Take A Look At My Puppies, and other stuff

 

Yesterday was Mischief & Mayhem's 5-month birthday. It was also the day I took away their manhood. Yep, they were neutured. They are doing really well and I don't know how I'm going to be able to restrict their exercise and movements for the next 7-10 days. The boys act like nothing happened and are still try to play rough house. Oh, Mayhem is the puppy with the one ear up, one ear down. Chances are that his ears won't stay that way but we are secretly hoping they do. It's such a cute look for him.

Counting down the days to our yard sale. Most everything is priced and I've managed to borrow a couple of tables from co-workers. I have to pick up a couple more from my folks, and my hubby has to get a few from his boss's church. Tomorrow I'm going to the newspaper office to place the advertisement and I have to make and put up signs. We are keeping the girl home from school Friday to help us. I know, I know - bad parenting, right? Please keep positive thoughts that the rain stays away and we have a successful turnout so that we make lots of money. It's for my boys fence, you know.

Trying to reconnect with my brother. I've managed to go visit him 2 Sundays in a row. It's been nice. Of course, this last visit I managed to piss my mother off with a comment I made about her getting Alzheimer's. She said it hurt her feelings. Long story short is that if she brings up the subject again to me, I've got a few things to say to her that I didn't feel the need to repeat in front of an audience.

The Elections stuff - I'm really not happy with either of the candidates. I don't want to NOT vote so it's looking like it's the lesser of two evils. Now I just have to figure out who that is. So many things about the candidates and their VP choices scare me.

TTFN!

Hurrican Ike's effect on my neck of the woods

Copied from an email I sent to my friend on Monday, 9/15. Sorry for being so lazy but at least I'm admitting it, right?

Well my area got some of the rain from Ike yesterday. We had a ton of rain in a short amount of time. Winds were up to probably 45MPH. But the rain wasn't huge stinging drops, it was more like misty rain if you know what I mean. We lost our power around 7:30 a.m. and it came back on around 9 a.m. Something that never occurred to us while our power was out was our sump pump. After the power came back on, I went downstairs to my basement to start a load of laundry and saw streams of water in my laundry room floor. Then I flipped on the light in the main part of the basement where there is indoor/outdoor carpeting and all of Dean's fishing equipment, a couch, TV, couple of chairs, and the furball, and I all of a sudden noticed the carpet was squishing. All the water that the sump pump would normal keep out of our basement, seeped up through the floor! The sump pump has been working over time since then and we've been vacuuming up the squishy water out of the
carpeting, and running fans to dry things out. Dean moved our DE-humidifier out of the furnace room and put it in the carpeted area. We also had a tiny leak in Gabby's room right where the sewer trap comes out on the roof and water came out of the ceiling fan. I think it was blowing rain so hard that water came through the vent on the side of the house and it blew down through the fan. The fan was completely dry and the ceiling too. Only evidence was a wet bed spread. So, even though what happened to us is NOTHING compared to the Texans, it hasn't been fun to deal with.

So yeah, that's what happened to us. Three days later and even with running the humidifier and fans, my basement is starting smell. Dean thinks it's the smell of rabbit pee but my nose knows the difference between rabbit pee and wet basement. Ugh!

Excuse me for being gone so long

Once again I have fallen into the habit of being a shitty blogger. What can I say - I've just had too much going on (not necessarily blog-worthy), to keep up. Yet, I still manage to read my favorites. I always have time to read you all. What's been going on, you ask?

1) The pups. We are slowly but surely coming along with them. I'm working on almost 2 weeks of not getting up in the middle of the night to take them out to potty. MIL told me on Labor Day that they should be old enough to hold it so we began that night. There have been less than a handful of accidents, never poop, and I'm okay with that. I wish I could say I'm back to my old sleeping habits but I'm not. I mean, it's definitely better but I still wake up every morning around 3:30-4:00 a.m. and toss and turn until my bladder says, Help! or my alarm goes off. Then by the time I take them out, feed them, and take them back out again so they can poop, because breakfast is a trigger for them, I've got something knocking at my back door and it's time for me to do my morning constitutional. Sorry for the TMI but it is what it is. Our next goal is to work on getting them to let us know they need to go out when we have them in the house with us. Boy! Is that a tough one. Trying to figure out normal puppy sniffing from hey I've got to shit/piss has been fun (NOT).

2) My girl has been back to school for almost 4 weeks now. She seems to be loving the 6th grade. Long gone are the days of no homework on Fridays though. She's been lucky up until now. There have been a couple of issues where she forgot an assignment that was homework. We gave her one oops and then a couple days later she forgot an assignment again, she lost her privilege to play with her friend after school/homework done and checked. Consequences for her actions, ya know. Otherwise, homework time hasn't been too bad. In the past, she and I have had some battles on it and Dad has had to take it over. Usually, I have absolutely NO patience when it comes homework time. She's been pretty cooperative. So far.

3) We decided that we have a lot shit to get rid of and that we are going to have a yard sale. Going through our things and figuring out what we wanted to get rid of, I finally decided that I'm getting rid of all my baby stuff, maternity clothes, etc., and the proceeds will go toward putting in a fence for our pups. Even though I finally came to terms with myself that I'm never going to have another baby it was really hard for me gathering it all together. I broke down and bawled hysterically during the process. I had sent G upstairs to get a large garbage bag for me, she couldn't find where I told her they were at, so I started up the stairs to get it myself and ran into her coming back down stairs. She was all alarmed at my state and asking me what was wrong. I just waved her off because I couldn't talk coherently. I think D told her because when I came back down, she came up to me and gave me a huge hug and kiss. There are a couple of things I will pull out as keepsakes for G but the rest is going. Of course, I've had more than a few people tell me that as soon as I get rid of it all, I'll get a huge surprise. I hate to tell ya, but that kind of stuff doesn't happen to me. I only read about that happening to other people.

4) So have any of you ever been in a situation where you've always been the better friend to your friend? That's me in a nutshell. I've had the same BFF for the last 21 years and we've been through a lot. But the most common theme in our relationship is that I've always been the better friend. I honestly don't think my BFF means to be such a shitty friend but you know what, I'm finally at my wits end and have decided that she can be the one to call me. I'm done calling her. The last time I've spoke to her was the day after we got the pups. I haven't heard shit or shinola from her. Oh, I take that back. My ILs ran into her Labor Day weekend at a block party and she was all, Yeah, I really need to call Susan, and get down to see her puppies. It's just that I've been so busy. Typical excuse that I'm sick of. I actually think I'd be more depressed about this if I didn't have my other friend to talk to. The thing is is that I've never actually met her IRL. I "met" Marsha through an online parenting community we are members of, and we took the plunge maybe 6 months ago and started calling one another. She is usually the one to call me because she has Vonage and it doesn't cost extra, but if we aren't talking on the phone, we are emailing each other. She lives in Texas and I'm in Illinois. One day, I will meet her.

So that's pretty much it. We are having some signs that Autumn is on the way. Yay! It's probably my favorite season. All the orchards around my area reported excellent apple crops so I'm anxious to go apple picking and all the baking that goes with it.

I wish I could say I'll do better with this blogging thing. I've said it before and look where it got me. I hope my little audience that actually reads me understands that I'm a better reader/commenter than blogger.