There I was, sitting at the dining room table with an oscillating sprinkler in my hands. Really, it was more like I was sitting there with an UNoscillating sprinkler in my hands. It had somehow lost it's ability to move back and forth. It worked fine in Los Alamos just last year, and I could see no reason for the change. It just refused to function in Oregon. Nothing was broken, and the control gizzy was set just where I liked it during a previous lifetime.
I was brought up by parents who themselves were raised during the depression years, and who learned to fix stuff - not just toss it 'cause it quit working. They, mostly my Dad, taught me to be the same way. If it's broken, fix it. If it's not broken, leave it alone. Well, I tell you I was stumped. This one was not broken at all, it just didn't want to work. Now if I were still a card carrying member of the Republican Party, this post would wander off in another direction and I'd rant a little about welfare queens.
These days I happen to think the biggest welfare queens are actually CEO's of our largest corporations, so I'm not gonna go there. Instead, I'm gonna tell you a little about my dog, Muffy, 'cause just about the time I was ready to bang my head against the table, in hopes that action would bring an answer to the problem of the balky sprinkler, he started barking from the deepest regions of his lungs at something in the master bedroom. He was, ya know, REALLY upset about something.
Several weeks ago, Carolyn and I spent a rainy afternoon listening to him and learning his accented version of doggie speak. He has a sort of yelp if there is a cat he wants to chase, a deep growl if a dog encroaches on his territory - that kind of thing. It was time well spent, as we now know exactly what he knows when he starts talking to us. But, I'm sure there are a couple of words in doggie speak we did not learn that day because he was using one of them back in the bedroom.
Hoping to further break the sprinkler so I could justify the purchase of a new one, I dropped it on the table and headed to the other end of the house to see what all the commotion was about. It sounded like he was a Seal exiting a Blackhawk - he was ready for war. I turned the corner from the hallway into the bedroom and started to laugh. Muffy was looking at a strange dog in Carolyn's full length mirror and trying to scare it away.
Muffy is a genuine eight pound white fuzzball all American mutt, a defender of his homeland and champion protector of his owners. Nothing scares him, he digs in the mud, crashes through rose bushes with delight and chases everything from butterflies to Dobermans. He hates being brushed and that's why his very long fuzzy hair wound up knotted so tightly it caused him to sit and scratch at it for twenty or so minutes every hour. He also knows exactly what he looks like when he sees himself in Carolyn's mirror, and because he's such a guy dog, he seldom takes note of his appearance.
It has finally warmed up a little around here. By that, I mean it no longer drops much below thirty degrees at night anymore. For the last month or so, I have been promising Carolyn that soon as it got warmer, I'd take Muffy to the groomers and have him shaved so all the knots and tangles in his hair would not cause him to scratch so much . They were clearly bothering the poor little guy. Well, today was the day. I loaded Muffy, mud, tangles and all, into the Guzzler Deluxe and dropped him off with orders to the groomer to shave him as closely as the middle class of this country has been shaved over the last couple of decades.
It didn't take her as long as it took the oligarchs and their bought and paid for politicians. An hour later I went back and loaded what appeared to be a rather largish, big eared, white rat into the Guzzler Deluxe and headed home. Oh yeah, the rat responded to the name "Muffy." What a change.
It was this change that had caused the mixed up animal to believe, as he casually passed by the mirror, we had been invaded by a strange dog, one that did not belong in our castle, and who needed to be barked at. After recovering from my fit of laughter, I calmed him down, reassured him all was right with the world and returned to the cantankerous sprinkler. Everything was good in Muffy's world, but I still had a lazy sprinkler in mine.
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