My kitchen has led a very hard life. back in 1979 when we built the place I was too busy to make too much of a fuss about anything and bought the most inexpensive cheap cabinets figuring that someday I would replace them with something more reasonable and modern ... little did I know that it would be 2022 before I even thought about it again... and I probably wouldn't have then if someone hadn't donated a bunch of cabinets.
fortunately I did spend money on a good waterproof pee proof. floor because one of the very first disasters was in 1990 when a beautiful litter of Great Dane puppies got parvo- Which for the uninitiated is basically Vomiting and diarrhea non-stop often fatal requiring attention 24 hours a day for about a week. so they lived on the only waterproof floor I had in the whole house which was the kitchen... which is also why there is a hook in the middle of the ceiling because I spent a lot of time giving those pups IV fluids.... it was a massive job and they all lived..
I cannot imagine it now.. how foolish I was to have anyone convinced me at a brand new house should have brand new wall to wall carpet.. I cannot tell you how many rug shampooer's I have bought in my life trying to cope with even my normal lifestyle with wall to wall carpeting.. finally many many years later I put down the vinyl we now have wanna buy better investments..
the day I tore out the cookstove and put it down at the end of the driveway is a story told by my family. because that was also the day that I moved in what I still have which is a Glenwood stove.. which is a 4 foot by 4 foot by 5 foot marvelous chunk of iron.. which very easily comes apart by lifting and removing it's many pieces without any screws or fasteners----- so we did get it into place without too much trouble in my kitchen where it still remains.. it's very possible to cook all sorts of things on that stove... if you're inclined to cook at all.. I have done that a little.. but that stove has often been so much more then a cook stove.
unfortunately for the past 10 years it has had the degrading job of holding up a microwave oven... and every time I'd look at that magnificent stove covered with microwave oven plastic utensils paper plates yesterday's mail call and maybe dog biscuits I would cringe. it has a history any new englander would be proud to have in their own repertoire. perfectly designed to be useful. No frills.
With one piece of firewood in the left hand firewood putting place, It is possible to boil water on the left hand side ethen to the turn the heat down you just slide the pan to the right--and way over there on the far right is just warm... or it is also the place you keep an iron pot of the stuff that makes the house smell nice. that stove is so massive that even one chunk of firewood will heat the entire room which it has in the past had to do as we were minus us electricity or other modern inventions. The fact that I have not lost any of the four dozen pieces of that stove is amazing.. and now just to bring it up to speed it is the surface on which I put the pot which holds this latest suvee method of cooking.. basically boiling a steak in a plastic bag.. sounds ridiculous but you know... it does work.
To increase its productivity there is an invention called magic heat which fits in the 6 inch galvanized pipe exhaust and by blowing air across the exhaust gets a lot of the heat out of what would ordinarily just go up the chimney. I am told but just fixed that and cleaned it up and it's ready to use.
So now my kitchen is going to become my indoor air conditioned training facility for mostly lucky and Gemini..... because as good as they are they have a few gaps in their education.. they are so happy at the thought of opening the front door that they are missing the command “ don't knock me over”. They are pretty good at wait if I can manage to say that before they knock me over... and we'll wait until I say their name and let them out the front door.. with that door problem also extends to opening the car door. where they had learned the command. ‘don't even think of it”. so now that heat and gasoline I have put pressure on me... I've decided to dedicate the kitchen to teaching a few things that any well respected service dog ought to know.. like. “damn it down”
Or. ” don't touch my food”. “Hold this” and “drop that” stuff like that... I have no excuse you don't need to drive the dog to the mall to learn these things
my dogs. Add all these so-called puppies, by now have achieved. the boredom necessary... before you can teach them details.. there are a lot of truisms pertaining to dog training... first is you can't train a dog to think about too much if they haven't had enough exercise... I think that's the same with kids and that's why they have some kind of physical exercise mid morning when you were in the 3rd grade..... the second truism is you can't teach a dog anything if they aren't basically bored by their surroundings.... otherwise they will want to sniff and think about every pillar and post On which the previous dog has left his scent. I do think a dogs intensive learning only lasts about 5 minutes. then you better move on and then come back but at some point it gets to be nagging and boring..
This whole kind of training is much different then sitting at an intersection waiting for the dog to be bored with the traffic and the air brakes... my dogs damn well better be accustomed to air brakes by now.. so I really have no excuse other to get to the business of training details. at best I am at least a year behind schedule... but I do like the comfort of my own home so between the kitchen and the mail call area I'm going to put that air conditioned space to good use.
