Bitsy in Santa Fe – 130605

Bitsy is snoring fl at out on the fl oor of our little travel trailer, taking up the entire space. She has been bored stiff for the past four days while I, first, slept for two days more or less, and then worked for two days to produce the current blog/podcast, and so today she rejoiced in a whole afternoon of social interactions.

We arrived a bit early at the end of the rail line in Santa Fe, because we like watching trains come in, and so chose the opportunity for a bit of restful meditation while waiting for the event. Or at least I meditated. She watched and waited for something more interesting to happen. Which it surely did. What fun to meet my cousin Nancy, whom I have not seen since I was more or less about 6 or 8 years old. We had at least two lifetimes to talk about, while Bitsy flirted with every passing dog lover, and finally tried to make friends with the entire trainload of people heading back to Albuquerque.

Now here I am sitting up late at night, feeling quite hyper, making pictures while Bitsy snores.

It’s Really Cold Here

How cold is it?

Pickup wouldn’t start this morning. Two days ago I forgot to take my gallon of coffee water out of the pickup into the house. In the morning, frozen solid, so I brought it in. I also threw out several inches of ice from Bitsy’s water. This morning, two days later, coffee water still has ice floating on it and Bitsy’s chunk of water is still sitting there. Snow has not melted from the peaks to which I am going next Monday.

But we still went out in the 40-50 mph wind to Santa Fe’s amazing four-acre dog park.

The Rest of the Story

For those of you who have followed he tale of my pickup that died every time I tried to hitch it to the trailer so I could transport the washer from the ranch into town to put it in the Peach Clubhouse, here is the end of that story.

Sorry I was too busy to take a picture, but you can check out the picture of the Peach Clubhouse, which is on the Peach Clubhouse permanent page of this blog you. Click on it in the upper left corner, and that’s where I was carrying it to. And the steps I encountered. But to get back to the story.

I did purchase a come-along, which turned out to be defective, but I jerry-rigged a way that I could make it work and got the washer into the trailer and managed to raise the ramp. That was the second time the truck died, just as I got the trailer hitch centered over the hitch receptacle, and here came A-1 towing. Again.

Then the truck got fixed (again) and I put it under the gooseneck hitch of the trailer, holding my breath because it was at that moment the truck always seemed to stop running and get sent back to Pickups Plus, where they did a great job of tracking down one problem after another until – – –

Everything went very well and I drove away, with two flat tires on the trailer, but it has four. So we rocked and rolled over to my tire place and had a nice chat with people I haven’t seen since last year, to give a good start to the morning, they aired it up, and I drove into town, stopped in the road in front of the clubhouse, and with some difficulty removed the washer from the trailer and dragged it up to the front steps.

Hmmmmmmm.

One little old lady cannot drag a washing machine up a set of steps.

And here is the best part of the story.
You’re waiting, I know. It’s taken about six weeks.

So a person I didn’t even know stopped, also in the middle of he road, and dragged the washer up the steps for me.

Hooray for neighbors and communities, right!

It’s Worth a Try

Bitsy’s Thanksgiving Holiday

Bitsy Elizabeth misses those dog parks we visited all last summer. Even though she loves riding in the car and otherwise hanging out with me, there is nothing more fun for a holiday bash than meeting new dogs. Especially those dogs who are about her size and like to play.

Bitsy Barked

When they hauled her truck off on the flatbed — again. You remember the last time we hooked the truck up to the horse trailer it died flat just when we got it hooked up and before we could load the washer on board. Because believe me I am not in condition to lift a washer up into a pickup truck. This time we got the trailer attached, backed it straight into a rather tricky place where the washer was, and managed to get the washer into the trailer before the truck died.

Bitsy was angry. She barked at the man who was carrying off her truck, but at least this time we also had a cell phone on hand so we didn’t have to walk all the way back to the car. So maybe we are making progress.

The goal for this weekend was to get the wheel back on the flat trailer and drag some things out — bookshelves, stuff like that. We got the wheel on, but of course without the truck — oh well.  And we are also happy that the tensioner on the car broke LAST week rather than halfway to Dallas.

If you want to hear about our much more carefree last summer go to Bitsy’s Dog Park Diary at http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3631026.

Bitsy Bored

This is the week of the insurance. Bitsy’s daily routine, usually, is to jump in the car, drive to the Peach Clubhouse at whatever time in the morning I manage to wake up, which always is by 4 am, which used to be 5 am, a time established by our old cat, Buttermilk Pie. I guess it is her memorial, at 5, now 4, Bitsy’s tail begins to thwack the mattress. Today I grabbed it to keep it quiet, and she took that as an invitation to 50 pounds of active playtime, so we were up and had to go to work. Then usually, early afternoon, work finished, we come back and she plays outside for the rest of the day.

But this is the week of the insurance, so we piled back in the car each afternoon, and went to all the various insurance carriers to get everything straight for the coming year. What a load off. I really don’t like these responsibilities, but I’m thankful that my contacts are local, accessible, not some machine in Utah or some place, and they do what they say they will do. Next will be the month of the greeting cards and book !!, Outside the Circle, twelve years in the making will be finished before the year-end holidays. After that the month of the taxes and then we will be off again. Meantime, Bitsy is bored sitting in the car every afternoon, and even bored in her own yard with no trips to the dog park and nobody to play with. Well, except that this morning she called my attention to a dead possum in the neighbor’s yard that I tossed in their trash can. She enjoyed that. Now — bored again.

But if you would like to read about Bitsy’s adventures last summer, in Bitsy’s Dog Park Diary, you can buy the cute little stocking-stuffer book that contains world-class photos on each of 20 pages, for only $15 from me or $15 plus tax and shipping from BLURB. It’s a nice small guest-gift for people who like dogs. Would be an excellent small gift, for example, at the BACH christmas party. Maybe next time I’ll make a horse book.

Bitsy’s Dog Park Diary is posted on BLURB, with the option to look at a few internal pages. At
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3631026
Or go to the bookstore and plug in Lynn Lamoreux, or click on the link above.

Those of you who are keeping up with the adventures of Bitsy and her owner as they try to find a healthy home — you will remember the last episode was about trucks and trailers. I had finally gotten them together at the same time and place and was hitching up, when the truck died and had to be hauled off to have its alternator replaced. I thought we did that when we were in Chama? Anyhow, the goal is to get the lawn tractor and the washer moved, but we can’t do this while driving the car.

I’ll leave out the part where the car broke down just when we got the truck back. Isn’t that sweet?

And then, yesterday, truck purring like a kitten, we backed up under the horse trailer, which is good for this job, low enough and wide enough, and needs to be removed from the weed patch. I let down the gooseneck on the truck bed, hooked it up and pulled the trailer forward far enough to see that I had not raised the tailgate before leaving last March or april or whenever it was. The tailgate is extremely heavy from being waterlogged, and my strength has unaccountably diminished over time. OK, I thought, I’ll just drag it around where the washer is.

The short answer is we hit the corner post of the fence (yes, broke it) and couldn’t go any more forward. I can’t back up the trailer with the tailgate down, and I never DID find my two come-alongs that used to be standard equipment in my pickup before I went trailer-parking. So today I’ll try the same recovery method I used when I couldn’t find the chain to haul out the hay. Buy a new one and maybe I will instantly find the old one someplace I wouldn’t have guessed.

Meantime, I managed enough strength to block up the tailgate so it’s not setting on the dirt wicking up water. Assuming any water is left in the dirt.

And for those of you who don’t CARE about the adventures of Bitsy and her owner, tomorrow we will begin a series of the adventures of Amelia in Uganda.

Bitsy’s Dog Park Diary – 120920

And on the final day, which was very long, we left the dead Llano River, and the pleasant Junction Good Sam trailer park – excellent internet access – and drove, and drove, and drove from the arid lands into the hill country forests that now consist mostly of dead oak trees. Well, maybe not mostly, but it does grab the eye, hundreds and thousands of big beautiful old dead oaks. I would have stopped several times to take pictures, but the road was only two lanes with no shoulder. One in particular I would have taken. I noticed a big “get Obama” sign in front of a forest of mostly dead oak trees, and I remembered whoever said that Obama “wants to help the ecosystem but I will help you.” Here is this poor guy who really believes that his politician can help him — while the only thing that could REALLY help him is those dead oak trees (well, symbolically and truly, the oak trees represent the bios that is the only source of our earth, air and water). His have mostly died.

In fact it wasn’t until Johnson City, all the way through Fredericksburg, that we found a place where Bitsy could stay in the car under a tree while I ate, so we made all that long first half with no stops. Nice little friendly place with a tree out one side and another tree on the other side they changed the building rather than cut down that oak tree.

Isn’t it odd, in Silver City, a place where trees basically don’t grow without help, there were plenty of easy parking places with wonderful huge old trees hanging right over Bitsy when she was parked in the truck, while in the original forests of Texas, we drove about a hundred miles before we could find a decent place to park.

Austin is a much worse mess than the last time I tried to find my way (it’s a straight shot, but four or five lanes in each direction and my – well we give thanks to the fine mechanic in Chama who installed the extremely inadequate right side mirror that I had bought to improve upon nexttonothing.

Next time I go anywhere with the trailer it will not be anywhere near a city. It’s Google’s fault. I assumed at least some common sense. Maybe I should take the other little trailer. It drives a lot better, but it has no toilet facilities, and it turns out the trailer parks are getting uptown and some won’t take little trailers anymore. Anyhow, it was theoretically not bad at all, I didn’t get lost and I didn’t run into anyone, and the road mostly went where Google said it would — but I had to do a heads-up on one guy who was riding my right rear in spite of my signals.

As far as I can tell, Dripping Springs has been all eaten up by the beast. Too bad, was a nice little town. On the other side, the beast rages almost all the way to Elgin – well, Manor, really, but all that gorgeous agricultural earth between Manor and Elgin is mostly no more.

Someone is raising the ugliest building I’ve ever seen on the outskirts of Elgin. Why would anyone spend all the money to build a big new building that is terminally ugly? Again, no place to stop for photos.

And then it was nothing but to come home. Altogether about 8 hours driving time. On state highways, our safest speed is about 50, plus or minus, because the little trailer jumps around like a grasshopper when we aren’t on the interstates. The truck is capable of a much bigger load, but probably not such an opinionated one, and we don’t want to be in a position where the trailer drives the truck.

The Brazos and the little Brazos both have water in them, and not quite so many dead trees on this side of Austin.

We came off the Brazos River Bridge into a cloud of agricultural chemical smell – not sure what but some kind of poison – maybe a pesticide or an herbicide – and on home to the standard Bryan sunset at the Studio.

Bitsy’s been basically on leash for months, so she joyously examined her acre, but it wasn’t very long she was at the door to the truck, asking for another ride. Today we’ll see if the car still runs. Got to find internet access and the company is mad at me because I had to refuse payment to get them to finally disconnect the IN in the clubhouse. Actually they never did listen to me; it went into collection and they turned it off then – for spite I guess.

Does that make sense? It’s a strange strange world we live in, where most of the people think the corposystem makes more sense than the biosystem.

Silver City Farmers’ Market