A Not-So-Secret Admirer

There was only one person at the counter of the Gas Station Chicken Store on Saturday. An older man, dressed neatly in a dark blue knit shirt, gray pants, and dark blue jogging shoes. He was chuckling with Fave. They seemed familiar with each other. For a split second, I wondered if it was her dad. That would be wishful thinking, though. I don't imagine that he's recovered so fast from his hospitalization a couple weeks ago.

"Okay, then. I'll get going. I'll see ya, Fave. Oh! Got a bunch of winners there?"

"I have a bunch of winners, but they're not BIG winners! They'll do."

Chuckles went out the door. He was parked out of sight, on the front side of the building.

"That guy! He comes in here all the time and flirts with me."

"He seems like a nice guy. I couldn't see what he drives. But he had nice shoes!"

"It's probably that little white pickup truck. He told me I was beautiful! And then said I was blushing."

"Well, why WOULDN'T he tell you that? And you ARE blushing, heh, heh."

"But I'm 48 years old!"

I can see why Chuckles would be flirting with Fave. She doesn't look her age. I might have guessed 38. She is outgoing, and gives off positive energy. I'm happy she has a not-so-secret admirer. Everybody likes to feel appreciated.

A Confederacy Of Rascals (Part 2)

Here it was, 11:00 on Sunday night, and I'd just learned that my package of dog treats had been delivered the previous day at 3:38. Well. Good luck to me finding it now. I tried to check the FedEx shipping details, hoping for a picture, to see if it actually came to the Mansion. No photo. I swear I usually get one. Then again, I usually get a notice on the morning it goes out for delivery. Wait a minute! It said it was "left on front porch."

I turned on the porch light and looked out. Nothing. I opened the door and stepped onto the porch. To my left, about five feet away, was my little Jack. SITTING BY A BOX. An open box. Jack hunkered down an walked to me. He looked guilty as all get-out, even though I had not said a word in my shock. Jack licked at my CROCS and rolled onto his back.

"It's okay, Jack. You're not in trouble. You're a good boy. Let's see about this box."

After reassuring Jack some more, and giving Pepper, who had come from the back porch by now, a cursory pat... I carried the box into the house.

THE TWO PACKS OF DOG TREATS WERE INSIDE!

How in the Not-Heaven had those treats survived 31.5 hours on the porch with two chewing dogs??? It was a miracle. The packing slip was inside, too.

They had definitely been working on getting into that box! Two corners were chewed. The clear tape was gone. Any packing materials were gone. I had seen Pepper in the front yard with a black mass that looked like a shredded garbage bag on Saturday. It might have been those blow-up packing pillow thingies.

This might be a case of the recipient enjoying the box more than the gift! Don't mind Farmer H's stack of clean shorts on the couch. It's become his new closet.

I'm guessing the box was actually sealed when it was delivered. I suppose the dogs might have tried sticking their heads in to get at the treats, but the flaps might have closed on their necks and spooked them. Otherwise, the treats must not be very appealing!

Poor little Jack. He probably has PTSD from the time he ate 1/3 of Genius's gift of a bison leather wallet that was also delivered to the front porch by FedEx, and found in the front yard/field in Jack's mouth! Heh, heh. Maybe all that thumping I heard was Jack trying to take the box away from Pepper, because he knew it was wrong!

Yeah. I don't believe that scenario. Those rascally dogs took great advantage of the laxity of the rascally FedEx delivery team.

A Confederacy Of Rascals (Part 1)

It's that time of year. The time for school fundraisers. I got a text from The Veteran a couple weeks ago. It was only a link. No message. I thought he meant it for Farmer H. They both deal in the same kind of merchandise with their businesses. I thought that's what the link was for. Farmer H said he did not recognize such a link.

I don't like clicking those things on my phone. I entered it in HIPPIE, and saw that it was a fundraising site for one of The Veteran's daughters. Of course I always contribute to such fundraising activities for the relative children. I looked for something to buy.

I don't need wrapping paper or overpriced candy. So I settled on overpriced dog treats. I realize that I'm getting very little for the money. But it's something that I don't have to worry about melting or being stolen or forgotten in the order. We made a donation, and that's all that counts. I also checked to have it delivered, so we didn't have to bother with Farmer H picking it up from The Veteran's house. His time is so valuable, you know!

On October 2, I got an email that my order had shipped. Okay. Usually, on the day of the anticipated delivery, I get an email from FedEx. Our orders come out of Rolla, MO. That's a 2-hour drive to Hillmomba. Sometimes later in the day, I get a 2-4 hour window of time. Sometimes the delivery doesn't happen, and later that night I get another notice that the order is delayed until the next day. Whatever. It was two little bags of dog treats. Not a big deal. I knew they had shipped from the fundraiser supplier on October 2.

I didn't get any further notices. I didn't dwell on it. Sometimes things take a while to get here. I didn't even check the tracking, I was so not concerned.

On October 4, Sunday night around 11:00, I started wondering about when the dog treats might arrive. I followed the tracking number.

WHAT? My package had been delivered on October 3, Saturday, at 3:38 p.m. 

I was in town at that time. Left around 3:15, and got home at 4:15. I had even passed a FedEx truck on the county blacktop road, on a curve over the hill from Mailbox Row. He had pulled off on a gravel road, and was tippy-toeing along the side of that curve to pick up a bright orange "come-a-long" canvas strap that had been there for two day. [Farmer H said he stopped, but it didn't have all its parts.] The FedEx truck made me think about my dog treats. I had looked at the porch as I came down the driveway, but didn't see a package.

Where was my package???

A Pepper-y Panic

We have an evening routine now. When Farmer H comes home, he takes off Pepper's collar and puts it on the charger plugged in by the kitchen door. Then he sits outside with the dogs, playing on his phone. I am at the table with my scratchers, and tell him when the collar is charged. It usually takes 45-50 minutes. The indicator light goes from a flashing, spinning, green circle of dots to a single green dot. The battery seems to old a charge of about 36 hours. 

When Pepper breaches the electronic fence, we get a notice on the app. The symbol is a yellow paw print. The problem is that our phones don't work well inside the Mansion. I blame the metal roof. Sometimes we don't get the notice until an hour after it happens. That's not a big problem. Pepper has always come right back into the fence after a shock. It's not like we would immediately rush out to search for him.

I hear the dogs throughout the day, thumping around, wrestling on the front porch in the morning. I hear them bark in the front yard. They spend a lot of the day lying under the carport, in separate holes dug in the gravel where Farmer H parks SilverRedO. Pepper's toys are often out behind the garage. I don't obsessively check the Halo 5 Collar app.

Saturday, I didn't look at it until around 2:30, when I was leaving for town. It showed Pepper's last known location to be in front of Shackytown Boulevard. There's a small sinkhole there. More like a collapsed little mini-cave. There's a solid bottom, and a bit of a top. Farmer H says they go over that way all the time, barking under the shacks. So I suspected Pepper was snooping out a varmint.

When I left, neither dog came running for a treat. I didn't hear them barking. That was odd. In town, I checked the app again. It showed Pepper still in the same place. The icon was not lit up. It didn't move to sync with Pepper's current location. When I squinted, I saw that under Pepper's picture it said 9 HOURS AGO! 

That worried me. Did Pepper's collar fall off? Or was Pepper hurt? I called The Pony to check on the app. The Pony said, "Hm. It says CHARGE BATTERY. So I guess that's just the last place Pepper was before the battery died."

Well. That was kind of a relief. But not. Because Pepper could be anywhere! He'd been 9 hours without any buzzers, whistles, messages, or shocks to discourage him from leaving the boundary. He's used to staying closer to home now. And he knows his way around. So I hoped he wasn't reveling in his freedom and traipsing all over the countryside.

I had seen Farmer H charging that collar the night before. I saw with my own eyes how he attached the charger. And how the light turned solid green after 50 minutes. It was easier to believe that he hadn't gotten the clasp closed. Pepper is wiggly with him when the collar goes on. I couldn't explain why the battery went dead around 7:00 a.m.

I DO recall that the collar was covered with mud. Farmer H thought Pepper had been rolling around after a slight rain. Maybe the connectioin wasn't good during the charge. It's magnetic. The charger itself plugs into the wall, but the part attaching to the collar is 6 or 7 little dots, which line up with such dots on the battery part of the collar.

When I got home, I was very happy to see Pepper come running out behind the garage with Jack. They jumped over the side, and raced into their trail in the woods. That was not making me happy. The dead collar would not discourage Pepper from breaching the fence there this time. Luckily, Pepper turned right, and ran behind the Mansion with his nose to the ground, rather than staying with Jack at the border of the neighbor's property.

I took off Pepper's collar to take it in for a charge. The connection area was very dusty. I blew on it and wiped it with my finger. It started charging. Took 1:15 this time. It was really most sincerely dead.

Farmer H came home, saying that Pepper hadn't breached the fence all day.

"You don't know that! Look at your app. Since 7:00 this morning, it hasn't worked. The Pony said the battery was dead. I just now put it on the charger."

"Huh. It DOES say the battery is dead."

"I don't know where you guys are seeing that. My phone doesn't show me."

Farmer H picked up my phone to prove me wrong. But also said it wasn't there. He fiddled around until he opened something that displayed the battery life for me. So now I can check.

The battery has worked fine all day. It's 2:00 now, and it still has 15 hours left. So that must have just been a problem with the mud and grit messing with the charging. I HOPE!

Pepper is fine. I think he was a good dog. I doubt he even knew he was free.

Scratchin' Tickets And Pickin' Bones

I have a bone to pick with the Missouri Lottery! It's about the new scratcher tickets that came out on Monday. No, not because they're CHRISTMAS tickets already. But because the new $5 ticket has a feature never used before. It's a QR code!

Ain't nobody got time for no QR code on a scratcher!!! At least this old gal. I want to scratch my ticket, and know if I won something. I don't want to pull out my phone and scan to see if I got a bonus prize. I only scan later, before I leave for town to cash in actual winners. I scan both winners and losers then, to make sure I didn't miss anything. I use the MOLottery app for that. I have no idea how to scan a QR code. That's just an extra, unnecessary step!

I asked The Pony how to do it. "[SIGH] Oh, Mother. I'll show you sometime." No. I'm not that curious if it takes an in-person lesson.

I looked on the MOLottery Facebook page, to see if other people were complaining. TRAITORS! Of the comments I saw, 80-90 percent of the people LIKE IT. But one of them said, "Not a fan. Not everybody is tech savvy. I imagine a lot of winners will be thrown away." I agree. I'm a technology simpleton. 

Anyhoo... I also found out, from the reply by the MOLottery official spokesperson, that the only time there's a winner on the QR code is when there's also a winner elsewhere on the ticket. AND that when you use the MOLottery app to scan the barcode at the bottom of the ticket, the result will inclue any QR prize that might be won.

So... as long as I scan the tickets in my usual pattern, I won't miss any QR code win. 

Good to know. Consider that bone picked.

Humans' Critters

The gory dead armadillo was gone the next day, as well as the turkey buzzards. In the fall and winter, those turkey buzzards hang out in the trees of Farmer H and Buddy's Badly Blacktopped Hill. Hundreds of them! We see them all the time when driving home as the sun is near to setting. I'm not sure when they'll return. Maybe they are always there, and we don't see them because we're home when the sun sets around 8:00 in the summer.

Anyhoo... this week I've seen two new critters down by the mailboxes, on consecutive days. They were lurking a short way up the gravel road, after I passed the three parked cars waiting for their kids to be delivered by the school bus.

The first was a cat. Fully grown, not a kitten. A gray striped tabby, standing on the left side of the road, who backed up into the underbrush as I drove by.

The second was a dog, a bit further up the road, by where there's a little waterfall in the creek, and a short path to get there. He was on the right side of the road, standing with all four feet on the gravel. He was definitely part German Shepherd, from his coloring. The other part must have been some kind of hound. He had longer legs than a shepherd, and a shorter back, and a less-feathery tail. He had a collar, with tags. As I passed, he RAN AFTER ME! Not alongside, barking, like a car-chaser. He ran up the middle of the road, following me. Like a lost dog, looking for his people.

I don't know anybody out here with a dog like that. If somebody dumped him, surely they would have taken off his collar and tag, which might trace him back to them. Maybe he was just curious and out roaming. 

I told Farmer H about the dog, so if he came to the Mansion, we could check his tag and see if we could find his people. Doggy stopped chasing after about a quarter mile, just before I got to the Badly Blacktopped Hill.

Farmer H said, "Did he look like Pepper?"

"No. I told you, he looked like part German Shepherd. He was brown and black. OH! I get it! Like the neighbor called you about a dog down by the mailboxes, saying it was Pepper!"

"Yeah. I guess she'll have to find somebody else to complain to about her dogs barking now. And you know, they never even said, 'Thanks for stopping your dog from coming over.' They ain't never gonna say anything good about it."

"Probably not. I almost hope some other animal makes their dogs bark at night!"

We're terrible, I know. It's our responsibility to keep Pepper from annoying people. But still, I refuse to admit that the barking problem was solely due to Pepper.

The Drag Boys Come For Fave

There were some old cars parked at the pumps of the Gas Station Chicken Store on Saturday. It was a bit unusual. I wondered if there might be a car show in town. When I entered, three great big guys were standing at the register. Beefy guys, late 20s, in shirts with sleeves cut off. Shorts, crew socks, muscular tanned calves. TALKING LOUDLY!

Also, the two guys waiting were antsy. You know, when people sway from side to side, shifting their weight, doing a disorganized waltz step while marking time. The guys were perfectly polite, having assorted conversations with Fave, talking over themselves while filling in parts of the story.

Apparently, they were from out of state, in town for the drag races. They're held on the "flats," which are tailings left over from the lead mining days. Back when I first met Farmer H, and we were tooling around in his Fred Sanford truck, with me spotlighted in the one painted door, we went to the drag races. Several of us from our apartments would load up a cooler and lawn chairs. It wasn't frowned upon to ride in a lawn chair in the back of a pickup truck back then. 

Anyhoo... since those days, some apartments have been built near the drag strip. There's also a Super 8 Motel there. From eavesdropping (which was unavoidable at the decibels they were exuding), I gathered that Fave lives in those apartments, and had been awakened by the loud revving of their race vehicles. Though you would think most of them would have been hauled on trailers.

It was all I could do to stay there in line. If I was less addicted to my scratchers, I would have left. I don't like big loud people milling around in tight spaces. There was nothing wrong with the behavior of the drag guys. I'm just an old lady who has retired teacher ears, and unstable knees.

My interaction with Fave was short that day, as two of the guys who had left came back in for something else. Fave made up for it the next day by asking if I was still losing weight. Flattery gets her everywhere!

Apparently, Fave's dad is doing okay now. She said he told her: "You know that 23 pounds you lost? You look like you've gained it back." Poor Fave. I told her that didn't need to be mentioned, heh, heh. Oh, and Fave won $60 on the tickets I gave her Thursday. Things seem to be looking up.