Been a few days, but I thought I would post a few random happenings.
First off I had an interesting night yesterday. I came home from seeing Stomp with Bethany (which was SWEET!), drove back to my parent’s home (where I’ve been house-sitting for the last 8 days). I saw that my dog got out of the back yard again (more on that to come), so I get home and get ready to go to bed. I walk up the stairs and walk by the bird cage. I don’t know why I paid attention to it, because usually I don’t notice the bird, but for some reason I did. I rattled the cage a bit and got no movement whatsoever. So then I look down to find that the cage was empty, with the door wide open…
Quick side-note – part of my duties of house-sitting has been to take care of the small zoo of animals that live here. I have to make sure that the dog, cat, fish & birds are cared for. My sister told me to give water to the bird every day and feed it every two days, so on Wednesday morning I did both. However I was running late for work and was rushing around and in my haste I FORGOT TO CLOSE THE STUPID DOOR! But I didn’t realize that until 1am Thursday morning…
So my first thought it "CRAP! Where is the freakin bird". I start whistling around, hoping that the bird will respond. I did a quick walk-around the house and couldn’t find it. At that point I pretty much resolved myself to the bird escaping somewhere, or maybe even is long gone when a door opened… There wasn’t much more I could do so I started to get ready for bed. I take my contacts out and start cleaning them, when I glance over into the mirror, looking at the right side, only to find… that freakin’ bird looking right back at me. At that point I tried to get him to perch on my finger, but he wouldn’t have any of that. He took off and started flying. With his wings being clipped he couldn’t get anywhere and started banging itself against the skylight. Then it finally flew out of the bathroom and landed right by it’s cage, by the stairway.
Well, that’s when the dog saw it too. Freakin’ dog went nuts and started chasing the bird. The bird was spooked and really didn’t know what to do so it glided itself down the stairs, with the dog following afterwards. The dog had the bird cornered and was ready to leap in. In retrospect, I dont’ think the dog would have hurt the bird. This dog has a lot of bark, but literally no bite – but at the time I wasn’t going to take any chances. At this point I yelled at the dog louder than I’ve yelled in quite some time to get away (at 1:15am I might point out – NIIIIICE). He finally listened and backed off. At that point I was able to get the spooked bird back into the cage.
Ugh… I’m sick of being a zoo-keeper. Which leads me to the story about my dog:
With the 4th of July drawing near our family dog has been getting more and more spooked by the neighborhood kids lighting off fireworks all over the place. For some reason my dog has it in his head that he would be safer in the front yard rather than the back yard (the real truth of the matter is that he wants in the house ASAP). For the last few days he’s been going to great lengths to get in the front yard. Before it was easy with the big hole in the gate, but we replaced the gate. Well now he totally screwed up the gate and broke a good 3 inch chunk of the gate below the 2×4 board we have at the bottom. Then he squeezed himself right under that. So the next day I went ahead and created a little barricade blocking the gate – with a nice metal cage blocking the hole he created, weighted down by a huge rock. Well now I think the dog has figured out how to climb the barricade and hop the fence. Now it’s only getting worse. Tonight I came home and found that the screen door got torn in THE MIDDLE – not the bottom where he usually scratches, but right in the middle! Then I came home this morning to find him in the front yard and while he was there he scratched out part of the front door. We’ve had the same front door in this house for hte last 19 years – and the freakin’ dog took a chunk of the door out. ARGGGH…
In all fairness I haven’t been home very early this week, and it’s probably not fair to the dog, but would it kill him not to vandalize our doors? I know fireworks are freaky, but geez… I just can’t wait for 4th of July to be over, and (this sounds really mean) but I can’t wait for my family to come home and this being their problem more than it is mine. After almost 3 weeks of being here my patience is pretty much worn out.
Hey congrats to the San Antonio Spurs. I was pulling for them to win it in 6, but I’m willing to take it in 7. I was hoping they’d win, mainly because they knocked the Nuggets out in the first round, and it’s a little comforting to know you’ve been beat by the World Champs. The NBA finals turned out to be pretty good – for the last 3 games. The first four games were unwatchable. But now it’s all over, and hopefully I won’t have to hear Rob Thomas’ "This is how your heart breaks" every commercial break… Geez! How hard it is to play more than one song?
TGIF tomorrow… I’m on a plane to DC in 30 hours…. The count-down is on!