Dogs on Thursday on Friday, again

Yes, it's Friday. I didn't manage to post Dogs on Thursday on Thursday again this week. It might have something to do with lack of sleep. We had a major thunderstorm move through the area late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning. You know what that means... Cooper was in a panic.

Cooper's pills we got from the Vet don't work, his Thundershirt isn't working, and his herbal calming collar isn't working. The poor boy was pacing and digging and pacing and digging for hours. HOURS! He gets a glazed look in his eyes and there is nothing you can do to calm him down. Of course, when he gets like that, no one gets any sleep. When the storm is finally over, he takes about a half hour to calm down and go to sleep. Unfortunately, it takes me a lot longer!

The good new is that my poor boy didn't have to get up and go to work in the morning. He managed to drag himself out of bed to eat a hearty breakfast, then stumbled to the nearest soft spot and collapsed.



If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I want to come back as a dog. I think it's time for another trip to the Vet to get something stronger. Valium maybe? I might share some with Cooper, too.
:-)

Dogs on Thursday on Friday...again

Dogs on Thursday completely got by me this week. No excuses. No good excuses, anyway. I'll try and do better next week. ~sigh~

Anyway, remember the neighbor's chickens from this post? The ones that have been taunting the dogs? One of those not-too-terribly-bright chickens decided to make a nest and lay some eggs. Now, it's not the nest that I object to, it's the location of the nest. It is so close to the fence that the dogs can taste those eggs. Literally.


Not too smart of that silly chicken. Here is a video that I took yesterday of the dogs and chickens.



The real fun part is that Spartacus (the rooster) feels the need to hover around the nest and display his machismo whenever the dogs or I are out in the yard.



It wouldn't be so bad, except that he is not content to simply flap his wings and cock-a-doodle-doo. He feels need to chase you, which can be might inconvenient when you need to get to work in the morning. I've told him he's going to end up on a rotisserie, but I think he knows it's just an empty threat. Maybe I should play him this video clip from Cold Mountain. It's one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies:



Take that, you floggin' rooster!

Need a laugh?

Watch this. It's the funniest commercial EVER!

GOOD Post #1

Welcome to GOOD Post #1? What is GOOD? I'm glad you asked. GOOD is my acronym for Getting Out Of Debt. Recently, a good friend told be about Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover.

I read this book, and it has changed the way I look at money...more specifically the lack of it. My previous retirement plan was to die young. That's right. Live for today and hope tomorrow never comes. Or at least hope that I won't have all that many tomorrows to worry about. There seems to be a little problem with the execution of my plan, though. (No pun intended.) I haven't died yet, and I no longer consider myself "young." Barring any unforeseen circumstances, it looks like I will be on the earth for a little while yet. ::sigh::

OK then, time to take the proverbial bull by the horns. I'm sure there are lots of ways to do it, (robbing banks? prostitution?) but I decided to do it legally, the Dave Ramsey way. Below, I've broken down his Baby Steps into an uber-simplified version. If you want to know more, ask me. No, wait... I'm hardly an expert. I'm following his plan with the blind faith of a sheep following a shepherd. Baaaaa. If you have any questions, buy his book, or get a copy from your local library. In a nutshell, here is Dave's Plan.

Baby Step 1: Save a thousand dollars. This is your Baby Emergency Fund. It is there so that while I am busy getting rid of debt, I won't go further into debt if WHEN something goes wrong.

Baby Step 2: Pay off your debts (except mortgage), putting every spare penny that you can on the smallest debt, while paying minimums on the rest of them to keep them current. When the smallest debt is paid off, you can pat yourself on the back for being so hardworking and clever, and then move on to the next smallest debt, adding what you were paying on the first debt to whatever spare cash you have to pay off debt #2 until that is paid off. Then, congratulate yourself for being so hardworking and clever again, and move on until all debts are paid off. This stage is called the “debt snowball”.

Baby Step 3: Increase the Baby Emergency Fund until it’s a full fledged emergency fund of three to six months of living expenses. Wow. Seems like a lot, but I'm determined to do it when I get my debts paid off.

Baby Step 4: Start putting fifteen percent of your income into retirement savings. This is on the assumption that my initial plan of dying young is not going to come to fruition.

Baby Step 5: Save for kids’ college. WHEW! This is just reason #2,498,589 why I never had kids. No college savings. Although if I did have kids, they would be in college right now and I would be totally screwed. Or rather THEY would be totally screwed. Hey, I paid for my own education, so any mythical, imaginary kids of mine can do the same thing!

Baby Step 6: Pay off the mortgage. Mortgage? You have to have a house to have a mortgage, right? So I guess I can check this one off... In place of steps 5 and 6, I don't see why I can't substitute my own:

Baby Step 5&6: Save for my dream house. Do you think this one will still be up for sale?


Yeah, I don't think so either...

Baby Step 7: Continue to grow wealth. Give some away, have fun with some. Live like no one else. If I live that long.

So there it is. I've been on this GOOD journey for not quite a month now, and it came to me last weekend that I needed a visual representation of my debt. I channeled the inner School Teacher in me, and I made a paper chain.

Nice, huh? All those years of college getting my degree in Elementary Education didn't go to waste after all!

Each link in the chain represents $100 of debt.

Holy cow. That's a lot of links. That's a lot of money!

How did this happen?

After finishing the chain I wanted to cry.

And then throw up.

And then go to bed and never get back up.

And then pray for a Comet to come and smash into the earth to put me out of my misery.

After I indulged myself by acting like a child for a good 10 minutes, I decided it's time to put on my big girl panties (so to speak) and deal with it.

I'm determined to do this thing.

I will be debt free.

I WILL.

So anyway, from time to time I will be blogging about my journey out of hell , umm, debt. The silver lining to this black cloud of debt is that if I never make another yarn purchase, I have enough sock yarn...


...to last me a good long time!

Saying Goodbye

This is a very sad Dogs on Thursday. Yesterday we said goodbye to an extended member of the family. Her name was Honey and she had the good fortune to live with my friend Kris. Kris has two other brittanys, Maggie and Ashley (in addition to a husband and four kids), so Honey had a life full of love and laughter and lots of food dropped from toddlers in high chairs.

Here is a picture of Honey the last time she and her sisters and her human siblings came down to Britknitterville to play with Emma, Tara and Cooper.


Sorry, but that's the best shot I have of her. You can imagine the chaos of six brits running around-- no one was interested in sitting for a picture!

Goodbye, sweet Honey. We will see you on the other side of the rainbow bridge. In the meantime, enjoy this time you will be spending with all of the beloved dogs who have gone on before you.

Dogs (and Chickens) on Thursday

Cooper here!

I'll be your host for this week's Dogs on Thursday. For the second week in a row, we have been invaded by evil pests just in time for the DOT post. Last week it was evil cats, this week it is evil CHICKENS!

Momma calls them Spartacus (for the bad-boy rooster) and Hanna and her Sisters. She can't tell the hens apart, so they're all either Hanna or Sister.


These pesky strays are always hanging around. Momma isn't sure where they live, but the certainly like to visit us. They eat the birdseed out of the bird feeders, and the cat food right off of the cat's plates. Guess what their favorite flavor is... Chicken! Stupid cannibals...

But I digress. This morning, Spartacus came right up to the fence and started pecking at us through the gate! The nerve of that feathery beast! Doesn't he know that Brittanys are bird dogs?

We had no choice but to teach that bird brain a lesson! That's me there, on the left, with Tara and Emma. I figured I should hang back and let the girls take the lead.

Eventually Tara got bored, but Emma was nose to nose with that evil bird. Again, I was a strong back-up.


Yeah, that's right... Get on outta' here, you flea bitten bag of feathers.


Run away, just like the chickens you are!

My work here is done!

Knitting Content!

It's been a loooooong time since I published any knitting content on the blog. I scrolled back looking for anything knitting related, and the blog is all dogs, dogs, dogs. Humans and geese are interspersed here and there, but it's mostly dogs. No apologies for all-dogs-all-the-time, but knitting content is long overdue.

So, what have I been knitting? Socks. 95% of my knitting is socks. Pretty boring, I admit, so I'm lumping all of the socks that I finished over the weekend into one photo.


Nine pair! Count 'em...nine pair! Of course, when I say I "finished" them over the weekend, it just means I finally got around to tackling the basket where I throw all of the socks that are done except for the weaving in of all of the loose ends. Can you tell that weaving ends is not my favorite part of sock knitting? Detailed information will be on my projects page on Ravelry in the near future, for all who care.

So, if 95% of my knitting has been socks, what about the other 5%? Over the winter I worked on Wendy Johnson's Order to Chaos Shawl. Big project. Scary-big for someone who has never attempted a lace project that large, but I kept plugging along, and I am so happy with the results. The most fun had to be the blocking. OK, it was a tiny bit tedious, but what a transformation! Here is a shot of it before pinning:


And here is a shot after pinning!


What a difference, right? I should have included tape measures in the photos, 'cause this sucker is huge! Here a detail shot of the center. That neat little hole in the center makes me so happy!

Detail shot of the edging. So cool!

Here is a shot of it draped over a bench at work.


I did the blocking on the floor of the museum. I spread a tablecloth out over the carpet, dampened the shawl, and stretched and pinned the heck out of that sucker. I left it like that for a few days. This was when we were closed to visitors, of course. Although I guess I could have just put up barriers and labeled the whole thing as an art installation... Just a thought...

I know some of you might be wondering why I didn't do the blocking at home. Well, there are three certain somebodies at home who would LOVE to be helpers in blocking a lace shawl, but that kind of help I don't need. I can just picture these little hooligans walking all over the lace, digging at the knitting, eating the pins...horrors! I certainly wouldn't point fingers or name names, you understand...



Then again, maybe I would.

Dogs on Thursday

It's me, Emma, taking over this week's Dogs on Thursday. I like to think that I'm as tolerant as the next dog, but these stray cats around here are getting my knickers in a twist! It's one thing for them to hang around OUTSIDE of the fenced-in yard, but when they venture INTO the yard, that's another thing altogether. Take a look at what we saw this morning:



Mom took that picture of me (in the middle) with Cooper and Tara. Outside on the ramp to our deck...do you see what that is??? A cat! An evil cat!

I begged mom to let us out into the back yard so we could teach that evil cat a lesson. She refused! She let us out into the side yard, but there was a stupid fence between us and the evil cat.


Wait a minute... Look a little closer... There are TWO evil cats on the ramp!


Mom calls the gray one Lizzie and the black one Joanie. I call them both evil. Mom says we have to be good to the strays because they're hungry and have no place else to go. I've got news for her... I can tell them where to go!

I'm still alive...

I can't believe it's been so long since my last blog post. It's been since July? How can that be? I haven't even read anyone else's blog in weeks. I am so behind! In my last post I said I ...have lots of excuses... and ...just need to get my act together. Clearly, that did not happen. This has been a month of ups and downs.



Seriously, totally, incredibly high "ups". But you know what they say... "What goes up must come down," and boy did I come down. So here is the question, is it worth it? Who can say? More on that later.

Where to begin? Everyone knows I have been yearning to buy a house in Fortescue. You remember... this tiny, totally adorable, impractical one:



Well, on one of my weekly "visits" to the house, which I of course refer to as "my house", we found this house:



It's not so tiny, with 3 bedrooms and a bath and a half. As an added bonus, you can actually fit a double size bed in two of the bedrooms, unlike "MY" house where you can just (barely) fit a twin bed. This not-so-tiny house also happens to be for sale, but as an added bonus it is also available for rent. I have come to the realization that the only way I will ever live in Fortescue is on a rental basis, since the only house I can afford to buy looks something like this:



Anyway, we got permission for the dogs to stay at the rental house, and just like that, we were going on vacation! Even though it was only about 30 minutes from home, this was the first time since 1997 that we planned a week's vacation, so it totally counts as a bona fide vacation.

As it turns out, the dogs are much happier in their own fenced-in-yard. Especially Emma. She views the leash as a punishment. Here is a shot of the babes on the beach at Fortescue.



The dog clinging to my sister's leg? That's Emma. She is never on a leash unless she's going to the Vet, and nothing could convince her that being on a leash on the beach was supposed to be an enjoyable experience. Most nights we just stayed at home and then drove to Fortescue during the day. It was great to have the house to store the boat and kayaks so we didn't have to trailer them back and forth each day.

So back to the ups and downs.... One day last August, I answered the phone at work, and had the shock of my life--it was a really great guy who I last saw the day before he left to join the army in 1987. He found me thanks to the museum's website. (God Bless the Internet!)

The seriously high "up" is that he flew to New Jersey and spent 5 days here.

The seriously low "down" is that he left to go back home.

Dogs on Thursday on Friday

Well, another week has come and gone, and all I have managed to post is another Dogs On Thursday, only this one isn't on Thursday, it's on Friday. My excuse for this negligence? Well, I have lots of excuses, but none of them are any good, really. I just need to get my act together.

Anyway, when I stopped at mom and dad's yesterday on my way to work, mom gave me her copy of a recent Orvis catalog of dog products. Look at this little face:

I don't know if you can read it, but in the upper right hand corner, it says "Cooper questions authority." Cooper!!! Another brittany named Cooper, and he shows up in a magazine! My Cooper wants to know why they always picture the sweet young puppies to sell products. He says he can question authority as good as that young whippersnapper!

Just take a look at this face!
I'll buy anything this sweet boy is selling!