How we got where we are

Pascal said “the heart has reasons of which reason has no knowledge,” so on a snowy North Dakota Christmas Eve back in 1991 my husband Steve finally consented to my begging and we headed for the pound to look for a puppy.  Our three boys were in grammar school.  Being in the Air Force and moving all the time had always persuaded us to stay away from the “pet for the kids” scenario but for some unknown reason I felt it was time.

Moochies on Christmas Morn

I knew we didn’t want a little dog.  Nothing went yip, yip, but something that went woof, woof.  With no desire to have a pet that was not a part of our family I knew we would have a house dog.  As a full time mom and a volunteer at school I felt was up to all the trappings of dog ownership.   You might notice that most of this is written in the “I knew that we” format.  That would be because Steve thought we already had one dog too many and we didn’t have any at the time.  See Pascal above.  

At the pound of course we found lots of darling puppies and too many terribly sad adult dogs.  The pound will never be the place I frequent just to visit the dogs.  If I could save them all I would.  As we sorted through the puppies and younger dogs we found a little female 3-month-old golden/lab mix.  She was hiding as far back in the pen as she could and snuggled and gave lots of kisses when we picked her up.  This was the one.  When we took her up front we passed a cage with 6 darling white puffball puppies.  They were very young and the pound was looking for someone to puppy sit for two weeks.  

Three of the six puff balls

As if the joy of puppy sitting was not enough, the pound would give, for free (!?) one of the puppies.  Cool.  It was just that we wanted a woof, woof not a yip, yip.  I asked attendant about "puppy sitting" in exchange for the puppy we wanted.  It was late Christmas Eve, there were lots of people shopping for that  “pet for the kids” scenario, and the overwhelmed attendant hemmed and hawed, looked perplexed, over worked and distracted about the exchange but didn’t think it would be possible.  But, after some persuasion and pleading from our boys though, we happily walked out with lots of puppies, port-a-pen, and bags of puppy food.

Do you have any idea how much poop 7 puppies can produce?

We got all the puppies home and the “rental” puppies downstairs where they would live for two very long weeks.  The golden mix stayed with us so we could begin housebreaking her and make her a part of our family.  Like almost all puppies, she loved to give kisses and our youngest who called these kisses moochies instead of smooches christened the little girl Moochies.

There's that adorable puff ball pooping on presents.

On Christmas morning we brought the little puff balls upstairs to play with Moochies.  She was like Gulliver compared to them and the boys thought the whole experience was darling.  They were  pretty cute when they were playing hide and seek under the tree among the unopened presents. Moochies was knocking all the ornaments off the lower branches as she galumped after the other puppies. But, before long there was poop on all over the place.  Presents under the tree had suddenly acquired gross, icky and stinky decorations.  No one thought the puff balls were cute anymore. A mere 12 hours after bringing those adorable puff balls home the boys didn't think they were so cute.  

It was my job to pay for the adoption process by feeding, cleaning and occasionally taking those adorable puff balls out into the snowy yard to play with Moochies.  If you don't know about the northern tier of the United States, it gets LOTS of snow.  Deep snow!  And it stays for a LONG TIME!  So the 2 weeks we puppy sat seemed like forever.  I didn't take the puff balls outside much, mostly I cleaned the puppies cage and kept them in the basement with lots of air freshener. Moochie played in the basement whenever I was down there doing laundry.  She wore those poor babies out with her rough housing.

No one cried or even noticed when I returned the puffballs to the pound to be adopted by some lucky family. 

World Without End

            

I've just finished reading World Without End by Ken Follett.  I should have written the review as I read in order to keep track of the good and bad, but lesson learned and here we go. 

WWE is the follow-on book to Pillars of the Earth, a book about cathedral building in England in the 1100's.  I remember liking Pillars and recommending it as a worthy, entertaining read.  WWE takes place in the same village during the 1300's with characters being related to the characters in Pillars.  Both books are long but WWE seems verbose and wordy and filled with plot necessity in order to make it as long as Pillars.  (I didn't think anyone got paid by the word anymore.)  It feels like it's been filled with trite, repetitive, or unnecessary phrases and wording.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a non-enlightening, cerebrally numbing read, but this was way, way too much and way, way too long to meet that criteria.

This book feels like Nora Roberts, Clive Cussler, and Will and Ariel Durant fell into a big vat of "let's write a book" and World Without End was the result.  

Unfortunately, the great history (the Durants) gets overwhelmed.  There's way too much Roberts style fluff: "Gwenda was heartsick. Her hopes were dashed. Annet had been too clever" and ample Cussler macho: "Ralph took the girl's hand and placed it on the altar.  He drew his knife.  With a swift movement, he cut off one of her fingers.  His heavy blade easily split her small bones..."  Really? His heavy blade - her hopes were dashed?  Really? 

 One of the main characters Caris, was the requisite independent, highly intelligent, resourceful, attractive female who in the 1300's was able to lead the men in the village into enlightenment.  She had an abortion, became a nun, experienced lesbianism, and in the end married the love of her life who she had spurned for 20+ years. Whenever she encountered a bright female child who asked questions other children never even considered, she would wonder to herself who this child reminded her of while someone else would comment that the child reminded them of Caris.  Reading this once was too often but this happened more than once in the book. Caris violated the laws of the church and laws of the land but was always "saved at the last moment."

Her love interest, Merthin, like her was highly unusual and very intelligent.  He too was a leader and saved the village from demise on more than one occasion.  After repeatedly begging Caris to marry him and being relentlessly spurned he moves to Italy and marries Sofia.  Italy is plague ridden, his wife and all her family die.  Although Merthin contracts the plague he recovers and experiences this amazing epiphany where he “realizes” he never loved Sofia like Caris and he must take his baby daughter, overlooked by the plague, back to England and beg Caris again to marry him.  Which she doesn’t do again.  Merthin hangs around for another 5 years until Caris has fulfilled all her goals, has nothing else important on her plate and finally finds him worthy of her hand in marriage. Puke! 

It would seem that Follett's recurring theme in WWE was the supreme female beating down the chauvinistic male.  But, Merthin is not chauvinistic at all especially for the 1300’s.  He is understanding and supportive of Caris becoming independent, successful in her own right but sharing a life with him and having children.  Although he becomes highly successful and rich, to me he lacked character and enough backbone to find Caris unlikeable, assuming the reverse role of female chauvinist pig.

Follett used simple prose and generally simple vocabulary but every once in a while would throw in a word that seemed out of place.  Because I neglected to make notes while reading this I can’t find them, but trust me the words are there.  He used words (one of which was "toady") repetitively enough to wonder whether he had ever used a thesaurus.

I found myself skimming through the final few chapters just to see all the bad guys get their just due, and the good guys triumph. WWE was rather predictable and I was a grouch most of the day after finishing because I felt I had wasted my time reading it.

Star Wars Birthday Cake

We had our Star Wars Birthday Party.  Having a birthday party at Chucky Cheese is definitely like being in "A galaxy far, far away."  The noise level was out of this world.  But the birthday boy had a great time and that is all that counts.  Ashton, our almost 2 year old grandson DID NOT LIKE CHUCKY CHEESE. I finally volunteered to sacrifice the party and take Ashton home.  I know, I know...I'm just a selfless person.

I think the cake turned out OK so I don't think I will show up at cakewrecks.blogspot.com/ this time.

Luca's Birthday Cake

I would have rather used fondant in place of the buttercream frosting but store bought fondant tastes yucky and I sacrificed (AGAIN) for the consumer especially since they were 5 year olds.  The frosting was delish though and I ate more than my share of the leftover cake.  When I make Ashton's cake in May I am going to try to make the fondant so the cake looks good and tastes good.

I did use fondant for R2D2, the Deathstar, words, and stars.  Oh, and the light sabers.  Although everything was edible, with the exception of a few toothpicks on R2, not everything tasted good.

After spending hours making the pattern for the Star Wars Logo, kneading the blue into the fondant and using a razor blade to cut the logo I knew I needed to find a better way to make the stars.

I did not want to cut each of the 30 or so stars by hand so I made three different sized "cookie cutters."  For the first one I just sorta haphazardly bent a strip of roof flashing into a star and it looked like I just sorta haphazardly bent a strip of roof flashing into a star.  So I tossed that one and planned a bit and here are the three resulting "cookie cutters." I even impressed myself with how good they turned out, but I'm easily impressed with myself.

Omega the Drama Queen

I just got back from the vet after taking Omega in for, according to the bill,  “Anal Express.”  Is that like the Orient Express?  

Wow!!  I don’t know about you but I DO NOT want to ride on that train.

The vet takes her in another room for procedures, and now she isn’t scootin’ anymore. 

OK!  TMI

Omega also has something wrong with her toenails so in addition to a ride on the Anal Express, she had to have one of her nails cauterized because it was broken and bleeding.  She came home with this adorable pink bandage on her foot. 

Our vet thinks she has some kind of fungus, (black Labs are prone to toenail fungus) but we can’t seem to get it to go away, so he thinks we should take her to an animal dermatologist.   That shouldn’t cost too much?!  What else can we do – amputate her toes?   Part of the treatment we have tried was soaking all four feet, 5 minutes twice a day in an antifungal soap. 

At the beginning I thought I could do one foot at a time, putting each foot in a cup filled with the soap mixture.  It did cross my mind to fill four cups and have her stand there like a good girl with her feet immersed in soapy stuff.  Oh boy, am I glad I had some forethought.  As it was, we were in the kitchen and she immediately tipped over the cup and ran around the house, down the stairs to the doggie bedroom in the basement, out the doggie door out into the back yard.  Really, she is such a drama queen.  After I cleaned the spilled soap, I coaxed her with sweet murmurs, back into their “bedroom” where I tried using four little zip-lock baggies.  That may have worked if she would have stayed upright, but crying and whining, she surrendered by rolling over on her back, “exposing her soft tummy” so I could just kill her and put her out of her misery.   

Finally, with tow straps I rigged a harness hanging from the ceiling in their bedroom in the basement.  It was just far enough off the floor to keep her on her feet in a standing position.

Twice a day, at mealtime, for one week I would drag me and Omega to her harness, strap her in and fill four zip-lock baggies with the anti-fungal soap and zip her feet in.  So now instead of rolling over, she would stand there whimpering, crying and whining.  I did the whole Cesar Milan thing: petting her, giving her lots of positive reinforcement, but she’d still run like crazy at mealtime. 

As if the soap treatment wasn’t enough, we had to treat each nail with fungicide: more surrendering, crying etc.   Somehow she can sense when we are going to inflict her with some nefarious treatment.  And still, her nails are falling apart.

Poor Omega, she has had so much doggie trauma in her life.  She hides under a workbench at mealtime.  Mealtime should be a completely enjoyable experience, don’t you think?  Omega even gets a pill laced in peanut butter at mealtime, but she still hides under the workbench.  Part of that is her personality, like I said, she is a drama queen. 

Already Omega hides every time we go downstairs. 

We have spent so much money on our dogs we can’t afford to let them die.   The veterinarian staff from before we moved called Alpha, Omega and Marzipan – The Million Dollar Labs. 

an occasional random thought

I called the motor vehicle dept. yesterday to find out about the window tint on a car we bought.  The person who I talked to said we couldn't have it done because of "in-climate" weather.  Really!?  They just said "in-climate?"  I believe the word she wanted is inclement. 

ErichMusick.com - personal website of Erich Musick-software engineer and Christ follower agrees:

Over the past few weeks, we've had some fairly extreme winter weather here in the Midwest. I've heard the word inclement used to describe it on several occasions. Dictionary.com defines this as "(of the weather, the elements, etc.) severe, rough, or harsh; stormy." In their eagerness to use this word, people have abandoned proper spelling. On more than one occasion, I've seen people write inclementin-climate. The prefix in usually negates that which follows. The word climate means, "the composite or generally prevailing weather conditions of a region." Put together, in-climate weather as would refer to weather conditions which are not representative of what is normal for a particular region. That's assuming that in-climate is actually a word.

Curious as to what the experts had to say about this misspelling, I looked it up on Dictionary.com. The only results it yielded were from the U.S. Gazetteer and were names of U.S. cities whose name contains the word "in": Bird In Hand, PA; Cave In Rock, IL; Put In Bay, OH; Howey In The Hil, FL; Lake In The Hill, IL. Reading these names made me think of Native American vocabulary.
My conclusion: Americans need to learn how to spell.

I agree with Erich although I don't believe the motor vehicle person was reading the word, I think they were ignorant of the proper word. 

Butt-scootin boogie

Omega

I guess I'll have to call the vet today and make an appointment for Omega, the smallest of our three Labrador Retrievers.  She has started doing the "butt-scootin boogie" around the living room rug.  I hope her anal glands are so stopped up that she isn't able to excrete on the rug.  No, I won't sniff to see.







 I should probably make an appointment for Marzipan, our fat yellow lab, while I'm at it.  She would love to do the "butt-scootin boogie" but she's too fat.  She tries to pull herself along but apparently her front legs are not strong enough to drag her almost 100 pounds.  She even tries to sort of rotate but can't quite do that either - sorta just rocks side to side with a pathetic longing in her eyes.

Marzipan was the only puppy out of a litter of 9 who did not contract Parvo.  She is very simple-minded, (even for a dog) and we wonder if Parvo sort of skipped her digestive tract and rearranged some of her brain connectors.  The vet told us that was not possible but dogs can in fact be mentally challenged.  That would certainly fit Marzipan.

Hungry Marzipan

 

 

 

 

 

Her main goal in life is to eat.  We had her on a diet one time and she resorted to eating all the pecans, shell and all, and rotten apricots that fell from the trees in the back yard; pecans are very fattening so she didn't loose any weight.   She has bad hips and isn't very active anyway and the less we feed her the less she moves.

Patience is a virtue

We have to keep her away from the other dogs during meal time otherwise she just eases her way into their space and before you know it she has her nose in their bowls and they are looking around for someone to "make her go away."   They may growl and threaten to stop her, but unless they are very hungry, they let her have her way. Once she has control of their food bowl, she lays down to eat, front paws around the bowl, eating as fast as she can before a nasty human comes in to shoo her away.  If I catch her anywhere close to extra food, all I have to do is call her name and she ducks her head and slinks away.

She has been eating diet food for a year now,  but the vet says since it doesn't cost more than her weight in gold it won't work.  That's not exactly what he said, but that is what I heard.  I guess we'll start buying diet food from the vet and see if we can get some weight off her.  I know she will feel better without all that extra weight.

Star Wars

Luca as Darth Vader, Ashton as an Ewok.

Our grandson Luca will be 5 years old next week and he wants a Star Wars Birthday cake.  I like to believe the cakes I make for the grand kids are NOT fodder for http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com so I have been planning in my head just how this cake will look.  When I asked Luca today what flavor cake he wanted he said all the flavors mixed together would be good!  I told him I would surprise him.

When we lived in Spain we only had Matt and Mike (pictured here) and somehow we got a copy of a Star Wars video tape.  We watched it EVERYDAY.  Star Wars became a staple in our lives and all 5 of us are nerdy fans of the original episodes.

One birthday we made a Storm Trooper Pinata.  It was really very easy but time consuming.  Cover a balloon with newspaper soaked in a mixture of flour and water.  White and black paint and Tadaa!  A storm trooper.