Alpha Human

Meet Mia.

She's not ours. Hailey has been dog-sitting this week for a couple in the ward who are on vacation. I hope they are having fun. They dropped her off Monday evening, with her accoutrements of water dish, food dish, toys & crate. We were told that we should put her into the crate when we leave the house, and at night. We try to be obedient. Really. That first night, we let her outside for her evening constitutional, and then put her into the crate, turned off the lights, and went to bed.

Sorta.

She whimpered, she cried, she barked, she complained, she boobed and hollered. She didn't sleep. Hailey didn't sleep. I didn't sleep. I decided that Tuesday night we'd put her crate out in the garage. Bedtime came. We started our getting-ready-for-bed routine. We put her in the crate. She began to whimper. She began to cry. She began to bark. She began to complain, boob and holler. After about an hour, I couldn't handle it any more. I decided that whether or not she sleeps crated at home, I need to sleep in my own home, so I let her out of the crate and brought her into the house.

Let me just say at this point that I know that dogs are pack animals. They crave being in a pack. They know who the alpha dog is in their pack. They're not much different from humans, in that regard. We know who our alpha human is in each of our packs. Mia's pack leaders had left her at our house. Hailey is supposed to be in charge of her-Hailey is the dog sitter.

Kinda.

Mia's figured out that I am the alpha human in our little, tiny pack. (She hasn't met or seen Tad, so she doesn't know that he is our alpha human.) She won't even give Hailey the time of day, except when she wants to play "Throw the Walrus". (Yes, that looks as funny in print as it sounds out loud.) Otherwise, she sits by me, follows me around the house, to the kitchen, to the scrapbook room, to the laundry room, to the bathroom...

When it's bedtime, she follows me downstairs to my bedroom, which I shut firmly in her face, and I immediately hear her plop down on the floor outside the door. At least she's not whimpering or barking or crying. She does, however, wear metal tags on her collar. When she wakes, she does what every dog in the world does--gets up and gives herself a good shake. This jangles her tags, which I hear through the closed door. This wakes me better than an alarm clock. Her humans must get up earlier than I do, though, because I've been seeing a lot of 5:30 am this week.

Suffice it to say I'm not sleeping well, and I'll be glad when her humans come Saturday evening to retrieve her.

I'm not offering to dog-sit, ever again, for anybody. Sorry to say, Hailey's not getting a dog until she's out on her own, either. I'm too old for this kind of thing.

Happy Birthday

Today is my sweetheart's birthday.

I know he won't see this blog posting, and he won't see the message I left on Facebook, either, but I still want to acknowledge him and his day. He's working far away and won't be home for another 2 weeks or so, but I will get to talk with him on the phone tonight, and Hailey and I will sing to him then. He's a good man. Actually, he's the best. I do love that man, and even after being together for going on 23 years, I'm so glad that we are together. He's funny, sweet, kind, tender, strong and my best friend in the whole world.

Happy Birthday, sweetheart. I love you!

Catching Up

I realized that I don't get much done during the week when Tad is home. He left again Sunday evening and I spent yesterday going full steam ahead again, just like the last time. I tossed some more things out of my scrapbook room, got the laundry going and put things back together again. This job creates a major upheaval in our lives with the weeks on and the weeks off. We'll get used to it when we finally have a real schedule.

My sister Jennifer reminded me that when I wrote this, I didn't post any pictures. I know. It was a hideous time of day, and it's hard to take a picture of yourself, at any time of day. Here, then, is the picture of me wearing my apron. Thanks, Hailey! I think it turned out really well. JoAnn fabric, Wrights bias tape.

Here is also a picture of Hailey wearing her apron that I just whipped up this morning. Cute girl, cute apron. Fabric is from Walmart, leftover from her quilted bag. Wrights bias tape.

In the interest of full disclosure, here is another picture of Hailey and an apron I made for her last year. Fabric is again from Walmart, and bias tape is again by Wrights.

I love making aprons. I can make one in less than 1/2 hour. That includes cutting out the fabric. I plan to make even more.

In a completely different topic, I just finished this, also this morning. I have this little lamp on the nightstand by my bed. It's a cute little lamp which my mom gave me a long time ago. The original lampshade fell apart, so I bought a plain one from, you guessed it, Walmart. It must have been larger than the original, because every time I turned the lamp on or off, I had to twist and contort my wrist to reach the switch. Finally about a week ago I got fed up, took the lampshade off the lamp, took it upstairs and cut 2 1/2" off the bottom of it with a box cutter. Not the prettiest of finishes, it was a little raggedy and crooked. Not bad, just  not finished. While I had it upstairs, I decided to decorate it with the paper flowers I had leftover from this.

That didn't fix the edge of the shade, though. On another trip to Walmart I found a spool of this beaded trim by Simplicity and thought it would be perfect for the lampshade. Et voila!

Brainstorm

I've spent a portion of the last 3 days trying to remember what I've done for the last 23 years. No, I didn't just wake from an overlong episode of amnesia, I just wanted to start working on my project for Personal Progress. My Individual Worth project is to write our family's history by making a scrapbook. I had been tossing around ideas for different sizes and formats, and finally hit upon the method which really clicked for me. I am going to use a 1/2 size binder (6"x9"--will hold 5.5"x8.5" sheet protectors) and a 2 page spreat format. On the left page of each spread, I will put the year at the top, and a timeline down the left margin. Then I'll highlight events of that year, where we were, where Tad was working, the years the kids were in school, family activities, etc. On the right page, I'll put a couple of pictures of something that happened that year. I have scrapbooks from the first few years of our family, but this will be compact, concise and I can also keep it up to date very easily. Since I really do have a bad memory for dates and places, I needed to do part of this while Tad was home. He rocks as far as remembering dates and places. With his help, I now have the greatest outline of the entire course of our marriage, so far. While he's gone I can do the crafty portion of the project and have it done in a jiffy.

I love these mini binder type scrapbooks. I have plans to make lots of them. I want to make one for each of the grands, one for this blog, one for my own personal use, plus the Family History one.

Random Thoughts at a Ridiculous Time of Day

I finished my patriotic apron in time to be able to use it already this month.

Tad arrived home Friday afternoon about 3:30 and it was so good to wrap my arms around  him again. Three weeks is overlong to have my sweetie away. He'll be here for the next week, leaving again on 10 July. Truck driving school is the next stage of his training, and he's waiting to find out which session he'll be attending.

My house is cleaner than it's been in, well, too long.

I knew July could be hot, but really, my skin memory is rather short term, so it always comes as a sort of a shock. It's not as hot as Phoenix or Las Cruces, so I think my brother comes home to Idaho in July to "cool off". Alan arrived safely late Friday with his kids. It'll be good to see them again.

Hailey is home safely from camp, looking tired and sunburned, but saying she had a blast, again. We've gotten her laundry done and put away, as well as Tad's. Clean and fresh laundry is a good thing.

Jessie and Todd should be safely in Colorado by now. They took my baby too far away.

2:30 is WAAAAY too early to be awake. Seriously.