Hello everyone; it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, here to show you how to make a post out of practically nothing at all. You may remember me from such similar posts as “A Post About Nothing” and “Another Post About Nothing”, as well as many, many posts which were actually about something.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
Here I am in another characteristic pose. I don’t get paid by the picture; I had two, that’s all. This one with the averted gaze of royalty, again. The guy I live with says I need my toenails cut, but he’s going to wait until my annual checkup in April and have it done there, since I bled all over the carpet when he did it and he felt bad, and not just for the carpet.
Oh, and someone’s birthday is coming up in less than a month now. He didn’t know when it was, if you can believe that, until my last checkup. My mommy knew, of course.
This morning everything was covered with rime. Or hoar-frost. There doesn’t seem to be much difference, but whatever, it’s rare here.
The guy I live with painted the kitchen cabinets, a little. In the afternoon, which it still is but I mean earlier, he missed what he said was “an excellent black-and-white opportunity” for a picture. There were these crows, or ravens maybe (he couldn’t see the beaks), pecking away at something in the street (I know what it was, but never mind), and some magpies were there too (half the size of the crows or ravens), and a black-and-white cat walked down the street to see what they were doing. The birds flew away.
The cat couldn’t have done anything to these birds.
That reminds me that not only were there cats here before there were purebred border collies, but my mommy, who didn’t especially care for cats until she met the guy I live with, painted their pictures. This was back when she stayed at home and did things like draw and make fancy dinners and stuff. These were done in acrylics, which is what she used before she started drawing plants and bugs and things. 
This was the guy I live with’s first cat. He got him as a Christmas present, I think. His name was Mister Pipo (pee-po), and here he is taking a nap on the comforter.
This seems like an awful lot of attention to be paid to a couple of smelly cats. But the guy I live with said to show them, so I did. He says that the purple paw prints were actually made by the cat. Well, whatever; it sounds gross to me.
That’s all I have for today. I did say at the beginning that I didn’t really have much of anything interesting to post, didn’t I? The sun is finally coming out and maybe tomorrow there will be some gardening-related activity.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
What lovely renditions of past-pets…
what a wonderful experience to live with such an artist/mommy
very nice.
Thanks. They were just smelly cats, though….
Yea, right…
It’s surprising that none of the purebred border collies got their portraits painted in color, but then again, there are hundreds of photographs of them.
Your mommy was an AMAZING artist. She sounds like a renaissance woman. I’m very impressed.
I suggest that you stay away from those crows since they seem capable of taking on pure-bred border collies as well as cats. They do look very menacing in winter
Thanks; entirely self-taught, too. The crows were pretty big, indeed. Back in the 1960s, they didn’t even have them here in Colorado, but they moved west, like blue jays did.
I found that cats very interesting. Lovely paintings.
Thought I would show them to prove that the guy I live with knows about cats. I’ve only met ones who were in my back yard, when they weren’t supposed to be. My mommy fell in love with her “black-and-white boys”, which is why we’re catless now. It suits me just fine. Besides, the back door is almost always open, except at night.
What a great start with two character pics of you, looks like you’re laughing about something in the first, such a happy Chess you must have had a biscuit. Being where I live I have never heard of rime or hoar-frost, what is it, obviously some kind of frost. Your mummy was such a great artist, she could bring anything to life, what a loss, make me sad. An interesting post covering lots of things, it was good. My mummy has to find a new dog groomer and there are lots to choose from here, that’s where I get my nails trimmed, I just won’t sit still for mummy to do it, I’m like a jumping bean anytime she wants to do anything except pat me or give me a massage, I do like a back massage. It’s my birthday next month too Chess, I’ll be six. What a cute end to the post…
Thanks. I’ll be twelve next month. The guy I live with has a nifty (so he claims) nail clipper but he’s very wary of clipping my nails again after the last time. I guess I would say that rime is what you see in the pictures. Frost is quite rare here, because of the low humidity, though of course it freezes all the time. Except in summer, for now anyway. Rime is what you get when just the edges of the leaves are coated from damp air freezing on the edges. I think that’s right.
On such a gray day, your mommy’s art is a colorful antidote. I like both the cat portraits – except, you know, smelly – but I too wonder why she never portrayed a purebred border collie. Perhaps she knew your moods and looks are too various to capture, and photographs, being instant, are more the medium to use.
And, oh, Chess, I surely do like those rime photographs, and you’ve got the garden to set up great rime shots.
Last shot of a purebred nose is sooo sweet —
I bet that the reason my mommy never painted one of us is that the guy I live with signed a contract for a book about 1996 or 97, and stood over my mommy with a whip making her draw (not really of course), and so she never had time to watercolor us. She did draw my uncle Pooka in pencil, and you can see that picture hanging on the wall in a lot of pictures featuring me. The cat portraits….I never knew the cats but my grandpa Flurry said they were smelly and crept up on him sometimes…aren’t displayed in the house. The picture of Mr. Pipo is covered by a topographical map (my mommy did that), and the other picture, of New Kitty (he was the second cat in the house, and the guy I live with has an incredible imagination when it comes to pet names…he wanted to call me Neutron The Wonder Dog…peeking through the Levelor blinds is in the closet. The rime vanished shortly after the pictures were taken; in fact, though the sun hardly shone today, it’s supposed to warm up this week, and the guy I live with went on a “conifer check” (looking at newly planted conifers to see how dead they are), and there were snowdrops in bloom.
I knew a Japanese Chin (dog) named Pipo…it means “clown”, yes? The Chin was also black and white.
Don’t know. The cat was named for a Turkish pipe tobacco, sold back in the 1970s. “Pipo’s Potpourri”. The guy I live with thought the name was funny. Funny as in ha ha type funny, or something.