It's been a while...

Lots of water under the proverbial...
Quick rundown:
Bought a used Land Rover Discovery II. A truly great car to drive; impeccable 4x4 manners. Unfortunately, within 8 months it decided to stop lubricating one of its exhaust valves. Estimates are from $3,300 to $6,000. We now pretty much have no money because 5 weeks after I had a complete physical which I passed with surprisingly clean numbers (even the doc said so!) I had a heart attack. Let me back up a bit...
Pam had been suggesting that I get health insurance. I'm 61 and it's was still a long way to Medicare, so I've been applying to Wal*Mart (only game in town) to get a part time anything. Finally, I was hired on as, what else?, a Greeter. I started on 29 April & had been working a week when I applied online for one of the Aetna (via AARP) insurance packages one morning. I electronically signed the application hoping for approval and a coverage start date of 01 June. That afternoon I had the heart attack. An uninsured & certainly unexpected heart attack. As of now we are at $19,600 w/more coming. Now you know why we don't have Land Rover fix-it money.

Also, we had to put our wonderful companion, Reno, to rest. He was pushing 14 and mobility problems were becoming too prevalent. He had ongoing digestive system problems that were causing him, and us, much discomfort as well.

Later...I need to run for a bit. Hopefully, I'll update/finish this soon. As in a week or so rather than another year.

Geez

Dogs in Arkansas Update.

Wow, I AM behind...
I found a great home for the Heeler in Jonesboro.
The basset pups went to the animal sanctuary near here but I don't think they've been adopted yet. Damn. The owners thought they could adopt them out quickly but even after 2 months, I know they were still there.

Finally, something new...

Did all y’all have a funnish “Christmas, "Holiday Season", "Kwanzaa", or "Cross-Burning" or whatever the hell you heathens celebrate? Pam & I celebrated by having a not-so traditional Thai Panaang Curry dish (tofu, hers/chicken, mine) with Satay (tofu, hers/chicken, mine). I made it and it was surprisingly good!! I’m becoming quite the Chef. Pamela calls me the “King of Defrost”. She calls me other things, too. I may have to head to Memphis or Little Rock this week or next, so I’ll try to find some Indian groceries with which we can celebrate Valentine’s Day (we’ll do a Masala or some other red dish). Of course, we’ll do a Thai green curry for St. Patrick’s Day.

We missed a White Christmas by a day. We got a little over an inch of big, wet snow on the 26th. Pretty I must say, but I’m sure nothing some of you others have received.

We are now the new, proud adopted parents of a beautiful Chocolate Lab (possible Rottweiler mix?) that wondered into our yard 3 times in 4 days last week. He was undernourished, covered in his own feces and dirt, and responded to raised hands by dropping, shutting his eyes, and cowering, so, yeah, he’s been hit. We're keeping him this time around. He is a really beautiful & sweet dog. But he's BIG (his paws easily reach up over my shoulders when he jumps up). And he’s STRONG. And he bounds around constantly. He’s now a very happy dog! The vet estimates him to be a year and he weighed in yesterday at 90 pounds. Next Monday he goes in for the sex change. We haven't told him yet. We'll advertise him as an adoptable in a few weeks after he has recovered but new owners will be scrutinized closely. Or we'll keep him. He's too rambunctious for Pam to handle right now so when I head to the Geezer Reunion (a high school reunion that is being held in the Florida Panhandle this Feb.) I'll board him for those 5 days, if we still have him. If we do keep him (yes, I already want to, but the Boss isn’t so sure) I’ll have a proper & spacious run built for him. He’s waaay too big for in-house & his tail is lethal. He already has a doghouse we’ve used for other strays that is big yet toasty and I move it all into the garage if the temp is slated for under 35…or if it going to be wet. Of course that means Pam loses her van’s garage space, but we do have our priorities.

You can see that he’s already pulled the tree border up; this is still a temporary site. He’s gone through 2 big rawhide bones in 3 days…that’s the soggy corpse of one in the background. Oh, yeah, his name is Hershey as in the candy bar. He got away from me this morning (he looooves the woods!) and bounded around for nearly an hour then came back with smudges of something he must have rolled in. Of course, he was bathed and received his puppy shots just yesterday.

We are approaching our 2 year anniversary as Arkies. We still love it here and are constantly awed by the state’s beauty. We are going to try to get more & more day trips to local off-the-beaten-path sites this Spring. Of course this whole area is off the beaten path. We never even hear jets flying over. We get cars on our stretch of the road maybe 2 or 3 times a week that aren’t the mailman. Private and so peaceful.

I’ve put my old truck for sale (for you guys in the know, that’s “Medium Rare”). The truck is more vehicle than I really need plus it’s getting a clutch glitch that worries me. The Land Rover is perfect for this area and I love it. I wish it was not so thirsty in the gas department, though.

The next Kevin-in-Retirement project I guess will be to repaint the house this Spring since it is beginning to look a little shabby. I’ll try to do most of it but I know I’ll need some help. Anybody?

& I still have to learn how to take care of green things. Back in Vegas I just watered the rocks once a month or so to wash off the dust and bring out some of the color of those rocks which were Dust Brown anyhow.

The extra good news is that there is a petition going around to try to get a bill on the ballot for next November to convert this dry county to a wet county. The Thumpers are going absolutely CRAZY. Those who initiated the petition are getting threats and are being cursed and damned to Hell. That doesn’t sound very Christian to me. I think bars are like strip clubs and churches: if you don’t like ‘em, just don’t go, but give us the options to choose. And didn’t Jesus (the Saviour Guy, not the landscaper) do a miracle or two that included wine? And what would Jesus say about cigarettes?

Okay, enough drivel…I’ll probably post this to the Geezin’InArkansas site. I haven’t published anything there in months!

Best wishes for a great year…

Kevin & Pamela Keough

Dog Situation in Arkansas

We just can’t take in any more! We already have our 90 lb, 12-ish yr old lab/shep mix & 3 indoors cats. Some have special needs; all are rescues. And we have the 2 outdoor feral cats that have adopted us. He (the boy cat, “Dennis” as in “–the-Menace”) just had 2 surgeries for an ear infection and now has a floppy ear. He was getting fairly friendly with me until I brought him to the vet 2ce. Now he’s very wary. And Momma Cat, Dennis’ mother & ‘lover’—having ‘spawned’ 4 kittens that took us months to spay/neuter and finally adopt out) is VERY wary…she will accept food, of course, but it better not be some shitty Wal*Mart cheap-o brand, either godammit!! The beagle mix puppies are a blur of energy and feeding frenzy, not to mention the poop quantities involved. The heeler is also a bundle & we don’t know how they will mix.

The adoption place in Fayetteville was a shithole and the woman who runs it is psycho. I mean a real mental case; vicious & vindictive. That’ll be another story…

So I brought the pups all the way back home; a waste of a day (12½ hours & well over 400 miles of driving on two-lane, twisty roads). We’ve come to the unfortunate conclusion that the only way through this despair is to put the beagle pups down via our vet. We absolutely just can’t keep them & a humane euthanizing is better than to abandon them & leave them out to die.

We’ve called every shelter in a 200 mile radius. No one will take them. No one CAN take them. Every shelter is over capacity & with this heat the toll is rising. It’s 106 right now. Even that “haven” in Fayetteville had many dogs in outdoor pens w/access to shade but no centrally cooled common area.

There was an abandoned kennel found in western Arkansas yesterday that had 114 dogs w/no water or food. They estimate it had been up to 2 weeks w/o care. Apparently the kennel itself was well constructed and designed, but the people there shut the fkng water off to the self-watering system built into the pens, shut down the power to the A/C system and drove off without telling anyone. No one has yet been able to locate them; they even just left a lot of their shit in the house & disappeared. 30 animals have to be euthanized (or have been by now). One female ate her own pup. This is a ghastly situation; one that we never knew existed anywhere to this extent before.

Even the woman with whom we board Reno (he doesn’t do well at our normal groomer/boarder—Marilyn at “Almost Home Acres for Pets” keeps him inside with her & he follows her around w/his tail between his legs) says that she now has to shut her eyes and just press on when she sees a stray. She let herself get over extended and got into money and effort problems. She told us about her friends who opened a shelter in her area (she’s 20 miles away) about 4 years ago and within 6 months, people had dumped so many animals that they lost the business due to over-capacity, the unforeseen expenses, & extra labor, and stress; they even lost their home and the couple divorced within a year after shutting down!

Sorry for the depressing news, but Pam & I are at wit’s and emotion’s end & we have to face this event head on. So, we thought we’d share our misery w/you. (That means I have to vent.)
I wish I could find a smiley face to add to the end of this sentence…


We thought about buying a dog run. A 10x10x6 we found is $500 but A) we can’t get it for 9 days and B) every asshole in the area will hear about it and they’ll dump dogs & cats here.

**Addendum
Pam just got off of the phone. That heeler mix we have got away from us the other day and was gone for 2 days. Animal Control got her somehow and tracked her back to us via rabies tag. Well, they just called to tell us that they have her again. But they don’t. "Ours" is in the garage right now. This is yet another one. And she was picked up near where I found “ours”. Must be a sister.

S H I T

Hell Motel

A couple weeks ago, I decided to take a little overnight getaway. So, on Sunday, the 5th, I headed to Hot Springs, a venerable old spa town of days past, to see the sights and to see if it was gimp friendly enough so that Pam & I might spend a day or two there in the future. Then on to Little Rock to spend the night so that on Monday I could do some non-rural shopping & chores in the 'big' city before heading back home. I used hotels.com to find a room. I found a La Quinta w/room rates that were suspiciously low (as compared to regular La Quinta rates) and it was located right in central Little Rock. Perfect! I could visit the River Market area, head right across the river to North Little Rock to visit a Land Rover specialist to get some info & advice on some minor glitches I've been experiencing w/my Discovery II. Follow that w/PetSmart stop (to find a special weight loss food for our now 30 pound cat) and then another stop or two to locate some car parts for the 2 vehicles I'm selling. Back to the River Market area to have an Anchor Steam (or 2) at the Flying Saucer Draught Emporium (http://www.beerknurd.com/). Then I'd drive over to west Little Rock to the one & only Indian restaurant in the city (state?), & load up on to-go plates for Pamela & me, and head home.

Hot Springs was jammed w/a fishing contest. & I mean jammed! By the way, the winner of this contest won ONE MILLION dollars!! It was not some little local event (move over NASCAR). Fox Sports Network & all of the Little Rock affiliates were among those covering the event. I got caught up in it and went in to watch the final weigh-ins. I though I was at a Rolling Stones concert...well, except for the music itself. There were only 2 kinds played: Country and Western. Because of the crowds & traffic I didn't get to my La Quinta suite (near the UofA Medical Center) until 9:15-ish. I was out of there by 9:30.(-ish).

This place was like a crack house. It started w/a sullen Asian girl, "Mai", at the front desk. She certainly did not make me feel "welcome" or even human. There was another employee there stumbling around the reception area. It seems he'd forgotten where or what a shower was. He was kind enough to grunt at me in acknowledgement of my greeting to him; that made him somewhat nicer than "Mai". And she had no idea where my room was. She told me to go "that way and turn left". Well, that way and left brought me to a wall. Then she yelled (I'm still in the office area...not 40 feet from her desk) "Oh, sorry, maybe you go right!" She essentially just sent me out to look for it on my own. As soon as I hit the littered parking lot, I was followed around by someone requesting money from me. The request quickly changed into a demand. I gave him a buck to get him away from me. Roaming the lot trying to locate the room, I passed by a room where a woman was shrieking at her two (or more) screaming, crying children. Then, I happened upon the pool where a woman was watching her 3 fully clothed (including shoes) children splashing & screeching in the water. But the best was yet to come. In a narrow hallway beneath the 2nd floor walkway, I glanced into a room to see a lovely 200+ pound, middle-aged, sweaty black woman napping on a bed in a brightly lit room right at the window...& not even the sheer curtains were drawn to protect my corneas, by the way. She was topless. She was wearing horribly stained granny panties. Nice. (I just threw up a little into my mouth recalling that sight.)
When I did finally find my room, the toilet had urine in it and the shower had been partially pulled out of the drywall. In an adjoining room there was a man & woman fighting. "Motherfuckin' this, motherfuckin' that, motherfuckin' 'ho', motherfuckin' bastard"...you get the idea. Plus, either he was slamming her into the wall (or maybe vice-versa) or they were throwing things around. I pretty much decided that I didn't want to be a part of this family's gathering.
On the way back to the front desk, a man came out of a room on the 2nd floor and dumped an ice bucket or a small garbage can full of water & debris over the railing & down into the pool, onto the deck, &, of course, on me where I was walking. When I returned to the desk area, there was a security guard sitting behind the counter hitting on "Mai". I've stayed at La Quinta motels before. They are usually rather nice. This place wasn't.

Divining. Yes, it's true

Some weeks back, I drove a friend to his friends "new" single-wide which is located on some way-back acreage in North Central Arkansas. I mean waaaay back. I doubt if I could find my way there again.

Anyhow, this trailer looked like a Cops episode waiting to happen. For that matter, the girl who just bought it would be in the episode, too. As the star, I think. She had a couple of pretty nice teeth.

So, we're out admiring the setting and she goes into the Cops set and comes out with 2 pieces of wire cut from an old wire coat hanger. They are maybe 7" long each and bent into "L" shapes about 3"x4". She calmy states that she'd heard that there was a water line buried along the front line of her property and she wanted to mark it. She slowly moves towards the front of her property line holding one wire in each hand pointing straight ahead. She moves slowly forward....and then they begin to cross.

"Yeah, right.", I said. She laughs and my friend laughs. AT me. So she says, "Watch this.", and goes over to the side of the property where a temporary 1" pvc water feed had been set above ground to supply her trailer until she could tap the main. As she crosses the pipe the wires cross again. Well, sheeyit, I think, anyone can cross the rods when you can see the water line and pretend to "find" a water line underground that may or, more likely, may not be there. She hands the wire els to me. She tells me to hold them somewhat firmly but to keep my thumbs off of them. I walked to the pvc line and they crossed. I went to the front of her yard to where she had "divined" the buried water main and they crossed. I swear I tried them a dozen times. I went up and down where the buried line was (not knowing it's route) and every place the rods crossed, they indicated that there was a pipe there and those places indicated a straight line. I went back to the pvc line in a dozen different locations and every damned time the wires pulled together.

Then they showed me the penny in the baggie of water...You tack that up near your door and it will keep bugs from flying into the door.

The Elks club does it at their entrances, too. Maybe there is something to the back country tales.

The Geez

**Clarification**

I've been trying to write something for weeks, even months now. I've actually written 3 different treasures but I've been smart (sober) enough to reread (& trash) them before publishing. God, I suck at this.



There is one posting that I must make a comment about. While rereading all of this drivel recently, I see that there might be a misunderstanding about something. The wedding I went to in Las Vegas last October (about which I have still not added any of those stories) had a reference to "possible" drug use. (Something about not wanting to have to take a drug test). I want it known that NO ONE in the wedding party, with the exception of one lone person who walked in on me and may have noticed alleged dandruff around my nostril, knew of or was aware of any alleged illicit behavior or product.

I may or may not have gone by an old neighbor in my old neighborhood who was not, in any way at all, part of the festivities or even aware of this event, and I may have acquired something stupid and energizing. Maybe.

Anyhow, I apologize to the Las Vegas crew for implying their knowledge or participation in any way.

I do have a great story that I need to set down about something that I personally experienced here in the Arkansas back country. Hopefully, I'll get it to you soon.

The Geez...