Category Archives: doggy diarrhea

I HATE cold weather. HATE, HATE, HATEY, HATE it.

As a small child I was forced to live with my parents and brother and sister on the Canadian border where it snows pretty much year round. 

It left me horribly scarred. Winter wise, cold weather speaking.

Nowadays, my alcohol and sun thinned blood just can’t take it. Every winter I curse the cold and dream of moving further south, longing for my tropical island. I know I’m being petty and small. We get none of the grief of our northern neighbors with their blizzards and freezing rain and hell on earth.

But, today, as another arctic blast of global warming slams through, we are treated to a stiff northerly gale that will make your big ones freeze into little hard marbles. And as I walk our double Labs daily; daily emasculating myself, I wonder.

Why.

Why DON’T we move further south? I mean, I have all of the stick-to-it-ness of a post it note. 

And yet. When there’s a fire roaring and the dogs are splayed, sleeping, and the house is toasty, you do kinda get a warm familial feel to your life.

My confusion overlaps.

I was thinking today that I needed to add to the Cutter and Tug back story. I really wanted to. People are clamoring for it. Unfortunately for the hordes of Cutter and Tug back story enthusiasts, Miss Carol turned on the TV tonight and American Idol is once again burrowing full throttle into our homes.

Oh goody. My fave.

And it got me sparking. Just seeing Ryan Seacrest makes my teeth itch. Not another year, not again, not another seemingly endless season of relentlessly poor television, of vacuous emptiness. Please no.

And yet, it trundles on, mindless as a truck.

And we watch it, like a train wreck. You have to realize, my big thing is that I kinda admire the kids willing to pin their hearts to their sleeves and put their hopes on the line and perform for a Paula and a Randy and a Simon.

I just hate that they have to bravely perform for a Paula and a Randy and a Simon and endure their carefully scripted, commercially timed, comments. 

Makes me wanna stick toothpicks in my eyes. I thinkin’ I’m gonna be holed up in the Me Only Room listening to a lot of music in the coming months.

I went striper fishing this morning. Again.

Today it had seemed, at least on the face of things, that the fish catching gods were aligning themselves in my favor. I sparkled with confidence. The birds were workin’, dive bombing bait fish, (OK, they were a ways out), the solunar table was calling for a major feeding time at 10:32,(OK, it was 11ish) and it was sunny. What’s not to like? Surely the striper were lining up, just waiting for me and my rod.

I got my gear ready, donned my hip waders, and marched up to the beach, certain that I’d be bringing home the bacon, er, striper. Miss Carol was brimming with pride and anticipation.

And I fared the way I normally fare. Which is to say I got skunked. Nary a nibble.  After standing waist deep in 40 degree water for an hour and casting like a man possessed, I came up empty handed. Zero. Zip. Nada. Apparently, there were no marginally suicidal rockfish on my stretch of the beach willing to make me come home a hero.

This isn’t anything new. It happens to me a LOT.

So I came home and put all the fishing crap away and took Miss Carol to a bar we frequent and bought some rockfish instead. Blackened. It was way good. 

I win.

Firstly. I LOVE this photograph. Normally, my rampaging narcissism would never have allowed a picture taken by anyone else to grace my oceandoggy. But I love the story this tells. It’s a young navy wife waiting on the docks for her husband to come off the aircraft carrier and take her home. Love it. (Sorry for the graininess but it’s my photo of a newspaper picture- which helps a lot in the rampaging narcissism department)

Secondly. Miss Carol and me started our Annual Oceandoggy New Years Resolutionary Weight Loss Program. It’s something we do every year, not because we’re tied to New Years Resolutions but, because we are cyclical people and come January we are fat and happy people and need to drop a couple pounds. I’m 6′ and 195 so I need to lose a good 10lbs. Miss Carol says she needs to lose some too so we are cutting out carbs and eating like hunter/gatherers. Just meat and veggies. Sometimes we don’t even wait to bring it in off the grill and just stuff glistening handfuls into our mouths while we squat on the deck, the dogs glaring at us.

Then, if there are any leftovers our subtle struggle begins. When we’re not dieting Miss Carol goes out for lunch with friends and the leftovers are mine and mine alone. Now, however, we jockey for the good leftovers. Miss Carol will make her lunch at night snagging some of the best and I’ll hide my faves in the back of the ‘fridge when she’s not looking. Hunger does funny things to people.

Thirdly. I had wanted to have multiple active pages on the new blog. I had envisioned a website chock full of goodies. Unfortunately, WordPress has other ideas regarding the way in which I can do my bloggy. So. Instead of a multiple pages I have to change it and have multiple categories. I will try and post things to a particular category so that they are archived in an easily findable fashion. If I slip up and forget, tough. 

I’m hungry.

2008 is gone and, at long last, so are the tourists. They’ve finally gone home.

When Miss Carol and me first moved to the island, back when the earth was still new, tourist season ran from Memorial Day to Labor Day- what locals called The 100 Days War. It was brutal but compact. Every year, you knew it was coming, you knew it would be painful, but you knew you could get through it.

Like going to the dentist.

Then, several years ago, thanks to the City’s promotional efforts and Global Warming, the summer crush of Tourons began oozing into the shoulder seasons of late spring and early fall. Not a whole lot but, like sand in your bikini, enough to irritate.

Then the shoulders grew arms. The Tourons somehow collectively determined that Easter and Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years had to be experienced at the beach to be enjoyed, were they to be enjoyed at all. So, Touron enjoyment being paramount in their collectively little Touron heads, that’s exactly what they did. Again, not many, just enough to set your teeth on edge. 

Now, Touron Season runs pretty much from Easter weekend all the way to the day after New Years before they are all well and truly gone; leaving us locals only a few miserably cold, windswept winter months to revel in our solitude.

And revel in it we will.

We got back yesterday from the Annual Oceandoggy Christmas Family Blitz. Each December we turn our back on the beach, brave the elements and horrendous holiday traffic, and trundle north. And it was, as usual, a ton of fun, packed chock full of Herculean bouts of eating and drinking.

I LOVE my life.

We went to Miss Carol’s parents (that would be my in-laws) on Friday. 9 of 12 kids were home for the holidays which meant there were, by Miss Carol’s count, 38 of us in the kitchen at one point, what with nephews and nieces. Seemed like a lot more to me. But, hey.

After harvesting all the fun we could there, we moved on to my youngest sister’s house on Saturday where all of oceandoggy’s family had hunkered for the day, eating and drinking like it was something newly discovered.

Leaving blearily fucked up early the next morning I failed to take a turn that I seem to almost always want to fail to make and ended up in the mountains far, far from home and adding hours to our drive home.

yea, me.

We got home, the dogs died, and we sat. Panting.

From us and ours to you and yours.

Oceandoggy hopes that your Christmas is all puppy dreams and warm firelight.  

Or, if fires and dogs don’t float your boat, then whatever makes your toes curl with pleasure and blankets you with happiness.

Have the Merriest Christmas ever.

Look Ma, I have a header now. Nice header.

Secondly, I’ve added a link to the Volvo Ocean Race. I know most people consider sailboat racing about as interesting as their aunt’s meatloaf, but for some reason or another it just appeals to me. And not just because I sail. Or used to. Or did at one time. 

I think it appeals to me on some purely adventurous, romantic, level. It is both elegant and dangerous. One of the very first websites (they weren’t called blogs back then) that I visited on a regular basis some 15 years ago followed the Around Alone sailors on their single-handed race around the planet.

At that time the race was called the BOC Challenge and for the first time each of the captains checked in daily via e-mail to the website so that you could follow what they were enduring real-time. It was Armchair Adventure. So check it out- you too may get hooked. 

Another thing I did is activate the wordpress snow on my blog. I know it’s really nerdy but for some reason it just makes me laugh every time I see it. Stupid Snow. In fact, just thinking about it makes me laugh.

And lastly, I have finally posted a doggy treat and some doggy diarrhea is on it’s way.

The fun never ends.

Daily, twicet, I walk the boys.

Ours is not an evening stroll, nor a gentle  morning constitutional.

Instead, it’s a twice daily wrestling match between me and 150 lbs. of lively Lab puppiedom. It’s fun in a going-to-the-dentist kinda way. Sometimes I wonder if Tug hears his name as a command.

But we do it, a mile each morning and every night, no matter the weather ’cause it’s the highlight of their day.

And their want melts me.

Hey, tomorrow, Miss Carol’s gonna be out of town so I’m making my Sausage and Beans. I’ll finally have a post for doggy treats. 

I can almost hear the thundering clicky-clack of excited typing.

There is a delicious melancholy to rain and fog.

Even though I prefer nice sunny  warm days chock full of bikini babes and beer I have to admit there is something eerily embracing about rainy and foggy. It’s like Mother Nature is muzzled.

So you would tend to think I was one happy camper today. But nope. I still bitched and moaned walking the dogs, cursing the rain and Cutter and Tug’s simple headed straightforwardness. And their need to urinate EVERYWHERE.

But then I got home and got dried out and relented.