Happy Turkey Day Amigos!

We are back from our trip, see previous post, and the "other" animals blog. I was starting to feel like the crew of the faithful minnow who took a three hour trip, a three hour trip....sorry, it seemed funny to me. We had to stay in a motel for a couple days to get a load back but we did get one back, thanks Tony. BTW I do have my CDL and I will probably be working with my husband a great deal now. (I weighed the pros and cons did I want to ride with him on ice or drive myself to work on ice, ride with him won). Oh and BTW did I ever tell you how I went on this trip? We were cleaning the truck since husband had used it for hauling construction stuff around for 6 months (read dust over everything) and I was playing with the passenger seat, he said it's air ride and I'll fix it if you'll go with me. Anyway I thought husband would have to put a new seat in the truck or @ least take the innards out of this one. Nope, it MIGHT have taken him 5 minutes to fix it. So I'm a truck driver again or a truck passenger part of the time.

I also posted about Thanksgiving and forgiveness on Tresa's Blog if you wish to be more unimpressed with my mental facilities. I'm so tired I was wandering from room to room forgetting what I came into each one for, bathrooom....... check mousetrap, bedroom.........get dog food (I put it in a suitcase, you think I keep the dogfood in the bedroom?)

The picture above? It's an aceo (colored pencil, 2.5"x3.5" painting) I did of Dispatch the Bichon when he was a baby puppy. I'm not sure why I put it on here and the other blog but it's one of my favorite pictures of him. He was a baby on my blue jeaned lap. I'm pretty sure my legs were skinny then?

All the animals are fine. Skeeter is much better. She yodeled when we got home Dispatch screeched like a banshee when she yodeled.

Highlights of the trip?
1. Dispatch tried to take out a border patrol when he stepped up on the truck when the door was open. I told the officer Dispatch was a citizen too. For those of you that haven't been to S TX or other places close to the border they look in trucks @ various inspection stations.

2. Dispatch is convinced the noise the rumble bars on the side of the road make is a monster trying to come through the floor of the truck to get him. This will keep him occupied staring @ the floor from the safety of my lap for about 1/2 hour. Also Dispatch is NOT happy on the dash of the truck but he fits quite nicely when we are sitting still if he's being annoying. He's not sure what the jake brake is but it's not nearly as scary as the rumble bars and if he watches his daddy much more I'm pretty sure he will know the gear pattern.

3. Remember how Dispatch is the terror of the car trip? Rides in a truck like he's been doing it all his life, sleeps on the floor most of the time, looks out whatever window is available, braces for curves etc. Of course he can touch mommy @ all times IF he wants to so that makes a difference. And of course everyone thinks he is so cute and well behaved @ the truck stops and even point and wave as we go down the road, @ least I think they are pointing and waving @ him or I'm having a REALLY bad hair day?

4. Oh yes, the refrigerator in the truck is @ floor level, it didn't take Dispatch long to learn this. He REALLY likes cold cold bottled water. He started telling me he was thirsty or his water was warm (horrors) by going and sitting by the frig.

Anyway I hope everyone has a happy and safe Thanksgiving without gaining a pound. We are going to my in laws tomorrow along with my sis in law and her family and their families and my daughter and her family and four of husbands kids with their families, intendeds, or intended with families. Anyway I just counted and it's 35 people, I think we had close to 50 here two years ago. Mostly immediate family. I got off lucky this year as far as cooking, my SIL was a caterer (she does everything perfectly, did I say that? hey Elenor, just kidding if you read this) and her two daughters are helping. My daughter is picking up canned sweet potatoes because no one was brining any and we have to have some even if no one eats them and I will fix them over there. She's also bringing dirt cake which is some outrageously rich crumbled oreo concoction or that's usually what she brings. I'm dumping canned fruit in a bowl and calling it good. Only two kids won't be there, my youngest and husbands youngest. One is house/dog sitting and the other is spending the holiday with her mother and her husbands family.

Anyway I'm full of good cheer but need to sleep again, Happy Holidays!!!

My New Page Family Mystery

I have a new page on Tresa's Blog.
My Family Mystery, it's long, real long with lots of links. We have a perfectly nice respectable family, but the page has murder, a wild boar, a gold ring and a rabbi on it, oh yeah, robber barons too. It was just the people who lived in the house that we are named after. Unless ........

AND it's got a very blurry self portrait of me illustrating my big nose with almost no makeup on. Confused? Good, go see what I'm talking about.

It's Been A Great Day

Did I tell you I had 30,000 hits on this site? If I didn't look to the right below, and the last post. (and more pictures of my bichon frise, talk about repetative AND I'm going to talk about blood clots--but I feel I must) My grandkids say I've refreshed quite a bit or I have 10 friends that go here all the time. They are lovely children. They really are, they took care of me while I was waiting to go have an ultrasound for a blood clot @ the hospital. I should have taken pictures while they were here but they told me to blog about how great they were. So I am, they emptied the dishwasher, changed the sheets on the king sized bed, ummmm, picked up and fed themselves, went and got me coffee and other necessities of life, oh yeah they took the trash out. The picture below is Dispatch smelling where they had their slip and slide, I noticed he went out there and kept sniffing where it was, then I realized he was looking for them. They really are good kids, the oldest was vacuuming when I got home from getting my test done or trying, the vacuum tripped a breaker with the ac in this end of the house. We are having a wienie roast next Tuesday when their Aunt comes in from KS (with her little dog Toto, I'm kidding, I don't think she has a dog yet and hopefully it won't be named Toto). They are gone home now and all is quiet. Nobody is streaking but we won't talk about that part, apologies to people on the highway. My favorite line from the whole grandkid taking care of grandma thing came when I was up going to go to the bathroom.
Zach: "Grandma, what are you doing up?"
Me: "Going to go to the bathroom." Ok maybe I added "is that ok?" or "would you like to do it for me?" Grandma can be rather snide @ times obviously.
I fiddled around in the kitchen which is not obviously the bathroom, headed down the hall for one of the bathrooms down there, thought about what I'd forgotten to do in the kitchen, went back there..........
Zach: "Grandma, pick a bathroom and GO to it!"
Me: "Yes sir." Thinking OK, oh bossy one soon I will be able to walk freely. The kids did say after I was allowed to walk around they liked me better when I couldn't move????? But they were really good as always. Nobody cried hardly and I don't think we had even one serious punch the whole time.

My test results from the ultrasound? Taa Daaaa-----I do have a blood clot or clots everybody seemed to be rather rushed since it was Friday afternoon, I had the NICEST radiologist though or he had a fancy name for it but we will call him a radiologist since I can remember that word. We knew quite a few of the same people and had some good conversation. But the blood clot is superficial which means close to the skin, I evidently have some pretty thick skin because no way can you see it, maybe it's that nice layer of padding on my legs that look fat in certain pictures, see 3 posts back. So the prognosis? I can go to Louisiana, I can go back to work, I need to not sit or stand in one place for long periods of time, and I need to take Plavix and a baby aspirin daily and if anything else goes on with my leg contact the doctor IMMEDIATELY. Why am I so overjoyed @ this? It's MUCH better than a deep blood clot, keeping my leg up, not being able to work (even though I have 5 days left), having to do injections of blood thinner and just a much worse senario. So today is a pretty good day and Dispatch the bichon obliged by posing quite nicely and looking good even though I didn't get around to brushing him yet.He even looked at me when I took a picture, well sort of in the distance when he figured out the evil flash from the camera wasn't going to go off, I actually think he was sort of getting into posing?


So that was my day, I hope your Friday was as good?

Fishing Dogs And Kids

This isn't absolutely about animals but it does have a bichon, a labrador retriever, a terrier and fish in it.

My oldest grandson bought a small blow up boat. They called me @ work yesterday and told me we were having a "weekend."

This is Marcus 13 getting ready to go fishing this morning. Paris the cat is watching him, Paris was named after Paris Hilton because the cat was so pretty, Paris is a tomcat. Whoops.
This is Dispatch 5, thinking he's going fishing. He did go.

This is the gang, their mother my daughter included, Sara is in the lead, she's 7, walking down what used to be a cleared road by the "branch" what we call small creeks here in MO, the pond is 1/4 mile or more away. My dad built the pond before I was born and stocked it with perch and bass, which are still there. We drove the cub cadet down the lane (discovered part of my lawn furniture that had gotten left in the woods while someone was deer hunting?) but the crossing was washed out so we walked part way.

This is Skeeter and Mugsey getting cooled off after the long walk.

This is a video of Zach 14 in his boat, Marcus fishing, and Mugsey 2 and Skeeter 12-18 (rescue dog she was my dads, he got her in 99 and he passed away in 2001, we've had her ever since, she was old when he got her) getting cooled off and of course the Bichon Dispatch 5. The boat in the water is the bat boat, about a 1950s model with wings, we were going to use it in the pond but it just sat there and sunk. Jacob kept wanting Sara to take off her life jacket so he could "save" Mugsey because Mugsey (the labrador) kept swimming across the pond and Jacob thought he might have to save him?

This road is on the pond bank and we used to be able to drive a car up here or a big pickup. The aluminum boat I really don't know where it came from but the kids say it leaks. I hadn't been to the pond for years.

This is a video of my daughter JJ, Sara and Jacob 9 fishing. Dog just wants picked up, he is in NO PAIN. He finally went off with the other dogs and then laid in the water and mud. Not good on white fur.


This is a view across the pond.

I caught one and Sara caught her first fish we think! Zach said he caught like 20 after we left, our fishing got interrupted because this big white doughnut kept coming over the fishing grounds (Zach in his boat). When Zach caught a fish he said what do I do? I told him the fish had to come in the boat with him, he managed to get it off the hook, it was hilarious though, he's in a boat in the middle of a pond with a fishing pole and paniced when he caught a fish! We caught and released because no one (me) felt like frying fish. Look closely there is a fish on the end of Sara's line.

This is the bichon after fishing.

This is the bichon frise after we had lunch and I gave him a bath and we brushed him. My SIL brought food so we wouldn't have to cook, good son-in-law.
That was our glorious Sunday, nothing special except it was almost a perfect day spent with family which is the most precious thing in the world.

Quote courtesy of Quote Garden.
I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren't certain we knew better. They fight for honor at the first challenge, make love with no moral restraint, and they do not for all their marvelous instincts appear to know about death. Being such wonderfully uncomplicated beings, they need us to do their worrying. ~George Bird Evans, Troubles with Bird Dogs

Brushing the Bichon part II with Daughter and Granddaughter

Ok, my plans for the day went awry when I took a nap, then my daughter and the grandkids came over. Was a good day, don't see them enough when it's just sitting around. We finished watching Best of Show, dumb movie, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? Watched the kids wrestle and fight over who got the last little debbies cake even though there are boxes and boxes of em, all the nutty bars are gone. Grandma does bake on occasion, just not this occasion!

So we did get the dog brushed, here's the pictures including Sara brushing the Lab, Mugsey, he enjoyed it. JJ my oldest daughter held Dispatch the bichon and we brushed and combed him. Dispatch has a love hate relationship with JJ, for some reason he loves her but is deathly afraid of her so he was a GOOD BOY when we brushed him. She made him behave when he was a puppy and cut his hair and pulled it out of his ears (not cruel, necessary for a bichon) and he has been VERY wary of her ever since but he loves her, she smells and sounds like mommy of course he loves her! Pictures were taken in the family room, it's supposed to be messy!

Mother hides guinea pig death, would you?

Link to Cnn story here.

It seems a mother hid a guinea pigs death from her 3rd grade son because he would be upset and had multiple tests in the next two days.

I've never done this. Most of the little furry things we had in the house survived when the kids were little. We had one hamster but I think I missed his death by being @ work and the girls were teenagers? I accidentally ran over my 5 year old daughters dog once on the way to the school bus because I swerved to avoid another car and I didn't know he was racing my car on the driveway. She wasn't horribly upset, in fact it's a family history story, she asked in her cherubic blond way "Are we going to skin him and eat him Mommy?" You have to understand we did NOT kill or eat dogs or cats for that matter. We did kill the flock of chickens because I'd discovered most of them were roosters and didn't feel like they should live all winter getting fat and tough and mean. We live in Missouri also and killing deer and turkeys is a time honored tradition and I usually got the job of skinning and butchering or @ least helped. We were too poor to afford the meat locker option. So the kids point of view was sort of understandable but you can imagine my shock when she asked that particular question?
My other daughter loved black animals, we lived on a farm with her grandpa and grandma in a different house and it seemed like we always had puppies or kittens, she always claimed the black ones and they would die. Not be killed necessarily but succumb to a mystery illness or just disappear. She always named them Blackie. After about 2 puppies and 3 kittens named Blackie the name became off limits and we got a black terrier and named her Cujo. Cujo survived for years and years, the spell was broken, Cujo weighed about 15 lb. soaking wet. We still won't name animals Blackie.
For the next story you have to understand I was a very independent child, my mom worked or went to college all the time it seemed like (or was with her family her brother was dying though we didn't know it @ the time) my dad raised me a great deal of the time and he had a business on the farm, a fix it shop, big metal building, he worked on everything from TVs to combines, to big trucks and tractors, mostly tractors and trucks though, and a dairy with 30 Holsteins. He had 2 or 3 employees @ one time so from the time I could turn on the TV and be depended on not to kill myself and watch for traffic on the driveway I could wander between the shop and the house and barn and about 200 ft. from the buildings. I learned to warm up lunch when I was like 6 and I don't remember learning to drive, I was too young and my mother always said they had me because my dad didn't like the way she drove a tractor? This was the early 60s.
When I was a child I had various animals, only one dog was mine, Shep, but more on him later. I think it was one of Shep's puppies this story is about. He was a curly little white and black English Shepherd, cow dog all around farm dog, we had had him for a month or so and one day I was playing in the yard before Daddy came home for lunch (I think I was 5 or 6) and I saw something funny in the driveway not far from the house. It was the puppy and he had been ran over and there were flies all over him. I didn't cry, it was shocking and horrible but I went in the house and turned on the cartoons that used to come on @ noon. I almost think I was afraid it was my fault somehow, I'd played too rough with the puppy or done something wrong. Can we say avoidant paranoid personality? My dad came in the house and told me he had something bad to tell me, he gathered me in his arms kneeling in front of the TV and told me the puppy had been ran over and was dead. He actually cried which was the most shocking thing that happened, I'd never seen him cry before, men didn't cry back then @ all, I don't think I'd ever seen a man cry much less my big dark burly father. Putting it all together now I'm not sure he wasn't upset because my uncle was ill but my father loved dogs too. He had 29 hounds for hunting when he and my mother were married, a year after they were married it was down below 10. She wasn't a dog person. Anyway I never told my parents that I can recall that I'd found the puppy first and hadn't cried or really done anything but switch on the TV.

Not saying the mother in the CNN story did anything wrong or my parents or I did it's just the different ways we approach life.
Can't find a picture of my dad @ the time of the story, this is not long after, the cat is enjoying itself contrary to what it looks like, it's name was Whitey? From left to right- my niece, grandpa, brother, me, grandma, sister-in-law, and my mother down @ the old house around Christmas after my uncle passed away. I still have the flower pot, didn't realize it was that old!,