Walks with Zack

Denton swears that this dog was tailor made for me.

Zack hates going on walks….
Zack hates being in the sun….Zack He hates being hot….. He hates exercise…. to the point that he will just lay down in the road and refuse to go on…. He is a goofball who wants to be with his people, in the cool, cool house where the sun can’t shine on him and he can lay on his back and snore the day away.Yep, he was tailor made to live with me.

Zack

We added a new member to our family this weekend.  Meet Zack.  He’s nine months old and a Bernese Mountain Dog.  Right now he weighs in at 77 pounds and he will continue to grow until he’s about 14 months old.  He is going to be BIG, which isn’t new to us.  Sampson weighed 151 most of his fourteen years of life.He is the sweetest thing.  He has yet to bark.  He woofed at one of the neighbors dog, but I think that was to say “Hey, new friend!!!!” before they introduced themselves.Yes, that sentence needed all of those exclamation points.  He is a giant floof ball.  And so far he hasn’t met a stranger or anyone that he hasn’t considered a friend.The cats don’t know what to think about him; they hide and look at him from a distance.  The kittens have never seen a dog, and Koshka is now angry at me again.  He was super ticked off when I brought the kittens home, but now they are no longer enemy number one.  Zack is, lol.  He apparently has never seen a cat either, so he is quiet and watchful of them too.Denton and Hayden drove down to Denton’s parents in Florida to pick him up.  They got Zack and his sister when they were seven weeks old.  They did the round trip drive down there and back in three days and they were in the car for over 32 hours.  Not what any of us consider a good time which is why we fly when we go down now.  But we wouldn’t have crated him on a plane for anything.When they got him home he wouldn’t eat the food that Denton’s Mama sent with them.  Finally, I sat with him and accidentally discovered that if I held the food in my hand right next to his mouth, he would eat. 😯 Hopefully he will get over that soon, hahaha.I put this extra photo in to show the scale of his paw to my hand.  Sampson was like a bull in a china shop, so it’s so surprising to me how gently he is.

He has adjusted very well so far.  We however are adjusting slower.  It’s like having a toddler in the house again.  Zack proofing the house is going to be ongoing…… 😀

Our Oreo

Oreo

Hello friends.  The last couple of weeks have been hard.  Almost always, here in my little corner of the world I try to keep things light, happy, and fun.  But life isn’t lived that way, not on a constant basis.  Still, I debated whether or not I should post this.  Some things are just very private and grief happens to be one of them for me.  Too, I don’t know how much of Oreo’s story to share.  How much is too much?  So I’m just going to share and you can read all about it – or not.

We lost our beloved Oreo, on October 25th.  He was 15 and a half years old.

We had had him since he was weaned from his feral mother at six weeks old.  She had a litter of puppies underneath an abandoned mobile home about a mile from our house in the Kingdom.  He was the only boy that Denton could catch; those puppies were fast.

We took him home and basically handed him over to Sampson, our 150 pound Chesapeake Bay Retriever (who had brain damage, but that’s another story I’ve never been able to tell) to be his companion and friend for the next twelve years.  They were inseparable.  They romped and played in the woods with the kids for the next six years.

Unless the coyote’s called.  Then Oreo would yip back at them and take off.  I have no idea why they didn’t kill him, but every time they would come around and start yipping, he would yip back; run off to join them – wild, cagey coyotes – and stay gone with them for a couple of days.  Animals are very strange that way.  At least at my house…

When we left the Kingdom and moved to our tiny town, we bought a house in a subdivision.  It’s a wonder the transition didn’t kill Sampson and Oreo.  They had had free rein over sixty acres of land and woods for all of their lives.  Now we lived on less than an acre.

Our new to us home came with a ready made dog lot where we immediately put their dog houses.  Which lasted approximately 30 minutes that night when we went inside the house.  Oreo and Sampson both had dog houses, which they almost never slept in.  They slept on the front porch, to guard us and keep watch over everything at night.  Now they were being punished, or so they both thought, by being banished to a doggie prison twenty feet away from the back door where their people were.  The howling was deranged.  I know the neighbors wished we would go back to wherever we had come from.  The neighbor across the street who had kids the same age as ours came over the second night and asked us very politely to stop the demented racket. Please.

I know what you are thinking.  Why in the world didn’t we just bring them in the house. Well, we would have.  Side story:  But Sampson had lived in the house the entire first year of his life with his sister Sadie.  Until he ATE THE WALL.  Our laundry room was about 10 X 10 in our house in the Kingdom.  Any time we needed to go somewhere, we put Sadie and Sampson in the laundry room until we got back.  One fine Spring day, we had been to town, and when we came home the first thing I did was let the dogs out.  When I got to the laundry room the first thing I noticed – because it was everywhere – was this floating pink stuff.  When I opened the door Sadie was laying as far from Sampson as she could get. She was very, very smart and didn’t have brain damage like her brother.  Sampson meanwhile, was jumping for joy that we were back from what he believed was a three week journey.

He apparently was bored, so to entertain himself while we were gone for a couple of hours, decided to chew on the baseboard.  While that was fun, the Sheetrock was possibly better. The prize was the fluffy pink insulation that was hidden inside his new toy.  To remove said toy he needed to get all of the wall out of his way.  Which he systematically tore off as far up as he could reach, all the way around the room.  There was pink insulation everywhere and no piece of Sheetrock bigger than the palm of my hand left.

Sampson also had on 37 fur coats.  You could have dropped him at the arctic circle and he would have been happy as a lark.  He didn’t want to live in the house, he just needed to be able to lay in front of the front door to protect us from all of the monsters that he knew were coming for us all.  Oreo wanted to be where Sampson was.  Back to the original story.

So, we built a fence around the back yard and into the woods for Oreo and Sampson and they lived happily there for the next half a decade.  And then Sampson died.  He lived to be 14 years old and Oreo had never been without him.  Not even for a day.  When Denton and his Daddy took Sampson away to bury him on a friends farm, Oreo was visibly anxious. He had no idea what was happening, but it wasn’t good.  As soon as it got dark that night, the mournful howling started.  And it didn’t stop.  Oreo was absolutely inconsolable.  We knew exactly what he wanted, and we couldn’t give it to him or explain why.

For the next two weeks, we did what anyone would have done at this point.  Denton slept on the back deck with Oreo.  That man.  If I hadn’t already loved him more than humanly possible at this point, that would done it for me.  He loved Oreo.  Loves him still.  So he slept next to him every night so that Oreo could mourn the loss of their best friend until Oreo could sleep at night without wanting to scream out his sadness and loss the only way he knew how.

And life for all of us carried on until about a year or year and a half ago.  At 4:01 AM in the morning I woke up to vicious, pain filled barking, growling and all around chaos.  It sounded like someone was torturing Oreo to death.  It was terrible.  Denton ran downstairs to grab the big flashlight and something to defend us all with – why in the world we were keeping all of this downstairs is still baffling me and Denton – while I stood at the french doors and stared uncomprehendingly at Oreo through them.  He was fine, but the horrifying sounds were still happening.  To someone else’s dog, in our woods.

Right before Denton came back upstairs, I see Oreo start barking like mad at the gate.  He was losing it.  As I started to step out onto the deck this great big, horrifying animal dropped onto the deck from the top of the fence in front of the door.  It was a raccoon.  Oreo didn’t see it because he was going berserk at something I couldn’t see.  Still the howling, screaming and pain filled cry’s are going on.

My brother laughed when I told him how big this raccoon was because he didn’t believe me.  Sampson in his prime weighed in at 155 pounds.  His and Oreo’s dog houses matched and were the same size, so you can imagine how big these things were.  When that raccoon dropped onto the deck he waddled over to Oreo’s house and tried to go inside to make himself at home, and he got stuck in the doorway.  Oreo weighed about 65 pounds in his prime and he had no problem going in and out of his house.  That thing was enormous.

By this time I was screaming the house down for Denton to come upstairs.  When he opened the door and stepped out, Oreo was on the deck and the racoon was gone.  Denton said immediately to get Oreo inside while he went hunting for what we assumed at this point was a pack of rabid raccoons attacking someone’s dog.  This was a terrible idea in my opinion.  BTW, can you believe that not a single one of our neighbors heard this racket?  I mean, I’m a light sleeper, but that’s crazy.

Denton hunted for about 15 minutes, but didn’t find the dog or what had attacked it.  It was 4:30 in the morning at this point.  There was no way in the world I was sending Oreo back outside after all of this, so we made him a bed in our bedroom and locked the cats out.  We had no idea how everyone would react, and after all of the terror and excitement, I didn’t want to find out.

Most saying’s have some basis in fact, but I’m here to tell you that the one that says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks is completely WRONG.  My Daddy told me later that he was so surprised that Oreo adapted so well to living in the house.  He acted like he always had.  He wouldn’t touch the cats food, he didn’t bark like a mad thing when someone rang the doorbell (like most people’s dogs that we know), and he never had an accident.  Well, in full disclosure he did have – I wouldn’t call it an accident the way that Denton’s parents described it – something while we were on vacation and Denton’s parents were house sitting for us.  I suspect though, that that incident had something to do with nutty buddy’s, just from the way Oreo’s eye glowed with hope anytime anyone got one out of the freezer, hahaha.

He quite literally was the perfect house dog.  He was happy to spend all of his time with his people, to go on walks and see all the things.  And if Denton sneaked him Slim Jims when I wasn’t looking, Oreo was never going to tell.  He didn’t try to eat the cats, which was one of my biggest fears.  Batman quite literally pretended that Oreo didn’t exist.  Koshka, our resident scaredy cat who is afraid of his own tail was equally terrified and outraged.  How dare we bring home someone he couldn’t beat up.

Oreo’s one and only quirk was car rides.  Every. Single. Time. we put him in the third row seat of the Pilot (we learned very quickly he had to ride all the way back there, or he would try to drive) he would bark like mad.  He didn’t do this before he came inside to live.  So I don’t know what his trigger was about riding in the car in his golden years.  Maybe he was warning everyone to get out of the way?  Hahaha.


I can’t write about having him euthanized.  This was our second time going through this process and it was just as excruciating as it was with Sampson.  Just know that it was quiet, calm, and heartbreaking.

Our Oreo was quite literally the best dog on earth.  He has left us with a giant hole in our hearts and he will be missed immensely.

Apples to Apples Games

This summer while we were on vacation we played a LOT of games.  One of my favorites was this card game that my Mama found on one of her thrifting hunts.  This game is AWESOME and I highly recommend it!  If you can’t find one at a yard sale or thrift store (I’ve been looking since June when we got home from vacation and still haven’t found one) Amazon just dropped the price on theirs to $9.00 with free shipping if you have Prime.  If you don’t have Amazon Prime you can sign up to get a free trial with free 2-day shipping here.

I’m going to add this one to my cart and force ask my people nicely to play it with me!  You know that after I order this I’ll find three next week.  🙂

Mattel Games Apples to Apples Party Box - FFPDo you have a favorite game you play with your people?

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Catching up….

Hello my friends!  It’s been a little while, hasn’t it?  Let’s do some catching up.

We were away last week on a much awaited vacation and it’s hard – HARD – to get back into the groove of everyday life.

Sunrise and moonset at the same time.  Life is such a dichotomy isn’t it?  The photos above and below were taken at the same time, just in different directions.  I LOVE it.

We did a lot of sitting in the surf in our beach chairs, one of my favorite activities.

We spent an entire day at Brookgreen Gardens, which will have to be an entire post itself.  If you haven’t heard of this place ( I hadn’t ), you need to spend a day here.  Make sure to bring sunscreen.  This is a note to myself.  I burned myself to a crisp.

We ate, and ate and ate yummy food.

We played games and laughed like lunatics, swam in the pool, walked on the beach at daybreak and at sunset, looked at jellyfish close up, and learned that if one stings you to sit in the wet sand and cover the sting with said wet sand…..Thanks surfer dude lifeguard.

I didn’t post about our grocery budget last week because all the money I spent was vacation related and I don’t count that in my grocery budget.  I also didn’t post what we ate last week either.  It was a mishmash of cooking in our rental house and eating out.  Heavy on the eating at our rental.  Number one:  it cuts down on cost.  But number two and most important to my people:  we are almost all of us homebodies who don’t like other people.  Hahaha.  That’s not true.  Maybe.

The reality is this:  we have 11 people to feed.  Taking 11 people out to eat is a very intricate and delicately done thing.

  1. You have to allow time for all ELEVEN people to primp and get themselves together.
  2. You have to allow time for all ELEVEN people to be transported to the restaurant.
  3. You have to allow time for all ELEVEN people to be seated at said restaurant.
  4. You have to allow time for all ELEVEN people to order food, wait for the food, eat the food and journey back home again.

As you can see, all of this takes TIME.  Time is finite and precious in my world.  It’s better spent sitting around doing nothing more than looking at my most precious people’s faces and talking; swimming, walking the beach, sitting in the surf, digging in the sand, playing card games, and laughing like lunatics.  Which is very, very difficult in a restaurant with eleven people.

In other news, Denton has been scheduled for an MRI next week.  Say a prayer for him if you would.  He is in a LOT of pain.  The long and short of it is that they believe he has a blown (herniated) disc in his back.  It could stem from the motorcycle and bear incident, extreme fatigue combined with 100 hour workweeks and everyday life or countless other things that could be inserted here.  Life has a tendency to interrupt even the best laid plans.

I hope to get my groove back and start getting things done again.  But we shall see!  I hope you have a lovely and pain free weekend!

How to Save $$$ on Souvenirs

I love traveling and seeing new places.  I also love saving money so that I can pay for those experiences.

Now, before you start feeling sorry for all of the souvenir shops that we avoid, rest assured we did not avoid them all.  We dropped about $100.00 on two hats, and a toboggan in just one store.  When you see something you truly like and know that you’ll probably never find another one of, BUY it.  It’s the little things in life that make my family happy.

Of course, my best source for souvenirs is thrift stores.  Especially the thrift stores in a tourist town.  I found all of the shirts you’ll see down below in ONE store.  I think there were at least twelve thrift stores in one of the many beach towns we stopped in, but even I don’t want to spend my entire vacation thrift shopping.  There are waves to stare at.  Safely from the sand.

As always, if you can’t wait to find one of these beauties at your own thrift store, click on the photo to be taken to that item.  Let’s see what we found!

Denton was very pleased when I came home with this one.  $2.49

Venice Beach.  It was a lovely beach.  Very different, but still a cool place to visit.  $1.25

I bought this one just so we would have a fun reminder of one of the most expensive meals we ate in California, in the pouring rain.  $1.25

The rest of the shirts don’t have anything to do with any of the places that we visited.  But, that doesn’t matter to anyone in my family.  We buy things that we like, that will still evoke a memory of that time and place.  And it will be a lovely thing.

One of Liv’s picks.  She loves anything to do with Canada and this will double as a dress for her, lol.   $2.49Denton was very happy with this find.  $4.49

I love this burnout material.  It is so soft and comfy.  Have you seen Stranger Things yet?  You should as soon as possible.  $2.49

I bought this shirt for me.  When I whipped it out and showed it to my family and said “Isn’t that funny”, they all looked at me blank-faced.  I said read it, and they all said, it says Karma.  No, no, no.  In tiny gold lettering, it also says, “Dear Karma, I Have a List of People You Missed.”  It feels like a cloud.  $3.49

I had no idea what this brand was, but Liv yanked it off the rack immediately.  Not because of the brand, but because she loves their logo.  Yes, I do live under a rock.  Apparently, Obey is a great brand.  $4.49

I think that’s it.  If I unearth anything else we picked up souvenir-wise I’ll add it to the list.  I also wanted to point out that you don’t have to wait until you get to your destination to pick up great deals either.

On one of the trips that we took the kids to Disney, I stocked up for six months before we left on t-shirts, stuffed animals and other souvenir goodies and then, once we were there brought out the new-to-them treasure’s.  Stuff is stuff, but the memories you make together will last throughout a lifetime.

Think of it this way.  I paid less than $25.00 for everything you see here.  ONE of the hats we bought at Pismo Beach cost more than all of this.  It’s an awesome hat, and I know that everything we bought there will be loved and worn for a long time.  But every dollar you save is another dollar towards a flight, an uber, a week-long subway ticket, etc.  It all adds up.

What’s your favorite souvenir from a vacation?  One of mine is a three-sided leather and brass barometer that I paid $3.00 for in Williamsburg, VA.  We were taking a break from the exhausting fun we were having at Busch Gardens and stumbled onto this awesome little thrift store.  The barometer was made in West Germany.  I love it and I keep it on my desk as a reminder of all the fun we had that week.

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Quick Tip: Cereal Bags

Last week I told you guys what I do with just a handful of leftover cereal, and this week I wanted to show you what I do with the leftover cereal bags.  About ten years ago, I found a brand new box of wax paper sheets at a yard sale for a $0.25.  A quarter, you guys!  It had over 1,000 sheets in the box.  I just ran out of them this year.  It was a sad, sad day at my house.

The main reason that I used those sheets, was to separate my hamburger patties when I put them into freezer bags each time I had extras.  They won’t stick together and create a huge clump of raw hamburger meat this way.  Otherwise, what was the point of spending all that time patty-ing them out?

Every time I empty one of our cereal boxes, I save the liner. 

I just open the entire thing up….

Like so.

Cut it in half……

Again, and again, and again, until I get the size I want.

They make perfect separators for my hamburger patties.  And they are FREE.   Which is one of my favorite words.