Spring Routine

Ha roo, pups and cool cats!  It's me, Zim!  We seem to have fallen into a new routine here, so I thought I'd share that with you.

After breakfast, Dave and I take Mom and Dad on a nice, long walk.  Here I am, a couple mornings ago up at Grand Mère Village -- long-time readers of the Ao4 Digest will know it as the Giant's Castle!

"Wowzers, it's the Giant's castle!"

Mom took a pic of us guys in front of the castle tower:

Dave, Dad and me.  Dad's the tall one in back.

Don't you love that blue sky? We came home and tackled the next part of the routine - coffee on the deck!

Actually, Dave and I get water, not coffee, but that's OK. After we have our beverages, us boys guard the house while Mom and Dad do tons and tons of "combat landscaping" -- lots of cutting, digging, re-planting, all kinds of crazy stuff that lasts for hours and makes them real tired. The best way to get past all of that "tired" stuff is to take us for another long walk, of course, so we do that in the late afternoon. Then it's on to dinner, zoomies, that kind of thing. Except for yesterday ...

The morning started out pretty normal, except that Mom was doing lots of muttering about stuff - mostly about a dagger sticking in her head, someone using sandpaper in her eyes, wanting to use a scrubby pad in her mouth ... I couldn't quite make it out with all that sneezing she was doing! Anyway, we headed out on our morning walk after she had a swig of coffee - here I am:

It was a nice, sunny day! Oh... it doesn't look like it, does it? No big, blue Kansas sky!  Have a look across town:

No, no storms in the area. It's haze from local prairie fires. They're quite necessary to maintain the integrity of the prairie - for more info, click here. They burn as safely as they can, and it doesn't usually affect us much. But when we got home and checked out the deck (coffee time!) this was the scene:

Yep, that's ash from the fires. There was a lot more sneezing and muttering, then the routine was disrupted! Instead of deck time, Mom jumped in the shower then went out WITHOUT ME AND DAVE. Something about hearing about something called Zyrtec from Meeshka's mom. It was hard breaking up the routine yesterday, but I think we owe Meeshka some thanks (we all know it was her smart thinking!) - we did our normal walk this morning, had coffee on the deck, then guarded the house while Mom and Dad planted rhododendrons.  Spring routine restored! Thanks, Meeshka!  I can't wait for our afternoon walk and those evening zoomies!

What's everyone else's routine like these days?

Play bows,
Zim