Old Dogs are like Old Men

Even though I have been a dog fancier most of my life, I am still learning and my dog Marshall is the current teacher. Marshall is an old dog, 13 years old as of last November, and he seems to be running out of patience in teaching me, especially when it comes to something that he wants that I don’t understand. In those cases, he stands directly in front of me and stares with his soft brown eyes holding mine in a steady glare. I always break. After a while, I get up and give him a cookie since that is his most frequent demand and, even if it isn’t what he wants, he accepts it as a substitute most of the time.

One of the things that Marshall has taught me recently is that old dogs are a lot like old men. For one thing, Marshall doesn’t suffer fools easily. If a puppy happens by, Marshall sniffs him a few times and then walks away as if to say ‘you aren’t worth my time’. And he won’t allow a puppy or a strange dog to give him a thorough sniffing either. After the obligatory sniffs at each end, Marshall demands that the stranger desist and he gives a warning bark to show he means business even though that is definitely impolite in dog-language. It is kinda like me hanging up the phone on a pesky salesman.

Marshall’s age is beginning to show. He likes spending most of his time on his bed and in the morning, he has a harder time getting up to start the day. I’m like that too. Some days, the bed just feels better than the cold floor. When Marshall finally completes all his yawns and stretches and decides to move off his bed, it is apparent that he has stiff joints. He moves gingerly at first, one step at a time, and then slowly gets his motor going to full speed which is only slightly above idle.

After Marshall finally gets going, I take him for a morning walk to the neighbor’s house where I drink coffee with other old dudes. Marshall is welcome at the coffee-drinking club and my buddies all take turns in handing out pieces of crumbled dog cookies to the little beggar. He had a high time begging cookies for several months until the vet noticed he had put on several pounds. “No more cookies,” the vet demanded. I tried explaining about the cookies to Marshall but he wouldn’t have any of it.

The vet suggested replacing cookies with carrots. It sounded like me trying to enjoy broccoli instead of a hamburger but I decided to try it anyway. And, just as wonders never cease, Marshall liked the carrots. He would gobble them down like hungry relatives at a wedding feast. I got in the habit of carrying a pocket full of carrots every day on our morning visit to the coffee klatch. The carrot ruse worked for several days until I learned that old dogs don’t seem to digest carrots so well when I found a generous pool of them along with green bile and other nasty -looking substances that Marshall had thrown up on his bed. After that, I put Marshall on a strict carrot rationing system.

One of the most telling symptoms of Marshall’s aging is his gradual loss of decorum in the matter of eliminating body waste. His ‘bathroom habits,’ as we would call them, have definitely changed. Marshall always used to have a delicate nature and he showed as much by being discrete in his manner of heeding the call of nature. Almost never did I have the distasteful job of cleaning up his poo as Marshall generally went to the woods at the edge of our lawn to do his business. Day after day he would find a different, but secluded spot to make his deposit. If nature called while we were on our morning walk and he was on the leash, he would walk to the edge of the road as the signal for me to give him more lead. Thus warned, I would loosen the leash and he would wander to the woods to find a suitable place for a deposit. I always looked away discretely and Marshall returned the favor by attempting to cover his deposit by kicking dirt over the soft brown mound before walking away.

As Marshall got older he spent less time in searching for the perfect place in the woods or alongside the road to make a deposit. Instead, he would head for the nearest patch of weeds, squat, make a few perfunctory kicks and walk away. Sometimes, he would even look me in the eye as he performed his routine, apparently unembarrassed by his performance in full view of onlookers.

This winter, Marshall’s age seems to have provoked him into to moving one notch lower in doggy world of ‘I don’t care who sees me poop.’ On many mornings during our walk, he stops me abruptly with a pull on the leash to squat. And then he poops. In the middle of the road. Fortunately, his lack of decorum matches my devil-may-care attitude and we both continue on our morning walk after he relieves himself, neither of us with a care in the world. Fortunately, it snows most days so that we don’t have to look at the prior day’s deposits.

Despite the title of this piece, I don’t have a direct parallel with Marshall’s poop habits although the wife would argue that my habits in choosing clothes to wear each day would qualify for an award in “least amount of care” category. She thinks my purple gloves are unseemly for a gentleman and my habit of wearing a baseball cap on most occasions is oftentimes a foul. I tell her that I am not playing that game any longer and I like my gloves and my priceless collection of baseball hats.

Marshall’s age and lower energy has made caring for him easier. His main focus is eating and sleeping and he excels at each. This focus is most noticeable in the evening during our television time. He lays on his bed in deep sleep until I get off my easy chair for a snack. My quiet movements seem to interrupt some sort of energy field he maintains; by the time I open the refrigerator door he is standing beside me. I don’t know how he manages to awaken from a deep sleep and move his aching bones so quickly, but he does. I generally stand looking at the open refrigerator and he stands looking at me. I always break and Marshall gets a snack along with me. He isn’t losing a lot of weight.

So the dog is changing as he gets older. Like me, he is not old, just older. Although he can’t run as fast nor jump as high as he once did and he is sort of prickly when things don’t go his way, he is still a loyal dog and I’ll miss him when he is gone. Just don’t make either him or me angry. We don't like being older in the first place, so it doesn't take much to make us angry.

Grandpa Bill

Bill's New Book

I have a new book!

 

Letters From Roscommon took me about ten years to write as it consists of a series of letters that I wrote to friends and family after moving to Roscommon, Michigan. I chose to re-work and publish 34 letters that focus on my observations of life in and around our county, although I suppose they could have been written about your town or any place else for that matter. Here is a sample, chapter 18, My Colorful Neighborhood.

 

My Colorful Neighborhood

 

Dear Friends:

 

It occurred to me the other day that I have never told you about my neighborhood and the folks who live here. Since several of you haven’t yet visited here, I decided I had better tell you about the neighborhood before you come so’s you won’t be frightened when you do get here.

As you know, a large share of Roscommon County is forested and my neighborhood is no exception. My neighborhood consists of a thin layer of houses that hold back the forest on either side of a road that wends its way to the single nearby business that is on the main road, the party store.

The road winds from the party store, past my house until it disappears in the forest and circles back on itself for no particular reason. From the party store to the circle in the woods is a little more than one mile, a perfect distance for a morning walk. On my walks, I regularly see many of my neighbors and I wave to one and all. My waving has provoked several brief encounters and a few longer visits that have yielded a treasure trove of information about those who live nearby. Like any treasure trove, some of the pieces are better than others. In the case of my neighbors, some are more interesting and more colorful than others.

Sadly, in the short time of my residence here, we have lost a couple neighbors. Betty Hoover has left due to old age and general orneriness while Big-Breasted Bertha passed on due to her weakness for the frothy brew that she bought regularly at the party store. Betty was a transplanted hillbilly who served as the neighborhood police, gossip control officer, and caretaker of Roscommon moral standards. Bertha’s appearance and drinking habits led her to become the most colorful for several years running according to Betty.

With the recent departure of the two women, two men have risen to take over the mantel as our most colorful characters: Bicycle Bill and One-Armed Amos. Both are north woods men through and through. Bicycle Bill has a slight a mental deficiency, although that doesn’t count for much in the neighborhood. More important is Bill’s penchant for riding his bicycle winter and summer, through rain and sleet and snow, even though the snow may be a foot or two deep in the middle of the road during some winters.

Bill rides to the party store every day where he picks up his supply of beer. He stops frequently along to way to pick up any empties he happens to find to recoup some of his money via the bottle deposit. Bill and I are in competition to see who can find the most empties along the road, but I suspect he has an edge on me since he is recovering some of his own bottles and he can cover more ground on his bike than I can by walking.

Bicycle Bill and One-Armed Amos pretty much look alike except for Amos’s one arm. Both wear full beards, stocking hats much of the year along with hunting coats and camouflage pants when there is a hint of cold [about ten months of the year]. Actually, their wardrobe is like that of many of us Roscommon men so there is nothing to be gained in this description.

One-Armed bases his claim to the title of ‘Most Colorful’ by his unequaled delight in making jokes about his one arm. Recently, he had a large cast wrapped around his one good arm with only his fingers visible. He explained that he had received treatment for carpal tunnel. He nodded at his good arm with the bandage, “I’m getting this removed next week.” He waited a moment, then added with a grin, “Not my arm, just the cast.” On another occasion, Amos warned a young boy not to pet my little dog Marshall. “I tried it once and this is what happened to me,” he said, as he held up his stub.

The houses in the neighborhood are diverse from year-round homes like mine to small cabins that are used mainly by hunters. The two houses on the circle in the woods are owned by two brothers who used to run a saw mill in their backyard making pallets and lumber. The brothers are now retired and they closed their saw mill after the wind blew the roof down. They still have piles of lumber in their back forty and a pile of sawdust about the size of the Mount of Olives.

Next to my house are three cabins used only occasionally. Each sits in a wooded lot that abuts a swamp. One has indoor plumbing while the other two boast ‘a path to the bath’ – a local description of a cabin whose outdoor toilet sits atop a hole in the ground. Beyond those temporary abodes is a permanent home of a recently retired man who lived an entire winter in a small trailer while his house was being re-built following an invasion of black mold. I continue to hope that black mold is not contagious since my house is not too far distant from his.

Next to the black mold house is more forest, two ordinary houses and then the last house on the road that is owned by my retired friend (he is not particularly different than most with his beard, camo, and stocking hat) who fishes most days of the year. When he isn’t fishing, he and I meet at the party store for morning coffee after my walk. We are often joined by Amos, but never by Bicycle Bill since he is too busy drinking to sit idly and complain about the weather and poor fishing. We are often joined at the party store by two friends who teach at the nearby college.

Although they are both interesting, neither rises to the level of most colorful so I’ll dispense with more information about them except to say that one is a man with two first names and the second teaches math and computers. (I suspect he is not to be trusted.) The man with two first names teaches something about plants and he knows all about Stinkhorn, a smelly fungus that grows in the forest around me. I don’t know what else he teaches or what else he knows, but if something stinks in the woods, he is the man to see.

 

So, there you have it, a complete description of my neighborhood and it’s characters so you’ll recognize it in case you stop by for a visit. See ‘ya real soon.

 

 

Grandpa Bill

                                  

If you are interested in this latest linguistic adventure, the paperback book is available at Amazon.com for $8.95 or, if you are into low costs like me, it can also be obtained on your Kindle for $2.99. Alternatively, if we live nearby, give me a shout and I can obtain a copy for you at a lower shipping cost.

Bill's New Book

I have a new book!

 

Letters From Roscommon took me about ten years to write as it consists of a series of letters that I wrote to friends and family after moving to Roscommon, Michigan. I chose to re-work and publish 34 letters that focus on my observations of life in and around our county, although I suppose they could have been written about your town or any place else for that matter. Here is a sample, chapter 18, My Colorful Neighborhood.

 

My Colorful Neighborhood

Dear Friends:

 

It occurred to me the other day that I have never told you about my neighborhood and the folks who live here. Since several of you haven’t yet visited here, I decided I had better tell you about the neighborhood before you come so’s you won’t be frightened when you do get here.

As you know, a large share of Roscommon County is forested and my neighborhood is no exception. My neighborhood consists of a thin layer of houses that hold back the forest on either side of a road that wends its way to the single nearby business that is on the main road, the party store.

The road winds from the party store, past my house until it disappears in the forest and circles back on itself for no particular reason. From the party store to the circle in the woods is a little more than one mile, a perfect distance for a morning walk. On my walks, I regularly see many of my neighbors and I wave to one and all. My waving has provoked several brief encounters and a few longer visits that have yielded a treasure trove of information about those who live nearby. Like any treasure trove, some of the pieces are better than others. In the case of my neighbors, some are more interesting and more colorful than others.

Sadly, in the short time of my residence here, we have lost a couple neighbors. Betty Hoover has left due to old age and general orneriness while Big-Breasted Bertha passed on due to her weakness for the frothy brew that she bought regularly at the party store. Betty was a transplanted hillbilly who served as the neighborhood police, gossip control officer, and caretaker of Roscommon moral standards. Bertha’s appearance and drinking habits led her to become the most colorful for several years running according to Betty.

With the recent departure of the two women, two men have risen to take over the mantel as our most colorful characters: Bicycle Bill and One-Armed Amos. Both are north woods men through and through. Bicycle Bill has a slight a mental deficiency, although that doesn’t count for much in the neighborhood. More important is Bill’s penchant for riding his bicycle winter and summer, through rain and sleet and snow, even though the snow may be a foot or two deep in the middle of the road during some winters.

Bill rides to the party store every day where he picks up his supply of beer. He stops frequently along to way to pick up any empties he happens to find to recoup some of his money via the bottle deposit. Bill and I are in competition to see who can find the most empties along the road, but I suspect he has an edge on me since he is recovering some of his own bottles and he can cover more ground on his bike than I can by walking.

Bicycle Bill and One-Armed Amos pretty much look alike except for Amos’s one arm. Both wear full beards, stocking hats much of the year along with hunting coats and camouflage pants when there is a hint of cold [about ten months of the year]. Actually, their wardrobe is like that of many of us Roscommon men so there is nothing to be gained in this description.

One-Armed bases his claim to the title of ‘Most Colorful’ by his unequaled delight in making jokes about his one arm. Recently, he had a large cast wrapped around his one good arm with only his fingers visible. He explained that he had received treatment for carpal tunnel. He nodded at his good arm with the bandage, “I’m getting this removed next week.” He waited a moment, then added with a grin, “Not my arm, just the cast.” On another occasion, Amos warned a young boy not to pet my little dog Marshall. “I tried it once and this is what happened to me,” he said, as he held up his stub.

The houses in the neighborhood are diverse from year-round homes like mine to small cabins that are used mainly by hunters. The two houses on the circle in the woods are owned by two brothers who used to run a saw mill in their backyard making pallets and lumber. The brothers are now retired and they closed their saw mill after the wind blew the roof down. They still have piles of lumber in their back forty and a pile of sawdust about the size of the Mount of Olives.

Next to my house are three cabins used only occasionally. Each sits in a wooded lot that abuts a swamp. One has indoor plumbing while the other two boast ‘a path to the bath’ – a local description of a cabin whose outdoor toilet sits atop a hole in the ground. Beyond those temporary abodes is a permanent home of a recently retired man who lived an entire winter in a small trailer while his house was being re-built following an invasion of black mold. I continue to hope that black mold is not contagious since my house is not too far distant from his.

Next to the black mold house is more forest, two ordinary houses and then the last house on the road that is owned by my retired friend (he is not particularly different than most with his beard, camo, and stocking hat) who fishes most days of the year. When he isn’t fishing, he and I meet at the party store for morning coffee after my walk. We are often joined by Amos, but never by Bicycle Bill since he is too busy drinking to sit idly and complain about the weather and poor fishing. We are often joined at the party store by two friends who teach at the nearby college.

Although they are both interesting, neither rises to the level of most colorful so I’ll dispense with more information about them except to say that one is a man with two first names and the second teaches math and computers. (I suspect he is not to be trusted.) The man with two first names teaches something about plants and he knows all about Stinkhorn, a smelly fungus that grows in the forest around me. I don’t know what else he teaches or what else he knows, but if something stinks in the woods, he is the man to see.

 

So, there you have it, a complete description of my neighborhood and it’s characters so you’ll recognize it in case you stop by for a visit. See ‘ya real soon.

 

 

Grandpa Bill

 

If you are interested in this latest linguistic adventure, the paperback book is available at Amazon.com for $8.95 or, if you are into low costs like me, it can also be obtained on your Kindle for $2.99. Alternatively, if we live nearby, give me a shout and I can obtain a copy for you at a lower shipping cost.

To Recycle or Not, That is the Question

 

I have been a dedicated recycler for some while. It always seems a good idea to re-use things whenever possible so I dutifully collect paper, cans, and other reusable materials for recycling. Not everyone agrees as I have noticed when I snoop around the back doors of friends and relatives. Of course, it is an individual decision to recycle or not. Sadly, our national and state political leaders haven’t provided much help on the issue as they seem generally incapable and have too little time anyway what with the heavy demands of fund-raising. Most also don’t want to risk losing a vote by supporting something that someone, somewhere, may object to. Furthermore, the current call for no new regulations and freedom for all businesses to do whatever earns a profit, doesn’t bode well for any government emphasis on recycling. This is not true for my local politicians.

 

Our township recently signed a contract with our garbage company to pick-up recyclable materials from our neighborhood. Oh, what joy! How thrilled I was when I heard the news. It seemed a major event, on par with the Neal Armstrong moonwalk, or the news that Congress had agreed to avoid the fiscal cliff. The celebration of the contract signing went on for days, mainly from me, because managing our recyclables was an awful task AND IT WAS MY JOB. This responsibility, according to the Mrs., is a man’s job since taking care of recyclables is like handling garbage, which is clearly a man thing. Foolishly, I had never thought to argue the point.

 

The old practice BC (BC – before the contract) required that I collect and fold cardboard, sort paper, clean and pile up plastic, metals and glass, then tote the mess nearly 10 miles to the three large dumpsters for recyclables that our township provided. There, a sleeping guard would occasionally wake up and complain about everything, while me and other citizens unloaded our store of valuable, but used, miscellaneous materials. I was obliged to complete this job at least a twice per month, or more often if the pile of cardboard, cans and empty bottles threatened to overflow the garage.

  

The new contract voided the need for all that. Now, the newspaper reported, citizens would simply put their recyclables next to their garbage cans on garbage day and presto, a special recycling truck would appear and the recyclables would disappear. As simple as that, according to the newspaper. I could continue to help keep the planet clean, but with less effort. A gross simplification, it has turned out.

 

Shortly after the contract signing, a green plastic box appeared in our driveway with the letters stenciled on the side, RECYCLABLES. I proudly scooped up my new plastic box and headed for the garage when I happened to notice a little pamphlet that was entitled RECYCLING INSTRUCTIONS. I took the pamphlet to the kitchen and unfolded a three-page set of instructions that read like an income tax Form 1040.

 

“Separate white paper from colored paper.”

“Place white paper in a clear bag.”

“Remove plastic windows from envelopes.”

 “Fold cardboard into bundles no larger than 2 X 3.”

“No pizza boxes.”

“Wash glass containers and remove lids.”

“No green glass allowed.”

“Remove bottle caps, and toss.”

 Etc., Etc.

 

WHAT? The newspaper story didn’t mention any of this. This is going to be harder than I thought, especially since my boastful neighbor, who has a different garbage company, says his company gladly takes pizza boxes, green glass and bottle caps. 

 

 On the inaugural day for recycling, I carefully carried my box to the end of the driveway along with the assorted sacks for colored paper, white paper, envelopes without plastic windows, bundles of cardboard, etc., etc. Across the street sat other green boxes dutifully filled with all manner of recyclables although some had failed to use a clear bag for white paper. During my morning walk, I happily noted that most houses on my street had their green box filled, most to overflowing. Maybe the planet will be safe from garbage, I thought.

 

For some reason, the green box induced a sort of hysteria in our house. Suddenly, the Mrs. and I were recycling all manner of things, no matter how insignificant. We became addicts, searching the  house for things we could put in one of the bags allowed in the green plastic bin. Gum wrappers, used aluminum foil, brown cardboard toilet paper rolls, used paper napkins, and junk mail suddenly became discovered gold. Nothing was too small and the green box overflowed. Each of us became expert interpreting the Form 1040 and we felt real pain if the 1040 disallowed one of our finds. Soon, we quit buying wine if it came in an unrecyclable green bottle. The green box had unleased monsters in our house.

 

I noticed that things were a bit different around the neighborhood two weeks after the initial recycling spasm on garbage pick-up day. This time, only about half the houses had their green boxes at the road, but that wasn’t the worst of it. I also noticed that several green boxes were still sitting in the same place as when they were delivered several weeks earlier. Those people hadn’t bothered to retrieve their green boxes. Shame, shame, I thought. I stole one and carried it back to my garage to use for my white paper and envelopes without plastic windows.

 

Sadly, in another two weeks, there were even fewer green boxes along the road filled with recyclables. Judging from this reaction by several of my neighbors, apparently, this recycling thing isn’t going to be as big as I thought. I guess I won’t need to worry about unemployment at the dump. In fact, maybe recycling is a bad thing since it reduces the volume of garbage and we already have an apparent shortage. We overcome the garbage shortage in Michigan by importing supplies of garbage from Canada to help fill our dumps. (I always knew that Canadians were smart!) One of the benefits we Michiganians derive is constantly changing scenery as new garbage mountains pop-up everywhere with their flares of burning gas that illuminate the dumps.

 

About the time of the contract signing, I finished reading a new book about pollution in our oceans from plastic waste. (Plastic Ocean by Captain C. Moore) The author says we have begun creating new garbage dumps in our oceans. The dumps are thousand-mile long flotillas of floating plastic bits of garbage. The floaters end up in the ocean’s gyres, where the ocean currents congregate the plastic like a giant toilet, except they don’t flush. All sorts of plastic pieces are found in these dumps. One of the more common are the cast-off nets from commercial fishing vessels that find it more economical to carry caught fish back to port than cheap plastic nets. So, they dump the nets.

 

Who cares about plastic endlessly bobbing on the ocean’s waves as long as it is far away and out of sight? Unfortunately, sea-going birds and numerous ocean creatures do. Many creatures can’t distinguish between bits of plastic and food. The result is high mortality rates for many creatures in the food chain including some of our grandest soaring ocean birds who are feeding their young with plastic bits.

 

But all is not lost. One of the high points of Michigan recycling efforts is our bottle law that requires beverage sellers to take back empty bottles while consumers pay a 10-cent bottle deposit fee. That law is credited with helping keep our rivers and streets mostly free from the litter of empties lying around and improving recycling rates. Not that Michigan can claim credit for being the first to implement a bottle law. Ireland began a similar effort in 1799, so you’d have to say that progress in recycling has been slow. Efforts in the United States are mixed; we still have some 39 states that do not have bottle bills mandating payment for return of used containers. The beverage industry fiercely campaigns to defeat attempts at expanded legislation for recycling bottles and so plastic bottles continue to fill our landfills and some escape to rivers and then the ocean.

 

So back to the question, to recycle or not? I hope you’ll say yes for everyone’s benefit.

 

                                                           

 

 

 

 

     

 

 

   

A Christmas Letter

      

Dear Friends,

 

This year I have decided to create my own, general purpose Christmas greeting in a curmudgeonly fashion. My aim is to reduce costs associated with cards and envelopes, not to mention the added burden of hiring the US Postal Service for last-minute delivery. Besides, I’ve grown tired of cards with sparkles and pretty pictures of Christmas trees with fake snow on rooftops. Instead, I want to tell it like it is: Outside, dead leaves being blown around the lawn by cold winter winds and, inside, the hectic pace of Christmas preparations interrupted by telephone calls from telemarketers. So, here it is: My summary of the year’s balance sheet of blessings and bumps for my Christmas Letter.

We did a good job again this year in finding ways to spend our retirement income in its entirety, leaving none to get moldy by lying around in a musty old vault somewhere. Not only did we manage to spend it, we achieved new records in how quickly we burned through it. The credit card companies must have thought we were in some sort of spending contest. Unfortunately, during the year, our sanguine ways were rudely interrupted by General Motors announced ending of my retirement paychecks. I recovered from the resulting catatonic state after I learned that General Motors were arranging annuity payments that would spend just as well as the retirement checks. Accordingly, we spent a good portion of our summer on camping vacations.

Marjorie helped with our cash flow again this year by reducing the outgo connected with our daily cocktail hour. Her skills in the kitchen and basement in fermenting malt and various fruits helped considerably and assuaged my investment losses in the lottery. We should be good next year as well as she has more bubbly in the making: one cauldron with 30 pounds of grapes promises to be another winner next year, although her cranberry wine from last year was superb.

We continue to spend considerable time together in pursuit of our dancing hobby with a lesson or a dance more than once per week. Most times, we must travel an hour or more to find a place to dance that is equal to our caliber of ballroom or square dancing. The dance caliber that we achieve is approximately equal to the Macarena when performed at a late-night wedding reception with an open bar.

The other exercise we’ve been getting involves a twice-per-week class known as Silver Sneakers; so-called, I believe, because all the women who attend have silver hair and the other two men and I sneak into the class with hopes that no one will notice. Two young women teach the class. I think they enjoy showing old-timers what we remember that we once could do.

Marjorie continues with her sewing hobby while I pretend to have deep thoughts at the computer in working on another book. She spent the better part of a year hand quilting a “Quilt of Valor” that she gave to a soldier, a Captain in the US Air Force.

Again this year we were blessed with good health and joy and we wish the same for you. Remember, every day is a gift, some are just more fun to open than others. May the joys of the season be yours!                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Bill & Marjorie Tudor

 

It's Not My Fault

I just learned from Scientific American that it’s not my fault that I am a little overweight. In their 2012 Special Edition, What Makes Us Human, they report that the human brain consumes 22 times the calories that other muscles need. 22 times. In other words, if eating one Twinkie makes me gain, say, 17 pounds, I’d need about 100 Twinkies to calculate the mass of my two snowmobiles sitting on the trailer which they are right now ‘cause they are broke.

For the past 25 years I have assumed I should eat less to lose weight AND IT DIDN’T WORK. I learned the hard way that eating less made me hungry so I would eat Twinkies before bed AND GAIN WEIGHT instead of lose it. After all my efforts to lose weight by exercise and eating less, now I learn that I should have been thinking more. That extra flab I see when I look down is not my fault.

I should have known that thinking uses calories. Every nerdy, smart person I know is skinny and wears glasses. And now that I think about it, I haven’t seen any fat guys buying any of my books, either. Not only do the skinny nerds think more, they have bigger brains so they use more calories when they sit around with their brains idling. I suppose they can calculate the mass of my snowmobiles even with their brains in first gear, whereas I need overdrive to remember the last time I put gas in the machines. Which is why they are broke, the repairman said the gas that I put in the machines last winter turned to mashed potatoes and plugged up the frazzelometer, and voided the warranty on the fuel metering ohmmeter requiring him to overhaul both machines just to get them started. I suspect his brain is not much bigger than mine though, because he has been calculating the cost to repair my machines for the last two weeks.

Since the holidays are coming upon us, I am determined to use my newfound knowledge to lose weight. With my small brain, I know I’ll have my work cut out for me. In fact, the last time I tried to think about something, (I can’t remember what it was) nothing happened. But I am determined to change things and I am going to start think training tomorrow by thinking about food, starting with Twinkies. If the Scientific American information is correct, I figure that if I think about Twinkies an hour or two each day, by Christmas time I should have dropped several pounds and I’ll be able to enjoy the holidays without that guilty feeling that creeps up on me like a cat stalking my dog, who also has a weight problem and who probably also has a thinking problem so it’s not his fault, either.

 

Happy Holidays

 

Grandpa Bill

Its For the Birds

I like to think of myself as a bird lover.

Not the kind that travels the country for bird –watching expeditions or one of those who keeps a life list of birds spotted and then brags about it to his friends. No, I’m more of a living room bird lover, the kind who likes to look out the living room window and then remark, “Hey, there’s a chickadee.” Not that chickadees are the only birds I can identify, but they are one of the four or five that I know about who live in my neighborhood. Because of my love of birds, over the years I’ve tried to help the little creatures that flit about my yard. My first attempt beginning several years ago was to help provide housing for the little winged dustballs.

 Over the years, I have invested a small bundle in birdhouses that I have built or bought and then mounted around the yard, defacing several trees in the process. So far, I have had exactly zero birds take up residence in my birdhouses. What I generally find is that the winged midgets live in houses of their own construction instead of my spacious and attractive proffered lodgings. My two-story, 12-room purple martin house is a case in point. I erected the apartment dwelling in 2010, but only one family of mud swallows inspected the place, sniffed, (imperiously, it seemed to me) and then left. Since then, a few other birds have stopped by, but none has stayed more than a week. I think that the business of selling birdhouses is a vast rightwing conspiracy foisted on us bird lovers by handcrafters at flea markets and craft shows. Since lodging birds hasn’t worked out very well, I have adopted other means of supporting them.

 I’m a bird feeder. I like feeding birds, probably because they remind me of my own habits. I get a kick out of watching the greedy little devils buzz around my feeders and devour my seeds like there is no tomorrow. Feeding the birds after the feeders have been empty for a day or so is a special treat. The fuzzy little chatterboxes just can’t wait for me to fill their larder. I can put out seeds anytime during the day and have half-dozen birds dive-bombing me before I put away the ladder. Those that wait ‘till I am finished generally sit on a nearby branch and scold me for being late with the food. After the feeders are full, it’s a hoot watching them chase each other away and then squawk or chirp proudly as they strut around the four feeders before they to gorge on my largess. But, bird feeding has also caused a number of problems. Beyond the mere cost of feeders, seeds, oranges, sugar and suet, I have had problems in keeping birds happy. In fact, it has been a long struggle between me, the birds, and several other critters that take pleasure in foiling my attempts to be a responsible birder.

 The critters that have caused the biggest problems are our local bears. Those beggars are determined to eat my seeds and, in the process, wreck my feeders. They generally wreak havoc early in the spring. Their springtime marauding happens when the lazy old bears wake up from a long winter’s nap only to learn that the rest of the world (that supplies their food) is not yet fully awake. Then, they turn to my feeders. I have also had bear problems later in the year when the mama drives away her youngster so she can receive the affections of the nearest male. The youngsters are often not skilled at finding food but they seem to find my feeders like a dog after a bitch in heat.

 I wouldn’t mind if the wooly bruins just ate the seeds, but no, they have to bend the steel pole holding the feeders, tear the tube feeders from their hooks then break everything else to get at the seeds. More than once, the black devils have carried away the feeders entirely, never to be found again. My poor, starving birds have to wait for me to find time in my busy retirement schedule to trek to the hardware store for replacement parts and then re-build the feeding platform and re-hang a new set of feeders. It makes me tired just thinking about it.

 Bears aren’t the only culprits. We seem to have our share of hungry raccoons also. Early one morning, I found four of the mangy furballs, all sitting in my platform feeder happily munching away. It is incredible how much they can eat in one night. I learned just how much the hard way when I left a 50 pound bag of sunflower seeds in the back of the pick-up truck that was parked outside. Some wily raccoon sniffed out my mistake, spread the word to all his friends in the neighborhood, and consumed a large share of the bag in one night.

 Smaller crittters also attack my bird food. I have a plentiful supply of red squirrels, fox squirrels and chipmucks who regularly attend the feeders. Of course, I discourage their direct attacks with the use of an inverted can mounted on the pole that supports the feeders. That helps a little. The birds don’t help though, as they shovel off seeds to the ground where the assorted buggers with tails gather for the bounty and laugh at the dog’s feeble attempts to chase them into submission.

 I put out a variety of food for birds; sunflower seeds, nyger, suet, safflower and of course, oranges and sugar water for orioles and hummers. The suet is a mistake since it attracts woodpeckers. The woodpeckers go from my suet to the logs on my house or the boards on my barn to peck away for their desert. My barn has several long rows of holes made by peckers who were searching for bugs on my board and batten. So far, the logs on my house are still intact as I keep alert for the telltale rat tat tat that identifies a pecker who wants attention or a bug meal. My favorite pecker is the Pileated, the bird who seems to be almost as big as I am. I am sort of glad that he is shy and doesn’t like seeds or feeding stations.

I’d like to tell you more about me and my local bird population, but I can see from my perch at the computer that the feeders are empty again so it’s time to ignite the feeding orgy. “By the way, there’s another of those screwy upside-down birds that looks like a chickadee hanging around.”

 

Grandpa Bill