My strange dog

Jake the Dog....Is about a year and half old. Black lab and Aussie Cattle Dog mix. And he's weird.

Before I came into the room, he was laying in his corner, snoozing. He had his chew-toy between his paws, and looked quite happy and peacefull. Then I walked in. He jumped up and started running around the room. Ran to the door, looked out, ran around the room....etc. So I opened the door. He than ran around the room, searching for something to take outside WITH him.

I stepped on the chew-toy, and he found a pair of kid scissors (hey I was looking for those!) and tried to slip out the door.

Yup, my dog tries to find toys to take outside with him. Which he then throws into the air, catches, runs around with and looses. Oh, and chews into teeny pieces.

He also brings toys IN from the great outdoors. Yesterday he tried to bring in a stick, a rock and something brown and frozen. (ewww)

I'm sure we'll find at least most of his toys outside once the snow melts. At least I hope we do! There's at least 8 toys out there somewhere.

In other news...all four kids are home sick today. High fevers and a couple have reported abnormal freqency of trips to the bathroom. Okay, so this is rather normal....except it's Monkey Man's BIRTHDAY! Poor kid.

Whistle while you work

So the kids have learned a new song at school. It goes "I'm a geek, geek, geek. But I don't care, care, care. Cause you're a dork, dork, dork. Wha!"

I think I've heard this 30 times this morning...and they have only been awake for 45 minutes. So, between 3 kids and 45 minutes...that's um...alot. Princess Pout even sang it to the dog.

This leads me to wonder what other gems of crudeness my children are learning in school. There's been a few things that I go "Hey, that's not how it goes...it goes like this"....course, I can't remember what that was now...lol But somewhere in the 20 years since I was in 4th grade...the actual song/saying/thingy has gotten transmutted and they got it all wrong now.

Okay, after that little diversion...it's back to the topic on hand...yup, you guessed it...CLEANING! It's been a few posts since I've actually gotten down and dirty, and it's tiiiime!!!

Recently, I've been dealing with hair...dog hair. It's everywhere! It doesn't help that there's 4 dogs in the house (one of which is mine), and they all do have hair! But the main problem is my dog. For some reason, he's shedding like it just turned 1000 degrees.

I'm no dog phsycologist...but if I had to guess, I'd say it's stress. He wasn't shedding before the other dogs got here. He's in his kennel* for the least ammount of time I can manage...with rotating the dogs' "out time" throughout the day, while I'm home.

So, on to the cleaning of dog hair. I've got a pretty great vacuum cleaner. It sucks good (ha). But I have to vacuum his kennel and around it at least 2 times a day, or the hair finds it's way into the whole house. It's easy, no big...a few seconds time. But it's doing a number on the ammount of vacuum bags I have to use! LOL

Ugh, is this post lame, or is it just me? Um...wait a minute-dont' answer that.

Today's to-do list!!!
Besides the normal day-to-day cleaning, that is!

The FRIDGE! Yup, just that. It's a huge job, believe me. If I'm brave, I'll take pics to post. But I'm not sure....I don't know if I'll want to remember this adventure forever captured in photographs AND in the blogosphere...

I'll blame the lack of sleep...or the cold.

I swear I came up with some really great stuff to post last night, while laying in bed trying to goto sleep. I promise it was all really great, funny, and a rare look inside to the "real me". But, of course, I did fall alseep (eventually), and forgot it all.

Except to say that we still have at least one mouse. And the little bugger is either one very picky eater...or it's smarter than the average mouse. Peanut butter failed, as did the jelly (it was even strawberry), so I'll be off to get some spray-cheese to try that on our ONE remaining working mouse trap. Because while this mouse doesn't like our offerings...our doggy does! Aparently he's not much smarter, cause the snap of the trap on his tongue (or nose) isn't enough to stop him from trying to get under EVERYTHING if there's a trap under it.

Seriously...he tried like CRAZY to get under the bookshelf...which has a floor clearance of about 2 inches. I'm just glad it's attached to the walls!

It is offically 'winter' in Sarah Palin's state! Yup, the snow fell and stuck...and all the silly 4x4 drivers went off into the ditches. I'm really trying to have fun this year. I stuck pretty snowflake window clings on my kitchen window...trying to block out the yucky snow that's actually outside the window....it's not really helping.

It might help a little more if I didn't have to air-up a tie on the van at least once a day. I'd even be happy with the old cassette player/radio if that meant I didn't have to air up a tie in the FREEZING wind....but no. Captain decided that I needed a nifty CD player instead. Okay, okay...we didn't know that the tie was going to die when he got the CD player! But, that used our monthly "car money"...so I gotta stand in the wind and snow for a few more days...airing up that blessed tie (see it's blessed, maybe when I go out it will still be full...hahahhaaa)

Can your brain freeze while you are still living--er and maybe airing up a tire? I think I'll blame the cold on my impending insanity. Half-frozen brain trauma...yeah....I hear a vacation to somewhere warm calling me!

And there is still 6 months of this to go.....

Cherry Chocolate Wind

I hate starting things out with weather, but the weather is the biggest news right now. It's freezing! The horrible wind is still here, 20-30 mph but today it feels like -11 out there.

I drove the kids to the bus stop. It's only .10 of a mile there, and it's only 5 feet from my door to the car doors. We froze! Warming up now, since I have cuppa java #2 in my hand-er on my desk. But! The weather report says snow...and warming up. Although not less wind. It's so bad, if a gust hits you in the face, it literally takes your breath away. You don't want to get caught in a long gust, it's bad. And bad enough that it's hard to turn away once you do get hit. Oh and you get hit.

Last year for about 2 weeks, the wind was so bad that it pushed my greenhouse off it's foundation. Pulled the nails and screws right out and pushed it about 2 feet. It also tore off the shed doors, and the stable's shed door. I hope that it doesn't get that bad this year!

Another wonderful by-product of this wind and cold. We woke up to several piles of doggie doo-doo in the family room. I thought I was doing Cody, our pound puppy black lab/shar pei mix, a favor when I didn't let him out one last time before going to bed. Turns out I did myself a DISfavor. Oh well...Bone Head cleaned it up for me! Boys are wonderful!

This picture is not great (Captain took it through the window last spring), but it's cute!

We watched episode #2 of Sci Fi channel's mini series Tin Man last night, and I must say that it's getting better. Although poor Zooey really can't act! I don't know if her acting style is what the directors are going for when they cast her, or she's got some connections...but it's almost painfull to see a pretty good movie with other good actors and then there's her. But, dispite the actors, we will be tuning in again tonight to see more.

Monster Monkey is on another dress-up phase, this time it's "Army Guy". Last one was Superman and before that was a ninja. So now he's dressed daily in mis-matched cammo, and his spiderman snowboots.

He carries his backpack loaded with all the things a 4 year old commando might need (even a much-smooshed PB&J), and carries his Avatar glider stick thingy as his gun.

It's too cute to say, so here's a picture of him...before he found cammo pants too!

He says he wants to join the Army when he's big. I say wow that's great. I know that in a day, week, month or year he'll change his mind and want to be something else.

Come Spring, I'm guessing he'll be Mr. Dare devil again.

One addition I wanted to make to I am...I am not. I am not a decorator, but I love to paint and remodel. We just finished (by we I mean Captain helped for about an hour and then I finished) painting our main bathroom. It's toothpaste blue-I mean SKY blue. Captain is now sketching out what he plans to paint on the walls. Pretty much Arizona. We both grew up there, and we love the colors. It will be a mostly desert scene. He's a wonderful artist (something else I wish I was), and I know it'll be great once he gets TO IT. But for now, I smell toothpaste everytime I walk into the room. Everyone thinks I'm nuts, but my brain sees it and I smell it. Same thing happened when I painted the guest room a wonderful chocolate brown. I smelled chocolate!

Who knows what I'll smell when I plaster the walls in the family room. It's sorta an orange, so maybe pumpkin pie? I'll be sure to report!

Going out to brave the wind now. I must feed the horses, and I really want to do a quick run around the house to make sure there's nothing damaged and nothing else that I missed in my winter prep. I do know there's a wind chime I missed, I hear it...but I'm not sure where it is. At least I'll be able to follow the sound!

If no post later today or tomorrow, I've surely turned into a ME ice-cube. Hopefully a gallon of coffee can thaw me out!

Sorry once again to the neighbors. I think today I'll get totally dressed before I head out.