Hello, sunshine!

Silas, Froggie, and Bea

We survived the last week of rain every day, cold, and no sun.  It was horrible.  The sun finally returned today.  I'm waiting for it to dry the yard a bit more (the garden is still pretty swampy), so I can get some power weeding done. I also need to stake some of the grasses that the rain knocked down.  My mood and energy level seem to be strongly determined by the sun.  When it's ugly like that, I just slog through with no energy and feeling down.  It's so nice to have a sunny day today, as I'm so much happier and more productive.

Poor Silas went to the back door every day, looked out, and decided he wanted no part of being out there.  He definitely likes the sun and warmth.  Today was his first day of deck sunning since last Sunday. He's back in the house now, lying in a sunbeam by the side door.  He's going to make the most of the sun.  

I cut back the morning glory vines, and his diarrhea has been totally gone, and he's back to his normal poop schedule, which makes my life SO MUCH easier.  I think that's pretty solid evidence that the morning glory leaves were the cause of it.  One of the challenges with a dog who survived on the streets by scavenging for food, is that he tries to eat and get into absolutely everything.  Almost every walk, I have to pull something nasty out of his mouth that he snatched up from the ground.  He gets into grocery bags, while we're trying to bleach and unpack everything. He will eat anything that is dropped, and he's so fast.  He's a very aggressive scavenger!  It makes me nervous, because his colon appears to be fairly sensitive, and I don't want him to get into something that makes him sick (or causes diarrhea).  I can't really leave him in the yard unsupervised, because there's too much out there that he can eat that could cause him stomach problems.  He's very smart and determined, which makes it even tougher.  

Silas, Froggie, and Bea

Last night I had the oddest dream that he decided to move on and leave me.  He swam away in a little stream with his new girlfriend and dog friends.  I was so sad that he left, but he looked happy swimming with his doggy girlfriend.  That was one small part of a much larger, much weirder dream--none of which makes sense to me in the light of day.  I also dreamed about my dear friend, Patrick, who ended his life in 2017.  While I hope every night when I go to bed to dream about him, it doesn't happen very often at all.  I can count on one hand the number of dreams in which he's appeared since his death.  Each one is such a gift.  Real or not, it restores my soul to see him and spend time with him.

My friend Julie brought me a bag of apples (50 of them) from her tree, so I made a caramel apple crisp this week and a batch of apple sauce.  I still have almost half of the apples left, so I'll be able to do another dessert and another batch of apple sauce next week.  My parents are coming by this afternoon for an outdoor visit, so I made a batch of whipped cream to go with the crisp.

I've roasted a couple more batches of heirloom tomatoes to add to my freezer stock.  We should have at least two more batches--hopefully more.  We harvested another batch of eggplant, and I used that to make a South Indian eggplant chickpea stew that was delicious.  I also made a Jamaican jerk (using soy curls) and coconut rice.  I'm looking forward to having that for dinner tonight.  If I can harvest a pint of cherry/grape tomatoes today, I'll make mac & cheese tomorrow.

We're starting the third week of classes this week, but I still have one class that hasn't met yet. It's really odd to be holding a first class in the third week of classes.  It's a Monday class, and the first week, we started on a Tuesday, and the second week, Monday was Labor Day.   

Silas' new skills

 The first week of classes is done.  The first week of remote classes isn't nearly as fun as the first week of face-to-face classes.  I miss the interactions with and connections to students. There's no way to make it the same online.  I'm doing my best to replicate it, but while I think the education can be equivalent, I don't think the connections can.

Silas had diarrhea again last week.  That is miserable for everyone with a dog in diapers.  He's been eating only rice and quinoa for a few days, and it's finally cleared up.  I've been brainstorming since it started to try to figure it out.  He eats the exact same food as the other dogs (and I make it, so I know it's fine), he's not on any meds right now, he hasn't been stressed, and he's always with me, so I know he didn't get into anything he wasn't supposed to.  I'm pretty sure I figured it out this morning.  He was sunning himself on the deck, as he does every sunny day, and I happened to notice him grabbing and trying to eat morning glory leaf.  He usually spends an hour on the deck, and I'm not out there the whole time he is, so I think he ate a few morning glory leaves and that's the cause of his diarrhea.  We're pulling all of the morning glories off the deck railings, and hopefully we won't have to endure the misery again!

His new hobby is trash tipping.  We have only one uncovered trash bin in the house, and that's in our laundry room.  It typically contains dryer lint and paper towels that we've used to clean up cat pee/vomit/etc.  Now and then, we throw in an empty bag of chips or an empty bag of cat food, and that's what he's there for.  He's so cute and proud of himself that I can't even be mad at the mess.  Last week he proudly came into the family room with the big empty bag of outdoor cat food in his mouth.  He really enjoys shredding paper and cardboard, so he had a blast shredding that big bag into hundreds of tiny pieces.  Yesterday he brought me an empty chip bag.

He also managed to take the lid off of the metal container in which I had stored extra rice and dry beans.  It's not easy for me to get the lid off, so I'm still not sure how he managed it, but he did.  I left him in the family room on an ottoman, chewing one of his toys, and ran upstairs for less than two minutes.  When I came back down, he was in the middle of the family room, with a two-pound bag of brown rice in his mouth.  He had put several holes in the bag, so the rice was all over the family room.  He again, looked quite proud of himself.

He's made really good progress with stairs, too.  We carry him up and down stairs, but he gets very impatient and sometimes goes down by himself.  When he started doing that, we'd always tell him NO firmly, because we didn't want his legs beat up by being dragged down stairs.  As the stubborn boy has continued to try to launch himself down stairs at will, he's gotten much better at it.  He is able to hold up his back legs, so they don't get banged around as he goes.  It's pretty impressive.  He can make it up the one step in our front-entry way, but I don't see how he would ever be able to safely get up stairs on his own.  

Last night was family game night, and for the second week in a row, we worked on playing/figuring out our new game, Asmodee Ghost Stories.  It's a collaborative game, so instead of playing against and trying to beat each other, we work together to beat the game.  It's extremely complicated.  The first time we tried to play, we couldn't begin to figure out the directions, so we ended up watching some YouTube videos that helped a lot.  We are starting to get the hang of it and managed to figure out some effective strategies last night.  I LOVE this kind of game.  While I enjoy playing games with the family, I don't like competing against each other. I wish all games were collaborative. I think it's much better for families and a lot more fun!