Back on Track. Sort Of.

 (I wrote this a few days ago but couldn't post because I couldn't get online for a couple of days. The photos I was planned on adding more appropriately are not working into the format today for some reason, but I have places to go and thing to do, so I'll just let them fall where they may. Mea culpa for the messy post!)

My own mistress is content with more gentle pursuits

So here I am (or, more accurately for you reading this now, there I was), at late afternoon dog walkies time. And I'm thinking, after a week of 3 and 4 walks a day with the dogs up and down some not needing gear but decently challenging hills for someone who doesn't do this, I'm feeling pretty good about not gasping for breath, sweating like a pig dog walker that I am becoming! I'm going to take them farther down than ever before because I can do it and not die coming back up. Here we go!

Ok, they are loving it! I'm loving it. I'm talking to them, and laughing at the same time (that is a good sign, as it means I am still breathing). And then we turn around. To come back up, because laying down in the road for the night is not an option. For one thing, it's really rocky. For another thing, it's steep and really rocky. So we climb. 

You've seen those shows with chimps where they are sitting upright, acting and looking damned human and then they scamper off someplace, using their arms as legs? If I'd had some chimp gloves on, I'd have done the same about halfway along (I don't like to use the U word anymore than needed...hives, you know). I mean, what really separates us from them except our egos? 

But the hell with my ego! There was no one around, I'd have happily put my knuckles to the dirt while the dogs ran circles around me, patiently staying with me in my journey to the top...maybe 3000 feet beyond my own feet. Or 30. They weren't going to leave me, with continual nudges, liquid eyes saying all that I needed to hear...if we could figure out a way to help you move your ass up the road faster, we'd have dinner sooner. It was a beautiful thing. Sadly, the Travel Channel wasn't there. No one was there but the dogs to record my epic arrival to the drinks cabinet front door and civilization. 

Why, you ask, did I post of photo of toilet paper on a tree? I didn't, this is the cool cotton like plant that grows wild around here, brought in, no doubt, by birds on the wing.

Another cool aspect about this place I'm house/dog/cat sitting is the bathroom. It's an outside inside bathroom, and don't even think outhouse because it is nowhere close to anything like your probable cracked wood, moon door, snakes in the hole imaginings. Frankly, outhouses were and are probably a lot more sanitary than a lot of indoor bathrooms. But this isn't that.

The thing of this one is, at night, to go across the patio to reach that one thought in your mind goal, it is very dark (part of the bliss beauty here). So you are going straight ahead and looking through the bathroom area itself, through the shower area and straight on to water and lights on a hillside. Once you hit the bathroom door a motion light, a lovely low, barely there, just enough to light your way to the toilet comes on. Otherwise, you might be drawn to go right through, across the wonderful deck of the outdoor but covered shower area and simply step off into a dream infinity. You'd have to plow through a mini forest of palms at the edge of the shower deck first, so you wouldn't. However, when you are rather near sighted, as I am in the extreme, and without my glasses or contacts, it's a pretty fun journey of 20 feet or so to a necessary function station. 

Yes, living in my head is full of many detours. Going to the bathroom is just one of them.

Have a make the most of memories Monday. Do something matchless.