Laughter really can be the best medicine

We've had a run of overcast skies and damp, chilly temperatures. Slim sounded pretty bummed out on Friday during the rain but had lucked out up top on Saturday and Sunday with a dry weather window for his annual cattle round-up. I don't imagine that having a trailer full of rained-out volunteer workers and bored kids would be a treat when everyone had been hyped up for serious cowboy action. Nor could I imagine having to wrestle with a lot of wet calves in the mud, especially since we still have all of his plumbing supplies in the back of the Dodge that he needed to get the showers up and running again. I guess we all just ran out of time on that project.

We had our own cabin fever moments brought on by this weather. It turns out that Daisy, the new dog in town, loves to find mud holes and returns soaking wet and mud covered. As she dries out, her thick, kinky hair sheds dust everywhere by the mound full. To cut down on the dirt, we have been keeping her indoors far more than hoped for. Two people and four critters are possibly too many for a place the size of the rat trailer, especially when that really means the kitchen and living room area. Daisy chases one of the cats, Brou chases Daisy as the new enforcer, Mark chases Brou to call him off. I sit here wondering where all the wonderfully deafening silence has suddenly gone.

A cabin fever hike was overdue. Rather than bring the entire entourage, I snuck away with just the original boys; Beautiful Dave the Cat and Ming the Merciless. As we threaded our way through the sage to the spring, I could hear Mark's exasperation with the two dogs who knew very well that they had been left behind. Just me and 'the kitty boys' once again and thankfully the whining and barking died down after we disappeared from view. Serenity had returned at last. We hiked along, exploring new and intriguing holes in the eroded sandstone walls and finally finding a new way up the embankment to the first bench overhead. Ming dashed from the cover of one tree to another but Dave boldly walked out in the open with me so I scanned the skies overhead for the golden eagles who had just been patrolling for prey again yesterday. So far, so good but maybe they had a better sense of the weather than I since it started to rain. Nothing like a little rain to motivate cats, believe me. Before long, we were all at a trotting pace for the half mile trek back towards the rat. Once the boys recognized our standard trail down, it was obviously 'every man and cat for himself' and they left me behind to pick my own way down the treacherous shale around the yuccas. The boys looked a little mousse-spiky from the rain and I must have gotten a serious chill.

I was feeling pretty miserable by the time the generator came on and was able to check on a friend's blog. I felt a surge of warm energy run through my aching, shivering limbs as my eyes welled up with tears from laughter. It's obvious that this man has not lost the ability to tell a good story in 35 years. If you need a good laugh, check out his tale of May 5th at:
http://alphonsedamooseramblings.blogspot.com/
or just click on his link on the left side of this page.
Thanks, Alphonse, I sure needed that.

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Humor of the day (sent in by Alphonse himself)

Barbara Walters did a story on gender roles in Kabul, Afghanistan, several years before the Afghan conflict and noted that women customarily walked 5 paces behind their husbands.

She recently returned to Kabul and observed that women still walk behind their husbands. To her great consternation, despite the overthrow of the oppressive Taliban regime, the women now seem happy to maintain the old custom and walk even further back behind their husbands now.

She approached one of the Afghani women and asked, "Why do you now seem happy with the old custom that you once tried so desperately to change?"

The woman looked Ms. Walters straight in the eyes, and without hesitation, said, "Land mines."