Sassy Sunday 10/31/10

Happy Halloween!

Hey Everyone.  Sassy here. :)

Happy Halloween.  In our town, trick-or-treating happens the night before Halloween.  Sound weird?  I thought so too.  But the reason is that there is a hugely popular parade in our town on Halloween.  Everyone goes.  There are tons of floats.  Contests for the best ones.  Candy is flung to the huge crowd.  There's a huge traffic jam trying to get to and from the parade.  It's "the thing" to do on Halloween.

So yesterday the family carved pumpkins with the next-door neighbors.  Here are some of the pics.

Youngest child's jack-o-lantern and oldest child's jack-o-lantern

Middle child's jack-o-lantern (puking)

Artsy-fartsy picture of pumpkin guts

Both of our trick-or-treaters chose to wear a blood-filled mask.  Pretty cool, with the blood streaming through the mask.

Ginger and I had to stay up in the bedroom during the peak trick-or-treat hours.  Seems the family gets annoyed when we tell them someone is at the door.  Ingrates.

Well, that's it for today's episode of Sassy Sunday.  Thanks for stopping by!

Sassy

Freaky Friday

Hey All,
Today I'm home with a pukey kid.  Yup.  Got a nudge at 4am.  "Mom", he whispers, "I threw up in my bed."  So we take the bed clothes off and put down a blanket on the mattress and another to cover up with. No, I didn't remake his bed.  It's a pain-in-the-ass bunk bed.  I hate making that bed and I'm not about to make it at 4am! [note to anyone whose kid is begging for a bunk bed or a loft bed: don't give in!  They are such a pain.  Especially the loft bed, but the bunk bed is almost as bad.]

I go back to bed.  Just an hour and a half later (and a full half hour before the alarm is supposed to go off, "Mom, it happened again.  Can I just get in bed with you?"  "No" I reply (thinking I don't want him to puke in my bed too).  "Let's just go downstairs."

I got him an empty plastic wastebasket (because this comes so suddenly he doesn't have time to make it to the bathroom) and listened to him puke to SpongeBob in the background.  It was cool.  I especially enjoyed his big brother, the teenager, get grossed out and have to leave the room.  "It's just puke." I tell him.  "Just wait til you have kids."

So.  Wanna know what else is freaky?  I've got a beautiful bearded iris in bloom in my yard.  Here are some pics I took the other day.  Now this particular bloom is fading, but there are two more in full beautiful bloom.

In case you didn't know, the end of October is not the time you usually see iris in bloom.  It's a very confused flower.  I asked a friend, who is knowledgeable about this kind of thing being the director of a fancy botanical garden and all, and he said sometimes the soil temperature can make this happen.  I just hope it will bloom again in the spring.  Anyone had this happen?

Gave an exam in my class this week.  Range in grades 40 to 104 (there were 4 points extra credit on the test).  Hmmmm.  But the average is over 80, so most of the students did well.

No foster dogs lately.  We are concentrating on getting Chili, the angelic face at the top of this post, to stop pooping in the house.  Don't you just want to kiss that smooshy face?  Lucky for her she's so cute.  

We are also concentrating on Ginger.  She has the bad habit of barking and chasing people as they walk or run by our house.  She even nipped at a neighbor and made a hole in his shorts.  Luckily she didn't bite him and break the skin.  But she can't be doing that.  She nips at my legs when I run too.  And the kids.  She's part border collie, so it's in her genes.  But if you don't know there's an invisible fence, she can look pretty scary.  So we are taking her out on a leash.  It's a pain.  Anyone have a suggestion?  

Wanna know what she did after nipping at the neighbor kid?  He's 15, by the way.  He stopped and said "Ginger!  What are you doing?"  So she sat down, wagged her tail and waited for him to pet her.  Stupid dog.  

K.  That's it for me today.  Hope you're having a great day.

Sassy Sunday 10/24/10

Hey Everyone,
Sassy here.  There's no new cool picture of me to share today.  And Barb doesn't have any of the old ones on this computer either.  Why?  Well, let me just tell you about that.

Ya see, Barb uses a Mac.  She loves Macs, btw.  And has always been happy with them.  Well, Apple Care, the warranty, ran out in July.  So guess what the hard drive decided to do in September.  Die.  Right. So, Barb got a new one. :)  All was good.  Then last week the laptop would not turn on.  Hmmm.  It's got a new hard drive, but it's making a funny noise like it's the hard drive.  So back to the shop. '
Then the call comes in.  Sorry, but the mother board or whatever it is in Macs is fried.  Best we can do, take out the new and working-perfectly hard drive and keep it as an external hard drive.  Then buy a new computer. :)

So I'm typing my Sassy Sunday on an old laptop that Barb has appropriated until the new one gets bought. Don't know when that will be.  I think Barb is planning to sell a kidney to scare up the cash.  We'll see.

Anyway, today was a good day.  We went to the dog park and did a bunch of running and chasing and sniffing and panting.  Can't ask for much more than that.
Our foster dog, Jimmy, who I never got around to telling you about, has been adopted, brought back and adopted again since my last post.  His picture is on the old hard drive which is sitting in a plastic bag waiting to be boxed up into an external hard drive.
And that's about it for today.  Thanks for stopping by.  I'll be back with more pictures next week!
Enjoy,
Sassy

Theme Thursday - Knot

Theme Thursday's theme today is "Knot".  Well, the 3 dogs, plus the foster puppy Jimmy, made quite a knot out of the 4 leashes today on our walk!  You can't see Ginger.  She's off to the left.

Sassy Sunday 10/10/10 It's a Dog Party!

Hey Everyone!  Thanks for stopping by.  Today was the best day ever!  There was this big dog party in a nearby town.  They are raising money for an off-leash dog park.  Isn't that great?

So Mom took Ginger, Chili and me (along with a couple of the human kids).  There were a ton of dogs there!  Big dogs, little dogs, black dogs, white dogs, red dogs, blue dogs, it was a huge dog party!

And Hope Rescues was there so we got to see some of our favorite people!

Here are some of the pics.

Here's Chili, smiling for the camera

Ginger and Chili making friends with some lady and her dogs

Me and some dogs

The 3 of us

Ginger standing in my drink!

We just ran and ran and ran.

It was a great day.

Thanks for stopping by today.  Have a great week!

Love,

Sassy

Wordless Wednesday - Roses and Rock Stars

Hey All.  I'm playing post-it-note Tuesday with all the cool kids.  Click above, link up and play along!

Ok.  Well, it's off to work.  Thanks for stopping by!

Meet Me On Monday 10/4/10

Hi Everyone.  Thanks for stopping by.  I'm doing a really quick Meet Me on Monday post since I'm supposed to be prepping for my class this afternoon. :)

If you want to play along, click the button at the top, go see Java, and link up!  We just answer a few questions about ourselves and we're done.  Sounds easy, huh?

1. What is the best dish you can make?  

I'd say I make Vance's Famous Old Settler's Beans the best.  Everyone always says it's great.

2. How often do you change your sheets? 

I'm not too good about changing them on a regular schedule, but they get changed relatively often since Ginger likes to get up there when hubby gets out of bed.  She leaves a lot of hair and hubby is actually allergic.  The other dogs and the cat do it too.

3. What is the longest car trip you have ever taken?

Hubby and I drove from western Tennessee all the way to Reno, NV the summer after we were married.  It was a great trip.  We stopped at lots of cool places and camped.  Oh, to be young again.  That was 21 years ago.

4. What is your favorite fruit?

Peaches

5. Would you rather have breakfast for dinner or dinner for breakfast?

Definitely breakfast for dinner!

Thanks for stopping by!

Sassy Sunday 10/3/10

Well, we got an email from Jackie.  The people who took Flopsy love him and have officially adopted him.  Hopefully, they've changed his name.  Flopsy is fine for a cute little puppy.  But it's not too masculine for a bigger boy. :)

Anyway, Jackie told Barb to let her know when we were ready for another foster.  Hmm.  I'd say never!  But I'm sure it won't be long.  We'll probably have one this week.

Barb has promised us a trip to the dog park today.  It's a nice fall day so it should be great.  We've already been on a walk today.  The reason for all this activity?  Well, apparently I'm not the only fat-assy in the house.  Ginger weighed 73 pounds the other day at the vet.  A wee bit too much, says the vet.  She called her "a hefty girl".  So, as I mentioned last week, we are eating diet food.  Not a good thing.  But getting more walks and trips to the dog park.  That is a good thing!

Here are a couple of pics from the last time we went to the dog park.

So there is a new law people are gonna be voting about in Missouri, the next state over.  It's called Prop B and it would set some standards for "dog breeding operations" (aka puppy mills) in the state.  Some opponents say the conditions are too tough on the breeders.  Like "provide the dogs with access to food at least once a day and potable water continuously", "house dogs in pens large enough to stretch out fully", "prohibit stacked cages and wire flooring", "bar breeders from having more than 50 breeding dogs and breed dogs to produce no more than 2 litters in an 18-month period".   Hmmm.  Do these seem over the top to you?  They sure don't to me.  I get fed twice a day (even if it is diet food).  I always have access to water and I'm never kept in a cage.  (Chili has to spend some time in her kennel each day.  But that's because she refuses to be house-broken.  But her kennel is the biggest one on the market, has a pillow in the back for her to sleep on, a blanket in the front for her to lay on while she plays with toys, and room for a water bowl.)  

The poor dogs who are living their lives in puppy mills are often standing on wire that hurts their feet, in stacked cages that let the urine and feces drop through the floor onto the dogs below, never get groomed so that in one case the matted hair cut the circulation off to some of the dogs limbs which subsequently died off.  The Humane Society of Missouri is constantly doing stories about the dogs and puppies they've rescued from puppy mills.  Last month they rescued 116 dogs from 2 puppy mills.

Let me just say that if you buy a dog from the internet and the "breeder" won't let you come to their facility but wants to meet you somewhere along the interstate, that should be a red flag.  If you get a puppy from a pet store, it most likely came from one of these commercial breeders.  

K.  We are off to the dog park so I'll get off my soapbox.  Thanks for stopping by.

Sassy