Hi-dee-ho, neighbor.

What’s better than a breezeblock wall? A breezeblock wall just at the golden hour, with three dogs and a cat greeting each other over it.

That guy doing his very best Wilson impression in the top photo is Bruce. He belongs to my preacher, Amy, who lives a couple of blocks down the street from us and has a fabulous hidden-circle wall around her backyard. Bruce and his housemates had a good time visiting with Ramona over the fence while Ron and I were walking the dogs yesterday evening.

Look closely to see Bruce peeking at us through the breezeblocks.

Jake the cat came out for a visit and took a moment to pose in the sunlight.

Ramona makes a new friend. This is Bruce’s housemate. I forgot his name.

This guy lives a few blocks over from Amy. I’ve never seen him before, but we got a kick out of his efforts to see us as we were walking down the alley.

Our dogs love this down time. We’re home a lot more than usual, and they’re getting a lot more attention. I finally had time to download the Hal Higdon app and start training for another marathon, which is something I’d been planning to do since Ramona was a puppy. I took her out this afternoon for our first scheduled run: a three-mile jog. She’s a good running buddy. If you’ve been thinking about taking up distance running (with or without your dog), now is a good time to do it. The weather is starting to warm up, but we still have a few weeks of fairly moderate temperatures, which gives you time to acclimate and build your endurance before it gets really hot.

Emily

Make-It Monday: Rubber glove pet-hair removal

When I bought my Marshmallow couch a few weeks ago, my only real misgiving was Walter. The world is Walter’s obstacle course, and he spent most of his time lying on the back of our old couch, looking out the window or supervising the goings-on in the living room, so with visions of snagged leather dancing in my head, I set about trying to create a more suitable perch for him.

Forty bucks later, I came home with 10 lbs. of birdseed and a carpet-covered perch just the right height for him to use for birdwatching. I hung a birdfeeder from the front porch, removed the bubble wrap from the window to give him an unimpeded view, and set the perch next to the window.

He was wary at first, but once he figured out how to jump up on it, we couldn’t have kept him off of his perch if we’d wanted to.

This is Walter’s favorite perch. He sits and watches the birds at the feeder on the porch.

Now our only problem is cleaning the hair off the carpeted surface. This cat sheds like — well, a cat — and it takes four or five layers of lint-roller tape to clean a perch the size of a notebook.

I’m not fond of wasting disposable materials at that rate, so I got on Pinterest to see how other pet owners had worked around this problem.

Rubber gloves, as it turns out, are great for removing pet hair from furniture. Put them on, rub your hands over the upholstered surface, and the friction does the rest. Two minutes of that treatment on Walter’s perch, and I came up with this:

Gross. (And as usual, Songdog couldn’t resist photobombing.)

Five minutes later, the whole perch — top, base and scratching post — was clean. File this one under “Pinterest win.” (Now I just have to find an equally effective means of getting the dog hair out of the office carpet. I’ll be testing a technique for that soon, too.)

Emily

Wintry feeling

We got a drizzle of freezing rain and a couple of inches of snow last night, but today is sunny, and the mess is melting off pretty nicely. Hopefully it will be pleasant enough out for a run tomorrow, but just in case it isn’t, I think I’ll hit the bike in the basement for a few miles tonight after work, assuming I get out of the office in a timely fashion.

I wish I could spend the day like Walter, who is content to sit on top of my typewriter and stare out the window. I don’t know how much he can see through that bubble wrap I put on the panes to keep out the cold, but he seems to be enjoying the view. He looked so dignified, I couldn’t resist snapping a gratuitous cat picture and posting it. 🙂

Days like this make me wish I had a big sunroom with a trombe wall to take advantage of the passive-solar heat. I’d stick a treadmill out there and run away my troubles in the sunshine.

Hope you’re staying warm, wherever you are.

Emily