Sabbatical

Hey everyone out there. It's been pretty quiet around here without the Pig to bark at. Actually, that's not true, which would make it a lie, but I'm not admitting to a lie. Okay,  back to the serenity of the peaceful Blue Ridge mountains. Nothing is ever quiet with six dogs around especially when those dogs are Dalmatians who are notorious barkers. Since the pig has left us (a moment of silence for Pig and Piglet) the Doos have found any number of things to bark at including each other. They bark at squirrels, leaves, trees, water, humans and even me. Right now they are the great moth hunters. They are stalking moths as if they were a pride of lions on the hunt for antelope. Moths are not the brightest of God's creations, To say they are several french fries short of a happy meal is a classic understatement. They live to glue themselves to a lit light bulb and fry themselves to death. During the day, they lay down with their wings spread and soak up the sunlight which dries the dew off their wings so they can fly. This is all well and good except when you do this in snuffling distance of a curious Dal your going to that bright light in the sky. Now all of the Dals except Sunfire like the sport of hunting. Sunfire likes eating moths. Everybody else waits until night when they can sneak up on a flying moth and snatch it out of the sky. They aren't even too fond of eating them, just catching them in mid air. Now Sunfire is different. That's like saying if you fall off of a boat in the ocean, you might get damp. They are all different, but Sunfire is different different. He is the baby,  less than three years old, which in the world of male Dals, gives him the maturity of a pimply faced 15 year old. Male Dals don't even begin to mature until after 5 at which time they grow a brain. Anyway, Sunfire doesn't understand the subtleties of hunting. In his mind, why would you expend all that effort when you can pick them off like popcorn in a bucket during the day, watch them flop around, smack them around like a hockey puck, squash them with a paw and eat them. Makes perfect sense to him. The others look at him like "disgusting". Like he cares. His way of moth hunting may be a little too direct for them, but in the statistics of  "moths killed" he's leading the pack.

Oh, speaking of the Pig before. I found some juicy info I want to share. It seems that Piglet wasn't a piglet after all. he was one of those Vietnamese pot belly jobs, full grown. So it wasn't a big pig taking care of a little pig, they were FREAKS! It's like when you see those big fat women with those little skinny guys. I remember a long long time ago, hearing some woman in the grocery store telling the cashier how her husband had given her a whupping. This  woman was 400 pounds if she was a ounce and a good 5'8". All of a sudden  this little skinny guy comes up to her while she is having her groceries checked out, and by that, I mean the food. This guy is about 5'3" and a solid 100 pounds and none of that was muscle and very little of that was groceries. Okay, big deal, I checked them out. I was looking for the reason she would stay with a dickhead like that. Anyway, she yelled at him to get the groceries out to the car and at that moment I figured it out, they were freaks. That piglet was just like this guy, and the Pig was the equivalent of his wife. I look at that and know that God has a sense of humor. If you don't want to take my word for that, just look around for a few minutes or go to Illinois, but that's another story.

Okay, back to the title of this post. Sabbatical! I have decided to take a sabbatical, also known as checking out of civilization, off the grid, what ever you want to call it, I call it a sabbatical because it sounds classier. Now you're thinking, where you live is out of civilization! You are right but sometimes I have to go to town for something or another and that's a big PITA. So I decided that I would take one month off,  stocked up on groceries and dog food and biscuits and library books. The aim of this was to stay here on the mountain for a month and just enjoy myself and the dogs.  I work from home using the computer and that's only a few hours a day. I thought that it may drive me stir crazy but 12 days into it and I'm enjoying life more than I ever had. It's great to wake up to the mountain air and sounds of the creek. Sit on the screened porch and watch Sunfire eat moths. I spend the day working around the house and the yard which doesn't take long, watching the dogs run and play in the creek, reading, listening to music and watching the dogs stalk bugs at night. Now this may sound boring but it's not. It's what I always dreamed of, peace and quiet (well maybe not so quiet) serenity and dreaming of my garden. If anyone would have told me 30 years ago that this was going to be my life I'd have laughed. If they said it 10 years ago, I would have smiled and said, "I hope so". So if you are out this way, let me know and drop on by, I'll be at home......