We did it!

It took most of a day that was soooooo humid, but we did it.  We have done it.  We now have an electric fence inside the chain link and the dogs are free to reign over the domain of our backyard once again.

We got some rain yesterday morning, which was an unexpected blessing.  I enjoyed it very much, sitting on my porch and drinking coffee. 

Following that was a trip to buy fencing supplies, long discussions of "options", the purchase of "some" supplies, other trips to other places for other discussions of "options" with coffee drinking farmers, and eventually the work was in progress.

I had no idea you could not just run down town and buy a 6 or 12 volt battery anymore.  Who knew?  Luckily, I had a practically brand new and hardly used battery in the lawn mower that hasn't run for at least 3 years.  A few hours on the trickle charger and we were in business.

The dogs got it within 1 zap each.  They are very smart that way.  The real problem is us.  After we had made the big beautiful yard safe for them, the boys were compelled to let them in last night "because they were lonely".  They went out for about 2 hours this morning and then I let them in "because it's so hot outside".  Now they are laying at my feet contentedly listening to my type.  We are very good people.  We love our dogs.  Self discipline is obviously the burden we are destined to overcome in this life.  So be it.  Eventually the boys are going back to school and I will go to work and the dogs will be in the backyard staying away from the fence, and everything will be as it should.  That is my plan, anyway.

After the rain it got so humid, as we were setting posts and running the wire, that sweat was actually beading up and running down my scalp.  Also, you may already know that the drought hasn't slowed down the mosquito's at all, and they had a feast on all of us.

This did not leave me in very good shape to go register the boys for school, but I just tried not to touch my hair, sprayed on some perfume we sallied forth.

Lord help me, we sallied forth in order to pay the school to be registered for such classes as "minority studies".  Yep.  You read that correctly.  I am not making it up.  If I hadn't already been sweat soaked and eaten up by mosquito's I probably would have had the energy to make a big deal of this.  I have very little energy left to throw at ignorant, gigantic Federal institutions, which is what public school has become, and this is probably good, since I have to live in this town.  Ok.  I don't "have" to live in this town, but it would be a lot of energy to move and the public schools will be the same no matter where I live.   But I have to tell you, I have just about had it.  If I could find someone to do it, my children would be home schooled, but this probably isn't news.  As it is, the kids show up and get passed without learning much of anything useful and the parents pretend to be happy and proud that they are doing so well.  We just work on the real lessons at home, in the time we have between supper and bedtime, if you are old-fashioned enough to work for a living.  It's the path of least resistance, I know, but I can only do so much.  

Do not doubt that we had a quite lively discussion of this in the convenience store where we ran into other guinea pigs students after registration.  The result was that there are several kids going to school that have been told that since they are white, male, and expect to work for a living, they are the new minority.   

Wonder how the teacher's gonna like them apples?  Poor thing.  I have no evidence that this is anything the actual teacher believes in, you understand.  I'm about 99.9% sure it's just part of the "curriculum" and there is a "rule" that it must (MUST I SAY!!) be checked off of a "list".  If the "list" isn't "checked off", there will be a "bad report", and the poor teacher's salary might "be affected".  

How do you think they get people to do this anyway?  It's not just through brainwashing.  You have to dangle some kind of good carrot to get people to go against everything their parent's tried to instill in them.  It is extremely helpful if you surround the subject with other's in the same boat.  They will call this a "team".  You don't think anybody would be stupid enough to advance this agenda without backup, do you?  Would you?  Of course not!  Most people do have a brain which often works despite their trying to suppress their own natural instincts.   Oh, and foster a strong belief that it's "the right thing to do".   This is supposed to silence logical and reasonable people with false guilt.  It is about 49% effective, too, and that is nobody's fault but our own.  

Apparently you need to start kid's attitudes of entitlement and victimization at least by the time they are freshman in high school.  Any later and it might not take, and then where would that leave the government?  

NOWHERE!  That's where!  

FAST! 

Which is one thing I would like to see before I die and I guess if that means having a war with my own children to supplant the insane, morally questionable (at best) and corrupt (at worst) attitudes that the school system seems to be intent on endowing them with, well, what can I say.? It appears to be my destiny.  We all have one and I'm not dead yet.  If you ever have cause to question what your "destiny" is, look around.  I'm pretty sure it's right in front of you.  Do it.  Then do what comes next.  This keeps the world spinning and we all have to do our part.

It's like a dream to me, getting the government out of our lives.  Remember another man who had another dream?  I thought we were there in the 80's, and I still think we were there, but not now.  Oh, no, now everyone is supposed to feel "bad" for anything "different" and "guilty" for things we never once did or even thought about doing.  

Would you just GET REAL already?  

If I am not mistaken, in America everyone has equal rights and we are all heavily encouraged to become adults and become self sustaining.  Nobody really cares or even thinks about what color you are and trust me, there are a whole lot of people who consider your sex life absolutely private and none of their business.  They wish you would consider it private and none of their business too!  Everybody has problems of their own and whining never helped anybody do anything.  

Whining=bad.  This should not have to be spelled out in a world of adults.  

But where are the adults? We have parents now who spend their time gaming and their money on "movies" that are cartoons.  Cartoons used to be for kids.  When my generation grew up, we waited to be 18, you know why?  So we could be independent!  The fact that this also meant we had a couple of milk crates for chairs did NOTHING to deter us.  In fact, it just made us swallow the fact that things cost money and our resolve to make more of it so we could buy us some stuff!  Now we have 18 year olds who play games most of the time living in their parent's basement and are not even expected to have a job, hence insurance, until they are 26????  Am I the ONLY ONE who is trying to raise adults????  I can't be!  It can't be true!!  I do not want to leave you with the impression that I think people below the age of 26 actually "need" insurance, either, because when I was that age I opted not to pay for it.  Why?  Because I was young and healthy and I wanted that money to buy beer or something instead.  But that was before the world moved on and started treating people like parasites, not to mention a time when people fought against being parasites.   Are those days gone?  Not if I have anything to do with it.

It looks to be a very interesting year.  Stay tuned.

Timing Is Everything

The dogs have put me through hell, literally, lately.

Two weeks ago they dug out of the fence and spent the whole day LOST.

I spent the whole day pacing at home, yelling my lungs out, slowly driving around looking desperately for them, crying, raging, imagining how mean I was going to be to them if they ever came home, imagining how sad I would be if they didn't come home, imagining having to tell the boys the dogs were gone, and alerting all the neighbors that they were gone, so they could contact me if they saw them.  Since I was driving around anyway I stopped by the police station to let them know, I called the pound to see if they had showed up there.  Nothing. There were a couple of sales with lots of people that I slowly cruised around until I made people nervous wondering what the heck I was doing.  Not a sign of them anywhere.

It was just exactly the same as when the older kids were not home when they were supposed to be.  It was exactly the same as it will be when the twins are not home when they are supposed to be.  This is still in the future, although it is coming at me very fast.

You think that you would 'know' if your child was in a ditch, slowly bleeding to death, and you are pretty sure that they are just out, having fun and physically fine, but let's face it, until someone actually lays in a ditch and slowly bleeds to death, you cannot be absolutely certain.  So you worry.

With dogs, you worry that they will be shot for chasing cows, or digging in someone's garden.  You worry that they will run through a field and come down on something that will impale their chest.  You worry that they will step on a broken bottle in a creek.  You worry that they will get hit along the highway.  Mostly you worry that they will meet some other nice people and just stay and you will wonder what happened to them, hoping it wasn't something horrible, till the day you die.  All this time, they are probably just running through timber and splashing in ponds and laying in the sun sleeping, enjoying the day while your hair is turning white and the gas tank creeps toward empty and you tell yourself that you cannot afford to drive around all day and that they are probably home now and you are missing them because you are not there!!  Throw a few hot flashes in there and it's enough to drive you crazy, or at least make you wish you were crazy and above such mundane worries.

After all this, they show up at the back door in time for supper, looking like butter wouldn't melt in their mouths.

Again, it is exactly the same as with a child.  You are furiously relieved and angry all at once, followed immediately by weak-kneed gratefulness that they are all right, followed by the stern talking to and the punishment which you fervently hope works because let's face it: their lives depend on it.

The dogs have been tied up since then unless we are home and while Jack is more mellow and takes his medicine basically like a man, Shadow should maybe have been named Houdini.  They are so proud when they get out, it's like they have performed some incredibly wonderful trick.  They positively exude joy.  If something runs from them they seem to feel 10 feet tall and bullet proof.  Anything that doesn't run and shows the slightest bit of resistance scares them. They are chasers-not killers. They truly know not what they do.  If only we were still in that same blissful state of ignorance.

I don't want to say girls are smarter here, because I do not truly believe that, but Shadow is able to not only slip a collar off her neck but also an admittedly uncomfortable harness. Like Houdini, I suspect she can dislocate her shoulders at will. Unfortunately, Shadow was not adopted by a family of spies or a circus where this kind of thing would appreciated, and this is Shadow's burden to bear.  We all have at least one.

This morning they did it again.  Jack even did it in his harness, not being one to expend energy uselessly.  By the time we found them they had apparently been through a pond and killed a neighbor's cat. Said neighbor decided the best course of action would be to inform two 14 year old boys in no uncertain terms that  if he saw the dogs again, he would be beating them with a golf club, one of which he conveniently had with him to wave around.   This, when reported to me, prompted at least one of my sons to respond in a way that would not have my personal first, second, or third choice.  Where was I?  I was 50 feet up the street in my driveway.  This is not, thank God, a neighbor who lives close to us.

By the time the boys and dogs get back to the house to tell me this, the boys are practically in tears and huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf.  It is at this moment in my day 7:27 am.  I have two dogs which I love but am in the mood to kill inside my house, two very upset 14 year old boys which I love but cannot protect from the ugliness of the world, and a neighbor that I would love to kill but have to set an example and therefore show love and understanding for. And it is only Thursday.  Annnnd we still all have to get to school and work on time.  These are the facts of my life at this moment.

Shiver me timbers.

Welcome to my world!!  Take a seat and buckle up, ladies and gentleman!  It's gonna be one hellovaday!!

I wisely decided not to complain; after all, I could have chosen to be an alcoholic instead of raising kids but that was not the choice I made.  There is no changing horses in the middle of this stream, we are just going to have to ride the rapids and hope for the best.  Besides, everyone else had already lost their cool, and somebody had to act like an adult even if they didn't feel like it.  By default this duty had fallen to me.

God was with me.

Of course he was!

I put the dogs in the garage with a little water, a couple of bones, a long lecture and some fervent hope that Shadow's multiple capabilities would be stymied by a locked doorknob, at least until I could get home at noon.  I had a little cartoon fantasy about her clicking out a claw shaped like a key, kind of like a dog version of Inspector Gadget.  Then I came back to earth and distantly wished for the days when cartoons were always on because I had small children.  I miss those days.  Then I sucked it up and charged back into the fray.

I told the boys that I was sure the neighbors loved their cat and I felt absolutely terrible about it.

This worked, as they know what it is to lose a cat.  It hasn't been that long since our own died, and that cooled down the killing rage that only teenage hormones can summon up.

Then I told them that whatever had been said, on both sides, had been said in the heat of the moment, and we all let our tempers get away from us sometimes.  Nobody is perfect.  The one rule that never changes.

Then, since this person works at the same place where they have to spend all day, I told them that if they saw this person there, and had to speak, that they should keep their faces neutral, their voices respectful, and sincerely give their condolences to the cat owner, and then walk away.  The walking away part was key, and I stressed it, because this is not an adult that I respect or even trust around children, for reasons entirely older and completely separate from this  particular incident.  But I cannot control the world, which is another rule that never changes.

As we drove to school, it occurred to me that as unpleasant as this day already was, the timing of it was eerily perfect.  In a year these boys will be driving, and going places without me, out of my control.  It will be up to them, then. This morning they had experienced exactly how I would feel if they did what the dogs had done, and they knew it.

I told the boys that now they understood what it was like to be a parent, who only wanted their child to mind for their own good, so that they could be safe in the world and know how to behave when their parents could not be with them.  We talked about how badly it can hurt to have to punish the ones you love, but that you had to do it for the child's own good.  It is really the only responsible thing to do when you are a  parent, because otherwise you really are leaving them at risk out in the world.  We agreed that we would buy some wire to make the fence electric, even though it would hurt the dogs to learn that lesson.  We talked about how smart the dogs were and how it wouldn't have to hurt them too many times before those very smart dogs would figure it out and we would not have to worry about that, at least, anymore.  Jack and Shadow will have even better lives if they learn to mind the rules and have respect for other people's property.  Whatever we have to do to get that lesson through their heads is what we are committed to doing, because sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.  I may have given away the secret that parents are mostly faking it till they make it anyway.  I figured if they were old enough to learn everything else this morning had brought to us, might as well go the entire distance.  Many lessons are lost when not followed through to the end.

Then I went to work where I would sit, upset by this whole thing all day long, faking a nice voice to answer the phone with and praying that adults would be able to be adults and children would be able to be children.  I did not get within 10 feet of wishing anything about dogs and cats, let me tell you.  Humans are quite enough to handle in my opinion, thankyouverrrrymuch.

Truth is, the world can be a terrible place where you can get hit upside the head with a golf club at any given moment when you think you are just out having fun.  Truth is, getting hit upside the head with a golf club is not by far the worst thing that could ever happen to you, either.  This is just a fact of life and the sooner we all learn it, the better off we all will be.  I always try to teach my kids to deal with reality instead of clinging to unrealistic illusions.  I do not have a lot of faith in unrealistic illusions, I have never been in the business of raising fools, and I guarantee you that hard reality will always show up sooner or later.

They seemed to really understand.  They were pretty disillusioned with both the world and adult responsibility this morning, which, I had a sinking feeling, was the most I could possibly have hoped for.

Isn't that sad?  Remember the slowly dawning feeling that you got the first time it dawned on you that being grown up may not be the big shiny gaudily wrapped present that you always thought it would be? That moment when, for the first time childhood seemed safer than what was coming toward you and that second thought that maybe you should go back, except for a nagging certainty that you would never really be able to go back there again?  Not really?  That happened this morning for my boys.  It is sad, but it brought a greater understanding that could pay off big dividends in the not so distant future.  Could being the operative word.  Depending upon the choices we are all yet to make.

And that, my friends, is life.  At least it's our life, right now, and we are doing the absolute best that we can. 

 Forgive our trespasses as we forgive others who trespass against us.

This week so far.....

So, one of the boys is playing football this year.  This means that I spend most of my evenings in my car in the school parking lot waiting.  Waiting for what?  Just waiting.  Does it really matter "for what"?  No.  Just bring a book.  This my best advise.  Or blog from your car.  Multi-tasking at it's best!!

Sunday evening, after swimming,  I reminded both boys to put alcohol in their ears.  Four times.  I do not believe either of them did this.

Monday morning I reminded both boys to put alcohol in their ears.  Twice.

Monday at lunch I come home, maneuver around the giant pile of clothes, sorted by size and item, that are currently residing in my living room floor, and go to the bathroom.  On the counter I see the bottle of Glyoxide out without it's cap.

I am certain that one of the boys, probably the younger one, put Glyoxide in his ears instead of alcohol.

Both bottles are the same shape and size.  Alcohol's tip is red.  Glyoxide's is blue.

I sigh.  At some point, probably about the time your kids turn 14, you are ready to let them sink or swim on their own.  Not that you don't hope they swim.  Not that you don't have vague plans in the back of your mind, constantly, about what you will do if they sink. 

Mostly you just sigh and wait for this day to pass.

I did not even put the cap back on the Glyoxide, because that is not my job, either.

Tuesday, the youngest baby asks desperately, "Is today Wednesday"?

"No".  I flatly state, shooting down his hope.



These cooler nights are coming earlier and we are all sluggish with the desire to sleep more and/or allergies.  Our days are nothing but what we must go through in order to get back to bed, where we would much prefer to stay.  I speak for everyone in my household when I say this.


Wednesday morning I am on my second "Ok, I really mean it this time, we have really got to go now!!" trip back into the house and the boys are having a yelling fight.  Youngest baby has forgotten a form that I need to sign and he needs to turn in today, of course.  And wants Oldest baby to just "put his name on his" form and then turn in one form for both boys.  Older baby said "forget that, dude."  Youngest baby appeals to me, his mother, who loves him, for help. 

It's hell being both mother and father to these boys, but I must say I do a pretty good job of it.  I just ask myself what I would do with a grown man who tried to pull that crap on me, and then act accordingly.  I figure I am saving an unknown number of women trouble in their not so distant future this way.  It has never been my intention to raise any fools, let alone crybabies.  The world needs men, and I intend to increase this world's "men" be at least 3.  I think it was all those years of complaining about "men" that made God put me in this situation.  I hope it is clear that I no longer give God reason to basically say "OK, babe, put your money where your mouth is, I am tired of hearing this same line of whining", but I am only human.  You will have to wait and see just like I do.

So I tell Youngest baby to suck it up.  It was his responsibility to bring home the paper and he didn't, so he will have to pay the consequences.  He is not happy and sulks all the way to the car.  While we have a few minutes because we are STILL waiting on Oldest baby, I say "listen, you are getting to the age where nobody is going to accept these silly excuses.  You are old enough to know better and you are just going to have carry your own weight.  To accept these excuses would mean that I am helping to set you up for a lifetime of bitter disappointment".  He screams at me that he knows.  I shoot lasers out of my eyes and he settles into a subdued sulk.

I drop off the boys at school and am fool enough to think I am free now to remember what my own day holds.  I remember again that it is Wednesday, finally!  I start to feel the stress leave me.

My phone rings as I am just turning off of the road that leads to the school.

It's the middle school where I have just about 2 minutes ago dropped off the boys.

"Mom?  Can you come back to school and sign my paper?  I found it!"






............."yeah.  I'll be there in a minute, honey."

I also have to be the sweet mother who will drive for miles just so you don't miss turning in your papers on time.

This is my life. 

Every time it runs smoothly for any period of time, something changes.

I just go with the flow.  Right now, that involves a lot of driving, waiting, and dog hair.

It could be worse.

I'm baa-aack

With warmer temperatures (sometimes), we have moved outside and been working on the yard.  Specifically raking and burning leaves and whatever the dogs have reduced to small foreign objects.  Mostly limbs out of trees.  The other night the wind was blowing pretty hard and blew a pretty big limb out of a Pin Oak. The dogs ran over joyously, treating that limb like the gift from God it probably was, and reduced it into about 9 smaller twigs within 40 minutes.  Really.  For this reason I have also been playing a lot of Pick Up Sticks.  I have reduced my love handles to the point of being able to get my pants buttoned again.    YES!  Not that I really mind being bigger, but I can't afford new jeans AND gas, so I had to make a decision.  I decided, as is my habit on High Energy Days, to HIT IT!  After a couple of days spent picking up sticks in my yard, my body now feels like Arnold Schwarzenegger's looked like in the 80's (note the emphasis on the feels  and the absence of the word "looks"). 

THIS IS WONDERFUL!! 

It was starting to really get to me, and just when we can no longer wear sweaters.  I hate it when that happens. 

I have stopped making my way steadily through bags of candy, at least temporarily.  One thing that I should mention, and this is a safety warning:  Do not buy Crystal Light hard candy.  Thinking this would save on calories, I bought a bag of them.  These candies have 1/2 of what looks like meant to be a hole like a Life Saver, but the hole only goes half way. 
Listen to me when I say that this CAN cause the candy, when you suck on it, to adhere to the roof of your mouth in a manner that feels pretty danged permanent, necessitating you to use your finger to try to break the suction, directly after which the candy will zing to the back of your throat, choking you in an embarrassing manner, should you be unfortunate enough to be in a public place.  Maybe even if you are alone in the privacy of your own home.   I was at work, and I hate to admit it, but this happened to me several times.  It seemed such a waste not to eat it when I already had them right there.  So, for what it's worth, beware the Crystal Light hard candy.

In other news, I have had to have a conversation with my youngest baby that included the phrase "No, dear, you cannot start dating when you are 13 years old."  I am baffled as to why in the world I would have to say that.  If you were thinking the world has gone crazy, I can only say that I think you would be correct.  I also would like to note the big sigh of relief from my oldest baby after I uttered this phrase, followed by the words "Why can't all parents be as strict as you?"

Yes.

I swear it is the truth.  The odds of a child expressing appreciation for the strictness of a parent, at 13 no less, are infinitely small.  I am going to have to remember it for a very long time and so have now documented that it does happen. 

Who says God doesn't answer prayers????

My only reply was "I have no earthly idea, honey, but all I have in this world that means anything to me is you kids, and you are not going down the wrong path on my watch", said with a smile and a pat on his leg as we drove down the road.  It was nothing but the honest truth, and I have the feeling we will be coming back to that conversation again, perhaps several times.  I won't go into what else I said but it involved anatomically correct words and my two babies begging me to stop. 

It went as well as can be expected. 

Any parent worth their salt is relentless.  Believe it, know it, live it. 

Blizzard - Seriously

We are having a blizzard.  This blizzard was predicted, prepared for and anticipated madly for at least two days.  The kids came home from school early yesterday and joyously proclaimed that they were not having school today.  Indeed, the blizzard was supposed to start last night here. 

I stayed up until almost midnight reading because I fully expected to wake up and be in the middle of a blizzard.  I marveled at what a difference a "snow day" can make in your life.  We all remember the feeling from childhood of course, but as an adult with a job, snow days are few and far between.  If there is even the slightest suggestion that you may not have to get up and do that same thing at the same time, suddenly everything changes.  Normally I have to drink coffee when I get home in order to stay up until 10 pm, so "tired" am I.  Last night I wasn't tired at all and hated to stop reading even then, but I did because I knew there was the outside chance that the blizzard wouldn't come. Many years of experience has taught me this.  It may not hold true in your life.  I hope it doesn't.  But I do not count on "snow days" until they actually happen.  That's just kind of the way things go with my life.  I 've learned to roll with it.

I think I live most of my life under some kind of deadline pressure, only the deadline never comes.  It's just the perpetual pressure of what I have to do next with a clock ticking, ticking, ticking down in my head.  That needs to stop.  Enough is enough.  Why do we do this to ourselves?  DO other people do that to themselves?  Is it just me?  I know intellectually that there is no "finish line", no "prize", no point at which we will ever be "done", as long as we still live.  But I can't seem to shake the constant checking off of that list and the adding to it. 

So, this is one snow day that will not be wasted.  It will be treasured.  I give myself permission to take a break from the list and the pressure and especially the review of what I did wrong or didn't do at all.

I give you permission too.  

So I wake up this morning, nothing.  Not a thing.  It's just started snowing in KC and Joplin is already buried.  So I figure ok, I'll go to work and stay there till noon or it starts flying, whichever comes first.  Due to the delivery of the new doghouse, I have gotten my car back in the garage, and I am just reveling in the fact that it's inside out of the weather when I push the button to open the garage door and it doesn't work.  See what I mean about my life?  I shelled out the money for a new garage door opener last year and it has never worked right.  The remote almost never worked.  About 1/2 the time you can open it with the keypad on the outside, but most of the time the button works.  Not this morning, but most of the time.  So I sit there and keep hiting the button, which is my technique for things that don't work, and eventually, after stopping and starting repeatedly, it goes all the way up.  I back out the car, have to get back out, hit the button, repeatedly, again, and then have to beat it to make it under the infernal thing before I can even leave to go to work.  I was exhausted already.

So the great Blizzard of 2011 started about 9 am.  It grew steadily worse all morning, cancellations are rolling out of the radio, local law enforcement is advising that visibility is dropping rapidly and basically begging people not to go out, and still no one is calling off work.

I left at noon. I think most people did.  Eventually they all left, thank God, I do not know what time.

What I do know is that we had about 6 inches on the ground when I got home at noon.  If you can believe this, I got the car back in the garage and we battened down the hatches.  I changed my FB status to "let us put on our mother's aprons and cook it up!" and got busy.  I baked brownies, made hot chocolate and got baked beans and tenderloins ready to go for supper.   All this time the snow fell like crazy and the wind blew until you couldn't tell which way it was coming from or going.  We brought in the dogs and attended the Snowpocalypse on FB, ate brownies and watched movies. 

We just went out to check and see how bad it was (and I'm sorry I don't have pictures, but I tried and all I got was a wet camera), and we are officially snowed in, man!!  In front of the garage there is a drift at least 3 feet deep.  There was 8 inches on the porch, most of which I managed to get off.  You cannot tell, at the end of the porch where the steps are, where the steps are.  It's just all snow.  You have to step off and wait till you hit bottom.  The dogs went out and were up to their shoulders.  They had to make it to the street before they could pee! They were pretty excited about it and ran first up the street, then down the street, chased by my Youngest Baby.  He did not have his hat. gloves, or coveralls on either.  But you probably knew that.  The one concession he made was boots, and if he wore them you can bet that there was no other way he could make it off the porch.  He is short on preparation but long on dedication, and between him and me using my meanest voice yelling at the dogs to come back, we got them to come back home.  They had less enthusiasm breaking through the 40 feet of driveway drifted in 3 feet of snow. Never underestimate the effect that the sound of food being shaken in the container  you feed them from.  I recommend using metal container, as the sound carries better through blizzards and stuff.  We are all safe and sound, surrounded by food and many, many blankets.

It's supposed to go on into the night, they are saying.  I don't know when it will stops, but when it does, I am going to have to find someone with a tractor and blade or something to dig me out. 

I talked to my family down south and Neosho is reporting 18 inches.  It will be interesting to see how much we end up with.  I can't see either one of the wagons in the back yard anymore, but with it blowing like this it's really hard to tell how much is on the ground.

Enjoy the blizzard if you are in it.  It kind of makes you feel sorry for the ones who didn't get a snow day, doesn't it?

You say you need a doghouse?

A couple of years ago a friend of mine had a much loved lab who found herself expecting puppies with a boxer.  She had 8 beautiful puppies.  When I went over to see them, and was asked if I wanted a puppy.  I firmly stated that I needed a puppy like I needed a hole in the head.  Then one of those sweet little things wandered over to my foot.  I leaned down and scooped it up.  It sighed, long and lazily, and snuggled up to my neck, and I was lost.  I felt this little thing had picked me.  It was a boy and before I left that night I was signed up.
Before it was all said and done, we ended up taking two.  A boy and a girl. 
The kids were thrilled.
The cyclist was appalled.
I was not intimidated, knowing what puppies entailed, and also knowing that having two little ones is actually easier in many ways than having one.
I bought kennels, pillows, bitterspray, odor eliminator, food, oatmeal shampoo and many, many chew toys.
The kids were thrilled.
The cyclist was still appalled.
I was not really discussing this subject with the cyclist at this point. 
Then one night as the Cyclist made his point about what dog food cost for the 120th time, I casually said "I'm thinking about calling that little boy dog Jack."
"That's what I was thinking of naming him!" the Cyclist replied.
I smiled, and said "Then I guess it 's settled."
And so our family grew to include

 Jack and Shadow

So, this year for Christmas the Cyclist thought they needed a house.  And not just any house, either.  This house had to be big enough to two dogs, with room for them to stretch out, like he knew they liked to do.  The Cyclist has the most wonderful father in the world, who happens to have his very own woodworking shop and a lot of time to work in it.  Now, as far as I was concerned, a very basic box would work just fine.  I even had some plywood and shingles and stuff in the garage and sent all that over for them to work with.

I did not know who I was dealing with.

These two men, who are not carpenters, proceeded to build a doghouse that is hands down nicer than my actual house in almost every way.

I want you to look at this:

It filled the entire bed of the truck.  Note the deck on the front.  It is made out of cedar.  It is also fully and completely insulated, in addition to being finished on the inside.  You could put up wallpaper on the walls, if you wanted to.  The exterior boasts trim, which was added at the suggestion of the Cyclist's angel mother, so that it "wouldn't look like just plywood."  It certainly doesn't, does it?

We had the dogs a house.  And what a house.  All that remained was to get it unloaded.

Well.

That was quite an ordeal, as we could not get a gate out of the ground to back the truck up.  So 4 of us had to work together to get the new doghouse moved about 50 feet.  Not far, piece of cake, right?  It would have been, except for  a length of solid ice right at the fence where we had to unload it, and the fact that the doghouse weighed about as much as a piano.

Now, I only say this because I have had to move a piano once.  I can not tell y ou how many pounds a piano weighs, but I can tell you that it is a LOT.  And this doghouse weighed about the same.  And we had to move it, over ice, without having anyone fall down and be crushed by the sheer weight of it all.

All I can say is that God must have been watching over us.  We did it.  We did it while the Cyclist was considering things from all angles and wasting time in the freezing cold trying to "make a plan" while I was barking out orders encouraging everyone to snap to and let's-get-this-done-because-we've-come-this-far-and-we-can't-stop-now-but-my-LORD-be-careful-because-if-any-of-us-fall-it-will-KILL-US!

And we did it.  No one fell, no one even said any bad words, and it was done.  We filled it with hay and while I can't say it is big enough to hold both the dogs and the Grand Finale, I can say truthfully that it is plenty big enough to both dogs and 1/2 the Grand Finale.  The other half opted out of getting in.  I think he is old enough to be considering his dignity or something.  Isn't that sad?  I'll miss having "boys".  They are growing up so fast.

Jack and Shadow have never had it so good.  They seem to know not every doghouse has a cedar deck.

And while I was more interested in the Cyclist spending some time with his dad, I have to say that this turned out really well for everyone concerned.  For one thing, it's completely changed my concept of "doghouse".

You never know what you can make out of odds and ends that have been laying around in your garage for years.  You never know what stories you might hear if you take the time to spend time with your parent's on any given day. 

Don't forget that we all make stories all the time.  Remember them. 

I, for one, can tell you that none of us will ever forget unloading that doghouse.  I'm pretty sure we will think long and hard before ever moving it again, either. 

I have the strongest feeling this doghouse will be around for many, many years to come.