Walking The Dog

... that when you rush to work, leaving everything as per to the last minute - by which I mean loading the washing machine, feeding the dogs, rinsing the dishes so that there is a chance that the stay at home offspring will manage to wash them up properly much later in the morning, chucking bread ingredients into the bread maker so that the same offspring will have food for lunch, making hot chocolate for Littlest, taking the fed dogs out for a walk round the garden with poop-scoop toolage and wellies and a raincoat and actually remembering to eat breakfast and find vaguely matching, vaguely respectable attire that will vaguely 'do' for work - and you push the speed limit along country lanes to arrive on time. And you do arrive on time. Just. And after saying, "Hello," and "Isn't the weather awful?" the receptionist politely inquires, "You do know you start at nine?" And it's an hour earlier than nine. That salvation lies in a cup of freshl...

Every step I take; every move I make; I am watching ... for whatever it is that I've forgotten to do. Every single day (must get this earworm out of my head!) for about a week, I've woken with the disconcerting conviction that I've missed a date in the diary (easy since I have two, plus a family calendar and husbad has a virtual one plus another on the study pin-board, which is exactly too many to cross reference or update or do anything sensible with at all in the manner of streamlining the family timetables, events and holidays - thank heavens for dentists and doctors who now text a few days before appointments just to remind you that once upon a time you declared yourself available for ten minutes in two days time, which is just time enough to check  all  the diaries and confirm, with the 'OK' text as requested). Or perhaps I have failed to keep a promise; have betrayed a secret; mislaid something important or left something plugged in. Maybe it's that ...

Sorry. Herein follows a bit of a rant. But there haven't been any rants for a while, so it's overdue. At long last American research has revealed that Tiger mothers are dangerous. Not dangerous as in the George Dubyah I'm-a-bit-unhinged-and-none-to-clever-an'-bein'-a-tad-trigger-happy-could-start-world-war-three-at-the-touch-of-a-button type of dangerous, but dangerous as in insidiously damaging like a canker that slowly grows on a tree and gradually throttles it. Phew! Non-Tiger mums and dads (usually mums) can relax, safe in the knowledge that gentle support, a lot of love, understanding and encouragement is really all that our little darlings need. And we may bask in the reassurance that our darlings will be more inclined to darling rather than devilish behaviour if we treat them this way. Which is after all the way of reason and the sensible, in proportion approach that we have known to be right for years but haven't dared name, lest we were labelled...

How can two dogs - of similar size, the same breed, and the littler one being nephew to the older one - be so different in their attitudes to so much? Take for example grass cutting. We are basically surrounded by a mossy field with some hedge-like planting around the edges  Cutting what grass hasn't been strangled by the moss would be a long and arduous task with a push-along mower, so we have a mulching tractor that we sit upon and drive. Top speed is enough to make any following dog break into a gentle trot. Any following dog being Four-legged-friend who faithfully trots after me, along-side me and in front of me in ever decreasing circles. Yes! - circles. I am not in possession of that peculiar  trait that would turn lawn-mowing into an obsession with stakes to mark out the tractor turning points at the verges (I kid you not!) and precision cutting in straight lines with impressive displays of fretting when the lines become wavy ... namely a Y-chromosom...

Wonderful is not the adjective I would normally choose to describe the word moth . Put me in a room with an agitated, light-obsessed, dusty, fluttering creature of the night and I will be ducking and diving and covering my head and making distressed noises like 'EeeK!' and 'Ooh!' I do not like them. I dislike the way they bounce around at face height. I dislike their lack of sonar guided obstruction avoidance. I dislike their dust in my hair and on my fingers. I hate their larval holes in my jumpers. I could come over all Dr Seuss-like at this point and say "I do not like them late at night, I do not like them round my light, I do not like them on a wall, I do not like them - not at all. I do not like them with my lunch, I do not like their bitter crunch, I do not like their hairy nose, But I like their squish 'neath stamping toes!" But this one ... I have to admit - helped by being outside (light-bulb-less and ceiling-less) - that it is rat...

Four-legged-friend needs to go on a diet. He is perfectly happy with the expanding-waistline-due-to-excess-food situation; oblivious apparently that his lack of enthusiasm for games of chase or fetch is attributable to his heaviness and resulting slow gait; and ready to top up his constant insatiated appetite with the occasional geriatric rabbit. We on the other hand, unfairly compare him with his nephew who is slight of frame and fast and bounces. Four-legged-friend has never bounced. To be fair he has a huge head and a big barrel chest, but his girth currently resembles a mare heavy with foal. It is not helped by his recent propensity for discovering unopened sacks of dog food. And ripping them open. And gorging himself. I guess he could be hypothyroid or have worms. I suspect however that it is simply greed. And a limitless, Labrador lust for food He eats everything - from rabbit droppings, to potato peelings, to wellington boots, to leather shoes. They make a good...

An indicator perhaps of my odd sense of humour, this footpath sign always makes me smile - Choices - path to left or right. Or straight to heaven. ... Yes - I know the 'up' is meant to indicate straight ahead, but that's not what I see, or think, when I walk by. Which I do frequently. Is 'walking on by' another way for a procrastinator to plough ahead - safer walking the worn path of blind-faith-in-sameness: same avoidance of decisions, same putting everything off, same not straying to embark on a new path in case that new path disappoints or throws up new challenges which would then have to be avoided, buried, and lost in the mountainous to-do-pile. Hmmm - this procrastinator is going to change. The list of jobs is too long to ignore, the consequences too hard to bear, and the fear of failure diminished a little, by some hopefully not too transient positive thinking. I spent this morning explaining positive thinking to Littlest who styles herself "t...