Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, your popular host, Mani the purebred border collie, here today after a few days’ absence to bring you up to date on the not-hugely-exciting news from our house and garden. You may remember me from such posts as “Seven Percent Humidity”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. 
The guy I live with said he likes this picture of yours truly quite a bit. It is pretty good, though it doesn’t ooze coziness like this picture of me, taken when he was sitting on the other end of the couch, reading, does:
The couch has a new thing, called a couch protector, which is this fluffy thing that goes over the very old and falling-apart cushions, and which he got from Chewy.com, because it’s for dogs, he said, and it makes things even cozier. The fleece goes over the couch protector.
In fact, the guy I live with said that Flurry, the first purebred border collie who lived here, and grew to be very ancient, slept on the very fleece I’m sleeping on in this picture, though the fleece was on the bed upstairs so he could have his own space, and that he had a motto, “Roasty, Toasty, Cuddly, Cozy“, which seems to me to be one of the most excellent of all mottos to have. I mean if you feel the need to have a motto.
I don’t need to have the fleece upstairs because I sleep on the pink afghan on the bed, the afghan that’s been there for like forever. Sometimes there’s a different afghan there but this is the heaviest of the three in the house, so I sleep on it, with sometimes the dark red one, which is slightly lighter in weight, pulled over me. If I lay my head on the pillow provided, I can snuggle right up to the guy I live with, who presents a rather large mass on the bed. I was going to say like a gigantic beached whale, but only if you imagine a toasty whale to cuddle up against.
And of course if I get too hot I can go downstairs and sleep in the rattan chair, or on the couch.
But back to my set-up on the bed. The guy I live with (the one playing the part of toasty whale) turns on the TV around ten at night, and gets into bed, with his clothes on, and signals me to come upstairs, and so we watch TV for a couple of hours, before going to actual bed. I really like this set-up a lot. I discovered that if I do some serious snuggling, I can get cuddles and ear scratches while the TV is on, unless the guy I live with falls asleep, which he usually does (and only wakes up when the TV stops because the thing called “Netflix” does that).
Here I am watching “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”. (You might be able to see my ears.) We watch that over and over and over again.
a late parrot
So that’s that part of my post. Not much else has been happening.
Remember the two hundred snowdrops? A few of them are up, in the large pots upstairs. One is even flowering. 
There are six large pots of equal size, and there were two hundred snowdrops (we didn’t count them), minus two that were no good, so six goes into one hundred and ninety-eight, um, well, let’s see….. The guy I live with said there “should” be thirty-three snowdrops in each pot, but probably aren’t, because planting that many snowdrops while you’re kneeling is both painful (if you have arthritis) and incredibly boring. But anyway there are snowdrops up.
And even today there were some crocuses in flower. This picture, taken with the DSLR, was from a few days ago, though.
There was an owl hooting tonight, and we got its picture. It’s not a very sharp picture, but it’s a picture.
And there have been some nice sunsets. 
The guy I live with said he’s always thought sunsets were intensely melancholy, maybe because when he looks at them, he’s looking in the direction of the west coast, where he grew up, partly, and which he never wanted to leave, but did, and never returned, for the usual reasons most people have for things they wanted to do but never did. And now he has a very good reason not to go anywhere. He just went out to lunch with her today.
Oh. I almost wrapped up this post without telling you the Tale of the Lamp. This is, like, classic.
There’s this lamp upstairs. Like a lot of other things in the house, it’s old, part of a set of furniture which we have most of. It used to be in his paternal grandmother’s house in east Denver, after she moved here (his grandfather died on the way out here, in 1962). There were several large blue spruce trees in the yard, and in the summer, miller moths would congregate there, because they do.
And the moths would fly around the house at night. Some would get caught in the bowl of the lamp, which faced up, and cook. The smell, according to the guy I live with, was “memorable”.
(I should mention, as an aside, that it wasn’t until just a few years ago–seriously–that he realized that moths were called millers not because they milled around the house, like he thought, but because they looked like they were covered in flour, like millers were.)
Well, so, anyway, the lamp stopped working. He switched light bulbs, “the way genius electricians do”, and nothing happened. I could hear the clicking, on and off. Click-click, click-click.
He unplugged the lamp and looked into the socket, which he discovered was packed with dead moths. He thought that was half funny and half irritating. The moths were probably over fifty years old.
So he cleaned out the socket, put in another light bulb, plugged in the cord, and turned on the lamp. Click-click, click-click. Nothing happened.
So then he said the lamp would have to be rewired. A few months went by before he got around to getting all the ingredients, but he did, for this “ten-minute job”, then spent several hours trying to get lamp rewired. He finally did, and plugged in the new cord. Click-click, click-click.
Nothing. Click-click, click-click. There was some colorful language. I decided to hide in one of my forts.
The outlet would have to be replaced. All that work, and it was the outlet. Well, at least everything else was new, now. The cord was original with the lamp and so needed to be replaced anyway, because cords and electric stuff gets brittle with all the heat, and so, hmm….
You should have heard what he said when he remembered that that lamp was controlled by a wall switch. The switch was off. 
At least it works now.
And that really is all I have for today.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Love the lamp story. I have a saying that everything I know now is because of something I screwed up the first time. I’m not a big fan of those wall lamp switches for that very reason.
Beautiful owl and sunset pics.
Thanks; the guy I live with said, “Another learning experience”, but I guess they’re unavoidable. And now the lamp works, when we need it, which isn’t often. Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone
Loved the owl picture…..thank you.
Thanks, and you’re welcome.
Snowdrops inside in pots! Crocuses outside! Yay! In winter, that must be Big Time. The guy you live with, Mani, must learn to take his success where finds it. I asked (made) my husband read the tale of the lamp. Because. My reaction is those are some awfully nice watercolors on the wall. And surely there is a story attached to those blue figures — and I hope they are attached with museum wax. I am a Californian, where the earth is shaky. Ah, the owl. Lovely photo. Were the photo on holiday cards, I would buy a passel. The “Roasty, Toasty, Cuddly, Cozy“ you enjoy, Mani, I think enables you to be all fierce in your protection. I do like the last photo of you and the countryside, with you ready to be all fierce at any moment.
Thanks; it’s pretty cold here right now, and the ground is frozen. The roasty toasty business is actually sung, but the guy I live with can’t figure out how to record him singing dog songs, which may be just as well.
Those are Fu Dogs, which came from the guy I live with’s grandparents; he remembers them as a kid in Los Angeles (but never remembers shaky ground). They aren’t worth anything but have a huge sentimental value, and are glued onto the stands. His wife put up the stands and did the gluing.
See the post for stuff about the watercolors; it is true that he remembers these from the time he was conscious. That post also has the story about the miller moths (I tend to tell the same stories over and over again, don’t I?) and a picture of the top of the moth-catching lamp.
Ah, I had one of those tricky light switch plugs that fooled me into replacing an iron. So now I have a new iron and a back up iron (and actually use one of them frequently).
Love the feeling of the cozy picture.
ceci
Thanks; the guy I live with uses 25-watt bulbs in most of the lamps here. He says it gives the place a “1940s film noir effect”. I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I do know having a whole bunch of bright lights in rooms we don’t use very often is pretty pointless. I use the living room at night but am usually asleep.
The guy I live with used to insist to his wife that there was an iron in the house, but she said no. There’s an ironing board (clothes that come out of the dryer are stacked there, and always have been), so why not an iron?
It’s another one of those mysteries.
My mother called the m “Dark Bulbs”. I do too. Modern light bulbs have such clean light that make it easy too see obstacles, print, etc. Mani, please ask TGYKW to try some.
The guy I live with says those light bulbs are too bright. He says everything is too bright. The sun on the snow, spotlights from next door, etc. What a whiner.
Hey, Mani, is that a Christmas/winter/holiday coverlet draped over the back of you cozy spot sofa?
It is. A holiday throw, I guess, with North Pole stuff on it. Kind of old and tattered a bit. It was downstairs and the guy I live with said it might seem seasonal.
Mew mew mew Mani you look pawsitivelee cozycomfy on yore spot on THE couch!! An yore even smilin 🙂
Mee lovess lyin on THE couch sumtimess too. Yore wee snowdropss are so cute…wee have snow so iss lovelee to see reel flowers on yore bloggie.
An yore sunsetss are speck-taculer!!!! THE last sunset photoe iss breeth takin! Say iss Mistur Hootie yore see-curotee Owl??? Mew mew mew…..
Mee-yow Mani THE Lamp story iss so funny….this sounds like sumthin LadyMew wuud do!
Wee watch a britcom called “As Time Goes Bye” an Miss Jean can not figure out why THE vacuum not werk. Mistur Lionel jiggellss it an says “Iss broken!” Hee goess to make tea an asks Miss Jean if shee terned it on at outlet (they has diffyrent wirin there). Shee sayss “Of course switch iss ‘on’!!” An shee checkss an seess switch iss ‘off’ so ternss it ‘on’. An Mistur Lionel comess back an teezess her ’bout switch beein ‘off’ inn ferst place! LadyMew sayss “LIFE immytatess art an Art immytatess Life.” Mee wantss to know who ‘Art’ iss????
Mew mew mew……
***purrsss*** BellaDharma
Thanks. The guy I live with has seen that show, every now and then.
The couch is pretty comfy with the new protector; the guy I live with said that some of the purebred border collies who lived here before me would eat the batting in the cushions, so there’s hardly anything to the cushions now. (We need new ones.) The protector is a little fluffy so makes a difference.
The owl does live next door (the other one lives down the street), but mostly just hoots at night. It’s kind of scary, really.
The lamps from my former home used no electricity. There was no electricity there. I sort of figured that everyone knew how to ‘turn them on’. The young people who ‘decorate’ the facilities where I work part of the week decorated the tables in one of the big dining rooms with kerosene lanterns. They were perfectly good lanterns that had never been used. Some of the kids wanted to ‘turn them on’, but never figured out how to. Well, when the electricity was turned off late last summer, I got some of the lanterns for around here. Some had batteries inside their tanks. I suspect that someone tried to put them in there because they fit into the round hole, but then could not get them out. Others had burned but dry wicks, as if someone knew that they should be lit, but did not know that they needed fuel.
The guy I live with said he used to visit a house where they burned kerosene. Instant headache, he said.
Less of is it used with a schedule that adapts to natural sunlight. When I was still at home, I did not work late anyway, and when I did, only one lamp worked fine. Modern candle actually burn cleaner. Besides the toxins, I was concerned with how the pollutants slowly soaked into the contents of the home, like tobacco smoke used to do.
There is that. The guy I live with doesn’t smoke, though he used to smoke a pipe. I don’t think that made the house smell icky like cigarettes can.