We need to train Daddy....

A little break from political crap.

There is a basic law of dog training. You don't train the dog. You train the owner to communicate his or her wishes to the dog. The dog will do anything to please the owner, you just have to work out how to let him know what that is.

If you have looked at the picture that accompanies my name on this blog, you will see a large dog. That would be our Boxer Baby Baxter. Now for 15 months, the dominate "dog" in our house has been me. (Aka. Mommy) Now that the hubby is home from Iraq, we are having a bit of a turf war in our house.

See Mommy has taught the Boxer Baby commands for good behavior, accompanied by hand signals. We have one hand signal for sit, another for lay down, one for stay, and another for come, to name a few. Daddy has not learned the hand signals. He uses the same signal for sit and lay down. Baxter is confused. Then Daddy gets upset, and well.... it just goes down hill from here.

Daddy needs to go to obedience school.

Totally Lost my Mind

I don't post like my sister does. Before that was because despite the dog, I don't have the inspiration that she has. Now it is because I just don't have the time.

I have lost my mind on several occasions over the last few years. I think the first major meltdown was probably when I decided to go back to dance class after a 20 year break. Most of my classmates weren't born when I took my last class. This gives you a bit of insight into just how insane that decision was. I have paid for it, in sore muscles, a badly sprained ankle, and an investment (large) in ace brand ice packs.

Now I have gone even further around the bend. (Yes, I have added a pretty hug me jacket to my Christmas list.) I have gone back to school for my master's degree.

I thought that maybe, I would get an associates degree in medical billing and coding. Then I started checking that out, and the cost of community college was going to be a bit more than I anticipated. I was going to have to repeat a bunch of classes that I had taken in the past, and then scheduling that around my work schedule was going to be very interesting. So I started looking into online classes to work around the scheduling part, and found out that I could make myself more marketable, spend less, and get a higher degree.

So here I am, trying to figure out how to work, spend time with my husband, help out around the house, have my regularly scheduled life, and get my classwork done.

I mentioned that I want a pretty hug me jacket for Christmas, right?

Of Boxes and Boots....

Here is the deal, hubby is in Iraq, but on his way out of Iraq. Just to be nice, and just because this is the kind of thing a military wife does, I agreed to accept a few packages here at the house that were being shipped from Iraq. These things fall into three categories.

There are the things that belong here, aka the hubby's stuff.

There are the personal things that single soldiers serving directly with the hubby are sending here because they don't have anyone living locally that could receive them.

Then there are the going away gifts for various persons of higher rank, who will be leaving the base shortly after the group returns to go to other bases.

So at first it was a few boxes of personal things. No biggie, just load them into the storage place before the dog got a chance to mark them for himself. (Some of hubby's boxes got tagged, but then they belong here anyway right?)

Then there were a few small, but fairly light crates shipped through DHL, a few small boxes of things dropped off by the mail lady. Nothing I couldn't manage.

Then the flood gates opened. (Let me digress a bit and explain that Hubby never builds anything small when it can be built on a scale of Godzilla) I received 3 larger crates last week. 3 more were delivered today. I got a delivery through the mail for one soldier where they just put his name and our address. They have stopped bothering with the in care of part now. I'd assume he was moving into the guest bedroom, but that is where the contents of the 200 pound box are.

Yes, you read that right. A couple of days ago, Hubby (keep in mind his scale of building here) sent me a 200 pound crate of stuff. Now most of the contents didn't have me even blinking an eye. You know pictures, spare clothing, equipment he doesn't need on the plane, some gifts for friends, and family, that sort of thing. What did have me blinking (and stuttering and scratching my head) were the seven pair of boots. Again your eyes are not deceiving you, I said SEVEN pairs of boots. Why would a man need that many boots? They all appear to be about the same size. They are definitely all the same color. I am still struggling to wrap my brain around this one. I have bought the same color, and style of shoe before. I have bought three pairs of black sandals all in the same size and color. Of course that was because the dog kept eating the left shoe out of each pair. I don't think the dog's teeth can handle that many boots. If he tries, we might be buying doggy dentures.

Anyway, I am just about over the shock of the 200 pound box and seven pairs of boots, when I get a call from my friendly neighborhood DHL office. (I think that they are going to put on their Christmas list this year, or possibly even designate our driveway as a shipping HUB.) This time it isn't just a signature that they need. They want to know if there will be anyone available at the house to help the driver unload a 300 pound crate. (I'll wait while you get back in your chair.) It is going to take four people to get it onto the truck to start with, and then I guess someone somewhere thought that the driver and little ole me were going to get it off the truck. Yeah,..... I don't think so.

So I asked the nice lady, what our options were here. After going through a few that involved me finding large strong people to help with loading and unloading, we hit on an excellent option. We will let the obviously insane person who sent the package, go pick it up when there happy little tootsies touch down in the US of A.

So while all of this is probably entertaining on it's own, there is a post script to the story. The nice DHL lady who does the deliveries to the office where I work stopped by today. As I was signing for the very small, light, almost minuscule package that she brought, I asked her if they were considering making my driveway a package terminal. She gave me a bit of a "what are you talking about look", so I mentioned the crates I had been receiving and my phone call with the nice woman at the terminal this morning. Her reply was "Your that lady! That lady in ****".

Yep definitely getting a fruit cake or something from DHL this year. I wonder if I could get some rum cake, hold the cake?

Do we really need the skeleton?

Okay, I am getting ready for a yard sale. Now I am sitting on a bit of a catch 22. On one hand my husband isn't here to tell me that these curtains from the 80's hold a special sentimental attachment for him. So they are gone. On the other hand, he isn't here to give me his blessing to get rid of about a dozen other things that I think should go but I am afraid he will actually notice are missing.

Now where does the skeleton come in to all of this? There is actually a skeleton, plastic not real, sitting in the upstairs office. I don't know where it came from, but I know that I cannot get rid of that. It is one of the things that he will notice is missing.

We have things that should go, but he won't let go. Like two love seat size couches that once belonged to his mother and have seen better days. In order to get rid of some of the umpteen million spare Christmas decorations I have in the storage area, I have to climb over the two couches, several dozen empty boxes, and a truck hood!

I have things that I can't seem to let go of either, like a brand new couch that is sitting in the storage area too. I keep hoping that I can replace the monstrosity in the living room with that and a new recliner for the hubby. I dream of the day that I can change the layout of the living room as needed.

I suppose that we all have our pack rat tendencies, but ours are out of hand. I have vowed to take time over the next two weeks and go through boxes of papers and get rid of anything that is not financially necessary, and file the rest in a way that it can easily be accessed in the future.

I am also going to ship all of the material that I have collected for sewing projects that I will never actually do, to my mother. She will use the material. I hate sewing so much that I have accepted the fact that I never will.

As for all of the yarn, craft, and scrap booking materials....those I will keep. The way my mother uses scrap material, I use up scrap yarn. There will be a project that I will be able to use it for. I may get rid of a good many books though to make room on the shelves for the crafty things. I think there is a used book store in town where I can trade them in.

I am declaring war on clutter. This yard sale is just the first shot!

If you could only watch the instant replay...

There are times in my life that I wish I could just see what I looked like in a moment and record it . I am sure that I would have won the grand prize on some video show by now.

For example, recently I stopped for dinner on my way home from vacation. Let me set the scene here. I have all three furry "children" in the vehicle with me. It is over 90 degrees out. I do not want to go into the restaurant and leave them to bake in the truck. The truck is my husband's baby. It has over sized mud tires on it, and a lift kit. Our 75 pound boxer "baby" with the bad back legs cannot jump into the truck without some heavy lifting on my part. It has recently rained. I decide that I am tired of being on the road and want this trip over with as soon as possible, so I thought I'll take the dog for a walk before we get back on the road and continue our trip. That will eliminate one of the many potty breaks we will have to take later. Also sharing a parking lot picnic is a mother and a young boy sitting on the tailgate of their SUV.

Now the scene is set. The back "lawn" of this particular restaurant is very steep, probably a 60 to 75 degree angle. I am trying to be careful, and watch my step not going to fast as we try to find the dog's preferred sweet spot. Suddenly, and this is the moment in time that I would like to have had on film, my feet shoot out from underneath me. I don't remember yelling. I am guessing that I did because the dog tried to get away from me so fast that he messed up his hip. I just know, I was suddenly on my back with a leg turned at an angle that God didn't intend, trying to breathe through the pain in my knee. I had let go of the dog's leash and he was headed up the hill as fast has his three working legs could take him.

Now as soon as I realized that the dog was on his way to immediate danger, I tried to follow him up the hill. This was no easy feat because I was only on one working leg at that moment. I make it to the top of the hill, and start hollering at the dog to stop, stay, come, whatever command would keep him out of the drive through lane, and get him closer to me. I am barely able to put weight on my newly discovered "bad" knee, so I am hobbling across the parking lot looking like a Quasimodo wanna be. The dog is obviously scared and in pain.

The whole time this little drama is playing out, the aforementioned lady and her son are sitting on their tailgate watching, and doing nothing. I wonder now what they were thinking. "Gee, look there's a dinner show!" or "This will be something to tell people about." I don't think that "we should probably offer to help her" crossed their minds.

I wonder what was going through the dog's mind. "What the ?" "Did I do something wrong" "What demon possessed her" "RUN!" maybe a combination of all of that.

In the end, since the dog was also "crippled" in the incident, I was able to catch him before anything more catastrophic happened. I rubbed the cramp out of his back leg. I even managed to lift him into the truck again once one of us was back on all "pins". Fortunately I had noticed a drug store right off the exit ramp, and was able to get an ace bandage and some ice packs to help me get home.

I remember praying before I left to head home. I asked God to get us all back home in one piece. I should have been more specific and said "in the same condition that we left in".