Author: doug

Truck gets hit by dog

Yes, you read that right.

Benji disappeared into a yard, the second half of which, facing the potholed dirt road, has tall bushes. I couldn’t see him, but, leash in hand, was watching for movement through the bushes. Also monitoring the aging Doguita, who sensibly stays to the side of the road when a vehicle, such as a 50-year-old gardner’s pickup, lumbers toward us.

Sure enough, with impeccable timing and predictable lack of vector calculation, Benji comes blasting blind out of the yard and BAM! smacks into the truck. I thought he hit the bumper. Maybe he hit the fender. Anyway, an exceptionally loud noise. The driver stops, rolls down the window and I say in Spanish “They never learn.” Had I been a little quicker, I might have asked if his truck was OK. Whatever the look on my face, it must have been amusing. He smiles, says something, drives off with his workers. No big deal.

I think I detect a limp, but no, within 30 seconds Benji is on to the next house, yapping at the dogs behind the fence and running up and down with them, tails wagging.

(N.B.: I am careful to keep him on the leash where I know fast traffic is possible.)

banji-tennis-ball

Here’s the little darlin’ earlier today, once again delivering a destroyed tennis ball for me to kick 3 meters (max) from where I sit at my computer so he can chase it.

 

 

We don’t use that word here.

Unable to secure the pretty-but-pretty-malfunctional wooden doors of the barbacoa (which is an enclosed parillera, or cooking area), given the recent rains and humidity, I decided to abandon the door’s lock and install a hasp and padlock.

I didn’t know the word for hasp, so I looked it up: aldaba. (Fun Spanish fact: if a word begins with “al,” it came from Arabic.)

In the local ferretería, this word drew a blank look from the proprietor. I explained with my hands and a mention of candado (padlock). Aha! He knew exactly what I wanted and reached for it on a nearby display. It’ called [_____________], he explained, but the word went in one ear and out the other when I saw what he had just handed me.

aldaba

Because puppy.

We had a problem. When we tried to sit on the couch after dinner to read, Benji would get between us and stretch out. Which amounted to being in both of our laps. At the same time.

So wife said, let’s replace wicker chairs in the bay window with small couch from upstairs. And it worked. She could sit there — reading material illuminated by an amazing 5-watt LED ceiling bulb — while I sat nearby on the couch, its empty two-thirds occupied by puppy.

Tonight, puppy Tetris.

image

FWIW: we bought used furniture and reupholstered thinking rental, since we had another house at the time. Didn’t happen. Stuff’s ugly. Whatever.

 

 

The country kitchen, or lack thereof

I still haven't made the kitchen cabinets

June 2014: It’s been six months now that the kitchen of our little country place has looked like this. After building a few little pieces of cabinetry, I froze on the kitchen. First, it was bloody hot, and woodworking is not great fun when you’re sweating and sawdust sticks to you. Then the awful rains, and then … well, no real excuses.

The other day I had a breakthrough of sorts. I realized that I’d been trying to start with the largest, most critical component, which would maybe present no problems if I had experience. But I don’t. “Warming up” with the smaller, less critical pieces makes a lot more sense.

Update: it’s been 2-1/2 years now, and it still looks like this. I think maybe It’s not going to happen?

No respect

I have not much effort lately to pick up the trash the fishermen leave behind on the beach. Today, walking barefoot, a clear piece of fishing line caught my eye. For some reason, I bent to pick it up. It wasn’t very long. Only then did I see what my unconscious eye had already spotted.

fishhook

This is why I have almost no respect for those cerdos humanos who fish on the beach.

Giant ants

espacio-ciencia

Espacio Ciencia is an interactive science museum next to the Portones shopping center in Montevideo. I had never noticed it before yesterday, when we made one of our “OK,we really need to go” trips to Montevideo. Because driving to and in Montevideo is not something I think anyone likes. But going by bus is worse.

Long ago I dreamed of making giant ants, and placing them in the trees of our property in North Carolina. Warms my heart to see someone else went through with it!

Mushroom season

Well, OK, I honestly don’t really know if it’s mushroom “season.“ But as autumn progresses, they seem to be popping up everywhere.  I spotted this cluster on a eucalyptus tree recently.

fungus/mushrooms on eucalyptus tree, Uruguay

2016-03-27-2

Are they edible? I have no idea. They don’t look like the ones people sell on the side of the road. The last time we bought some of those — six years ago — we ended up throwing them out because they were so nasty. Not poisonous. Just not good. Perhaps they were the pine tree mushrooms instead of the eucalyptus tree mushrooms.

Another nice development since we moved here (recall coconut oil going from nonexistent to ubiquitous) is almost-constant availability of fresh mushrooms in the supermarkets. They’re not always at a price we want to pay, but they’re available.