Life with the new puppy continues.

Moonshine, our 13 year old black lab, seems to have accepted the little one. He’s not overjoyed at the prospect, but she learned that the big black dog is not a chewtoy and he has stopped slamming his paw on the ground and barking when she forgets that he is not a chew toy.

Sophie, the beagle-dachshund mix, is not thrilled about Maggie’s presence in her home, and still growls when Maggie gets in her face. However, as long as the pup leaves her alone, she is happy to leave the pup alone. Basically, she is playing an extended version of “The Floor is Lava” as she hops from one place the pup can’t reach yet to another. Maggie cannot seem to understand this. I mean, she is small and black, Sophie is small and black, so the hostility is confusing.

Ellie, the beagle-lab mix, wants no part of all this. When Maggie tries to follow her, Ellie actively retreats, usually while expressing one form of canine profanity or another. I’ve never heard Ellie growl like this before, but a quick pet on the head and some attention calms her down. However, Ellie now prefers life on the back deck or in the basement where Maggie isn’t allowed. Maggie tries to initiate play with Ellie, but I think this is going to take some time.

I’m trying to train myself to remember that Maggie will not always be small enough to be a lap dog, and if I train her to be a lap dog, I’m going to need a bigger lap. However, there are few things in life more relaxing than having a puppy fall asleep in your arms.

The fuzzy thing appears outwardly and by temperment to be a black lab, but she had one litter mate with a lab body and german shepherd coloring. Another litter mate was a yellow lab with blue eyes like a husky. So, either she’s a complete mutt or her mama had several baby daddies. Only time will tell.

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The weather in Kentucky continues to be as psychotic as it ever was. The past few weeks have been hot and muggy, which is to say it’s been typical for Kentucky in July. Yesterday afternoon, the temperature dropped 20 degrees in 20 minutes, then it rained hard for about 10 minutes, and it’s been quite pleasant ever since.

The weather daemon says that it’s going to be like this for a few days before another heat wave comes in. I’ll just enjoy this while it lasts. I just keep reminding myself that every wake-up is one day closer to fall, Kentucky’s best season.

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A friend recently remarked that one of the reasons he does not do appendix carry is that he does not want to walk around with a pistol pointed at his junk.

After careful consideration, I think I will be trying out appendix carry.

My junk has gotten me into so much trouble over the years that I no longer care about how it would feel about staring down the barrel of a 1911.

Man hath no love like a labrador puppy watching a man cook bacon.

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You may think you’ve worked hard in your life, even in hot, muggy conditions.

You may even think you’ve done a good job keeping your home clean.

All of this is shown to be incorrect when cleaning out your garage in July.

Also, I am going to demand an independent investigation into how we accumulated so much crap.

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Man hath no love like a labrador puppy watching a man eat noodles for lunch.

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The Young Prince is applying for part time jobs now. This will teach him time management, responsibility, and prioritization of priorities.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to get a refresher on the number and type of freaky people live in our area. When Girlie Bear worked at an ice cream parlor in high school, I found out that the meth heads all emerged from their lairs to howl at the stop light at midnight every Friday and Saturday night.

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Man hath no love like a labrador puppy watching a man heat up spicy chicken legs for dinner.

Somehow, the Facebook algorithm decided that I needed exposure to ‘prepper’ content and advertising. Most of it is pretty basic stuff, some is useful, some of it is borderline psychotic. So it’s all par for the course.

One ad that keeps popping up is for a gas mask, carrier, and replacement filter package. From the picture (I DID NOT click on that), it looks like a low-res version of a military protective mask.

The latest version of the ad touts it as the “Ultimate CBRN protection package!!!111!!!”.

I want to state for the record that I am proud of myself for not commenting on the ad and telling them that their idea of CBRN is bad, and they should feel bad. I refrained not because I know that I will be harassed and belittled in the comments. I did it because the less I interact with this drivel, the less of this drivel I will be firehosed with.

The package they advertised for the low, low price of just shy of a house payment did not include the following:

• Hood. You know, the heavy plastic canvas thingie you pull over your neck and shoulders to keep things that you really don’t want on your skin off of your skin.
• Gloves – See hood above, except visualize a part of your body with a huge number of nerve endings being dipped into something that dissolves hands or eats nerve endings.
• Chemical Suit – If you’ve ever worn MOPP gear, you know it’s hot, cumbersome, and uncomfortable. If you paid attention in training, especially if that included those films from the 1950’s (you know, the ones with the sheep, goats, and cattle that all of a sudden decided to do some disco dance and Mongolian throat singing before taking a restless nap), then those extra layers between you and whatever you got slimed with is worth it.
• Decontamination kit – I’ll admit that this one is kind of a geeky kind of thing, but a little plastic or metal box full of charcoal pads and strong cleaning wipes is kind of essential for CBRN. I won’t go into gross details, but if you have to put on that nice black plastic mask you just bought in a hurry, you’re probably going to want to get something icky off your skin.
• I’m going to leave the autoinjectors off of this list. I actually appreciate someone being responsible enough to not advertise 2 PAM Chloride and atropine to a population that makes a fetish out of “Hey guys, I have four Zin’s in three orifices, I pounded three energy drinks that are considered a war crime by the ICC, and now we’re going to juggle supercharged chainsaws” videos.

Basically, what the ad is selling is a gas mask, which is probably good enough for riot gas or OC. It’s not “CBRN DEFENSE!!!!ELEVEN!!!” It’s a, hopefully, upgraded version of the breathing protection mask you can get at Home Depot for 1/3 the cost, with a pair of goggles molded in.

But it probably looks really cool when you’re making a video or showing the dudes when they come over to talk about how they will ‘grant passage’ to the hot girls when they become warlords of the post-collapse wasteland.

OK, grumpy old dude rant over. I’m going back to watching videos of Gen Z hipsters talk about how their organic herb garden will cure the Vietnamese black crotch rot they’ll all get when society collapses and they can’t get DoorDash anymore.

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I’m really not a manly man, and I’m really not a dude who has to do manly things to feel manly and show folks how manly I am, but there’s just something really satisfying about going to the hardware store and buying a really nice plunge router.

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Maybe it’s a little passive agressive (OK, it’s a lot passive aggressive) but I’ve made a hobby of making little daily height markers on the kitchen window to mark the growth of the two tendrils of ivy that are growing up that side of the house. You know, those two tendrils that I told the Young Prince to dig up and get rid of last week? It’s kind of like what I used to do on the kitchen doorway when Girlie Bear was little.

I’d say the odds are even that either the ivy grows above the window before it gets taken care of, or Irish Woman and I have a ‘discussion’ about the Young Prince and his dedication to assigned tasks in the near future.