Dogs, Cats and Afternoon Conversations

I’ve got a lot going on inside my head but it's not "baked" enough yet to commit to writing. And as for doing anything interesting this week, I doubt I can write 1,000 words on that topic either. Who really wants to know about a Red Hat Society tea where the highlight of the hour and a half conversation was a discussion on the shapes and sizes of women’s breasts? One of the ten ladies in attendance used to be a bra fitter back in the day when department stores had lingerie employees who did that sort of thing which is what got us started on the conversation. All I did is listen while the others joked about their fried eggs, cucumbers and watermelons. Half the ladies had also recently seen Mamma Mia: Here we go Again! and that filled up a good fifteen minutes as they told the other half about the movie. Unlike me they all loved it and several even wanted to see it a second time. Again, all I did is listen. Why spoil their happy chatter with my less than flattering opinion of the movie? 

We also talked about the engagement of one of our Red Hat sisters. Her ring has three diamonds: one for her, one for him and one in the middle for Christ. Someone asked her when the wedding will take place and she said, “Never. I’m going to a fiancée for the rest of my life. I’d lose too much of my income if we get married.” Before I learned about the diamond for Christ I teased her with a follow up question, “So you’re living in sin then?” to which she said, “Oh, no! I have my house and he has his and I love it that way. He’s too messy and I’m too neat to live together.” Okay. I get the two houses concept and know from my father’s last decade of life that having a girlfriend living a mile apart, who early-on turned down his marriage proposal, can work out great in the senior set. Dad and his girlfriend saw each other 3-4 times a week, talked on the phone daily and took vacations together. 

To round out the conversation that afternoon, the person in charge of planning our Red Hat ‘walk abouts’ announced that the church she wanted us to tour this month has stopped doing them. Boo hoo. The endless church tours the past couple of summers is what turned me sour on the chapter. So this month’s walk about will be to a nature center that takes in wildlife that’s been injured. I’ve always wanted to go there so I’ll be attending my first walk about since what seems like forever and a day.

Also going on this week: Levi did a return performance at the doggie dentist’s office where he showed off his obedience training by automatically hopping on the scale and sitting while the technician got the reading. Like me, his weight went up this year. He should be 27/28 pounds, but he’s 30. (Too bad his human---that would be me----keeps coming up with excuses for not taking him on daily walks. It’s too hot, it’s too cold, it’s too this and too that. It’s been a long couple of weeks since Levi got three teeth pulled. He didn't liked the canned food he was supposed to eat until this appointment. And I don’t blame him. It smelled awful and looked worse and he wouldn’t touch it, even when I resorted to trying to get him to eat it off a spoon. Don’t judge me; after three days of him not eating anything, what would you do? I ended up soaking his regular hard food in water until it was soft enough and I returned the unused cans of food to the vet. Thankfully, Levi the Mighty Schnauzer got cleared to go back to eating hard stuff. And the Milk-Bones Trail Mix fairy could be heard singing, "Yippie yi ooh!". The company missed Levi’s brand loyalty.

Ever since he was a puppy, Levi has gotten a trip to Starbucks for a cup of cream and to the pet store after leaving the vet’s office where canines are welcome to do their own shopping. In his first 5-6 years he’d always come home with a new stuffie but this time he literally smelled every foot of every shelf (down at his level) in a very methodical way up and then down each aisle, so that nothing in the entire Chow Hound store was missed including the official ‘house cat’ that was snuggled down between two dog beds. Their eyes met, then the cat went back to sleep leaving Levi to wonder, I imagine, if the cat was just another stuffie. 

Twice, people stopped to complement Levi on the fact that he was so calm and polite, sitting upon their approaches like the little gentleman he was taught to be. He didn’t bark in the store either and to chalk up even more merit points for good behavior, he also didn’t mark the ends of the aisles like others males have been known to do. But what was supposed to be a short shopping trip took well over a half hour of sniffing and he didn’t once haul a single thing out of its bin leaving me to guess on a treat to take home. I ended up getting him a cookie from the specialty ‘dog bakery’ shelf because they were close to the cashier and who doesn’t want to spoil their dog with a ridiculously expensive, decorated cookie that looked suspiciously like Chow Hound’s calico house cat? ©