Psycho with a knife

My little frenchie Corbin knows for a fact, since he first met the big dog Jayne, that to him Jayne is a psycho with a knife. Cobie has this terrified whites of the eyes showing kinda look every time Jayne takes notice of him. It's terribly amusing and yes, I know I'm going to doggie parent hell for said amusement but I don't care. Anyway we moved the big dog crates behind the couch (under the high bar that is in the most impractical place possible, totally lame space usage) and Jayne hangs out in his big crate back there a lot. Corbie (for a reason no one understands) also likes sleeping in Jayne's crate. Maybe he dreams of being the big dog in the house, classic little man syndrome, who knows. Regardless, this evening I notice Corbie in the big crate and low and behold Janie wants to hang in his crate so he goes on in. Ooohh the expression on Corbie's face was priceless, he was horrified that he'd be punished by Jayne for taking his spot. Now mind you this is an extra large Dane crate, it's huge. So Jayne goes in, sniffs the terrified Corbie and then curls himself in this little Jaynie ball in the far back of the crate (he's autistic, he doesn't like anyone touching him. ever.) as small as can be and goes to sleep. Corbie then proceeds to quietly, with the least amount of movement possible using those little 3 inch legs, crawl out of the Jayne crate and move into the Roxy crate, a normal large crate that they have to go past to get into the big Jayne crate. Both are now contentedly asleep in the crates while Roxy is the smart one on the dog bed. *edited 2 hours later-Roxy is an idiot, she squeezed her fat butt into Corbie's dog bed. Made for 25lb butt dogs. *It's so fun to watch the doggie dynamics of the household and see them work it out amongst themselves. I try to intervene only when necessary. Usually when Jayne is feeling particularly sensitive and is having problems functioning like a normal dog. That's about once a week now that the dh isn't here and it's jacking with the familial balance. Yes, I am still displeased with his absence. He will suffer for it.

Just in case there was any doubt

I am tired of being a singe parent. I know the dh is all into this whole corrections officer thing but the pay is crap and, quite frankly, I'm not real keen on the safety of the job because well, there's a reason you get hazardous pay. Really, not so keen on the whole idea. Plus I'm miserable about having to work so damn far away and the kid not having her parents around at all during waking hours. I'm not keen on it. I don't mind working when I can earn a real paycheck but neither my nor the dh's jobs are earning crap so what the hell are we beating our heads against the wall for? I mean really it's almost not worth the effort and this commute is killing me!

First day back to work

I like the people I work with but lets face it, chemistry is dull. Like super bland dull. Plus the drive is 1 hour each way. So I have to drop the kid off at school at 7:10 in the morning and rush to get to work by 8am. I then have to leave at exactly 5 pm to be able to pick her up by 6. By the time I showed up today she asked what took me so long. I really hate the single parent work all day thing. We got home and the dogs had to pee soooo bad. I feel bad for them, I tried to see if the neighbor teen boys would let them out during the day when they got home from school. Turns out they don't get home until after 5pm. What the hell!! That's awfully late but they don't start class in the morning until 9 so it does make sense I suppose. I remember my hs was 7:25-2:35. It was way too early.
So we came home and I fed the kid a whole bunch of food. We also practiced her spelling words, she has instructions to work on them at after school care tomorrow too and they are in her book bag. We also did all of her homework that's due Wednesday so we're a bit ahead of the game. I figure we'll start out the week pushing it a bit so we don't end up behind by the end. It's going to be a rough week...

High School Musical on ice

Not that bad really, not nearly as bad as The Wiggles concert we took the dd to when she was 3. DD was given 4 tickets to it and so we took her and her bf, they just loved it. Disney did a great job of doing both HS Musical 1 and 2 on ice and squeezing in the stories but of course it's not like they were complicated stories. The ice skaters/actors have wonderful energy and enthusiasm which is exactly what is needed when entertaining kids of this age group. We left the house at 12:15, picked up the little friend, did the Micky D's drive thru and managed to get to the Alamodome and park by the time the show started. We got home at 3:30 with no melt downs, small miracles. All in all a good day with the kid and yeah, it did have potential for disaster or being a really really bad show but it was all good.

And she's gone!!

Thank the gods. Our one other local foster home has taken the beast, thank you Gretchen! She also does fostering for animal control so she has a house FULL of animals. 2 dogs of her own, 2 hospice dogs, 2 kittens and 1 evil little wonder that I dropped off this morning. If she can get along with the other dogs she can stay there. If not she'll be flown out to CO next weekend. We'll see how that goes and if she does need my help I told her to give me a call. I don't know what I can do but at least we got her out of my house before she bit anyone. That would have been bad. We are soooo relieved!

The sound of sirens wailing

Oh no wait, that's just the sound of my foster dog. Because you know, life is sooo hard. I have put her in her crate outside because she makes such a fuss. I let her out for awhile in the back yard but of course, once again, she decided that the way to get my attention was to scratch at the window screens. We have defenses up so that dogs can't destroy the door when they scratch at it but my dogs are not smart (or rather, dumb enough) to go at the window screens. So now, as punishment, every time she goes at the windows she goes in the crate. Outside. I don't like using the crate as punishment but that is what we are left with. She destroys doors and walls if you try to use a room. I don't keep her in the house anymore because I really don't like the smell of dog poop in the house. Her old owner had her anal glands removed and now she leaks poo. It smells. And, once again, I have nothing at all positive to say about this dog. Her old owners raised a monster and I don't want her in my house. We are still waiting for an answer for another foster home for her but it's taken me awhile to get any answer back from the people in charge of placing, or rather, re-placing her. One problem with this rescue is that they say they are 'for the dog' but I really think they are all about making their image great and once the dog has a foster home they could give a crap if it's working well or appropriate. If this monster bites my kid she's dead. I already told them I'd take her to be euthanized myself. If I don't get any response from them next week I'm dropping her off at animal control and telling them they can pick her ass up themselves. This is my 3rd foster dog and I am so not impressed with how any of these dogs were handled in foster care. They did not do right by any of them. I have a friend who was basically kicked out as a foster parent and he's a lucky one. I will never ever foster for them again.

Texas mud rain

(the pic is from on line, all the cars out here look like this) Never heard of it? Neither had I. It rained here last night. More specifically it rained mud. No lie. Apparently it happens here in west Texas, rain mixes with a dust storm and ta daa, mud rain. Every body's car that parked outside last night looked like they went off roading. I picked up the dog bowls from outside this morning and had to scrub them out for like 10 minutes. Totally nasty. Plus the wind was so crazy I was sure we were going to have a tornado. Those things scare the crap outta me. Give me a good ol' earthquake any day.

Got a job!

Yup, it's a miracle. It's not doing anything that I was doing before but it's a phD starting a new set of labs in an inorganic setting. I'm perfect for starting up labs, it's my specialty. I can also come into one that's a mess and revamp it, I think it's an ocd thing but whatever, it works. Both B and I will be making (combined) a bit over what only one of us earned in San Diego and he is even getting hazardous pay. Health insurance is also going to cost us. It'll be like $40 less than what we're paying for private but at least the benefits are better. Ah, back to the working world of toxic/explosive substances. Someone remind me why I wanted to be a chemist again?

DD lost her first tooth

She's been sooo excited about it being loose, fortunately the dh was home when it happened too. She pulled it out all by herself Saturday night. Anyway the tooth fairy brought her a dollar in pink fairy dust last night. DD was soooo excited this morning!!

I got my Chichiboulies!

From Stamping Bella. I love her new artist stuff, it's cute without being too cutsie. I also got 2 sentiments to go with the fairies, "Have a fairy happy birthday" and "Thank you fairy much". The kid has already insisted that we start using them so I EZ mounted them this afternoon (I love EZ mount, it's soo nifty) and stamped a few for her to color.

My garden is growing!

Of course it may have something to do with the fact that it's in the 80's-90's out here but this is Texas ya know. My weeping mulberry tree has new mulberries and the beginnings of leaves all over it. So does my weeping japanese maple. I took pics of both but it was so bright out the weeping mulberry pictures were totally washed out. So you get the maple pics, there's a lot of leaves on the ground from the oaks but we don't bother raking them up, bothers the allergies too much. Plus it's a pain in the butt and I'm lazy. We still have holes to dig for the roses. Did I mention that I had bought 2 more? I have pics of the black bacarra that came with blooms. The souvenir de la malmaison has buds but they have yet to open. I have high hopes for both of them, I've wanted them for months now.

Hell Spawn

No really, she is. I have the new foster dog and I can't stand her. She obviously never had any discipline in her previous home and it has made for a dog that has no endering qualities. She gets up on the table to steal food, like all 4 paws on the table. She scratches, whines, and barks when crated. The same when she's put outside but she scratches at the window screens. Her housetraining? Not so good. And leash manners? No, she has none, she's just horrid. She's a seizure dog though and I don't want to stress her any more than I have to. I took her to the vet today to get acupuncture treatment to lower her chances of getting a seizure while she's with us. It did not go well but at least she didn't seize. Turns out she's vet aggressive, like seriously. And my vet is a holistic one with an entirely different atmosphere than the average vet office. A very unpleasant experience that my vet was a total trooper through. In the beginning my vet held her in her lap and loved on her, rubbed her tummy and the dog was just totally happy. Then I held her and the vet tried to look in her ear. She flipped out, tried biting and snapping like a crazy wild freak. Luckily I have 5 years of experience as a vet tech and my instinct was to clamp down on her. Normally you can at least make some sort of noise and it'll distract them a bit but this dog is all kinds of discipline ignorant. She went after my big dog and he, of course, responded in kind. She challenges all my dogs but Jaynie doesn't tolerate that crap from any one. I was able to grab his collar and pull him off before anything bad happened but then she just tried to attack him again. Stupid dog. So not only does she not know human boundaries but dog also. I didn't get a full night's sleep for the first week we had her because at 2 am she'd go off barking like mad in her crate. She was crated at night in her old home so I continued on with that here. My dogs don't sleep in crates, they're spoiled and in my room. I got fed up with it waking my kid so I now put her in her crate in the garage at night. My master bedroom is on top of the garage so I can still hear her (just in case she seizes) but the dd can't (thankfully) she needs her sleep. So I am all kinds of ready for this girl to get another home asap.

Classic!!

Mancold, so true!

Those poor boys...

I was raised by my dad and later, as an adult, he told me that he always felt bad for the boys I would bring home because as far as he was concerned they were all stupid and I was going to make them mental mush. The good news is that he didn't have to worry about them making me miserable, which is rare for a teenage girl. The bad news is that I may have scarred a few young men. Not that it bothers me any, they were going to have to learn it eventually anyway right?
So we've been trying to have the dd have more boy kids over to play because the girls can get really catty when playing with each other. It's the dd's best friend's b-day party today and we offered to take one her classmates (a boy) to the party with us because his parents have another b-day party they need to go to (they have 4 kids, all adopted and another biological one on the way). We figure it's a great way to occupy the kid easily and it'd help our friends out too, everybody wins. Well everybody but the poor boy who has to play with our dd, he's being subjected to girly play. As long as he doesn't end up leaving dressed up like a princess fairy we're good. Right now we're trying to teach her that you don't change the rules of a game as you are playing it so that you win, that's cheating. It seems to be a common phenomenon in the age group though so it's not a big surprise. He's a nice boy too so he'll let her get away with it until the dh steps in. Poor boy, getting walked all over already, at age 5...

It's raining today

And it's a very gray dreary rain. Winter came late to Texas, apparently it'll be snowing in Dallas. I'm glad we're 5 hours south of that stuff! Still, I'm by myself with a bunch of ingrate dogs right now and it's gloomy. My boxer girl Roxy had stolen a 5lb bag of treats off the kitchen island last night while I was up giving the kid a bath. I heard the foster dog screaming up a storm and came down to see what was wrong. Roxy was on the dog bed next to the foster's crate gorging herself on a few pounds of oatmeal peanut butter treats. Ugh. She spent the rest of the evening trying to relieve her obvious discomfort by drinking gallons of water. Oh no I don't think so. The expansion factor of the dry oatmeal once water hit it would be catastrophic. I took up the water and watched her walk around the house like a woman in her 15th month of pregnancy. She's still looking fat this morning, idiot. Gluttony thy name is Roxy. She was a stray when the shelter found her and had obviously just had a litter of puppies. I don't think she's ever gotten over that feeling of starvation. Obviously. I was up twice last night letting her out and the bedroom smelled terrible with her noxious gas.
Strangely she's only puked twice, once last night and a little around noon today. Usually she'll heave up more than that when she over does it. She's done this before you see. It's one of the reasons she has to be crated when were not in the house, she'll dig at the cabinets to get in them. Drives me nuts!! Jaynie will mad dog the windows when people walk by, Corbie will chew everything, including the window sills. GAH! So everyone is crated when we are out. I never trust fosters out either. As far as I'm concerned it's not my dog so I'm going to be overly cautious with them. My dogs are crated, so are any fosters.

So today I'm at home, alone, with farting dogs that won't go outside unless I can point them towards an open door, plant my foot up their butt, and shove.

I made a MinivanaBella card

OK I made a MinivanaBella card for a friend awhile ago (She had her baby Feb 17th. I made it when the baby was born) but have been staring at the card for a bit thinking whether or not I was done with it. I couldn't very well post it before I sent it to my friend. She had her second child (a girl) and webcasted the birth from home. I wasn't able to stay up and watch, I konked out at about 1:30 am and she showed up at 4:30 am (3:30 am my time). She only has 2 kids and the stamp has 3 but at least I got her hair color and the van color right! I used my copics on it and the mom's hair is warm gray #5 and a burgundy color that I can't remember. I have to take another picture of my master color sheet of Copics again, I'm up to 50 and had to redo it. The paper is MME and the embellis are Target Dollar spot (love that place). Oh and the circle was cut using Nestabilities.

And he's gone

So the hubby, in his mission to figure out what he wants to be when he grows up, has decided to go into corrections and they have a 5 1/2 week training course. He found out last week that he had been hired and needed to start this training. In Beeville. 2 hours south of us. That means I have to get up in the mornings and get the kid to school. Doesn't that just suck? Oh and we have the new foster too, she's cute but a pain in the ass. I have to do the dog shuffle (put one in a crate and pull the other out) so Jaynie doesn't feel the need to eat her. When the dh is gone he decides he's going to get freaky so he's uber sensitive. So I'm going to be uber sensitive to his needs and keep them all content in the meantime by keeping them separate. Right now I have 3 snoring dogs, the foster girl has had nare and palate surgery so she doesn't snore. No disasters yet but it's only a matter of time I'm sure.