The dishwasher is now on the fritz.  So I’m standing at the sink doing dishes.  I’m looking out the window.  And here comes Ben, our new Irish Wolfhound puppy, trotting onto the back porch, proudly dangling a dead rat by it’s tail from his mouth.

We live in a swamp……….on a farm……….there’s dribbled food for various farm animals everywhere.  So, of course we have rats.  In fact we have

a variety of rats.  Our rats are multi-generational……….I catch them and re-home them with TLC and kindness……….(no I don’t—–I kill them with abandon).

 

I don’t stick them on paper. I gave up on the old-fashioned, standard mouse-traps………..my fingers got smacked too much and too often.  I let the rats choose to poison themselves.

One-Bite Rat Poison does just what it’s label says.  I don’t Hav-A-Hart.  I don’t relocate rats like I do rat snakes.  I simply poison the buggers.

However, it’s not a good thing for our future stud-puppy to be snacking on an errant, tasty, dead one, who is riddled with rat poison.  (Why do they have to die in the back yard?)

After all of my joint replacements, I’ve been on Warfarin multiple times……………………you know, for all of that clotting/rejecting/stroke-stuff.  It has it’s purpose.  It kept the waterways unclogged.  Okay, they (the stuffy medical establishment) tactfully call it Coumadin but, it’s still rat poision.  And it’s still not good for the puppy, or the puppy’s inside plumbing.  So vigilance is necessary.

So, I quickly book it out to the porch and extricate the very dead/flattened rat from the puppy’s mouth (who then becomes immediately depressed/forlorn/dejected/& petulant———-the puppy not the dead rat)…………………….I’m just not up to a quick trip to the emergency vets today.

Fortunately, we dodged THAT bullet.

 

Now back to the mundane task of continuing to wash dishes………………(after thoroughly washing my hands………………..of course, maybe).

The repairmen come on January the 2nd.  Actually the hand-washed dishes are sparklier than the ones that were coming out of the dishwasher for awhile now.  I wonder just how long the machine has been pooping-out on us(?)  Eeww.

Additionally, the kitchen sink faucet decided to strip gears or something.  Hot water is sometimes at the cold water setting where and cold water used to be.  And now quite often, the cold water is impossible to find……………………..and then the lever falls off and you have to jam it back on.  A spare part is in the mail……………………then, I guess we’ll have to figure out how to install it…………………..

AND, the timer on the oven just decided it doesn’t want work at all when the oven is on………………it will work just fine when the oven is empty.

Two burners out of four on the stove work, another one only works on high, and the last one doesn’t work at all.

Let’s not forget that the oven also turns itself off whenever it decides to…………………………..(besides the rotter has never baked evenly, even when we first got it/when it was brand new/all the cookies on the back side of any cookie sheet burn)-(vigilance is a must).

Leaving my wonky-appliance-rant for just a moment.  I made a mental note to myself this afternoon that weeding very soon is an absolute must———-this is because there are multiple, opulent nightshade plants in both the front AND the back yard.

They are chlorophyll’ing their way to happy healthiness, cuddled up against those Whatever-the-Named, killer nettle plants that are abounding absolutely everywhere.

I shouldn’t complain.  Things could be worse.

We have a new septic system………………….and it’s working swimmingly.

……………….Life is good………………keep track of the things that ARE working.

I’ll take a burnt cookie any day over a non-flushing toilet.