Volpone
Zombie Hunter
There's a decent chance this is my last dog. I love her and she's a good dog, but I like active dogs and I'm getting too old for an active dog. It warmed up for a couple days, so I put away my cold weather gear yesterday. Was supposed to snow yesterday night but we just got a light dusting. Woke up this morning. 3" of snow on the ground and still coming down (I've got a thing up in Indy tonight so yay for that) and temperature dropping slowly but steadily.
So I unpacked all my cold weather gear. Morning walk was relatively uneventful. I mean, apart from crawling up a steep snowcovered railroad embankment and being annoyed when The Dog would stop to smell some random patch of ground for 2 minutes. Then circle back to smell it again after walking 30-40 feet. Lunch and a nap then out for the afternoon walk. This time she wanted to head down the bank to the creek. This is treacherous on an ideal day so I was resolved to just slide down most of it on my butt. I tore my ACL years back and the repair is stronger than not having it repaired, but not as strong as an undamaged ACL. So if I lose my balance it's usually better to just fall down than to try to "save" myself. I learned this on this same bank maybe a year ago, when I slipped in dirt and didn't want to get the new black jeans I'd *just* put on dirty. But not only did The Dog want to go down to the creek, she wanted to cross the creek. At this point, falling down isn't an option because there are head-sized rocks all over. In retrospect I should've sat down right away. I didn't and slipped slightly. Just enough to remind me my ACL only maybe 80% strength. The Dog, being about 1/3 my weight, a lot closer to the ground, and with 4 points of contact tipped with claws, ran around like everything was normal.
So now I've got to get *up* the other side of the creek bank. This is under a big concrete road bridge, so I stuck to areas where there wasn't any snow and gingerly made my way up. The Dog is good enough to wait for me.
I'm getting ahead of myself and should mention, having been below freezing for some time, the (uneven and covered with slick grass) ground is frozen hard--no sinking your foot into the soil for traction. Because of the cold, the snow is that light powder that just compresses and becomes even slipperier when stepped on instead of melting. So I'm stumbling along as best I can, cursing my life while The Dog happily trots along ahead of me. We got down to the turnaround point. There's a cut in the creek that is reinforced with big concrete landscape blocks. Not the kind you get at the hardware store, the kind they put in front of government buildings to deter bombers. They're tiered like a 15' tall pyramid. Oh, I'm ahead of myself again. By crossing over the creek, we were now on the side that my house is on. Instead of nearly killing me, we could've walked 3 blocks on cleared level pavement to get to where we came up the bank. So anyway, we're at the turnaround. I make it back down to the creek and make it across the ford without falling over or falling in and pick my way up the other bank--all the while prepared to fall if I slip. We eventually made it back to the first bridge with minimal falls or slips, but did have to scrabble back up the slick bank to where The Dog tore around like a lunatic for awhile for some reason. Then it was back down to the original creek crossing to cross a second time and go home. She's snoring on the bed behind me and I won't accomplish anything productive because I need to start getting ready for my trip up to Indy.
On an unrelated note, had some money come on as expected and am very close to being back at my emergency cash reserves after the misery of December's expenses. Of course once I pay upcoming bills that'll take up about half of that money and doing back of the envelope math, it will be very hard to do anything but stay caught up until I rent out my vacant property. When that happens, life will be good, but until it does I'm one catastrophe from being back on the ropes. And this isn't even paying back the additional money I drew from my HELOC loan. Life's a lot of work when you're going to die no matter what you do and the best you can hope for is to make the trip as comfortable as possible.
So I unpacked all my cold weather gear. Morning walk was relatively uneventful. I mean, apart from crawling up a steep snowcovered railroad embankment and being annoyed when The Dog would stop to smell some random patch of ground for 2 minutes. Then circle back to smell it again after walking 30-40 feet. Lunch and a nap then out for the afternoon walk. This time she wanted to head down the bank to the creek. This is treacherous on an ideal day so I was resolved to just slide down most of it on my butt. I tore my ACL years back and the repair is stronger than not having it repaired, but not as strong as an undamaged ACL. So if I lose my balance it's usually better to just fall down than to try to "save" myself. I learned this on this same bank maybe a year ago, when I slipped in dirt and didn't want to get the new black jeans I'd *just* put on dirty. But not only did The Dog want to go down to the creek, she wanted to cross the creek. At this point, falling down isn't an option because there are head-sized rocks all over. In retrospect I should've sat down right away. I didn't and slipped slightly. Just enough to remind me my ACL only maybe 80% strength. The Dog, being about 1/3 my weight, a lot closer to the ground, and with 4 points of contact tipped with claws, ran around like everything was normal.
So now I've got to get *up* the other side of the creek bank. This is under a big concrete road bridge, so I stuck to areas where there wasn't any snow and gingerly made my way up. The Dog is good enough to wait for me.
I'm getting ahead of myself and should mention, having been below freezing for some time, the (uneven and covered with slick grass) ground is frozen hard--no sinking your foot into the soil for traction. Because of the cold, the snow is that light powder that just compresses and becomes even slipperier when stepped on instead of melting. So I'm stumbling along as best I can, cursing my life while The Dog happily trots along ahead of me. We got down to the turnaround point. There's a cut in the creek that is reinforced with big concrete landscape blocks. Not the kind you get at the hardware store, the kind they put in front of government buildings to deter bombers. They're tiered like a 15' tall pyramid. Oh, I'm ahead of myself again. By crossing over the creek, we were now on the side that my house is on. Instead of nearly killing me, we could've walked 3 blocks on cleared level pavement to get to where we came up the bank. So anyway, we're at the turnaround. I make it back down to the creek and make it across the ford without falling over or falling in and pick my way up the other bank--all the while prepared to fall if I slip. We eventually made it back to the first bridge with minimal falls or slips, but did have to scrabble back up the slick bank to where The Dog tore around like a lunatic for awhile for some reason. Then it was back down to the original creek crossing to cross a second time and go home. She's snoring on the bed behind me and I won't accomplish anything productive because I need to start getting ready for my trip up to Indy.
On an unrelated note, had some money come on as expected and am very close to being back at my emergency cash reserves after the misery of December's expenses. Of course once I pay upcoming bills that'll take up about half of that money and doing back of the envelope math, it will be very hard to do anything but stay caught up until I rent out my vacant property. When that happens, life will be good, but until it does I'm one catastrophe from being back on the ropes. And this isn't even paying back the additional money I drew from my HELOC loan. Life's a lot of work when you're going to die no matter what you do and the best you can hope for is to make the trip as comfortable as possible.
