Tsavo

We've gotten yet ANOTHER dog. We seem to have really bad luck with pets since moving out to the boonies. At first, in an attempt at humor to lessen the sting of the heartbreak, we jokes that sasquatch was taking all of our pets. It stopped being funny.
Since moving here we have lost Ziggy, Daisy, Opie, and Bubba.
We live on a fully fenced 40 acres. There are escape holes, but the dogs stay on our property for the most part. The problem is a neighbors dogs. They come onto our property every morning. We discovered one of our pups dead earlier this week on their property. We're assuming the pups followed the pack over to their place and met their demise on their land.
I don't know if this is considered premeditated murder, but we have plans to shoot any other animals discovered on our property.

Anyway, While reading through my email I got a message from my local freecycle. Somebody was giving away a Border Collie. Her post mentioned that he showed up on her porch in really bad shape. We decided to go take a look to see if it was really a Border Collie, check out his disposition, and what shape he was in.
I was AMAZED. I have always wanted a Border Collie, and he was gorgeous. Less than a year old, yet housebroke, and very well mannered.
He's very tolerant of being laid all over by the girls. I was very opposed to an indoor pet.

But......

"I wanted a Guinea pig"

That's what Bethany told us friday night after we rushed a little over 62 miles from Plano to Cumby to retrieve two popcorn kernals from her ears.

Mark and I had gone to the Karaoke store at Collin Creek Mall. We were getting ready to meet his mom at El Paso for an adult meal with adult conversation. Just as we were getting out of the truck, Hannah called. I hear terror in Mark's voice..."She did WHAT?!?!" "You have GOT to be shitting me!?". (For some reason he will never interrupt a phone conversation to tell me what he's freaking out about. I have to wait till he has hung up.) My heart pounds as I resist the urge to grab the phone from him.
He shuts his truck door, gets ready to dial his mom to tell her what's going on,and to cancel meeting us up there. I stop him. "WHAT'S GOING ON?!?!"
There was a lot of anger in the first 20 minutes of the trip home. We called back a few times to instruct the older girls to keep an eye on her to make sure she wasn't rubbing or poking, thus pushing them in farther. Another call to ask what everybody was doing while she was putting the popcorn in her ears. Yet ANOTHER call to tell them to locate the bulb syringe for when we got there.
Our monstrosity of a pool table served for our "operation" table. a very BRIGHT construction light illuminated the area. A pair of curved tweezers, and a vacuum cleaner with a few modifications served for extraction. The bulb syringe was useless. She had already been trying to remove them before telling her big sisters who were beside themselves with guilt over the whole situation.

On the ride home we had contemplated going to the ER. We realized that it being a friday night, and not that big of an emergency compared to what else may be rolling in, that we should give it our best shot at home.
Mark got pretty frustrated at a few points as he was the extractor. We almost gave up to head out for that hellacious waiting room. I just had the task of holding her still. We finally got them out and I have to tell you, the relief of them coming out was darn close to the same relief of getting a child birthed.
We asked her why she did it, she said "I wanted a guinea pig." I'm sure there's a logic in there that I'm missing. But.... yeah. Me too. A guinea pig would be much easier.


BTW, I'm feeling much better.. thanks for all the support.

Anti-Social

I guess I don't do well with the end of summer. I've noticed a trend for the past two years. Almost like clockwork. As soon as the temps drop, I get depressed and anti-social. I contemplate deleting my blogs, message board accounts, and my local yahoo moms group account. I did it last year. I convince myself that everybody hates me and pretty much just tolerates my presence.

It's not just online "relationships" either. After the Halloween party that I mentioned in my last blog, there were apparently some rumors going around that my oldest was up to no good at the party. Somehow she was confused with other groups of kids that were up to no good, but for some reason she and her friend were the ones that all of the rotten stories were constructed around. All of the stories from the night have been matched with the right kids, but the damage is already done IMO. Im amazed that full grown professional women of high standing in the community would spread rumors all around town without knowing the facts. I've seriously contemplated not seeing any of these "friends" anymore because the women that were spreading the rumors are close friends with them. I'd really have a hard time not kicking somebody in the face.
I don't think my children are flawless by any stretch of the imagination, and I know a lot of moms say this, but my daughter tells me the truth about everything, whether I want to hear it or not. I know what they were and weren't doing at the party, and to hear the outrageous stories and hearing from friends of friends what she supposedly did, well.. it pissed me off.
Soo... I'm going to do my best to not delete anything. If I do, I'm sure I'll get over my funk come springtime.

Halloween!

Hope you had a safe and happy Halloween. If Halloween isn't something you celebrate, I hope you weren't annoyed by trick-or-treating kiddos. I honestly had no idea this was a problem for people until I was cruising the Rants and Raves section on Craigslist. For the people that don't like little ghouligan's knocking on their door, leave your porch light off, and don't open your door. Sheesh.

We started celebrating on Thursday night. Mark and I had cocktails while helping a friend decorate for their annual Halloween party that we attended for the second time this year on Saturday.
Here's some pics from the Halloween Party.
In the slideshow (that I'm hoping will work) is pics of Hannah and her bestest friend ever as 1950's pin up girls, Misty and Bethany as faeries, Heather as a dark faerie, Crista as a devil, Mark as a vampire, and me as a french maid. I believe there's also a picture of a retired hooters girl with very large sagging breasts, and Marty, the host of the party in drag. LOL Misty use to be really excited to see Marty. She'd see his white truck and scream "MAAAARRRTTTYYYYYY!!!"
Things just haven't been the same between them since she saw his furry face surrounded by a blonde wig.
We thought she didn't know who he/she was, but she saw his picture pop up on the monitor as we were loading and viewing pics after the party. She shook her head in disgust, and said "marty......"

Slideshow




On Tuesday, we took the three youngest girls trick-or-treating. Heather walked with us, but after a heated mother/daughter argument before leaving the house, she decided she was going to punish me by not trick-or-treating. Unfortunately, I really think this is the last year she could have gotten away with it. Hannah stayed home and cleaned house for me since the chaos seemed like an omen for WAYYYY too fun of an evening in the forecast.
Since we had a cold front, the girls wore different costumes than they had worn the warm night of Marty's party.
Bethany was a skunk. Misty was a pierrot clown. Both were costumes made by my mom way back when Hannah was little. They have held up well through the years.
Here's Misty as the clown.


Bethany as a skunk.


We love love our little bitty podunk town. The girls saw their teachers and many classmates. Where we use to live, the kids went to all the larger towns in hopes of getting more candy, and avoiding weirdo lake-people, christian's that preach to the children about how wrong it is to trick-or-treat, and the "penny guy" that forgets to turn off his porch light and hands out change in lieu of candy.
I got a picture of something pretty offensive while we were out trick or treating. I won't post the pic here, but if you comment, and would like to see a picture of what's funny for the youth in our little Texas town to dress as...... Comment with your email address in the comment and I'll send a pic. Just know that you were warned it *IS* very offensive.