Senior Vs. Senior

I play in a tennis league during the week. It is really fun! This year, I will be turning 50 so I'm eligible to play in a Senior League. One night during our regular season matches I was playing against a teenager who was a Senior at one of the local High Schools. Part of our league involves playing a singles match. I have most always played doubles & I have never been a great singles player but I feel like this may be my "senior" calling. As it turned out, I was slated to play against the teenager for the first half of the singles match. Well, the tennis balls were all lined up in my favor as I won my portion of the match 3-0! No matter what else happened that evening, I was more than satisfied with my singles match versus the High School Senior! Serena, look out, I've found my groove!

Too bad the Iranian diplomats cannot attend our Fourth of July festivities. As you may recall, President Obama graciously invited the Iranian diplomats to celebrate our Fourth of July at U.S. embassies around the world. However, since the recent election in Iran and the chaos that followed, the President withdrew his invitation (as a side note, no one had yet to RSVP). I'm sure the government would have pulled out all the stops to show our Iranian counterparts what fun could be had on our most patriotic holiday. I remember our Fourth of July shindigs to be one of food, fireworks, and alumni reunions! We've feasted on roasted hot dogs, brats, sausages, ice-cold watermelon, red white and blue jellos and most recently, a flag made of jello, blueberries and whip cream! Although I'm not a big fireworks fan, I did love shooting bottle rockets at the neighbors with my brothers, throwing "lady fingers" in the air and the "smoking cap sticks". Oh, and who could forget the charcoal snakes and chasing down the flying parachute? I'm sure the Iranian diplomats would have had a blast-perhaps things will settle down before Thanksgiving. Now that's a feast to behold! And they wouldn't have to worry about a stray spark lighting their turbans on fire!

Today, another prominent politician saw his political career and aspirations come crashing down. And all of it do to infidelity! It seems that no matter how far we've come, it all goes back to that old song, "birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it....."! Of course, they were talking about falling in love. But as Tina Turner once said, "what's love got to do with it?" All of this seems painfully clear as our household is in the midst of our female dog's heat cycle. It wouldn't be such a challenge since we have a fenced yard & could keep an eye on her, but we also own her step-brother, Sunny. He's not altered so he's total focused nature's gift-a female with no suitors in sight-unless you want to count the four skunks from my previous post! Anyway, we've talked to Carrie and explained to her that Mr. Man Man is not a candidate, unless we want to move to Arkansas (or Iowa)! Although in his mind, he thinks he's the perfect match. We're into day 2 or 3 (they are all blurring together now) of the "love shack". Don's doing a great job of keeping distance between them-and if things get to crazy-they are put in their kennels. Hopefully, we'll only have a few more days (and restless nights) to go before our dogs turn back into pets and not some crazy wild animals from Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. Maybe Sunny should have went on the South Carolina's governor's trip to Argentina!

The skunks are back. Although I'm not sure they ever left! We just moved into our house last August so this is our first summer in the new neighborhood. I've heard the smelly tales of skunks in Tennessee; skunks in the attic, skunks in crawl spaces, skunks with rabies and skunks in skunk races (why does everything I write have to rhyme?) Well, a couple nights ago we let the dogs out for their last run of the night and then went back inside to finish eating our snack at the kitchen table. It was around 9:00 pm and just as the air conditioner kicked on for it's next cycle, we smelled a skunk aroma coming thru the vents! Next thing I smelled was burning oil, somewhat like the smell of diesel fuel from my childhood memories on my father's work clothes. Now I'm thinking, "What's going on?. Did a skunk get caught in our brand new a/c unit? There's another $1000 repair bill!" We brought the dogs in, and lo and behold, one smelled and one didn't! The smell on the Sunny wasn't as overpowering as a skunk smell could be (thank goodness)! I tried wiping off his fur while Don went out to check the air conditioner! Back with the news-there's a skunk out there and did I want to go see it? Well, curiousity got the best of me so we both went outside and shined the flashlight over to the babygate by the air conditioner and there they were (yes I said "they"). At first I thought there were two of them but upon further count of eyes and white striped foreheads, it turns out there were four skunks total! They did look cute looking back at us-and we were a safe distance from the sprayer! They were outside the fence but we called the Pest Control experts to come out and check it out in the morning! Turns out that the little critters had been going in and out from our crawl space thru the air conditioning unit! So, the pest experts set a couple traps and will be back next week to shore up the back of the a/c unit. We also plan on putting some lattice work around the deck so they won't be tempted to come back. Although I'm not sure what happens to the skunk once he gets in the trap (may I don't want to know-and don't tell the PETA people). I'm sure it's not a pretty sight! Soup anyone?

Dear PETA,

I killed a fly today. Actually, I killed two flies today (and many more to come). Okay, I'm all for being nice to animals; those that are big & those that are small; those with fur and some not at all but I do draw the line on flies! And just what does Buddha have to do with anything? Didn't God give us dominion over all creatures? I can't believe your organization even wasted the time berating President Obama for ending the life of a fly. But just so you're not too mad, I probably increased the fly population by 3000 by leaving a couple of dead birds out to rot in my backyard so, I've got a few more "at bats" before you put up my picture on the "most wanted" wall!

Sincerely,


A Fly Hater