Too much fun.

The hardest part of writing this post is simply that I waited too long. There is so much going on, I just don’t know where to start.  I mean, do I lead with the puppy developments, or the 16 year old’s acceptance into a boarding school all the way across the country.

I mean I’m pretty excited that little Miss Brigid is learning so well, and she and Trinity passed Puppy 1 class with flying colors. My youngest is doing a great job with Trinity, and I am so proud of her. Puppy two class doesn’t start until after the camping trip the end of this month, but she’s been having fun with her puppy socialization sessions in the meantime. She’s up well past 30lbs now, and she still wants me to lift her out of the car.

It can’t exactly compare to my eldest getting into the boarding school she really wanted to. A school where both her hockey and her engineering can be pursued as fast as she can keep up. A school that’s SO FAR AWAY! Somewhere between 2,600 and 2,700 miles away, depending on how you get there. She’s been that far away before, but never for anything like nine months. She will be gone for as long as I carried her in my belly. I guess this is good practice for college, at least I know she’ll be coming home each summer until she’s done. It does give me the opportunity to see an area of the country I have never been to, that is very close actually, to where my Grandmother grew up.

The garden fence is up, now we just have to get the organic cloth down, and plant the seedlings that are outgrowing their spot in the garage, and we’ll have some lovely vegetables soon, and the porch railing should be up soon.

Speaking of up, here comes the sun. Work is over, now it’s time to relax at home. And when I say relay at home I mean something like this: Feed the dogs, and walk the dogs. Then my youngest and I have bowling to catch up on, and then we’re bowling just for fun with my eldest and my mother. After that, I sleep, for a little while anyways.

 

Another Birthday.

Well, another birthday has flown by.

First time in the Lake!

I was worried, because money has been a little tight because we have had to buy antibiotics for the puppy, but I ended up having a wonderful day. The morning was pretty normal. I dropped the ten-year old off at school, shortly after getting home from work. When I got back home, I played with the puppy

Brigid and worked on my computer in the morning while Jim and the other two dogs slept.

Then instead of going to sleep, my husband and I took the puppy and Trinity, our 5ish year old Australian Shepherd mix, for a walk in the park by the lake. Everybody had fun. Brigid and Trinity met a nice German Shepherd, and Brigid had a blast playing in the lake. Trinity thought about going in the lake, but it only took one wet paw to change her mind.

I talked to my teenager and then took a nap while everyone was out of the house for a few hours, either at tap dance lessons or working out. When I got up, Jim had all the ingredients for a recipe I wanted to try, and then we went and got a copy of the second p

age in my book digitized and the ten-year old and I and I picked out a dessert at Costco.

When everyone was home Jim began cooking. The recipe appeared more difficult than I thought it would be, so I went and got him a six-pack of a good Alaskan beer. Dinner was great. It was a BLT pasta dish, and it turned out resteraunt quality great, and it was followed up with the tuxedo mousse cake and red wine for me and beer for him, just milk for the kids though. We watched some stand up comedy and some Touch and then headed to sleep.

A day with the family, with no major fighting, excellent food and fun times. It just doesn’t get much better than that

Too close to home!

I was planning on updating this after the first puppy classes since we got the new puppy Brigid, but it was too long to wait and having the house next door catch on fire, well I just have to share something like that right?

I was talking to my husband in the front room just after the youngest had gone to bed and I see firetrucks and paramedics driving around the corner, so I go look out the back door to see where they were headed and they stop right by my fence! I look over the fence at the neighbor’s house and there is clouds of black smoke pouring out of the chimney, and the Jack Russell was going crazy in the upstairs bedroom.

The firemen knocked on the door.. then when there was no response, with the exception of the increasingly frantic dog upstairs, they went on in. It didn’t take long for them to put the fire out, locate and remove the terrified dog, and secure the premises. They found a place for the dog until the residents returned, and left information on how to reach them.

It was handled very well and very quickly, but it still made me think. Especially when the firemen were still in the house and I was checking off the stuff I would need to grab if I started seeing flames. It makes you think when you start having to decide what handful of stuff means the most to you, or if you have time for any of it?

It made me look around and be thankful for my fortune, and although the neighbors are going to have one big mess to clean up, at least they are all still alive and healthy.

Tragedy and Healing

So, I keep putting this one off.

Clarabell, the sweet pup I was so excited about, passed away just a few days after that post.
She did a wonderful job at the puppy class and she was a fantastic friend and playmate for Trinity. The day after her first puppy class, she was out in the fenced yard, which was made less effective due to the high accumulation in the yard, and my husband came in for just five minutes to check on the sick kid, and she got out. Unfortunately we weren’t quick enough to stop her from running into the road and being hit by a car.

My initial reaction, after crying for two days straight, was to obsessively start looking for another puppy. I found a new puppy, but she wasn’t quite ready to come home. So with that settled, my family and I were able to mourn properly. We will always remember her playfulness, and fearlessness. We will always miss the way that she often resembled a horse, more than a dog, galloping down the hallway to grab toys from Trinity to get her to play tug. Even Trinity was sad, she wouldn’t even play fetch down the hall anymore.

We have a new puppy, Brigid, who came home just last week, and is just 8 weeks old as of Saturday. She is helping us heal our hearts through sheer cuteness, but I think I will wait to share how wonderful she is, because Clarabell was wonderful too. I wish I had gotten to see how beautifully she got to be as an adult, but I know now that nothing can hurt her again.

Yup, I did it.

I gave in to the silent begging and pleading. I gave in to being shadowed whenever I moved from one end of the room to the other. My eldest dog has always seemed to feel that her job is to stand as warden for the household, and she is somewhere in the 11-14 year old range. For the last month or so she has been following me around with this look in her eyes that tells me she’s ready for the easy life, and she’s fairly certain that the Aussie mix (Trinity) isn’t up to the task, so I started looking for another dog to add to our crew.
Yes, you heard right. I was looking for a dog. Not a puppy. I have never looked for a puppy. They take so much work, what with potty training and well, general training. With the number of personalities in my home, when I do add a pet, especially one that will be interacting without cage walls in the way. I spent several weeks scouring the pound, the rescue societies, newspapers and Craigslist, looking for a younger dog with the right instincts and behavior. Then I ran across this ad with this pup that needed a home. She was just under 12 weeks old and I was told she was well potty trained, a little Husky/Lab mix, so I went to visit her, overexcited 10 year old and not so overexcited husband in tow.
Because the family that had her was in the midst of moving, we were met outside with the pup. I was a little skeptical due to her age, but when we got out of the car, my munchkin went straight over to meet her and I was amazed. She gave one welcoming bark and then sat down to accept any attention we wanted to give her. She didn’t jump up, she didn’t get overexcited, and she sat on command with no trouble. I was feeling pretty confident at this point, but I was waiting for just one more little thing. Then I heard it. That resigned sigh that my husband gives, when he knows I have found the “right” animal. So she came home with us.
To the previous owners’ credit, she is mostly potty trained, though there have been a few times we weren’t fast enough to the door. I think she’s doing great for a pup, and she gets along with the other dogs. She’s taught Trinity to play tug, which was apparently a confusing thing for her, and she also taught Wolfka to look up when passing the snow-bound deck, to ensure that she isn’t going to be landed on by a 22 lb puppy. It’s definitely changed Puppy classes with her and Trinity start on Saturday! I will get to train Clarabell, and under dad’s watchful eyes the 10 year old will be training Trinity. My eldest child doesn’t have the time for full time training, but she has been having fun teaching the dogs to take turns when playing fetch.

Is it? Yes, it is! Puppy!!

I'll share more about our little lady in upcoming posts!

It’s been a while….

I know. It’s been a while.

I got all caught up in life in general. We had the Thanksgiving through New Year’s holiday arc stuff that everyone in the US ends up dealing with, along with hockey and bowling tournaments that one or more of us attend around the same time of year the last several years. This year we also ended up having to get the tonsils and adenoids removed from the younger child, right before her birthday.  On the positive side of things, the eldest child got her braces removed, and we get a break of a couple of weeks before the youngest gets her braces on.

So, as you can guess, several things fell a little by the wayside.

Obviously, one of the things that fell behind was this blog. I was planning on doing a New Year’s Resolutions entry, but that float had flown, along with the entire month of January, before I really got to slow down. Still, even late, resolutions are important. I have so many things that I want to get done this year, but I know I can’t do it all. That’s always the difficulty with me. I’m a bit of an idea person. I have lots of ideas, and not all of them are good ideas, of course, but some of them aren’t bad either. So I have to decide which ones are good and which ones are, well, not so good.

There are always the standard New Year’s Resolutions, you know; lose weight, get organized, save money. Those are all great goals. In fact, those are all goals I have listed in the past. Those are all goals that would be beneficial for me to embrace, but usually I get through about maybe two or three weeks of excitement, then life comes up again, and I leave my great intentions for myself crumpled up on the floor, while I try and scramble to keep up with my family, and the rest of the world.

So this year, I’m narrowing it down to three goals:

1)      Get “Frankie the Chameleon” (a children’s book I and my kids are working on) finished and self-published.

2)      Pick a story I have already started writing, and give it middle, and an ending.

3)      Keep writing this blog, on a semi-regular basis, even if I don’t think I have anything to write about.

So there you have it folks… let’s have an awesome 2012!

Changes

My daughters are growing up. There is a bitter-sweetness to all of this. There is an ending to an era coming up, an ending to this stage where I am needed for all these different little tasks. They can, for the most part, be relied on to handle things like making breakfast, taking showers, and doing their own homework. There is still the occasional editing and definitely the drama of teenage hood to go through, but they are becoming their own creations. Now, I rarely resented any of the things I had to do to make sure they were cared for, and there is a part of me that misses it, but I was barely more than a teenager when I had my first child. The change isn’t all bad.
I find myself letting go a little. Not of them, never of them. I will do what is needed to guide them, defend them, and comfort them. That part will never end, thank God. However, I find I still have this creative energy flowing through me, and I can’t use the “sorry, I’m too busy being a mom” excuse for not doing these things I have planned. I do have the “sorry, I got a new game to play” for short periods of time. This would be why there was a bit of a gap between this post and the last. I can only use that for so long though… or it gets a bit ridiculous. I have ideas, plans, and even occasionally, time.
Oh yes, time. It’s a luxury that I am just starting to see glimmers of. I seriously need to stop just looking at it as if it is some sort of jewel and USE it. Then I can work on my writing, my ideas for illustrating, and maybe even use some of it to get rid of the extra weight I am carrying around with me.
Here’s the best part of all of it. I don’t have to leave anyone behind to do this. My eldest is headed off in her own directions, and my youngest happens to have similar interests to mine. I get advice from both of them. I still have to filter the advice I get from the nine year old, but they do notice things that I miss sometimes. Both of them still come tell me all about their lives, achievements and even losses, the great thing is they occasionally want to hear about mine too.
Time to get down to the business of me…

How odd.

So my eldest daughter is 16 now. How odd.

Obviously, I expected that my children would eventually grow up. I have the same maelstrom of emotions brewing about them getting older as many parents do. Joy at watching them blossom, fascination with the unique way each of their minds work, and completely unsure about what exactly will occur for me once they are ready to strike out on their own.

I don’t know what will happen, and most of the time, I’m okay with that. There are days when I feel a bit panicky that they will both move away so far that I won’t get to see my grandkids grow up, or that things will go horribly wrong and they’ll never leave home. I kind of expected that sort of day on her 16th birthday, but no, not today. I had to text her Happy Birthday wishes, because she is out-of-state, pursuing what she loves. I thought that might sting a bit; make me feel old, or induce some nostalgia for the days when she was little. The only thing I felt was pride. She was off doing what she loved, doing it well, and not letting anything hold her down.

Now, at the end of my day, I sit. Just like so many other days, sitting in front of my computer at the end of my day, as the sun shows her face to the world. I reflect a little as I drink my Pinot Noir, about how it seems like it’s always been this way, and yet how much has changed. How quickly time changes the world, and those of us who live in it. How odd it is that we only really take notice of those changes, when we take the time to stop.

How very odd indeed.

Anniversary Musings

My husband and I celebrated our tenth anniversary about a week ago. We went out to eat at a nice restraunt, and visited the wine shop down the road. Before you ask, of course we bought some wine, and some chocolate; we like to buy wine and chocolate whether there is an occasion or not. A pretty traditional anniversary celebration for us. One of our traditions is that we make wine for our anniversary at a local winemaking place called Denali Winery. We put it together in May, and it’s ready for bottling on or near our anniversary. We get about 24-26 bottles of wine out of it, and on the big day we share a bottle of last years wine, and a bottle of the new wine. My husband gets me wine glasses that are in some way special, to commemorate. This year I got this little lady.

The story behind this one is that a girl of noble birth and a goldsmith fell in love. Her father was so irate that she fell in love with some one “beneath her station” that he had the young man put in jail for some contrived crime. His daughter however, was so tormented and saddened by this that the father could stand it no longer. He told her that if her goldsmith could make a wine glass that two people could drink out of at the same time, without spilling a drop, he would get the goldsmith out of jail, and she could marry him. This is what he came up with. See, that little bucket that she holds over her head swivels, so that when you hold her upside down, her gown is the main glass, and the bucket becomes another small cup that tilts to allow both parties to drink at the same time. It does work best if the shorter party uses the swivelling cup though.

He can be romantic, at least once a year.

What did he get? I got him steel balls for his anniversary. No really, it’s what he wanted. You know, those little tiny magnetic steel balls that you can make all sorts of stuff with. What kind of steel balls were you thinking of?