Tallulah-Palooza Friday

Our little invalid: Tallulah Mae had to have surgery on Wednesday to remove a small "mass" from her right front leg. We won't know what it was until we get the biopsy results on Wednesday--everyone please think positive thoughts that it was...nothing.

In the above photo she is still very groggy...she kept nodding off while standing up (poor sweet girl!)
The t-shirt is in place of the dreaded Elizabethan collar--she had one on at the vet and came running out to see me, wagging her tail, kissing the vet tech good-bye (bopping him in the face with the E-collar). The vet advised us to try the t-shirt since it's much less disturbing to the dog than the cone. So far, so good...
Camille, on her couch...
B. donated his 42-year-old University of Maryland-Munich t-shirt to the cause...
Soooo darling (cute or sad? You be the judge!). The incision is healing nicely and she's not messing with it--yet. I have a long-sleeved striped shirt that may be next if she starts to bother the wound. Anything but the cone, say I!

She's getting extra treats: rotisserie chicken! Since I'm a vegetarian, she never gets meat, so it's extra-exciting. Every time I open the fridge, I look down and find my little friend at my feet, willing some delicious chicken to levitate out and into her mouth.

Spider Portrait

I find spiders just fascinating (I do like them MUCH better when they're outside the house)...this one really looks as if it has a face (or a Lucha Libre mask!). And it almost looks as if it is holding a swaddled baby (even though we know that's not a baby--that's dinner!). I took this photo a couple of weeks ago and this gal is still there...

Sir Stanley

Like many black English labradors, Stanley enjoys a good "knock, knock" joke:

Knock, knock!
Who's there?
Bow.
Bow who?
Not "bow who," "bow wow!"

Good one, McStanlerson!

Happy Indeed

This plate of yumminess is the Happy Vegan salad from one of my favorite places to eat, Tender Greens. While I'm not a vegan (vegetarian but not vegan), this does indeed make me VERY happy.

Umm...OK...

Plastic eyeball + neighborhood sidewalk = ??? Rather macabre kids' or dog's toy? Alien left his eyeball behind? Artificial cyclops eyeball? What???

Tallulah-Palooza Friday

Miss September.

A Midwestern Odyssey: Part Eight: Dogs Along the Way

Satchel: he is an amazing/funny/goofy/ bull mastiff.
Star: she is permanently winking at you as she has only one eye.
Satchel and Star: they live together; Star is quite patient (he is still a teenager.)
Hershey: he is a long-distance trucker dog.
Bubba: he is a Chinese Crested with trust issues.

Dogs! Never far from my dog-loving grasp--or my ever-present camera--even when I'm on vacay!

Bonus: a video of Satchel (who is camera shy) and Star. They belong to my sweet friend, Miss J-Lou, and her family.

A Midwestern Odyssey: Part Seven: Odds and Ends

Hitchhiker.
Farm stand.
Sign reads: "I don't know how to spell zuchininni, but I do know they are .99 a pound."
Drive-through dairy, sadly now defunct.
Right down the street from where my grandma lived.
John Deere tractor made of salvaged wood--this man had a whole yard of things made of wood, including a train.
Kiddie tractor pull (?).
The horse part of this statue in downtown Lexington traditionally sported, um, testicles painted red when I was growing up there (didn't get close enough to see if the tradition continues! If the painters could paint the man's personal parts red as well, they probably would!)
Spectacular.
CSA monument (wouldn't be a cemetery in the south without one...)

A Midwestern Odyssey: Part Six: The Vistas

A Midwestern Odyssey: Part Five: Details

Tallulah-Palooza Friday

Wink, wink; nudge nudge; say no more say no more. Know what I mean?

A Midwestern Odyssey: Part Four: Fun at the Fair

There is nothing like a small-town/rural county fair, no?
The classic.
Fun!
Who doesn't love a good tractor?
Gotta love a business called Mr. Plow!
Wow, corn judging--clearly I'm not an expert, because I couldn't differentiate between the red ribbon corn and the blue ribbon corn.
The pretty quilt with the roses up there (cross-stitched roses) was made by my great-aunt, who won a third place ribbon--yay, Aunt Helen!
Lots of pretty quilts...lots and LOTS of quilts.
Love how these were displayed. Not pictured was a whole category of produce called "Freaks of Nature." Fantastic!

I loves me a fair, and this one was really quintessential: guess-the-weight-of-the-frozen-hog-and-win-it contest (the hog was wearing a chef's hat!), square dancing, harness racing, kettle corn, combine displays, the county Republicans on one side of the aisle, the Democrats on the other. I went with my second cousins--who I hadn't seen since I was about 8 years old--and it was just a really fab experience all around. (Thank you: Kyle, Karen, and Bob!)

A Midwestern Odyssey: Part Three: Breathless

This is mostly what you see growing in Indiana and Ohio--lovely dense fields of corn, often with soybeans in the field across the road; each year they alternate what's planted in each spot.
Imagine our surprise when we came across this view:
Sunflowers, as far as the eye could see. It took my breath away, honestly.
Gorgeous.
These are being grown for their seeds...Wow.