My wife left me this past Wednesday morning.
We've been married for over twenty-four years now, and it's the first time I've had the house to myself.
The transformation our home has undergone during her absence has been astounding.
Disastrous might be a better word.
I'll know for certain when she returns tomorrow afternoon.
I haven't fished or contributed anything to this place in quite a while.
After I retired I spent many hours sitting on the patio.
During that time I drank a lot of beer and smoked a lot of cigars while staring at the dog's toilet.
One day, after consuming more beers than I normally do, I thought, "Perhaps I can train Chauncey to use a different part of the yard (i.e., one I can't see from the patio) as his toilet."
And so the next day I prepped a patch of dirt on the side of the house and sowed it with lawn seed. I put up a temporary fence and gave the lawn generous amounts of water until it was green, lush, and well established.
Then I removed the fence.
In a matter of weeks it looked just like the dog's regular, everyday toilet.
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Unfortunately, once the dog had destroyed the new lawn, he went back to shitting and pissing on the old lawn.
It was then I thought, "Fuck it. I'm putting in artificial turf." Before I knew it I was ripping up bricks and shoveling dirt into a wheelbarrow.
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Once the bricks and dirt were gone, I paid someone to dump seven tons of base rock onto my driveway, and then shoveled that into the wheelbarrow and filled in the area where the dirt used to be. Then I chipped the mortar off the old bricks and replaced the old pathways.
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Chauncey remained undeterred by the changes that had taken place.
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I was one day away from renting a compactor and ordering a roll of artificial turf, when this arrived.
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From the photo one might think, "What a sweet looking dog."
Minutes after his arrival, he was spinning like a Looney-Tune Tasmanian Devil, and base rock was flying everywhere.
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He was adopted last week, but it will take a while to repair the damage he caused during his brief stay.
When not working on the yard, I'm usually with my father. He requires more and more care, and my mother finds it very difficult to look after him.
I try to take him up to his ranch in Mendocino at least once a month, and it's during those times that I come to fully appreciate my mother's predicament.
He can't do much of anything for himself, and I no longer feel comfortable taking a walk and leaving him on his own.
His old chicken coop and its surrounds are now infested with California ground squirrels. These rodents are classified as pests, and the state encourages their eradication. I've a good view of that area from just outside the bar, (roughly 150 yards across the way), and so for entertainment purposes I purchased a .22 caliber rifle so that I'd have something to do in the afternoon while he's napping.
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I never thought I'd be worse at anything more than fly fishing.
I was wrong.
I recently purchased a scope for the rifle. Perhaps that will improve my odds the next time I take my father up to his ranch.
More later, when then mood strikes.
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