Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound. We here in the pack, hope you had a great three day weekend…as for me, I don’t know yet. I am typing this ahead of schedule since my play-date book has been pretty full the past four weeks. As I mentioned in my past article, I had the opportunity to attend the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500, where we got to stand in lines for hours under a hot sun, and pay $30 for two brats sandwiches and soft drinks…but what are you going to do? Then this weekend I get to go to a baseball game with some friends, and the following weekend I am scheduled for a colonoscopy. Not exactly a play-date activity, but I finally got tired of my doctor asking me when my last exam was, and when I tell him it was over 10 years ago, he gives me that eye-rolling, clinched teeth, big sigh look. Enough is enough! I agree it should be done but I hate taking that stuff that acts like a vacuum cleaner on your insides. Oh well…better safe than sorry. Then the following weekend I return to Ohio to visit family and have a memorial service for my brother who passed away just before Easter. He did not have a viewing…was cremated …so the plan was to get back together and share memories. And that pretty much brings me up to the Fourth of July weekend. Kind of hectic but better than sitting at home in front of the TV or computer every night. One activity that also occupies my time is mowing the yard. I have a big yard..about ¾ of an acre and during this time along with the regular rains the grass grows like weeds. I don’t know about you but I have certain clothes set aside to do chores like mowing [I mow most of this by hand]…usually clothes that have holes in it, a stain, or just doesn’t fit very well anymore [you know…dryer shrinkage]. During the cooler days I have some light weight sweatpants that are good to keep the wind and grass off the legs. There are several ways a pair of sweats can wind up in the grass pile; one, they get holes or tears; two, the drawstring will disappear inside the pants and no amount of effort can coax it out; then there are times it just breaks off and of course there is not enough string left to tighten the tops of the sweats. The final and most frustrating one is where the knot you tied has become impossible to untie once it has gone through the washing machine and dryer…and no matter of pulling or tugging is going to untie that knot. So about a month ago when a cool front came through I decided to put on a pair of “cement-tied knot” pants, figuring there was just enough give to get it up over my hips. Well…of course…the rope snapped. I was already dressed so I figured that if I tucked in my shirt and wind breaker there would be enough tension to keep my pants on. Well that worked for about 15 minutes until I discovered that even mowing with a wide stance was not going to keep my pants up. I should have just cleaned myself off, went and changed clothes, but I have a thing about making things last. So I came up with this brilliant idea [my words…but I think you will agree once you see the solution to my sagging pants]. I had some big paper clips in the garage…the big metal kind that can hold an inch of paper together. I use them to keep bags shut or keep pairs of gloves together etc. I grabbed a couple of those..pulled my pants up..clamped both sides to the windbreaker pockets…and went back to mowing the lawn. Worked like a charm! Fortunately I have no real close neighbors, so my strange sense of fashion style remains here in the pack.
Got to run. As always be good, do good, play safe and remember clothes make the man….sometimes.
JR
