Mono Monday. : : Yellow

Yellow has always struck me as a celebratory color, or at least a happy one! It's quite a stretch, but it also looks a bit diadem-like to me, so I offer it in honor of HRHElizabeth on her platinum jubilee. She has devoted herself to the monarchy since she ascended the throne when she was just a young woman with her whole life ahead of her. She sacrificed a 'normal' life for the restrictions and prescriptions of The Crown. Whatever one thinks of the monarchy, one has to admire her for her devotion to duty.

I had been thinking for some time of making the mattress experiment to see if sleeping on the guest bed mattress would make any difference in my back pain. Last night events conspired to send me off to the guest room as John, suffering from allergies, was snoring robustly by the time I was ready for bed. It may be a bit early to declare the experiment a success, but I certainly slept better and woke up much less stiff. Successful enough that we will be taking ourselves off to the mattress store tomorrow. There are dozens of brands of mattresses to be purchased online and lying stiffly and self-consciously on a bed in a mattress showroom probably doesn't prove much, but they will sell us a simple platform, deliver everything and take away the old stuff, so we'll start there....

Spike has had an eventful day. We took him with us to Jim and Dana's last night and he immediately commandeered Blake's fuzzy stuffed bone considerably bigger than than his head. Because of his propensity to eat anything softer than a hard rubber Kong, he doesn't have anything like it at home anymore. We didn't want him to destroy Blake's only toy but he latched onto it like a pit bull and would not give it up despite the combined efforts of all four of us to get it away from him. 

I finally wore him out by standing over him and not letting him move . Every time he tried to move I just said no. I was surprised that he responded correctly to that command but he couldn't put it down or chew on it so he finally gave up. Spoiled dog that he is, we bought him his own fuzzy bone this morning. He must have learned something last night because every time he started chewing on the bone, I said 'no'. And he stopped. *

Now we have to work on 'give'....

After we got home I took him outside for his 'last call' and he flushed a baby ground squirrel out of the hole that John thought he had successfully plugged. I don't know who was more surprised, the baby who ran under a nearby plant or Spike who chased it out and up the plant where it froze, precariously perched at the very end of a branch.

Our life could be pretty boring without Spike. Some might say it is anyway, but he keeps us amused....

*Here he is, making a statement....