought the rest of the computer gear down and set things up properly.
I’ve set it up so that the desk is adjacent to the window rather than facing it (I can look to my right and gaze dreamily at our garden - but not too often), the G3 iMac that I use as a music and print server is directly behind me, and I even have a 3-piece suite to lounge on if I feel like reading something in a comfy chair.
Also tonight I decided to decorate the walls with some of the CDs that have sat unused in a bookcase since I bought my first iPod four years ago. I reckon they look pretty good!
Just went shopping for some basics and noticed that the Helga’s bread we normally buy is $4.50.
$@*!
The much nicer Alpine one that we don’t buy because it’s too expensive was almost a dollar cheaper. So I bought that instead.
Is the bread Helga’s? Not any more.
