An outlined blog!

In honor of school starting back, today’s blog will be categorized to make it easier to follow. Sorry, no syllabus as I don't expect you to learn much.

OUTLINE:

1. Weather

2. School starting

3. A smattering of football stuff

4. Molly by golly

5. Squirrels

1. WEATHER! As you can probably tell, the weather has been much nicer over the last week. No 115 temperatures and even some rain! Just in time for football practice, which should be in section three but was moved up in my excitement.

Here at the House of Trish, looks like a bumper crop of leaves! And it just seems like the last week or so that I finally finished dumping last year’s crop over in the neighbor’s yard.

Since winter, spring and summer were so rough, I feel like we deserve to have the best fall in recent memory. Eh?

2. SCHOOL has started for a couple of county schools with the rest getting started soon, much to the relief of parents throughout the county, state, country and universe.

Not that I have been appointed community service…yet. But be careful out there and watch out for our students, even those wearing shorts down at their knees.

3. FOOTBALL—practice has started and the first scrimmages will be held this week. YES. That means cool weather is coming and many of us will enjoy our Friday night rituals.

A friend (yes, I have a few), asked about the county teams. Overall, the county teams will not be as strong as last year. At least I don’t believe we have powerhouse teams like Spiro and Talihina were last year.

The two teams I believe have the best shot at making runs this year are Poteau and Arkoma. Both teams have some excellent skill players back and could be pretty good.

I heard Poteau and Spiro were having trouble finding a third opponent for the 2012 and 2013 school year. The two county rivals are discussing reviving the rivalry and I hope this happens.

4. MOLLY—has now been a member of the House of Trish for over a year. She is now almost 16 months old, so she should be showing some maturity. Not.

Molly wants things her way and wants constant attention. Lately, she has decided wet ground is not proper for her so I have to bribe her to do her deal outside.

Wet never bothered her before and Molly was a big fan of the snow. Since she always hangs out with me while doing the Journal stuff, I ought to honor her with some title such as associate editor or morale buster, but she is a dog.

She pouted a little when the Trish had to go back to educating students last week since she didn’t have company all day, but has since got back into a sleep all day and stay up later routine, which Molly tries to share with me.

Pet experts, such as my mother, say dogs should start calming down when they are 18 months old. So that means Molly has two months before she becomes a normal dog. I fail to hold my breath in anticipation.

5. SQUIRRELS—I am easily entertained. Sunday morning, while sitting outside on the deck trying to get Molly to get her feet wet and do the bladder empty routine, I noticed several squirrels playing in the trees.

They chased each other, made their irritating squeaking nose and jumped from limb to limb. I was a little worried for them since a good 50 percent of our trees appear to be dead thanks to the drought. Fortunately, none of them fell. Molly also watched, hoping one would fall, I fear.

That reminded me of my all-time favorite squirrel memory. Back in my bachelor days, I had two dogs named Maggie and Harley. There weren’t any trees in the back yard, only a light pole. Maggie and Harley did not care for squirrels running rampant in the back yard.

I let them out one day and a squirrel was trapped and climbed the pole to escape. There weren’t any trees close by so I feared this might not end good.

But instead of panicking, the squirrel started mocking my dogs. Harley wasn’t the sharpest canine to ever chase a stick, but he was fairly proud he had light poled a squirrel. He was barking and doing his best to shake the squirrel down from the pole.

The squirrel continued to mock him, then decided to show Harley who was boss. He (or she) took aim and dropped a load of squirrel urine on Harley. That was when I went inside and got my gun and...ha ha, just joking. Uh, that's all folks!