Not a Day of Rest

I did a lot of housework today. I vacuumed the living room and put down more borax to kill any fleas that might come in. Then I took the plastic off the windows in the family room and vacuumed there - sucking up all the dead asian lady beetless. Then I put down borax there too. I cooked a turkey breast for Steffi, baked some biscuits for me, baked the rest of the peanut butter treat dough I had in the freezer for the dogs, went outside and walked since it was so beautiful outside there today. Sunny, breezy and not too hot. It was wonderful. And I also washed a bunch of dishes since I did all that baking and cooking today.

Puppy Update 3

I went to see them last night. The longhaired one never stopped wagging her tail and she kissed me repeatedly. The shorthaired one was scared of everything and just shook and shivered. I put her on my chest up near my neck and just petted her and she got used to that. I hope she grows out of that. Dad came with me and he got to hold and pet them too. They are bigger than they were last week. The lady said she thinks she saw them trying to sneak some of the puppy chow out of the mom's food dish. I guess the lady mixes adult food with puppy chow when she wants to start getting the puppies to eating dog food.

Dad found another dog he wants. The woman had a 4 month old yorkie running around the living room. He was cute. He had a cute little bark, and he was all hair. You couldn't see his eyes, nose or mouth. Very friendly and very much wanting attention. He finally got up on the couch with us and squirmed all over dad nipping him and licking him all over.

The lady had a min pin who just had a baby Friday night. She showed us the baby and it was so tiny. She's got another min pin who's going to have babies at the end of next week. That dog got up on the couch between me and dad and dad spent a lot of time just petting her. She loved attention.

This Week Has Flown By

What's been going on here? I made some cheesy biscuit treats for the dogs tonight. Another recipe I found online. I ordered ink and photo paper for my digital camera printer the other day. Walmart isn't carrying supplies for my printer anymore. I also ordered the first Princess Diaries movie. Walmart doesn't have that either at the store. And I got a 2007 Rafael Nadal calendar. Plenty of good pictures to admire. I've pulled mroe ticks off of Fritz. This year is going to be really bad when it comes to bugs and pests. Tonight I put some flea/tick drops on Fritz. I hope it helps.

I'm hoping to see the puppies tomorrow. I want to try to go early, but dad just has to go to an estate sale. There will be plenty of estate sales in the future to go to. But only a couple more times to visit the puppies before I bring them home.

Despite the weather people calling for rain every day this week, I got to go out and enjoy some good weather 4 out of the 5 weekdays.

Only One Nap Today

I only took one nap today, when I could have taken two. But it was sunny outside and I didn't have that horrible headache, so I went out a few times and walked around in the back yard. Steffi and Fritz went out every time with me and then they would come back in and sleep for a long while.

I made doggie crackers for them today. I found a recipe on the internet and tried it out. I would call them cookies, but there's no sugar in them, so I'm thinking they are crackers. They're peanut butter flavored. Fritz and Steffi really seem to like them, which is good because there's a bunch. I have some dough in the freezer that I can use next time.

I did some laundry today and washed my dishes.

I also took a couple of pictures of the glider I painted yesterday and emailed them to Mom so she could see what she was missing by not coming up to check it out. I told her that one day I'll come home and it will be gone - Dad will have come up and taken it to his house now that it looks good. LOL

Saturday Notes

Well, I had a bad headache today. I think it was from the caffeine I drank yesterday. I took two different kinds if sinus medication, three tylenol and then ate some chocolate to try to get rid of the headache. And I took two naps. But it's finally gone.

I spray painted the lawn furniture today. There's still a chair that needs painted. It isn't the best job in the world, but the thing's painted so it shouldn't rust any more when it rains. It's painted John Deere Green as they say. I used farm machinery paint that is supposed to be good in bad weather.

Went to mom and dad's this morning to get my hair cut. Took my Lakeside catalog and the newest Paula Deen magazine for mom to look at.

Yet Another Blog

I've created another blog. This one is centered on Chihuahuas. To check out "Gaga For Chihuahuas" click here.

Puppy Update 2

Dad and I went to see the puppies today. We were greeted by a whole pack of mix-matched dogs - chihuahuas, pomeranians, weiner dogs, poodles, boxers, min-pins. And all of them just wanted to lick us and get petted by us. They are all seemingly well adjusted and happy. We went in the house and sat down and the seller brought us our puppies. One had just had her nails clipped and the other one needed hers clipped so the seller's daughter clipped her nails too. The puppies are more active, but not energetic yet. They are only about 4 weeks old and still sleep a lot. The long haired one rolled over on her back and licked me and dad and the short haired one licked me and actually made a noise or two. She was chilly and wanted to curl up.

The seller's adult daughter and the grandkids were there today and there was a lot of house cleaning going on. I think it's worth noting that the seller not only keeps the names of all her dogs straight (I haven't heard her call one by three different names before getting to the right one like most people do their kids) but she also knows their personalities. There was one chihuahua who came in from outside and got up on the couch with me, dad and the puppies. The seller came over to pick her up and said "watch, she's going to growl now." And the dog did. Growling isn't a bad thing in itself. It's just a way of communicating.

After about a half an hour, Dad said "give them back, we have to go." He said that two or three times. He really needs to just sit there and pet the sleeping puppies. But anyway, I gave them back and we left. I think he's going to have to come with me for the next few visits because the puppies are going to get even more active and I will have a hard time keeping a hold on both of them.

A Full Day For A Day Off

I had today off but I was busy just the same. I got up regular time, like always, and let the dogs out, fed the cat, then fed the dogs, washed my hair, ate breakfast, went to the grocery store and walmart and was home by 8am. Then at 9am I was on the road again. This time with mom and dad. They went to the cemetery to pre-pay the arrangements for when they eventually pass away. This was just planning ahead, there's no bad news or anything. But I had to go because Dad wanted someone else to know what was going on. Once that was done, I called my puppy seller to see if I could see the puppies today and when she said yes, I went to mom and dad's house because Dad was going to come with me to see the puppies. Before we went to see the puppies, however, I treated mom to lunch at Ponderosa. She never goes anywhere except to the store and doctors with dad so I thought she needed to get out some. And I lectured both of them, telling them that Steffi and Fritz both need to see them more often. My dogs need to see people who aren't me. It's good for their morale. After lunch, Dad and I went to see the puppies. I'll make a separate post about them. Then we came back, stopping at the bank so I could deposit my paycheck, and I watched Passions with Mom (I don't watch the soap, but it's mom's favorite) and I watched the first few minutes of Ellen's talk show, went to walmart and got some low fat ice cream sandwiches (really wanted a milk shake and should have just gotten one from McDonalds) and then came home. I got down on the floor so Fritz and Steffi could smell the puppies on me and then changed into lounging around clothes, ate an ice cream sandwich, and went outside to walk around in the warm, sunny weather. Fritz was thrilled that I came outside. He ran and pranced and grinned.

All that being said, at least I wasn't stuck inside at work. The cemetery was pretty good compared to that. The sky was blue with just a few puffy white clouds, the cemetery grounds were mowed. It was a pretty place, polka-dotted with flower arrangements here and there.

One Cat to Go

Well, yesterday one of my two remaining farm cats died. I don't know what she died of, but she didn't have any marks on her when I found her. We've been pretty lucky with this last batch of farm cats. We've had them for something like 7 or 8 years. The usual life expectancy of a farm cat here is about two years. After that, they either run off or get killed. They disappear either way. I did have two cats once that disappeared for months, we figured they were dead. But they showed up again. They were named Jim and Andre after tennis players Jim Courier and Andre Agassi. This cat who just died yesterday had two names: Her christened name was Lady. But she was mean when we got her so I renamed her Satan.

This passing wasn't as traumatic as Phoebe's. I'm not that attached to the cats.

So, now I have one cat left, Lapcat. She's a sweetheart. I don't think she's much of a hunter and I don't think she roams all that much. I might be keeping her for a while.

Screwed By Blogger

Monday night everything was fine. I could post on my blogs and life was good. Tuesday after work, I discovered that the not so fine folks at Blogger had migrated all my blogs to what they call ‘new blogger’, supposedly a better form of blogger that offers new features. Well, I tried to log into blogger using my blogger username and password - nothing. Tried logging into new blogger with my google account name and password - again nothing. I was redirected to the blogger help site. What kind of help did I get? Canned how to articles that did nothing but lead me around in circles. Then I clicked on every option available to try to contact an actual employee of blogger, but it took me over an hour to find a form to complete to submit to them. And it wasn’t a ‘report a problem’ form. I went to the google help group and found that many, many others were suffering from the same problem I had. Did google employees help us? One employee posted the same canned answer that we found at blogger help. And he said ‘if this doesn’t work then contact us directly at (insert website). This kind of thing may be best solved on an individual basis.” Well, when you click on that website link, it takes you back to the page where I clicked everything I could to try to find a ‘help me’ form to fill out. After all this, I posted my own comment on the google help group website detailing every step I had taken. I wrote everything down and did it three or four times so I know what I tried and what I didn’t. To date no google tech support person has responded to anyone on that forum that has the same problem I did. Finally, some other blogger supplied the answer and it involved tinkering with the address of a link that blogger supplies us when we ask to retrieve our passwords. Basically, that link that we got when we asked to retrieve our passwords was reading our usernames as Case Sensitive, but when Blogger tried to find our accounts, it was not reading our usernames as Case Sensitive so it wouldn’t recognize us. That is a programming problem that blogger and google tech support are just too lazy to fix. So, instead, they let their customers flounder in frustration.

Bottom line: Blogger/Google Tech support is not serving the customers. They would rather spend their time making money in corporate mergers and stock options, lying to investors by saying that Google is a good company that provides valuable goods and services to the public when in actuality they ignore the customers and do not service their products to the satisfaction of the end users. Or, they are goofing off in a lax workplace in which productivity is not emphasized, but playing with toys is. Word to investors - if the tech support won’t help the people the company serves, then the company doesn’t care about you either. Sell your stock and invest your money in money market accounts or IRAs or Certificates of Deposit. You’d be better off.

Half of the News

On the local news tonight, they said that a couple from my small town ended up in a hospital because inside their plastic magazine cover of a magazine they got in the mail was unidentified white powder. The news reporter didn't report the names of the people, which I could live without. But it would have been nice to know what magazine they had gotten. I got a magazine today in a plastic cover. I doubt theirs was Wizard, the comic book magazine that I have a subscription to. But still, it would have been nice to know what magazine they got in the mail.

Doggie Toys

I ordered some doggie toys from www.dog.com earlier in the week. I got them today. They looked a lot smaller in the catalog. But they are cute. I have to cut the tags off of them and get them ready for the puppies.

Puppy Update

I went to see the puppies tonight after work. I was worried that the woman wouldn't know which puppies were mine since she didn't remember who I was when I called her this morning to ask to come see the puppies. But when I got there she went right to the correct puppies. They are bigger, but they are still sleeping a lot. And they are getting more brown on their noses and eye brows and paws. They are going to be really cute. And I found out a little about the mother of the short haired one. She is 7 years old and has had 6 litters of puppies. To put this into perspective, Twila at work is one of 9 children - I don't think there were any twins or triplets in that family so some people and this dog have a lot in common. But 6 litters are all this dog's going to have. This last litter, the first puppy that was to have been born got stuck and the seller had to take the mama dog all the way to the animal hospital 50 miles away at midnight to have a C section done. She lost that first little puppy because it smothered, but the others were all right. The seller decided to just go ahead and have the mama dog spayed while she was there at the hospital. The seller said that it cost her $562.00. That was the first time she'd ever had trouble with that dog.

The seller had a lot of dogs out in the yard when I got there. A little longhaired Chihuahua, a boxer, a Pomeranian, and I think it was a min-pin, but could have been another Chihuahua - they look alike. And the seller had her two grandkids too. A girl and a boy. And what was the seller watching on TV? Animal planet of course. I sat down on the couch with my two little puppies and the Pomeranian climbed all over me and kissed me and wanted a lot of attention. Now I know where Fritz gets it. He's half pom, half miniature collie. The kids were typical kids. The seller is doing something with eggs in water. I think she put some kind of seed in them and they are going to sprout. Anyway, the girl brought the can over to me to show me and she pulled out one of the eggs and dripped water all over me. Then the kids settled down for all of a few minutes and the seller asked them "where's your mama at?" And the girl said "mom's not coming back." LOLOLOL. Actually mom was at the grocery store. The seller called her to find out and to tell her to get her butt there. I left before meeting the mom, but I think I passed her as I was pulling out of the drive way.

I think I could get used to that little Pomeranian. My uncle said he'd give me his pom when he was done with her. I hope that doesn't mean when he's dead. That's not fun to think about. But if I have room when he's ready to give her away, I might take her if she's as happy go lucky as that one was. I've never met his dog.

Public Service

I just saw a headline on google news that said Barack Obama isn't interested in the Vice Presidency. That rubs me the wrong way. How can he say he wants to work for America and do good things for Americans but only if he's President? If he's a public servant and if he wants to help America, then he should be willing to accept any door that opens to him that would provide him with an opportunity to serve America. Sounds a bit elitist to me.

.... For Dummies

Mom bought a Chihuahuas For Dummies Book online and let me take it home today to read. That was so sweet of her.

PUPPIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In five weeks I'm bringing home two cute female puppies!!!! One is a short haired white with black spots and a little bit of brown and the other one is a longhaired white with black spots. I'm so excited. I hope the lady remember those are mine and doesn't try to sell them again. LOL. She said I'm welcome to call her and come see the puppies anytime before they are ready to go so I will probably go see them again just so she remembers that they are mine.

As for the lady and her business - she sells all kinds of dogs. She had schnauzers, poodles, yorkies, Boston terriers, Pomeranians, weiner dogs, min pins, and boxers. She had a bunch of dogs in the house but she also had two outbuildings with dogs in them. I only got to see inside one of the buildings. The house smelled clean and the two puppies I picked came from the house. The building that had other Chihuahuas in it smelled, but so does my house with its 30 year old carpet so I wasn't too worried about that. She had 4 litters of Boston terriers. She said that they all decided to get pregnant at the same time. Heehee. She had a really adorable 2 1/2 pound chi female but I was afraid Fritz would jump on her by accident and hurt her. She would wag her tail and kiss me all over. Then the woman had one female with a medical problem - part of her intestine was bulging. She said surgery to fix it was about $200.00 so she would sell that one for about $150.00 but I didn't want to start out with a challenge. I wanted healthy puppies to start with. Dad though said I should have gotten that one. The building I was in where I saw the terriers and poodles and some of the Chihuahuas was built with little doggie doors so the dogs could go out and play in a fenced yard. It was warm in there too.

Tomorrow is.....

Tomorrow is Puppy Day!!! I can't wait. I'll be up at 5am anyway to feed the dogs and let them out and then to go to the grocery store. But after that, I will have a hard time waiting around for a decent time to go see the puppies.

I've been trying to find out from the web if I can bring home a male puppy and Fritz won't fight him. I think as long as the new dogs are puppies, the resident dogs will accept new dogs into the home either male or female. I need to read some more on the web and see what I can find out. If I have to get a male, then I'll get one and Fritz will just have to adjust. It's not like the puppy would be a cat or anything. Fritz really hates it when the cats are in the house. He tries to eat them.

This Will Be a Bad Year

So far this week, I have pulled 5 ticks off just one of my dogs. I think last year, I may have seen 5 ticks total.

Too Early For This

I pulled two ticks off of Fritz today. It's way too early to be thinking about ticks. Global warming is real, no matter what the Republicans say.

Saturday is Too Far Away

Mom called the dog lady and she has puppies. Dad and I are going to go look at them on Saturday. But mom said the lady was flighty and so we don't really know how many females she has or how old they are. Hopefully, I will be able to put deposits on two females and I will then soon have new puppies in my family.

Weekend Notes

Let's see - what's been going on this weekend? Yesterday, I got up at 5am, as usual, and fed the dogs and cats, washed my hair and got ready and went shopping at Krogers and Walmart. I like this shopping early thing. I was home by 8am. I bought some green spray paint to paint the metal glider I have here at the house, but it started raining and it's been raining pretty much all weekend so I didn't get to do any painting. I did work out yesterday but I also ate both pop tarts that come in the package, not just one like I normally do. So, I don't know if I managed to do any good yesterday with the diet/exercise thing. I watched golf and tennis yesterday and today, made more low fat chili for this week's suppers (I pour it over lettuce and make taco salads), did some laundry. This morning I went to mom and dad's and took their mail, the newspapers, and dad's birthday present. His birthday is today. Then I came home and ate lunch, worked out, and while it was sunny, I went out and walked trying to get a tan. That lasted about 20 to 30 minutes, then it clouded up again. It's raining again now. I had to take the tv off the satellite and use my regular antenna. Luckily, both tennis and golf are on network stations today.

I'm getting anxious about the puppy project. I decided to wait to see what happens with this local lady whose dog is supposed to be having puppies. The lady said she would call mom or me when the puppies were born. Well, it should be any day now I think. If I don't get puppies from her, then I think I might go back to the pet store. There's another person who is selling puppies - there's a website for that person, but I don't know if there will be any females left by the time I find out if the local lady is a go or not. I will get at least one puppy from somewhere, but my parents talked me into two and I've been making plans for two.