Back in the Saddle Again

After almost two weeks of not blogging it is hard to get started again. This will be a dog's breakfast of things, just to sort of catch up.

Let Brotherly Love Continue - About two days before I left on this business trip, Volk and Bobik decided to decide once and for all who was top dog aka Alpha. I was just putting them in their yard for the night at 7:00 and something sparked the deadliest dogfight I never care to see again. It was savage mortal combat. There was blood everywhere, on the ground and all over them, all from surface wounds - ears, face, lips etc. Ten month old puppies with thick winter fur are not too deadly regardless of how hard they try. They took turns choking each other down. There was no separating them. Finally they tired out and Volk surrendered. Bobik is the new Alpha. Andrei showed up about them and saw the blood and phoned the veterinarian. By 8:00 pm two of them came out and in the light of the garage, cleaned and disinfected the wounds all for $20.

Eau de Steer Pen #5 - Bobik has a girlfriend down the street so yesterday he decided to impress her with a new cologne and rolled in the vilest rotted manure you can imagine. Of course, not to be outdone, Volk also rolled in it. One cannot get far enough up wind of them. The little lady sppears to like their new masculine smell but she is the only one.

Mouse About the House - I am upstairs working when I hear Tanya ask me to come down and help her. There is a mouse under the deepfreeze. It has been hauling walnuts behind the freezer and cracking them open for a healthy snack. Tanya grabs Kuchma and points him in the right direction. I tip the freezer back and POW! Got 'im! Thirty minutes of entertainment for Kuchma prior to termination of said mouse.

Banana Loaf - Three black bananas require throwing out or ... so I introduced Ukraine to the wonders of banana loaf. The wonder is that I had all the ingredients. Turned out not bad and so simple to make that I will add it to my repertoire along with apple crisp and Scotch oat squares. To tell if it is baked you stick a knife in. If the knife comes out clean, then it is done. When I was doing all my own cooking, if the knife came out clean I stuck the rest of the silverware in.

Roses, roses, roses - I promised Tanya when we got married to keep her in chocolate, champagne and roses. Now that we have a huge area for flower garden, the roses morphed into bedding plants, including rose bushes. Tanya was in Dniporpetrovsk for two days while I was in Zaporizhzhia. She said she didn't have a good time the first day because she saw everything she wanted but didn't have enough money to buy anything. The second day she went to the big market. Her brain said "I will not go to the flowers" but her feet went on their own. She bought five more rose bushes. Now we have thirty.