A Perfectly Good Peccary.

Or is he a razorback pig?

Can you tell it's Large Trash Pick-Up Day again? This little marvel was laying by the side of the road atop a bunch of crap. FinnigantheCurious almost flew out of his car seat and through the windshield due to the slamming of the brakes when I spotted him.

What on earth could his story be? I immediately pegged him as a Peccary, aka, a Javelina, but perhaps he is a common swine?

Here's some information I found on the Peccary:

The Collared Peccary is the only wild, native, pig-like animal found in the United States.

It is also known as the Javelina, Tayaussa or the Musk Hog.

They are called Javelina because of their razor-sharp tusks, Spanish for javelin or spear.

You may smell a peccary before you see it.

The prickly pear is ideal food for the Collared Peccary due to its high water content.

Collared Peccary have poor eyesight and good hearing.

This species is vocal; several calls have been classified into three categories: aggressive, submissive, and alert.

(Clearly, mine is in the submissive category.)

Why on Earth, I ask you, would anyone throw out a perfectly good Peccary?

I think he is just hilarious and I feel fortunate that he now lives with us. I'll need to get to know him before I can name him.

Maybe I should run a contest.

Hmmm, what could the prize be?

Tickets to Spamalot?

I know! I know!

A can of SPAM.

If you're the winner and you live out of town I'll mail it to you. Promise.

Let the pig-naming begin!

Death of a pond.

This cute little pond that you see before you is now upside down and empty.

(The cute little boy is still with us.)

Sigh.

Note to self: when you put the pump in the pond be sure to anchor down the end that puts the water in because, if you don't, one day the hose might pop out and then the pump will pump all the water out and all the fish you just bought will die and the hole under the pond will fill up and the pond itself will pop out of it's brand new home and you will have a big mess to deal with at 8 pm when you are really tired and hungry and wanting to go inside and eat and sleep.

Yes, the very same pond that we very recently spent hours and hours installing (digging and leveling and digging and leveling and filling and cleaning and filling and cleaning). It was so pretty for about, oh, 3 days. We were all so excited about it. We'd go out and check on it several times a day just cuz we liked it so much and were so happy to have it in, finally. Then the fated evening when we went out to a friend's house, stayed a little too long. I wasn't even going to go look at the pond because we were all so damn tired and grouchy and hungry ... glad I did. Poor Jackdaddy had to do an emergency rescue. There were actually a few fish left. I put them in the stock tank that had a few inches of water in it (and plenty o' mosquito larvae) thinking they'd be fine there. The birds gobbled them up first thing. Poor babies. Guess they were better off in that damn crowded tank at the fish store.

And so it goes.

We'll give it another shot this weekend.

I sure am looking forward to the Austin Pond Society's Pond Tour this year. Maybe we should wait until after the tour to put ours back in. I imagine I'll learn a thing or two on the tour. Like, how not to let your pump pump you dry, perhaps?

POW, POW, Y'all.

Y'all know I just can't go too long without doing SOMEthing to my house.

I've been twiddling my thumbs (while dying from the heat) just waiting for this whole GARAGE VS MAN episode to end.

Finn and I went to the The Dollar Tree to look for some Speed Racer cars and what caught my eye but some brightly colored cowboys and Indians.

Hmmm...what could I do with them?

I'd been thinking about putting some pirates all along the top of my fence line, but have had a hard time finding any that were reasonably priced. I'd prefer pirates, but a different warring faction will do just fine, especially at $0.99 per bag.

So, I glued them up there and they look just cuteashell.

Wasn't too long after I put them up that I noticed the squirrels and birds having a hard time on their "runway." Now, I love to watch my squirrels and birds. I spend countless hours (OK, minutes) observing them out my kitchen window. They run up and down that fence line all day long eating and drinking from my feeders.

I got to feeling all bad that I'd messed up their path. I was thinking about taking them down when I noticed a few had gone missing.

The squirrels were just powering right over them... knocking them down left and right.

As if the actual fate of the Indians wasn't bad enough, now here there were plunging to their deaths before my very eyes.

And so it goes in the land of wabi-sabi.

Maybe the pirates will fare better.

ARG.

Why we built a driveway.

Now, uh, is that not just plain rude?

I mean, really.

There's poor ole' Maxine totally sandwiched in so tightly that she can't even breathe, much less move.

This happens all. the. time. We live across the street from an elementary school and across the other street from a church. I have to say that I have more sympathy for the school folks (even though we are not school folks ourselves). I see those mamas and daddies frantically parking and rushing up to get their precious babies before the babies get too antsy.

However, I do have a nice story about the above mentioned church folk. They knew we had it bad. They've suffered complaints from the neighborhood off and on forever. When we moved in they came right on over and told us ahead of time that there were always people that would park like poo-poo heads (my word, not theirs) no matter what they did. They promised us that they told everybody every Sunday NOT to park in driveways or in crosswalks or in other places to fierce to mention. They also promised us that someone would. Then those same people (the ones talking to us, not the ones parking like poo-poo heads) came over one day and said that they had taken up a nice, fat collection of money and were gonna give it to us to help us build a driveway whenever we were ready.

Now isn't that just downright neighborly?

And so, three years later, we are!

Never let it be said that Jackdaddy rushes into things. Nope, he took his sweet time and figured out just what he wanted and where he wanted it. I hounded him about it taking so long and them spending the money on new choir robes or something, but he wouldn't budge. Said he didn't care if got that money or not, he wanted to think on it.

And think.

And think.

And think.

And then the lovely refinance happened and suddenly there was more money each month and a little extree to play with so we got to building, as we are prone to do.

Here's the old non-driveway situation :

It was a kind of a driveway. Sort of. I mean, at one point it was probably used as a driveway. It was so crooked and broken up and sloped that we didn't use it at all. People parked in front of it all. the. time. Can't say I blame them. It really did not look like a driveway at all. It seemed more obvious once the mermaid was on there, but some folks are too busy to even notice a mermaid. Isn't that sad?

Here's Jackdaddy helping break up the garage floor. Oh, yea, THAT was a fun job. Did I mention that the floor was all cracked and broken and poor Jackdaddy had to live with that for 3 years? And him being a garage kinda man and all. It was the bane of his existence. (Sort of like the old windows are to me.)

On Day 2 they got smart and brought a jackhammer.

We used Decorative Concrete and they did an amazing job! What a nice group of guys. I'm always a tad panicked before we do something big like this. We got pretty burned by a couple of guys when we were trying to get moved in here. The evil and sweaty tile guy and the "I-can-do-it-all-in-2-weeks-really-cheaply" dude left us gun shy. But, we've been lucky ever since. Maybe those first two rip-offs were karmatic debt repayment and now we're even steven with the house gods?

Did I also mention that Jackdaddy had to jack the garage UP so

that they could dig out the old concrete underneath the sides? I'll let him post on that. It was just the most crazy, complicated thing you've ever seen. You may need to just look away if you feel faint at the sight of big, heavy jobs being done totally bassackwards. I know I had to sit on the couch with a big glass of tea and the A/C running whilst it was happening. Did I also mention that every single thing that was in the garage is now on my patio?

Must purge. Must purge. Must purge.

Getting there. Now it feels real. At this point there is a big ass corncrete truck sitting in the street, a makeshift fence around the property, dudes with shovels and wheelbarrows everywhere, plants being trampled, neighbors congregating to look.

Oh, my. I feel so exposed.

I feel like putting a sign up that says:

We're not fancy, we just refinanced!

It's poured!

I'm gonna leave you hanging like this for awhile. You won't see this project again until it's all dry and they've come back to stain it (dark brown, of course. You know how I love my greens and browns). And, I've got another surprise for you coming up. You know Mamaholt had to have just a little treat for herself if Jackdaddy was getting a new garage floor and a driveway, don't you?