Slippery at Places

January 7, 2010.  Thursday.

Situation:   Have to leave for work today about 3:30.  Mway is sitting underneath the kitchen table, beneath Moi, when I come down to suit up at 2:30.  She starts circling around the kitchen table.  Moi teases her, “Why are you so happy?”  My boots are both behind the laundry room door, where I have been storing them for some time.  For many years, I kept them in the laundry room itself.  On many days, Mway would steal one or both of them, and drag them up to Moi’s bed or my bed or into the music room or somewhere else to remind me to take her for a walk.  That meant that I would sometimes have to roam the house looking for one or both of my boots.  Also Mway would sometimes get teeth marks in a boot and ruin it.   Since I have been hiding them behind the laundry room door, I have only had to search the house for a boot once or twice.       

State of the Path:  The snow seems to be disappearing from the path, but there are a number of icy patches, very slippery.   What little snow is left is also slippery.  I am glad I have my walking stick today   Down at bug land,  I see Mway running off into the grass with another stick she has picked up somewhere.  But when she sees me keeping doggedly to our usual route, she drops the stick and returns to the path.  Down at the creek, she runs way ahead of me, full of energy.  I walk slowly behind her, careful not to slip on the path where it runs close to the creek edge.  As I wind through the oaks and wild olive shrubs, I come upon Mway sniffing at the patch of ice in the grass at the other end of bug land.  I think for a moment that it might be interesting to walk across bug land on top of the ice, but instead I keep to the path and cross bug land at the usual place, at the plank that lies just before the area of all the red willow shrubs.

State of the Creek:  I don’t pay too much attention to the creek today, though I notice, in general, that much of the ice is starting to melt.   I do stop at one point to jab the ice with my walking stick.  Where I do that, the ice is still rock hard.

The Fetch:  Up in the clearing, Mway starts hopping and barking, showing great enthusiasm for a round of fetching the stick.   I stand at the end of the clearing, throw the stick toward the electric pole.  I remark at how much the clearing seems to be clearing.  Mway fetches the stick only one time.  She comes bounding back, holding the stick in her mouth, then goes bounding up the path, way ahead of me, back to the house.