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Category Archives: UMBRAGE!!

Biscuit baby

The other day, I got home really late.  I had left super early in the morning and got back really late.  The dogs were displeased.  They were hungry and bored and probably lonely even though they have each other to talk to and they were displeased.  And they decided to show their displeasure by escalating some of their usual antics, like shredding the cardboard boxes I leave out for them into extra fine bits and hiding their Kongs so I can’t find them to refill for the next day and in Horse’s case, by acquiring a biscuit baby.

What is a biscuit baby, you may ask.  Well, it is exactly like a food baby but made entirely of biscuits.  For you see, while I was away, Horse and Yaris decided to get into my closet where the extra biscuits are stored and rip open the box.  It’s a Costco sized box.  It contains a lot of biscuits.  The two of them ate fully half of the contents of that box.  There were crumbs everywhere.

Yaris was appropriately guilty and apologetic when I found out (and also because she’s vain, she did not have a biscuit baby because that would ruin her figure).  But Horse…Horse had the biggest belly ever.  He had a biscuit baby.  And then it was my turn to be displeased.

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The tree was feeling a bit stabbity

That was exactly how the tree felt.

You may remember that I have a slightly adversarial relationship with fruit trees.  This hasn’t changed.  But I was content to just let this relationship be what it was.  I may not be best of friends with fruit trees but I wasn’t going to go out of my way to antagonize them.  The trees apparently don’t feel the same way.

The other day, I came home from work and was taking care of some stuff around the yard in preparation for trash day when I realized that one of the green date trees had decided it would be a good idea to load up only one of its branches with fruit.  Just one.  Completely covered in fruit.  So obviously, the branch snapped and broke off.

Now I have a dead branch covered in almost ripe dates on the floor.

I thought about just throwing everything away as I’m not the hugest fan of green dates or the tree, but I knew my mother would be greatly displeased with such a decision.  She highly values her date trees.  So I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to pick every single date off the branch and then get rid of the branch.

Now, the thing about the date trees is that they’re covered in thorns.  I’ve been stabbed by them before.  I try and learn from my mistakes.  So this time, I went and donned a pair of leather work gloves before bothering the branch.

The tree was not having any of it.  It stabbed me anyway.  Through the leather of my gloves.  Into my thumb.  And then broke tip of the thorn off in my thumb so deep that I haven’t been able to get it out with a needle.  I’m not squeamish about digging around in my flesh with a needle either.  I have a hole in my thumb now from picking at the area around the thorn with a needle.  But you can just barely see the tip of the thorn.  I definitely don’t have enough of it to grab with tweezers.  Jerk tree.

Looking around online for splinter cures, it looks like maybe an Epsom salt compress might help coax the thorn out far enough so I can grab it.  Yay.