Bowling

Chris has played in a bowling league for a few years now.  I remember going to watch him bowl and hang out that first winter we started dating and have been going along ever since.  This past season one of the wives of the guys that Chris bowls with asked me to bowl on the women’s team.  It made me chuckle because I once (in the not so distant past) bowled a 39.  A 39!! That is out of a total of 300 possible points!  I was a terrible bowler!  She said she didn’t care because I would bring a lot of handicap points with low scores like that and she just needed an extra person.

As many of you know, I don’t like to make a fool of myself in public.  If it’s something I’m not good at, I just don’t do it to avoid the embarrassment.  To put it into perspective, this is a very small alley in small town SW IL that has a total of 6 lanes.  Everyone in the place knows everyone else. I reluctantly agreed after a lot of begging from Amy. 

I inherited a bowling ball from a friend of a friend, ordered some awesome bowling shoes online and asked the owner of the alley to give me a lesson.  He taught me how to throw a curve ball and my game started to improve immediately.  I ended up with ~87 average after the first week of league and prior to last week, I was at a 104 average.  Not too shabby for someone that bowled a 39!  I have gotten to the point now though that I have figured out what I am doing wrong but am struggling to figure out how to fix it.  Once I do, I think my average will go up at least another 20 pins.

Case in point – last Friday.  I was either right on mark or very wrong.  I threw two scratch spares in a row.  Imagine what my score would have been had I thrown the strikes on my first throws instead of ditching it into the gutter.  I also threw my first turkey (3 strikes in a row) ever during my second game and followed it up with two gutter balls.  NOT CONSISTENT!  Very frustrating to say the least.  I bowled an 87, 108 & 160 on Friday night.  I almost doubled my score from the 1^st game to the last game.  It will get better with time.  At least that averages out to 118.  Much better than my 104 average and the 160 was my highest score ever with the exception of a 164 in a 9 pin tournament the weekend before (I had 1 nine-pin strike in that game so I did most of that scoring on my own).  Hard to believe I even played in a tournament last weekend considering the 39 from earlier!

I have had a good time with it this winter and made some fun new friends on my team.  We do some drinking, some bowling, but most of all, we have a great time.  Next year I will aim for the most improved player award.  I am having mixed feelings about the season being over in a couple of weeks.  Sad to be done for the year, but glad to have Friday’s back to be able to do other things too.  After the weather we have had lately, I am quite looking forward to the summer.  It’s been nice to have the windows open to let the fresh air in.

Bessie

Silly Dog

Gypsy has had an eventful week this week.  On Sunday, we took her to the dog park because it was beautiful outside.  Most trips to the park, we usually see about 3-4 other dogs at the park that she tries her hardest to ignore while we are there but we try to get her over there to socialize and play nice with the other dogs.  On Sunday, there were about 30 dogs at the park (no joke) because it was so nice out.  Being her usually snobby self, she did not want to play with the others so she stayed right next to Chris and myself the whole time we were there.  We even had one dog try to come “smell” her and play and her owner called her back and made a comment that “that dog doesn’t want to play with you”…poor Gypsy.  She didn’t snap at the dog, she just responded to the “smelling” by plopping her butt down on the ground and didn’t move.  Maybe someday she will enjoy playing with the other dogs.  Anyway, we stayed at the park for about 20 min till we could tell she had enough and proceeded to head home.

On the way home, she looked really tired/stressed from all the dog activity so she laid down on the back seat the whole ride (she normally has her head out the window).  Within an hour of getting home, she wasn’t acting like herself – very lethargic, wouldn’t come when we called her, wouldn’t jump onto the couch.  I took her out back to throw her toy which she normally chases immediately, but she would take like 2 steps and stop.  She wasn’t limping or anything but she just wasn’t right.  We ended up taking her to the weekend vet and found out that she had a neck/shoulder injury on her right side.  Not sure if it happened at the park or when we got home.  She is now on prednisone and pain pills for two weeks…poor baby.  She is also on very limited activity restrictions during those two weeks (no walks, no chasing toys, no stairs other than to go up for bed and come down in the morning).  The vet said she wants to hear that Gypsy is laying down watching soap operas all day which means a lot of tough love from us.  The pain pills mask any pain from the injury so she thinks she is fine even though it is still healing so she has been bored out of her mind with us the last few days.

To get her out of the house, on Tuesday night we drove to PetSmart to buy her a harness (vet said no more collars when on a leash for walks) and let her ride along.  We did not bring her inside like we usually do because of the limited activity restriction so she stayed in the car.  Chris was feeling bad for her so he bought her a small bully stick treat to give her when we got home.  After PetSmart, we stopped at the gas station to fill my car up and decided to both run inside to get a beverage for the night.  We were not in the store more than 5 minutes and when we got back to the car she was swallowing the last piece of her treat, sticker wrapper and all…needless to say we were not impressed.  First off, she had to climb into the front seat and onto the floor to get into the bag to get the treat which is off limits with her injury, and second off, now she had a sticker wrapper in her stomach.

Chris usually works from home 3 days a week with his job so he had been keeping an eye on her this week during the day but he had to go into the office on Wednesday so I ended up working from home to watch her.  Thankfully no vomiting of the sticker wrapper so hopefully she passes it the other way…I will not be inspecting to find out.  She seemed to be fine all day yesterday other than being bored so hopefully she is on the mend.  In the meantime, she is getting a lot of cheese treats so that we can mask her pills in them to get her to swallow them.  I don’t think she even tastes the cheese as she swallows it whole because she is so excited so the medicine doses have gone down very easy.

Hopefully this is a minor blip in the road for her.  She is only ~5.5 years old so hopefully she has a long happy life in front of her yet where she can go back to chasing her toys, playing tug-of-war, and going to walks – three of her favorite things.