outside

Much like the inside of my house, the outside has also been ravaged by the dogs. Rather than chewing up couches though, they have been spending their time knocking down walls. When we moved into this house we were so excited to have a nice big back yard with different layers formed by nicely made rock walls. However as the dogs have spent much of their lives outside these days, the walls have been slowly turned into misshapen piles of rocks that seem to resemble something that may have been a wall at some point in it's past.

Over the past few days I have been taking advantage of the nice weather and spending some time in the backyard rebuilding a wall. Most of the rocks were already there, but I still had to find a few more elsewhere. I turned to the area just to the left of the backdoor. It was an area that has always seemed to me like more of a tripping hazard then anything else. There were a bunch of large sized rocks that I needed laid out very unevenly and unattractively. I pulled them out and discovered that there was actually a flat concrete slab hiding under the two inches of rock and dirt.

Anyways, here is the wall in progress that I am working on. The bottom layer specifically. I am not done yet, it's still in progress.


I also decided to add a row of upright rocks to the perimeter of our soon to be vegetable garden area when I went outside one day and saw Elsie shoving her paw under the chicken wire to fish out a horse turd.
And speaking of chicken wire, I once had a boss who would correct himself every time he said "chicken wire". Example:

"Put some chicken wire, I mean poultry netting, around those trees over there."

Who was he afraid of offending? The chickens? Or perhaps a gaggle of galled geese (thank you thesaurus.com for finding me a g word) pissed off that they too should be included in the name of fencing intended to cage them in? But I digress....

Due to my time outside, I am not getting as much new glass done as I wanted to for the next Terlingua market next Wednesday. Oh well, I don't have tons of extra space anyway, and the yard work has to be done too.

The other reason that I am not getting much done is the fact that my baby girl has apparently undergone some sort of genetic cross with a monkey and does little else besides try to climb on things that she doesn't need to be climbing on. Turn your back for a second, and she is standing on the chair with her head three and a half feet above the very hard tile floor. She's up on the back of the couch pulling pictures off the wall, up on the other couch pulling the mouse and keyboard around and knocking the pencil/pen mug on the ground, pulling the stapler on the floor and trying to eat staples. She climbs up on her high chair which she then stands in, uses the windowsill to pull up onto an end table etc, etc. I guess she is one of those active babies you need to watch all the time, because it seems like that is all I do, watch her and remove her from the precarious positions that she has put herself into.

Iffy has been super busy at work lately. It's not even spring break yet and already it seems like it is. My personal favorite, if I have not already mentioned it ( I don't think I have) was when he was called one night at 8:45 pm because there was a skunk "bothering" people at the lodge. Apparently the person was not able to walk away from the big bad skunk. He wisely decided that the presence of a skunk in a National Park did not merit him charging two hours of overtime to the park. People call dispatch for some pretty stupid things.

Also yesterday he was hot on the case of the stolen used toilet paper. Apparently some park visitors had some personal belongings, (toilet paper, poop shovel, bucket, hose, USED toilet paper) in a bear box at one of the back country campsites. A couple park volunteers happened upon the campsite and, finding no permit displayed, thought the stuff was abandoned so they brought it out. When the visitors came out of the back country they went to the ranger station to report the stuff stolen. They were very adamant about what was missing, and VERY descriptive of these very mundane items. Iffy asked if their toilet paper was single or double ply and whether or not it was quilted. Apparently the visitors did not find the humor in this question. But it all turned out well in the end. Iffy got a hold of the volunteers and happily the visitors were joyously reunited with their toilet paper in the end. (end. ha ha)

On the topic of Iffy, he has complained in the past that there are not enough pictures of him and Sara. So I took one:

And here's another of Sara and her blueberry pancakes. By the way, blueberries make for some weird looking diapers.

Well, that's about it for now I guess. We are going up to Ft. Davis tomorrow for a night just to get the hell outta here for a couple days. The dogs are staying at a kennel VERY appropriately named "The Nut Farm" I think it might be an orchard or something that also has a kennel as part of their business. Anyways, I'll post more when we get back.

Toodles