Pups to the groomer.

Our three pups will be going off to the groomer's today for their monthly fix up.  Last month the oldest female came back with what we call a "hot spot" where the groomer had some trouble getting a tangle out and irritated her skin.  Of course after we got home, the male started licking it and made matters a lot worse.  Since we had both our females "fixed", he gets excited about the smallest things even if they are imagined.  Poor boy, I feel sorry for him.

It seems that yesterday's rain is over, although I have not seen the sun yet.  Last night the weather man said it would clear off today and get up in the mid to upper 70's.  It will be a good day even though I had trouble sleeping last night and am a little on the tired side.  Of course, any day that I wake up alive is a good day, right?  Now, I plan to have a good day and I want all of you to do the same, you hear?

Wondering about some red wild flowers.

For the last couple of weeks my wife has been seeing some pretty red flowers along a fence on the back road we take coming back home after stopping at the post office to get our mail.  She keeps telling how pretty they are and I always seem to keep missing them.  Yesterday, was different.  I remembered about them before I got to them and it just so happened that there were no vehicles behind me and I had my camera in my pocket.  I handed the camera to my wife (the flowers were a long a fence on the right side of the road) and told her to take some pictures.  I slowed down and made a quick stop and she snapped a couple of pictures.  Usually this field gets covered with blue bonnets and these red flowers which, after some research, I believe that they are a wild Phlox.  Here is the panoramic view:

 I cropped the picture down for a closer look:

 And a little closer:

Can't go any further, it is already starting to get blurry.  You get the idea, right?  This is the start of a very pretty time here in Texas.  Now, you all have a great day today, you hear?  It is a rainy day here in East Texas.

Wondering about hibernation.

Just a couple of days ago, poor old Punxsutawney Phill was yanked out of his den and his hibernation and held up to see if he saw his shadow.  Of course he saw his shadow and there will be six more weeks of winter.   That is just fine with me, because the weather here has been pretty nice with highs in the 70's.  I can take six more weeks of that before the hot, hot summer gets here
Correction:  I was looking at last years results and this year he didn't see his shadow so Spring is around the corner.

Oh, got off the track a little.  I was going to talk about hibernation.  What is it?  Do any of you know?  I figured it was sort of a state of suspended animation and in a way, it is.  A warm blooded animal that truly hibernates is closer to dead than alive.  Their heart rates drop to only a few beats per minute and their body temperature drops very low.  The Arctic ground squirrel cools itself down to 27 degrees.  It has actually come up with a way to keep its blood from freezing.

Everyone has heard that bears hibernate and usually have their cubs during that time.  Just in case you think that you could then sneak up on them and take a peek, if you were to come within 50 feet of her den, her heart rate will spike and wake her.  Of course I suppose that just like humans, there will be some that are extra heavy sleepers and you could enter their den while they are sleeping.  Notice that I used the word "you" and not "me".

It isn't always the cold that sparks the hibernation process  but also drought or periods of low food supply.  Mammals are not the only ones that hibernate; lizards, snails, turtles, and fish will hibernate, even in warm weather when food is scarce.  Life has many tricks that it uses to maintain itself.  I prefer to hibernate on dreary, rainy days like yesterday and this morning.  Now you all have a great day, especially if you have come out of hibernation, you hear?

Wondering if blogs are like TV shows.

I was just wondering where some of the blogs I follow, including mine, would fit if we compared them with TV shows.  They don't all fit into just one category or, in this case, TV show.  Some are like travel brochures, some are like do-it-yourself manuals, some are like encyclopedias, some are full of useful information and some are not, some are about prepping, some are about homesteading, some are about people, some are about children, some are about pets, and some are just plain full of it (grin).  My blog is all of the above, but mostly just "full of it".  I wonder, how many of you recognize yourselves from the above list?  What??  I missed you??  OK, I did forget your category, so here it is:  "The best blog in the universe".  Now, did I get everybody?

The different types of TV shows would vary from variety shows to comedies, from horror  to happiness, from despair to joy, from helpful hints to useless information.  Just like I watch all those type TV shows I also read all the different types of blogs.  If they were all the same I would only have to read one of them, right?  Everyone has their own and usually different opinion of things.  Some of you are such prolific writers and it is a joy to just read your pose, some of you travel in RVs and that always is of interest to me, some of you fish and I love to fish, some of you talk about food and I love to eat.  I could go on and on but I always seem to enjoy reading what you all write and try to listen to what you have to say.

Now that I have written this, I am not quite as full of it as I was when I started (grin).  You see, some spilled out.  Now I hope the TV show which you are in today will be a wonderful and cheerful show full of plenty of sunshine and smiling faces.  In other words, have a great day, you hear?

There was a crooked man. . .

There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse.
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

 Remember that poem?  Well, so far I am not a crooked man and I don't live in a crooked house, but I do have a crooked power pole.

And a view from the other side:

 What happened, you may ask?  Well, a little while back the power company hired contractors to trim the trees and vines and any such stuff away from their lines.  When they came in here, they must have pulled too hard on the vines and when they saw what they did they just quit, leaving half of the line from the transformer to my pole untrimmed.  So, I guess I will try to finish their trimming job and then straighten my pole.  I think I will get a treated 2x4 and use it as a brace after I tie a rope around the pole and winch it back to vertical.  Not a huge job, but one that needs done and one that needs done right.

You all have a great day now, you hear?

Wandering back from the flea market, etc.

I am a little late posting today.  I don't suppose anybody noticed.  And yes, I have an excuse or two.  I have to admit that I did sleep in a little bit and that my wife wanted to leave a little earlier than usual to head out to the flea market.  She bought so much she had to take several trips back to the Jeep with her bags and boxes and stuff.  But guess what, I even purchased something.  I couldn't go home with out this plaque.  It is the metal one on the right side of this picture:

It is sad but true.  Also, it made me smile so I bought it.  The other one had a good saying on it, too, but I only bought the funny one.  On the same table was cigarette machine.  You stick a blank (filter and rolled paper) in a hole on the side (as shown) and then dump tobacco in the slot.  You then grab hold of that lever and pull it around and it stuffs the blank cigarette with tobacco.  I quit smoking way over 20 years ago, so didn't see a use for it.

We were late getting back home.  It was lunch time and as we were eating there was a knock on the door.  It was a census guy saying that a random number of people from the census two years ago were picked for a follow up more in-depth interview.  We happened to be one of those picked.  To keep from being bothered by the dogs, we went out to the motor-home and talked to him out there.  He was quite an interesting fellow and an interview that only took a few minutes stretched into way over an hour or so.  There was just so much to talk about and you all know how much I just love to talk.  He is now probably trying to make up all that time he lost but we became friends and he said that he and his wife may stop by sometime, or if he is back in the area he will surely stop.  Makes me feel good that someone, other than our dogs, likes my company.  Then again, maybe it was my wife's company?  OK, it was both of us, right?  You all have a great day now, you hear?

RV interior with slides in.

All the pictures I have posted in the past of the inside of my RV has been with the four slides out which gives us a 12 foot wide living area and bedroom area.  I thought that maybe you would like to see what it looks like with the slides in, the way it goes down the road.  I went out yesterday, disconnected the shore power and ran both the generator and the main engine for awhile, since they haven't been run for some time.  Both started up without any problem and ran perfectly.  While I was doing this, I took these pictures showing it with the slides in.

This first one is from the front looking to the rear.  The door in the back goes into the bedroom:

Sitting on the bed looking toward the front:

From the kitchen looking forward down the driver's side:

From the same spot only looking straight down the isle:

 From behind the front seats looking toward the rear down the driver's side:

From the same spot but looking down the curb side:

 It is actually livable with the slides in but to get to the large closet that extends the width of the bus at the rear, you have to crawl over the bed.  This makes it a little harder to load up the closet for a trip when the slides are in.  Since I didn't have any bright idea for a blog today, I figured that you wouldn't mind a tour of the RV with the slides in.  Do you remember from my old posts what it looks like with them out?  Just in case you don't, here is a picture from our first outing with it back when we got it:

  
We are having some great weather here, hope you all are, too.  Just, have a great day, you hear?