Just Like Seinfeld

Just like the sit-com Seinfeld.
Blog post about nothing..............

These pictures were all taken in and around town over the past week.

We have done nothing extraordinary recently.  

No grand adventures to beautiful places.

No unexpected visits or visitors.
Thankfully no unexpected occurrences.

Merely a continuing quiet life, during a quiet and dormant time of year.

SE Idaho has been in a seemingly stagnant weather pattern of calm, sunny, dry and unseasonably warm for almost a month now.

Snow is a long distant memory.

We had freezing cold temperatures and gale force winds the past two days, but are again moving back into warmth and sunshine.

So.........who actually whines about sunny and 40 degrees in January and February?

I guess it DOES sound like whining - particularly in light of this winter in the east, which has been slammed (and then slammed again) by snow.

It's not meant to sound like whining.

More like commiserating over a lost winter in the west................

This is the picture of the John Deere plough (that has sat dormant in a back field for the better part of a year), which is now half buried in tumble weeds.

This picture was taken over a week ago, and since that time we have had two very windy days.

On days like that (when the wind is so intense that you can almost feel it wrapping its freezing cold arms around your body and when it holds you back as you struggle to walk into it), the world is completely filled with tumbleweeds on the move.

They race across open BLM land, seemingly in a big hurry to pass through Atomic City and make their way to..............where do tumbleweeds go, anyway?

They are everywhere in the wind - rolling across wide open public lands, quickly tumbling through town, some getting caught up in fences and underneath cars while others are lucky enough to miss the barriers of the city and simply continue to roll freely across the beige desert ground.
For two days we watched the tumbleweeds speeding to wherever it is that tumbleweeds go.
And when it was all said and done we picked the stray tumbleweeds out from our fences and bushes and trees and the underside of our trucks, and then set them free to continue on their journeys..............

Mountains 30 miles to the north, still partially covered with snow................

I found this antler laying on BLM land a few days ago, just on the outskirts of town.

I had always assumed that if we found any antlers out here, that they would be up on one of the buttes, but that has not been the case.

This is the second antler that I have found out here so far.  

The first one was found in the field close to the silos around this same time last year.

They now sit together on top of the TV cabinet in the living room...............

I have taken so many pictures of Big Butte over the past year and a half, at all times of day, at all times of year, in all kinds of weather.

There are times when the light is just right, and when the clouds are just right, that make this lone mountain look mystical and beautiful......................

I unexpectedly received a birthday card the other day.

It was from a woman that I used to work with in Tennessee.

Back before I moved to Alaska, to Wyoming, back to Tennessee, back to Wyoming, over to Idaho.

Back when I was whole.

We always got along so well - working well together, drinking well together, being stupid after hours at conferences together, sharing in the joys and fears and sadnesses and successes of our respective families..

I had been so much a gypsy all of my life that I never looked back once I found myself moving on.

If you don't stay in one place long enough your roots are always shallow.............

When I left Tennessee eager and excited and worried about a new job in Alaska, I had assumed that she and I would go our separate ways.

But that didn't happen and we remained friends.

And so I received a birthday card the other day from her.

The front of the card was a goofy picture of baked beans (some of which had birthday hats and smiling goofy faces).

Hope your birthday is the best there's ever BEAN!

I instantly knew why she had chosen that card.

She, and her partner-in-crime, and all the others I used to work with, always took great joy in making fun of my accent.

Only..............I wasn't the one who had an accent.  THEY were the ones who had accents, and I in return took great joy in making fun of their red-neck-ed-ness.

 My pronunciation of the word "been" was one of their favorites.

When I opened the card I realized that my friend had signed it, and that she had corralled the signatures of others from my past as well.

It was a totally unexpected surprise that both pleased me and made me incredibly sad.

I miss her.

I miss a lot of things......................

LC and I have been bouncing backwards and forwards for months about whether or not to get another dog.

Unsure about how our dog (who came from challenging circumstances) would welcome another dog into the house.

Sure that she would love to have a running buddy out on BLM land, but unsure of how she would react to a full time interloper at her home.

We considered another dog recently, and faced with the actual reality of one more dog, took a step back for a moment.

Kory has rawhide bones, dog biscuits and chew sticks spread out all over the house, and when we go for a walk she knows that her treats will still be in the same place when she returns.

Would she want to fight for all her treats, fight to keep another dog out of her food and water bowls, fight for our attention, fight for her favorite napping spot behind the wood stove in the living room?

Would we want to walk two dogs in town?  Keep track of two dogs when we go camping?  Squeeze two dogs into a fishing boat out on the lake?

The answer to all of those questions (we think), is no.

We have spent the past year training her and she knows what we expect of her.

 Kory has routines that she is comfortable with, and so do we.

We have officially stopped thinking about a second dog.............

LC and I spent a few days late last week playing in the dirt.

Rather, tearing down two of the three huge and dilapidated planter boxes that were sitting in the greenhouse-that-was.

For the better part of one full day we shoveled dirt from the planter boxes into wheelbarrows and then tediously spread that dirt over the uneven ground where our plumbing was repaired.

The ground is almost ready for grass seed, but in the meantime one third of the yard is nothing but dirt, which please Kory to no end................

When Kory first started running on BLM land she would regularly find bones.

Happily she would crouch on the ground and gnaw on them while I continued walking.

Inevitably I would turn back to Kory and call her to come to me so that we could continue on our journey, and she would abandon the bone and quickly catch up to me.

And then my dog progressed to finding a bone, gnawing on it while at the same time keeping a close watch on how far away I was.  When I was far enough from her that she instinctively knew I would call to her she would pick up her found treasure, catch up to me, run beyond me, and crouch down again to continue chewing on her sun bleached bone.

The other day we unexpectedly found a new trick.

Kory found a dirt covered pelvis from some unfortunate, long dead animal and began walking with it.

I continued walking, watching her and expecting her at any time to drop to the ground.  Hidden among the sage bushes, I knew that my happy dog would eventually crunch the thing to pieces.

Only she didn't.

We had wandered off trail and were now walking across wide open BLM land.

Eventually we would circle our way back to a second trail, but on this sunny and very warm day neither of us were in any hurry to return to the house.

Looking over to her frequently, I realized that Kory was still carrying the dirty bone in her mouth.  

I continued walking, and although she wandered as she always does, she was actually following my path in her typical, round-about way.  And still with the bone.

30 minutes later we reached the trail, and my dog was still carrying her found treasure.

45 minutes after she first found it, my sweet girl carried that nasty thing all the way to the house.

As soon as we walked into the house she proudly dropped it on the carpet, seemingly relieved that she had successfully secured her wonderful find.

Momma promptly grabbed it, walked through the house and threw it out in the back yard.

We have now had that pelvis sitting in the back yard for the past few days, and Kory (after going through so much effort to bring it safely home) has paid it no attention.

We'll let it stay in the yard for a while longer though.  

Just in case my dog decides she wants it after all..............

The worst type of crying wasn't the kind everyone could see--the wailing on street corners, the tearing at clothes. No, the worst kind happened when your soul wept and no matter what you did, there was no way to comfort it. A section withered and became a scar on the part of your soul that survived..........Katie McGarry