Jewel vs. The Lizard

As we pulled into the driveway after church on Sunday, Jewel was crossing the street from her other yard (the accross the street neighbors') with something in her mouth. This inspired a discussion of whether the thing was a mouse or a lizard and whether it was alive or dead. It was a lizard, and it was alive. I know this because she let it go and caught it again twice more before bringing it to the front porch for the final showdown.

I happened to be watching through the front door when I saw Jewel and the lizard squared off, face to face. That lizard was not going to go easily. It's mouth was open like it was hissing at her, and every time she moved it moved. The juked and jived for several minutes before she launched what I'm sure she expected to be the death blow. It was not. That lizard grabbed onto her toe and would not let go! She was slinging it around, biting it, and it was still hanging on. She finally gave a hard shake of the paw and the lizard released it's jaws and slammed into the glass door! It did not die. It slid to the ground and looked at her again. She walked off and started bathing like she meant for that to happen. When I left them, the lizard had mostly disappeared into a hole and she was diligently trying to pull it back out my the tail. I'm quite sure it died eventually due to internal injuries, but she didn't get the satisfaction of killing it.

Kitten Sittin'

Dave and I have a house guest for a couple of days - a calico kitten. Her name is Talim, but she goes by Kitty. She belongs to one of my coworkers, and we are keeping her because he's having some maintenance done in his apartment. Talim looks a lot like Jewel E. Cat; I think it's because of her stripes. Twice last night I saw her and thought she was Jewel.

My cats are wondering when we got a new cat, and the girls don't seem too thrilled with her - though they both enjoyed her food for breakfast. Gypsy spent the morning stalking and talking to the kitten, so I left her outside today. I felt that my Street Cat shouldn't be left unsupervised with an innocent. Jewel seemed a little shocked to see a new face in the house and decided to spend the day outside as well. Squirt (who is home for a visit - more about that later) doesn't seem to care, but Talim likes his tail. He lies with it hanging off the end table and it's just too much for her to resist. She was also intrigued to see other cats because she is an only cat at home. Squirt is keeping her company inside today.

Georgia is equally excited about and intimidated by the new kitten. She can only look at her from the corner of her eye for fear of the Evil Death Ray that is emitted when making eye contact with an unknown cat. Also, she is jealous and must sit on my feet and insist that I pet her instead of the kitten. However, she did feel compelled to pounce at said kitten this morning - which, as you can imagine, caused quite an uproar in my house.

The kitten is just young and fiesty enough to wander all over the house, transforming into a Halloween cat only when she hears a noise or sees movement. :) Dave is enjoying her kittenish ways - he played Dental Floss with her last night and loved it.

So, Squirt Black Cat - apparently he lives at my father's house now. Twice my brother has brought him home to our house because he was in their backyard, or better yet, he wandered into their house. He had been there before, but he's frequenting their yard more often now. My brother wants to keep him - I don't think he realizes that the choice isn't his. Squirt lives where he wants to live. He takes care of himself, too, since he comes home fatter than when he left. I think he's going to my dad's now because people and a dog moved into our old house. I'm hoping this means he'll start staying home, but I've been hoping that for 5 months now.

A Tiny Taste of Paradise

Well, I guess the term "paradise" is relative, especially if you are a native of Mexico. At any rate, this is a picture of the waterfront in Progreso, Mexico. We stopped there for several hours while on our cruise. Progreso hasn't become a complete tourist trap yet, so I really liked it there. We visited the pink flamingo feeding area, the salt flats, and some Mayan ruins. There were thousands and thousands of pink flamingos there. They have a refuge for them, and if you kill one (by accident or otherwise) you go to jail. It was really cool to see them standing along the side of the road.


We had a wonderful time. I needed the week of thinking about nothing other than when and what I was going to eat again. And, Dave will tell you, I thought about that a lot. The food was fabulous and there was so much of it!

We also went to Cozumel, but we'd been there before. We just walked and shopped and ate some more. We did find an "Only a Dollar" store there, so I bought some wooden bracelets.

We are back to real life now and it will probably be another two months before I get to update this blog again. :(

There has been so much happening lately, I'm feeling overwhelmed about updating this thing.

Animals first - Jewel E. Cat looks like someone socked her one. The left side of her face is swollen, and I don't know why. She's also being VERY sweet, and that's out of character. I looked for fang marks because I think she may have tangled with a snake, but I can't really tell if that's what bit her. Then again, it could have been a spider or a bee or ants. At any rate, she's locked in the house for observation. I've narrowed the time frame to between 6 and 7:30 tonight, so we'll see if she swells some more or acts seriously ill. She's an expensive cat.

Squirt is MIA. He refused to come inside Thursday a week ago and I haven't seen him since. Dave says he saw him at the old house on Sunday, but he certainly isn't coming when I whistle for him.

Gypsy the Street Cat has somehow turned into a spoiled house cat. She thinks that if I'm cooking or using the can opener, then she needs some of whatever it is. She ate cantelope the other day.

Aside from puking 5 gallons on my new carpet, Georgia's life has been relatively ordinary lately. Thank goodness.

The people - We are both working on a lot of church stuff. The pastor resigned, so we are looking for a new one, setting up new committees and teachers for the next church year (which starts tomorrow), and working on the parsonage. It's keeping us very busy. Dave has meetings a couple of nights a week, and I've been painting the parsonage. We started work on it last weekend without anyone knowing because it needs to be done and we didn't feel like thinking about setting a meeting to talk about making a list of things that need to be done to the parsonage. One of the things about the "sleepy little church" is that they like to talk a lot and not do much. We are slowly (well, Dave is mostly) getting things stirred up - and it's good. We didn't tell anyone about painting, but people found out and showed up and we bypassed the whole meeting junk. I'm excited about it. I've also agreed to teach the toddler Sunday school class for the year. This Sunday is the first time. I'm not too sure about teaching toddlers (19 months through 2 years), but we'll see how it goes. At the very least, it should be entertaining. :) I'm also still maintaining the church website, and I really enjoy it, but I wish I had more time to work on it.

Dave's parents are listing their house for sale (yes, the house they just moved into in January), and looking for a house down here. They've visited quite a bit lately. They looked at my Grandmama's house last weekend because she has moved to a nursing home now. That's pretty sad. It's very weird to see Daddy and the aunts and uncle cleaning out that house. It sucks, really, because she always lived there.

There is also a nasty rumor that a new residential development is going to be built right behind our back fence. Supposedly, it's 40 apartments and 69 townhouses. We'll see how it goes. I'm sure it will happen at some point, so I'm planning to plant rows of pine trees behind the fence so they can be growing in preparation for that day.

I can't wait for Labor Day weekend. I need three days in a row. Our cruise is 15 days away. I NEED it badly. We both do.

Oh by the way, I just re-read this and realized that I'm starting to talk/type like my boss, who natively speaks French. So, if something reads strangely, that's probably what's happened. Also, I spent several days this week with some German co-workers and I found myself picking up some of their sentence structure, too. :) It's funny how that happens. I really have to admire the people I work with because the majority of them don't natively speak English. I can't imagine moving to another country and learning the language fluently enough to communicate in a business setting. Amazing.

Critters by the Creek

Today was Montevallo's first annual Critters by the Creek event. It's like Doo Dah Day, but probably better because it's by the creek and you don't have to drive downtown. :) It's just another one of many "by the Creek" events we have here, because the creek runs through our city park. The Shelby County Humane Society was there with adoptable pets and they were running a micro-chip clinic. Furtastic Pets Grooming did the contest prizes and the free stuff, and the MHS band boosters sold refreshements. The Montevallo and Calera Police Departments and the Shelby County Sheriff's department were there with the K-9 units, inlcuding some Chocolate Lab puppies in training! There was a pretty big turn out; lots of different breeds of dogs, a miniature horse, a rabbit, and a parrot.

Georgia did the Hokey Pokey in the Talent Contest, and she won 2nd place! The picture above shows her loot. The gift basket had samples of her food, a bag of treats, some toys, and a gift certificate to the groomers. The 1st place winner was also a Chocolate Lab, named Petey. His owner is a fireman, and he taught Petey to stop, drop, and roll when he says, "You're on fire!" Then he says, "Crawl out of the fire!" and Petey crawls across the ground. It was a good trick. The parrot, whose name is Jimmy B (as in Buffet), was also in the talent contest. He plays dead and rolls over. :)

We let Georgia swim in the creek while we were there, and she had a blast retrieving a stick. Now, she's sleeping at my feet. All those dogs and people wore her out. All in all, I think the event was a success, and some money and supplies were raised for the Humane Society. I hope it will be even bigger next year.

A Rant About Feeling Left Out

There is a saying that you get out of things what you put into them. I've found this to be true in every organization I've been involved in. It was true of the sorority, it was true of group work in grad school, and it's also true in church.

I have a real problem with people who get mad and whine that they have been excluded when they make no effort to be included. When they exclude themselves and expect others to bend over backward to try to include them. It drives me nuts. It drives me nuts because typically in an organization, 20% of the people do 80% of the work while asking for others to volunteer!! If there is an announcement presented on four different mediums for help that is needed, and you do not step up to help, then you deserve to feel left out. What else do you need? A personal phone call? Because you are so much more important than all the other people who respond to those announcements with willingness and excitement for the job at hand? Pardon my rant, but this is one thing that I can't stand. I work hard, and I work hard at being social when I absolutley am not a social person, so DON'T TELL ME YOU'VE BEEN EXCLUDED WHEN I NEVER SEE YOUR FACE AT A FUNCTION.

So, the next time you feel left out of something, take a minute to analyze your actions and determine if YOU made any effort. Did you volunteer for anything that anyone asked for help with in the last 6 months? Did you attend any special functions in the last 6 months? If not, then shut up about it, because I'm probably too busy doing 80% of the work to entertain your petty whining.

By Reader Request

It's been so long and so busy since I've been here, that I've been putting off updating this thing. Let's see, the cats have quit bringing dead rodents into the house because they are locked in or out unless we are home. No more free access unless there is parental supervision. On one occasion, I happened to intercept a live mouse as Jewel brought it through the window, so I just tossed it right back outside. There was also a tail-less salamander that I rescued, but that's about it. Thank goodness.

Squirt moved back to the old house one more time after our vacation to the beach, and since then he's been staying home. I didn't take any pictures at the beach, and I've been a slacker about getting some to share. Oh well, there's no need to post bikini pictures anyway. :) There were some quite funny beach incidents involving my sister and the sea gulls. She HATES birds and Dave can think of nothing funnier than tormenting her by planting bits of bread around her chair on the beach to attract the birds. It was a relaxing four days of nothing but sand, sun, books, and good food. I can't wait until September when we go on our cruise.

We all survived the wedding (some of us just barely) and the party afterwards was a blast. It couldn't have gone any better - good music, good food, good fun. Dave and I danced and danced. Both the ceremony and the reception turned out beautifully. It rained ALL day long until right before picture time, then it started back as the reception ended - our prayers were answered. We so needed the thing to go according to plan. Since it's over, I've been completely worthless. :) Here are a few pictures.

The ceremony in Orr Park.














The wedding party.














The bridesmaids.














The reception.













I counted down the days until the release of the final book of the Harry Potter series, then ended up spending that weekend in Atlanta. It wasn't everything I hoped for and more, but some good came out of it. There was an ugly scene with our friend whom we were staying with, and the entire experience really made me appreciate the fact that Dave is my best friend. Another good thing, this was Georgia's first vacation with us and she did great! We took her and our friend's boxer to the lake to swim and ride on the boat. She had a blast, and now I want to find more places to take her for vacation. She's so good, and she just went with the flow and did great. I'm reading Harry Potter now, and it's killing me that I have to put it down to sleep at night. :) I had so planned to read it all the day it came out. Oh well.

Hmm, church. Our preacher resigned and took a job at another church, so we are without a preacher right now. It's very strange around there right now. I've taken over maintaining the website, as the preacher's wife did that job previously. I'm actually pretty excited about it, since I'm a nerd and all. I may be building a site for Dave's law practice soon, too. He just has to decide what he wants on it.

I guess that's enough for now. I'll try to do better about updating more often - and taking pictures. :)

The Death Toll Rises

Seriously, we’ve moved beyond rodent control. I’ve lost count of how many mice the cats have killed. They even graduated to bunnies last week. The bunny count is 3 dead, 2 rescued and alive the last time I saw them. That’s right, rescued. They’ve taken to bringing live animals into the house via the pet door, and then killing them. Over the weekend, I was cleaning the toilet in the basement, and happened to see a bit of fur on the floor on the opposite side of the toilet. I stopped and said a little prayer: “Lord, please let this one be whole.” (The 3 dead ones were less than whole when we found them.) It was whole, but I wasn’t sure if it was alive, so I poked it. And it moved. I had to rescue it and give it a fighting chance to live, so I blocked off the bathroom, caught it, and took it outside. I decided that my new policy is to rescue the live animals and let them go outside to give them another chance at survival. If they stay in the house, they are goners (although I did notice that Georgia left enough dog food bits around her kennel that a bunny might be able to live in the basement for a while).

An update on Squirt, we had to retrieve him from the old house again yesterday. I really think he had gotten confused and thought we had just abandoned him there, instead of coming back home to the new house. When I went over to get him, he cried and cried at me. I took him home and put him at the food bowl, and he chowed down - several times. Every two hours, all through the night last night, he came crying through the house and all he needed was some to know we were there. I finally just started calling him to me and petting him until he went away again. I think he just had to make sure his family was still in the house. He stayed really close this morning while I was getting ready for work. I could see him lying in the floor outside the bathroom. Which meant I could also see Jewel bring him something from outside: a bunny. She brought a live bunny right inside and dropped it in front of him as if to say, “See what we do here at the new house?” The chase was on. The bunny ran back to the kitchen with the cats close behind, and I was right behind the cats. The bunny tried to jump out of a window, but it was closed so it went under the kitchen table instead. The cats chased it out from under the table, and I was waiting. I scooped it right up and took it outside and across the street the neighbor’s yard. Jewel gave me the stink eye when I got back inside, but Squirt was up for the game, so I’m hoping he’ll investigate further bunny hunting possibilities outside the house and stay for a while.

Georgia was a ball obsessed fool all weekend long. We got her a new pool, because she dug holes in the old one, so we spent Saturday and Sunday afternoons chasing balls and swimming. What a life.

A Black Cat Protest, Pet Door Lessons, and Rodent Control

We moved into our new house over Memorial Day weekend, and spent the first night there Sunday. Georgia has been with us through all of the painting, cleaning, etc. so she was already fairly well adjusted to the new house. I brought the kitties over for the first time after we had moved and unpacked most of our stuff on Sunday. The plan was to keep them inside until they adjusted to the new house and started acting normal, because most cats don’t handle change very well. At approximately 4:30 Monday morning, Squirt was losing his mind. He was crying at the top of his lungs, standing on the dresser in the bedroom, and scratching at the mirror. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I let him outside so I could sleep in peace.

When I woke up at a decent hour on Monday morning, he was nowhere to be found. I didn’t see him when I fed them breakfast, I didn’t seem him when we got back from our shopping trip several hours later, and I knew. He had moved back to the old house. I stopped by my dad’s to use the computer (being without Internet service temporarily myself), and he told me that Squirt had been hanging around at the old house. I went to clean the old house and I brought Squirt inside so I could keep up with him. While I vacuumed, he hid under the kitchen sink. I loaded him up in the cat kennel again, took him to the new house, showed him the all important food bowl, and let him go. He investigated the yard, the house, the neighbors’ yards, and he was still there after several hours. When he finally went inside and ate, I knew that he had officially moved to the new house – our protest was over.

Georgia LOVES that the guest room has a WHOLE bed just for her. I think that is her room now, and if we ever have a guest, I’m not sure where she will sleep. She sleeps on that bed with her head on the pillow like a person. Apparently, Dave is having more difficulty adjusting to Georgia in the new house than Georgia. He says he can hear her walking on the hardwoods during the night, but I don’t know what he’s talking about because I’m dead tired when I finally get to bed and I don’t hear anything.

Georgia seems a little confused about the location of her kennel right now, but we’ll work that out. We started with it in the laundry room, but moved it to the basement because the laundry room was too crowded, and really too hot to leave her in there all day. When it’s time to kennel up in the mornings, she looks at me like, “Where?” Oh well, it won’t take long to get her on program. One thing that she’s totally on program with is the new pet door we put in the door that leads from the laundry room to the kitchen. I think she would rather use it than wait for me to open the door when we are both going through together. She waits at the door to make sure I’m coming, and then goes through the hole before I open the door.

We put the pet door in because the laundry room isn’t climate controlled and the kitchen stays much cooler if that door is closed. However, I have all the animals’ food and water in the laundry room, plus there’s a window in there for the cats to come and go, so they need access to that area all the time. Since Georgia needs to fit through it, it’s a very large pet door. Dave dared me to go through it the night he put it in. I told him there was no way my shoulders would fit through. I was wrong. Yes, that means I actually tried to squeeze through the pet door. I got my shoulders in, but the hips weren’t going – no surprise there. Then, when I tried to get out, I thought I was stuck, but I survived. He was laughing at me and I asked what he would have done if I was really stuck. He said, in his best country boy accent, “Rescue 20, my wife is stuck in the dog door.” It was quite comical.

The kittens are not adjusting as well as the George to the pet door. Jewel E. Cat really has no problem with it, but she’s been covering so much hunting ground that we’ve barely seen her in days. She checks in for breakfast, and that’s it. I’ve spent time stuffing Gypsy and Squirt through the flap, and I think they’ve both used it in a pinch, but they would rather I open the door for them when they yell at the pet door. They are still a little anxious about going through the flap. If I lift it for them, they will go through without a problem. I think they’ll get used to it when they get ready to sleep on the couch and I refuse to let them in. Also, if Georgia’s big head wasn’t always waiting on the other side for them, they probably wouldn’t be so hesitant. Beast.

So, rodent control… well, we seem to have quite the mouse population at the new house – outside only, so far. No worries, my kittens love a mouse chase. I’ve been a little worried that the new neighbors might have a problem with the kittens (Social Jewel has already been across the street on the neighbor’s porch). In preparation of my defense for letting them run around outside, I decided I would spin the rodent control angle. I’ve already seen several dead mice around. The other night, I let Georgia out and the kittens were all congregated in the driveway. She busted up the party, like always, and to her pleasant surprise, found that they were playing with a mouse. She wanted to play with the mouse, too. She kept trying to sniff and snuffle it (like she does everything new she happens upon in the yard if it’s smaller than her), and that little mouse was running all around her feet – feet that are bigger than the mouse. She was hilarious because she kept hopping around, trying to keep up with the mouse and sniff it at the same time. Occasionally, it would get away from her and she’d pounce on it again – never stepping on it, though. The kittens were surrounding the area, lest the big beast let it get away. I finally got her inside, and they finished up with Mr. Mouse.
What have the people been up to? Besides squeezing in pet doors? Hanging curtains and pictures, unpacking, organizing, meeting the air conditioner man, etc etc etc. When we turned on the AC Sunday, it was not working well. We had someone out on Tuesday to fix it, and he gave us the wonderful news that we will need to replace the unit soon. Hopefully, what he did to it will last the summer. We LOVE our new house. It’s a neat place with a lot more space. Dave has his own room downstairs with his office and his recliner and TV. I may never see him. My new kitchen is WONDERFUL! I cooked in it Monday night, and I loved it. It’s so comfortable, a great working kitchen. Lots of work will happen in there tonight, because the bridal shower is tomorrow!! I can’t believe how fast time has gone. The wedding is only a month away. Good grief.

Reason # 1,256 Why I Love My Dog

At 3:45 yesterday morning, Georgia barked her “booger bark.” That’s the scary one that wakes me out of a dead sleep in the middle of the night because something is wrong. And something was wrong. There was a dog in our yard, and it was stalking my cats. Gypsy was peacefully sleeping on the back porch like the house cat that she is (her previous street cat life convinced her to stay close to home). Squirt and Jewel were nowhere to be found, but there was a wad of fur in the driveway. You can imagine that I freaked out a little. I ran the dog off and whistled and whistled for the cats. After about 15 minutes, I gave up and decided that they were probably too scared to come out of hiding. I went back inside and stopped in the bathroom on the way back to bed. I heard Squirt jump in the window (that’s where they go to yell for me to open the door). I let him in and he was stinking like a skank-nasty dog. I’m pretty sure he tangled up with the dog that was in the yard, and got away from it. I checked him over and couldn’t find any visible injuries. When I got back in bed, Jewel was still out. I worried over her for a while, but admitted to myself that it was just as likely that she has a second family she sleeps with at night (she’s very social). Before Dave left for work at 5:30, he dropped her on the bed with me. She had come in for breakfast, as always. I checked her over, too, and couldn’t find any injuries. It seems that they escaped the killing dogs once again.

This is the second time that Georgia has woken me up in the middle of the night because a dog was after the cats. The first time it happened, I was too late to save the neighbor kitty, but mine all survived. It’s the same pack of dogs, too. They are really scary and I honestly believe that it won’t be long before they start attacking children. Apparently, Animal Control caught the main one several months ago, but it broke out of the holding pen and it’s had another litter of puppies – and it’s teaching them to hunt.

When we move to the new house, we are going to try making the cats inside kitties once again. They were fine in our first house with the basement, and the new house has a basement, too. The new house just has more room in general, so I’m hoping they can all peacefully coexist in the bigger space. It makes me nervous to let them outside there because it is closer to the creek, which is where the killing dogs stay most of the time. Plus, I get the impression that our new neighbors won’t appreciate Jewel’s social personality. We’ll see.

A Revelation About Me

Everyone who knows me knows that my animals are my children. They may annoy me sometimes when they do things they aren't supposed to do (like coughing up a hairball on the carpet, jumping on the kitchen sink to get a bug, rolling in the middle of the bed when I'm trying to make it, scratching my bare skin when I've just gotten out of the shower because street cats don't know how to keep their claws in, etc.), but even when they are annoying me, I find joy in them. As I scold Jewel when she's about to jump on the counter after that bug, I can see the expression on her face saying, "But, MOM, there's a bug in the window!" Then she sulks off and cleans her self, giving me the stink eye the whole time. They have such great personalities, even when they are sneaky little witches.

There have been a couple of temporary pets that have stolen my heart, too. Oscar was one of them. I told his story last summer, I believe. My brother Rob brought him to my house after finding him eating garbage on an old logging road. He was sick with infection from the horrible cut on his neck where he had apparently broken off a chain, and he was so stinky. Bathing him was WILD. He was just a puppy, about 5 -6 months old, I know because he was losing his puppy teeth. He stayed in my yard until he was well, and he got so big and rambunctious that I was afraid he would hurt Georgia. We couldn't keep him, so I tried to find a home for him, with no luck. Rob and Dave took him to the Humane Society, and I'm pretty sure that sweet puppy found a forever home. He was such a sweet dog, just too big and out of control for me to handle at that point in my life. I cried like a baby the night before they took him away because I let him down. I took him in, but I couldn't give him what he needed to be the pet I needed him to be.

Before Oscar, there was Taco. Taco was a husky mix with white-blue eyes. She was called Taco because she looked like a larger version of the Taco Bell dog. She had been hanging around the neighborhood of some people we went to church with at the time. They were tired of her, but they fed her because she had just had a litter of puppies and she appeared to be starving. Dave offered for the people to bring her to our house. He thought they would drop her off and she would just fend for herself. This was early in his understanding of me and animals. :) She was also a super sweet and very stinky dog. She stayed in our yard in Gardendale, and she played pretty well with Georgia. She slept on an old comforter on the porch. Her only drawback was that she roamed a lot, it was the Husky in her, I think. There was one very traumatic night when I had put her on a tie-out on the porch so she wouldn't roam and get hit by a car. When I got back from class, the dog and the tie out were gone. Dave was home, but he had not let her go - he thought she had just left. I went looking for her and found her in the backyard. She was so traumatize from being tied up that she wouldn't even move. I had to pick her up and carry her back to her blanket on the porch, and she wasn't a small dog. She had obviously been mistreated. We decided we would keep her in the house with Georgia. I brought her in and bathed her on a Friday night, and we were going to the vet for shots on Saturday. Saturday morning, she took Georgia off into the woods and we couldn't find her for a while. We decided then that unless we were ready to fence the yard (and we couldn't afford it), then we couldn't keep her. Georgia would stay in the yard on her own, but Taco took her off and we couldn't risk losing here. We took Taco to the Humane Society, and that was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I cried like a baby over her, too.

That experience is why I made sure that Rob went with Dave to take Oscar to the Humane Society. It's a hard thing to do, and if you are going to pick up strays, you need to be able to do it. The rule at my house now is, if you pick one up, it goes to the Humane Society immediately. If it comes to the house, it will be treated as one of our pets - shots, spay/neuter, flea meds, kennel trained, house trained - all of it. I'm too soft to get attached to them and then have to take them away again without knowing if they will find a family.

I wrote all this as background to help explain what I learned about myself. As an avid animal lover, it's always been hard for me to imagine not liking an animal, especially someone's pet. In the past week, I've learned that I don't love them all. We’ve been dog sitting my in-laws’ Dachshund for a week. He started and ended the week by chasing and attacking Gypsy. I’m not happy with him. He is mean, he bites, he screeches and whines, he doesn’t listen, he’s stubborn, and he constantly has to be ON me. I could deal with all of that stuff, except the cat chasing. Last night, I though he was going to kill her. Luckily, she got away from him and she wasn’t hurt. Everyone in my house was traumatized by the time we got him under control, including him. On top of that, he is not kennel trained. When he’s in the kennel, he screeches at the top of his lungs and sounds like he’s going to stroke out. As you can imagine, there hasn’t been much sleeping going on lately. We tried letting him sleep with us at night, but he keeps us awake and he chases the cats. It's hard for me to not like him. I want to like him, but we just don't mesh well.

Georgia has been looking quite frazzled and she was really clingy this morning. She doesn’t like it when he misbehaves, and she REALLY doesn’t like it when there is yelling. :) Two of the cats, Gypsy and Squirt, all but moved out for the week. I’ve barely had to fill the cat food bowl because no one has been inside to eat. I feel so bad for all of my animals; it isn’t fair to them, and I’m not sure I can do this again. He goes home today, and I am looking forward to a peaceful night of sleep. I’m hoping my animals quickly return to normal.

New Blog

This is the link to the new remodeling blog: http://amanda-newhouse.blogspot.com/. I'm going to try to keep them separate. :)

This is it!

This is the new house. I took pictures of the inside as well, but I can only post a limited number in the blog. I will be creating a separate blog for the ongoing remodeling project, so there will be plenty of pictures in it. I plan to show before, during, and after of each room we do.

Last night was Day 1, we ripped out the carpet in all rooms except the den. The hardwoods don't look too bad - not nearly as bad as I expected. Hopefully our friends can meet us this weekend to work on refinishing. They work for food. :) Tonight we will be pulling the staples out of the floor. The carpet pad was stapled down, and the staples don't come with it when you pull it up. :) We probably would have done more last night, but we ran out of daylight and the power was off.

Speaking of power, do you know that you now have to provide proof of residence before you can get your utilities turned on? What a load. We tried to line up power, water, and gas last week so that it would all be on on closing day, but we couldn't. We had to bring a copy of the deed to prove that the it's our house. So we worked by Big Light (we gave my dad a giant flashlight for Christmas) until it was just too dark to see. Hopefully there will be power tonight.

I'm ready to start painting. I'm anxious about getting everything done in time for the shower and I'm just ready to paint and make it mine.

Today is the the day.

We close on our new house today at 4:00. We had a little scare because apparently today is Confederate Memorial Day and the courthouse is closed. Our credit union is in the courthouse so we thought we weren't going to be able to get our certified check. Luckily, the main branch is open today, so all is well. Let's hope there are no surprises at the closing table.

I'll take pictures of the house the next time I am home in the daylight, which will probably later this week. We have decided to go ahead and refinish the hardwoods because we have some friends that are going to help us with it. I think we'll be pulling up the carpet later this week so we can start that project. After the hardwoods, I'll be painting. We walked through the house again this weekend and I realized that there is WALLPAPER in the bathrooms. I DESPISE wallpaper and it is a pain in the butt to remove, so the bathroom will be the last thing I paint. That wallpaper looks like it is on there good, too; it isn't even peeling in the corners. :(

The deal is, I want to refinish the hardwoods, paint, and move in by June 1. This is because I'm co-hosting a shower in the new house on June 2. Dave is willing to go along with this plan because I promised that the next thing on the list, after hardwoods and paint, can be the little out building that needs some serious help to make it a functional space. He has also been promised the basement as "his area" until we can build a bigger outbuilding for him. Eventually, I think we will make the basement a master bedroom suite, but for now it will belong to him. This will allow me to do basically whatever I want upstairs. Within reason, of course. :) Future plans for the house include new kitchen counters and floor and remodeling the bathrooms and the basement. I'm so excited! There is so much potential just waiting there.

New Things

If pets look like their owners, who does this remind you of? Rebecca? Good, because this is her new kitten. :) She got him for Vivi, because Vivi has been behaving badly - most likely due to loneliness during the day. His name was Shep to begin with (the name of Vivi's husband in The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood), but she changed it to Dean. Apparently, she likes that name. :) I took this picture of him right after she got him; she brought him to my house so I could see him, and he hissed at everything, including the camera. This picture just makes me laugh everytime I look at it. Georgia was so intrigued by him and the more excited she got, the bigger he hissed and spit. I don't think he appreciated her very much.

This is the new painting I did last night at Sips 'n Strokes class. I think it turned out pretty cute, and I plan to hang it and the other one in my new house. Rebecca and Kendall went with me, and we had good time. I never would have expected my sister to be so Type A about painting, though. I thought that all three of our paintings looked great.

That's good for now. I just wanted to share these pictures.

Not Guilty!!

The verdict came back this morning, and he WON!! He won, he won, he won!! I'm so excited for him. This is good stuff.

Some background on the craziness of this week: Dave has spent the last several weeks preparing for a robbery trial. When he got to court Wednesday morning, he learned that the robbery was dismissed, but he would be trying a theft case for the same man. That day. With one hour to prepare. You see, he spent all of his time preparing for the robbery because it was higher on the docket. The judge was testing him - because he likes him. :) He did the best he could, and apparently that was enough to create a reasonable doubt for the jury! He saved this man from a sentence of 20 to life. For the record, if he was guilty of anything, it was probably a misdemeanor - not deserving of life imprisonment. As Dave said last night, it's a hard job - harder than he ever imagined it would be.

A house update - we are supposed to close on the 23rd of this month. God willing, everything will work out fine and this will be our house. We walked through it again this week and found some things that need work. It looks like the shower in the master bathroom leaks, so we'll probably need to replace it . This means down with the pink tile! :) (What is with the trend of pink tile? Yuck.) We are going to try using it for a while first to see if it is actually still leaking, or if the water stains on the ceiling downstairs are old. On that note, we've decided not to refinish the hardwoods (the ones that are hiding under the carpet) because the shower is probably a more immediate need. We will be doing some painting, too, before we move.

That's enough for now.

I forgot something.

I forgot something really big in my update yesterday. Dave's first trial is scheduled for next week, April 9th. I can't disclose any details because of attorney-wife privilege, but please keep him in your thoughts as he prepares to try this case. He is really stressed out right now, so please pray specifically for calm and peace of mind as he prepares. Also, pray that God gives him the words he needs during the trial, that justice is served, and that Dave has peace with the verdict.

He's not on the "good" side of the law (he's the defense counsel - but then, I guess "good" is relative), so we have to be careful about praying for a victory. I will say that Dave is pretty sure the defendant is innocent, so he's really hoping to win. Are you thinking to yourself, "What does a lawyer do when he knows the client is guilty?" The answer is: He hopes that the district attorney does his job well. The majority of Dave's work is appointed by the family court, and most of the people he represents are there because they NEED to be (i.e. the kids need to be taken away, the mom does have a drug habit, etc.) so his job is to get the best deal possible for his client and hope that the other side does a good job.

It would be wonderful if he won his first trial, but I just hope he does his best and that he is happy with his effort - regardless of the outcome. Anyone who knows him well knows that he will argue with a rock just for the sake of arguing. It's fun for him. He's been practicing on me for years. I've been thoroughly cross-examined a multitude of times, so let's all hope that he uses that experience in the courtroom next week. By the way, when I said this to him last week he told me that the difference between arguing with me and arguing in the courtroom is that I don't have a lawyer present. I told him that I thought I may need to get one. :) The Good Lord knows I can't win an argument with him on my own. With all due respect for myself, it IS virtually impossible to win an arguement with someone who argues just for the sake of arguing. How can you make a point if the person you are arguing against changes his position over and over again so that nothing you say is relevant to the next point? He's very good at getting your thoughts so twisted that you don't know what you believe anymore. Surely he can do that in the courtroom and create a reasonable doubt for the jury, right? I can't think of anyone who should have been a lawyer more than him.

On that note, please pray for my sanity, and my sense of humor. :) If we survive this one, we'll be okay through all the rest of the trials in his life - court trials, anyway.

Serial Contract Writers Strike Again!

Once again, we’ve put a contract on a house. Hopefully this will be the last one. This is the house that we heard a rumor about last week. There isn’t even a sign in the yard yet. We got to see it unofficially on Saturday (that means we walked up to the people in the yard and asked them if we could go inside) and then we saw it again officially on Sunday (with our agent). I love it. It reminds me of our house in Gardendale, which I still miss SO MUCH sometimes. It doesn’t look anything like it, but it feels right. And, it has the same old people smell that the Gardendale house had in the beginning. Luckily, I know how to get rid of that now. The yard is huge and beautiful, and fenced in. There is a nice brick patio in the back and a huge front porch. It’s 3 bedrooms and 3 baths, and it probably has hardwoods under all the carpets. The kitchen is very comfortable with giant window over the sink and lots of cabinets. There is a laundry room off the kitchen – big enough for a kennel and the animal feeding station. Maybe this will be home. God willing, the inspection will come back okay and we can finish this house search.

Speaking of God, this is the Christian Holy Week – the week between Palm Sunday (when Jesus returned to Jerusalem) and Easter (when He was resurrected after being crucified). I think this is my favorite holiday because it just astounds me that God sent His only Son to die for me. Isn’t that amazing? Jesus Christ came to this earth to set an example of how we should live our lives, and then He died to wash our sins away so that we can have eternal life in Heaven. Also at His death, the veil that shrouded the Holy of Holies was torn in half, giving us direct access to God so that we can have a personal relationship with Him. As with most relationships, I don’t always give that one enough attention, and I am a sinner by nature, but I cannot imagine how hopeless I would be without God. Amazing things happen when Christians pray. Read more about the real meaning of Easter in the Gospels: Matthew 27: 35-50, Mark 15:24-37, Luke 23: 22-46, and John 19: 18-30.

Finally, here are a few pictures we took over the weekend. Bunny ears have nothing to do with the Risen Christ, but they are awfully cute on a Brown Dog. The azaleas in our backyard are gorgeous, too!

Is that a fuzzy caterpillar?

Nope! It's Gypsy and Squirt having a summer nap in the shade.





It's not really summer yet, but 88 degrees certainly starts feeling like summer. The kitties love this carpet roll that Dave and I have been carrying from house to house with us. We have a certain attachment to this roll of carpet. See, this is the carpet that we put into our house in Gardendale AFTER we moved out of it. It replaced some hideous tannish-gold carpet, and since we didn't get to live on the new carpet, we brought some with us. It stays on the carport because our house has carpet already, but we just couldn't bear to part with it.

Anyway, the kitties love to lounge on it, so I guess it's good for something.



This is a picture of the tablescape I created for our Ladies' Night Out a few weeks ago. It also had clear glasses with gold rims, but I bought them and put them out after taking this picture. A funny thing about those glasses and ladies, I had eight glasses because the table sat eight, but when the men were filling the glasses, one was missing. I could not figure out what happened to it - until the end of the evening when I happened to be following behind a seasoned lady who passed by my table to replace the glass she had taken from it earlier. Apparently, she did not want to drink out of the gold rimmed goblets that were on the table where she was sitting, so she borrowed a glass that would match from my table. Go figure. No big deal, except that one of the ladies at my table had to drink out of a plastic cup. Women. The favors were little candles in travel tins, and I had enough fruit to last two weeks once the thing was over.

It's Wedding Season!!

Obviously, since we only attended one wedding last year, we are making up for it now! Presently, I am co-planning a reception, a bridal shower, and a baby shower, and buying gifts for all of those plus three more. I'm also the Wedding Liason at church, so I'm now coordinating an unexpected wedding that just popped up. It's the first wedding in the 7 months that I've had this position, and it had to happen now. At least it will be over in about two weeks (I'm glad I'm not planning that one!). My calendar is so full it makes me cringe when I open it. I'm also in charge of the Mother's Day Basket fundraiser at church, so I'm really wondering what else I can add to my agenda right now. WHAT WAS I THINKING?!?

Anxiety aside, it will all be dramatic and fun (and funny when approached with a spirit of silliness), and I won't have to worry about being bored for a while. I'm so thankful that I have a beach trip planned in June.

I attempted to decorate a cute cake over the weekend and it was a DISASTER! The cake is very tasty, but the icing melted because it was too hot in my house, so it didn't turn out as cute as I had planned. It was my plan for the bridal shower I am co-planning, but that plan has been modified.

I stayed home from work yesterday because I hurt my back over the weekend and I needed a visit to the chiropractor. He told me that sitting in my chair all day will cause me to have this catch in my lower back. I guess that means I should retire. :) How am I supposed to NOT sit in my chair?! :) He did say that I need to get up and walk around more often, so I'm trying that today and it seems to be helping. Of course, had I not walked the 70 lb. dog last night, it would probably help more, but that was me being dumb because it felt better.

On the house front... we are at a loss. There is rumor that another one in our neighborhood will be on the market next week, so we are planning to go see it. We have until June to find one before our preapproval expires.