Lucy

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Letdown

May 11, 2010 in Family, Lucy by Sara | 4 comments

I guess it was bound to happen. After all the hilarity and good food and stimulating conversation that happened last weekend with the parents here, this weekend was bound to be a little bit of a let down, right?

I had high hopes for it, however. There was mulch to be delivered and we had kept the calendar clear in hopes that the entire day would be devoted to getting our flower beds back in shape and said mulch spread around.

I started early on Saturday (if you call 9:30 early). Our house sat empty for about a year and a half before we bought it. There are many reasons why that will cause you problems when you move in, not the least of them is that when no real tending of the gardens have been done in that long, the flora gets seriously out of hand. But I declared war on the ivy and the vinca and the whatever-it’s-called other weed that took over our beds. After two days of furious battle I believe that I came out on the winning end. But not by much. And not without getting my butt pretty seriously kicked by said enemies. Luckily for me, I have a giant bottle of Advil. Because when I got up after crouching for 3+ hours, I could barely walk. I’m glad no one had a camera because I seriously must have looked like an old granny trying to get all my joints and muscles to obey me and loosen up.

The mulch was delivered soon after we stumbled out of bed that morning. Why is it that 6 feet of mulch doesn’t sound like much but Lord have mercy when it is dumped unceremoniously in your driveway it looks like Mount Fuji? And I now know why our fair city offered it so cheaply. It costs about 1/3 the cost of mulch from our nearby garden center. Know why? Because it is the ugliest mulch you’ve ever seen. It looks like they sucked up all the leaves that fell off the trees last fall, let them compost down and then delivered it back to us.

Indeed, that is exactly what they did. So I now have paid for perhaps the very leaves we raked up last fall. I guess next year we’ll just let them lie where they fall, wait til spring and redistribute them and save ourselves a bit of cash.

JD worked all day carting the ugly mulch around. To be fair, from a distance it doesn’t look too bad. We have a very tall pile of the stuff still in our driveway. Mulch, anyone?

Did I mention that after having beautiful spring weather all week long the temperature never broke 50 degrees on Saturday?

Brrrrrr.

However, the highlight of the weekend had to be when I drove up from taking Katie to softball practice and JD met me with the words,

“Do you want the bad news or the worse news?”

Neither, thank you.

Seems that Lucy had eaten something that upset her delicate digestive system. (I did notice a stick of butter missing) This upset manifested itself in an impressive display of diarrhea in the guest bed room. On the carpet.

Oh, and JD lost his wedding band somewhere in the piles of newly spread mulch. I feel kind of sick about that.

Mom, Dad (both sets) Come back! It was so much better when you were here.

I promise not to give you the guestroom.

Cookies + Dog = One Big Mess

April 27, 2010 in Family, Food, Kids, Lucy by Sara | 2 comments

Katie begged me to let her make cookies on Saturday. She and Maggie were bored. It was raining and they had run out of things to do.
“Please. please, please, please, Mommy, can we?”

Picture two sets of brown eyes staring up at you imploringly.

I gave in and said “Sure.”

Little did I know what I was in for.

The making of the dough went well enough. Except they forgot to read the recipe all the way through and didn’t realize they would have to refrigerate the dough for 24 hours.

This is why I hate making sugar cookies. I’m too impatient. I mean, really, who wants to wait 24 hours for cookies? Plus, Pepperidge Farms original sugar cookies are the only ones I ever liked. And I liked them so well that I pretty much kept the company in business during my college years.

Oh how I miss my metabolisim.

Anyway, the cookies were made after only 2 hours which led to all kinds of rolling out difficulties which caused frustration on everyone’s part. I stayed around for the baking of the first batch, showing the girls how to tell when they cookies were done and warning them that if they let them overbake, they would regret it with many broken teeth. Thinking they had learned their lesson, I left them in charge of the second batch, told them to clean up their mess in the kitchen and went back downstairs where I folded clothes and became transfixed by “Hoarding: Buried Alive”

Nothing like a little quality television.

I went upstairs about 30 minutes later to find the oven timer going off, the cookies a VERY dark brown, the kitchen a mess and Katie and Maggie nowhere to be found. I pulled the cookies out of the oven, turned the timer off, found the kids, yelled at them for all of the above and told them they had about 10 minutes to put everything right.

Katie pried the VERY brown cookies off the cookie sheet, decided she wanted to keep them in spite of their crunchiness and put them in a tupperware container and set them (what turned out to be) too close to the edge of the counter.

So that when she and I returned from seeing Oceans that night, we found an empty container and a dog with a seriously guilty look on her face.

Judging from the crumbs I found on EVERY piece of furniture in our house, I can only surmise that Lucy preferred a change of scenery with every cookie.

I believe that she may have also stumbled upon a cure for obesity. Since eating roughly 2 dozen 2 inch sugar cookies, she refused all food for 2 days, drank about 4 gallons of water, and visited the bathroom many times. She still looks a little green around the gills. And a little slimmer around the waist.

Maybe I’ll start prescribing this treatment for my weight challenged patients.

So the next time my kids are bored I’m going to be very tempted to just say no to baking.

Unless Lucy is looking a little chubby.

Comes A Time

April 8, 2010 in Lucy by Sara | 2 comments

When the girls were little, we started out with them in our rooms. Katie had a bit of a rough start in life and I felt more comfortable with her being right where I could see her and hear her. It was nice hearing the little noises she would make in the night and many times wake to her cooing contentedly from her crib.

But after a while, the proximity started to wear a little thin. As she got bigger, so did her noises, until at last I was not sleeping very well because of them.

It was time to move her to her own room.

It was very sad. I wondered if she would feel abandoned. If she would miss me. If she would somehow figure out that she had been ousted from our room and feel dejected.

Of course she did just fine and she’s been sleeping in her own room ever since.

I’d forgotten all about that little right of passage.

Until tonight.

Because tonight we moved Lucy’s crate our of our room into the spare room. Just as with the kids, as she has grown so have the noises that she makes. In fact, I think she and JD were competing to see just how many time each of them could sigh heavily and shift positions during the night. And somebody was occasionally wafting some pretty noxious fumes about.

I hope it was the dog.

It was keeping me up (the noises). And making me cranky (the fumes).

It was time to move her to her own room.

And I’m telling you, I’m having the same feelings as when we moved Katie. Will she miss us? Will she be lonely? What if she needs something? (I know, I never said these were rational thoughts.)

Just like the girls, she’ll be fine.

I hope.

She’s A Long Way From The Trailerpark

January 21, 2010 in Lucy by Sara | 7 comments

We got Lucy in Kentucky. She and her brothers and sisters were dropped at the shelter. No sign of mom or dad.

Looks like she lucked out.

I doubt she misses Kentucky very much.

Winter Wonderland

January 8, 2010 in Lucy by Sara | No comments

It snowed all day today and somebody must be part Siberian Husky because she couldn’t get enough of that white stuff!

Now if we could only teach her how to shovel…….

A Quick Study

October 29, 2009 in Faith, Lucy by Sara | 2 comments

Today I’ve been mulling over the distinct possibility that my dog is smarter than I am.

(Yes, brother, I can hear your snickering from here. Stop it.)

You see, we have an invisible fence around our yard. It was actually here when we bought the house but we didn’t notice it until after we moved in. So when it came time for Lucy to learn to hang out in only our yard all we had to do was get them to turn it on. They came out and put little white flags up around the perimeter of the yard and then showed us how to train Lucy to know the boundaries.

She was a quick learner. After just a couple of little shocks, she wouldn’t go anywhere near the “hot” zone. For a few days she just sat smack in the middle of the yard, afraid to go anywhere. But little by little she learned that most of the yard is free for her to play in. If she get too close to the fence, her collar beeps and she leaps away from the area faster than you can blink.

She doesn’t know it, but it’s for her own good. Our street is not very busy but we don’t want her getting run over. Or pooping in other people’s yards. Or chasing a squirrel down the street until she is lost forever.

She doesn’t know anything except that she isn’t about to get shocked again if she can help it. So now, even if we don’t put the collar on her and the flags are gone, she doesn’t go out of our yard. And if we want to take her for a walk? We have to pick her up and carry her outside our yard to the sidewalk and she is protesting the whole way.

She’s been shocked a few times and she has no desire to experience it again.

That’s where I think she is smarter than I am.

I like to think of the Holy Spirit as being kind of an invisible fence collar that I wear. That small voice warns me clearly when I’m getting close to the boundaries that I know are put there for my own good. I can hear the beeping noise and know that I should back away. And yet time and time again in my life, I’ve had to experience a little (sometimes a big) shock to knock some sense into me.

Now, truthfully, I think I can say that I hear the warnings more clearly and heed them more readily on most days. I hope that’s maturity kicking in.

Because it’s a little embarrassing to be dumber than my dog.

Lickity Lickity

October 28, 2009 in Lucy, Marriage by Sara | 2 comments

My kitchen floor isn’t the only thing that gets licked clean by Lucy these days.

This is what happens every time JD comes in from a jog. Lucy has gotten to where she stands and waits for him at the door because she knows that a sweaty, salty treat is in store.

Is anyone but me grossed out by this?

Pride Goeth Before a Fall. Or So I’ve Heard

September 22, 2009 in Faith, Lucy by Sara | 2 comments

If you were a person who had some experience with dealing with a prideful heart you might have trouble having a very smart dog.

The kind of dog that excelled in obedience class. Who seemed to pick up new tricks and commands with the greatest of ease. While all the other dogs were jumping and barking and straining at the leash, your dog would be lying quietly at your feet.

Of course you would not let on that you were prideful. Oh no. You’d be encouraging and edifying to all those owners of less intelligent and well behaved canines.

And when your turn came to do the recall in class on say……a Monday night……you would not feel your chest fairly burst with pride at the way your little puppy sat and waited and then came straight to you ignoring any and all distractions along the way.

If the rest of the folks there oohed and ahhed over your puppy, you would just duck your head a bit and say something like

“Aw shucks.”

However, if you did have some problem with a prideful heart and you’d been asking the Lord for help in that area recently, the following might also happen.

That would be the last command that dog would listen to the rest of the night. From that point on she would do exactly as she pleased regardless of leash tugs and reprimands and promises of no treats EVER AGAIN AND I WILL GROUND YOU FOR A YEAR IF YOU DON’T START LISTENING TO ME!!!

And you might leave that class chuckling under your breath at the funny ways prayers are answered. And a reminder that you better watch what you ask for.

Or so I’ve heard.

Thwarted Ambition

September 16, 2009 in Lucy by Sara | 2 comments

Lucy realizes that her nemesis the squirrel is running across the driveway.

Then she realizes that she is tied to the tree.

I think she blames me.

Poor Lucy.

Lucky squirrel.

I Told Him So

September 1, 2009 in Bloggable Moments, Family, Lucy, Marriage by Sara | 3 comments

My sister has a new house that I’ve only been to twice.

I hate vomit.

Now at first those two things might not seem to be connected but hang on. All will become clear.

My folks live on 160 acres on top of a mountain. They have horses.

The horses poop.

A lot.

Imagine my horror when Katie came running up to the house on Saturday screaming,

“LUCY IS EATING HORSE POOP! LUCY IS EATING HORSE POOP!”

Yes, she was. And she licks my children in the face with that same mouth.

I’ll be honest and tell you that I had a little freak out. JD, on the other hand, simply raised an eyebrow, shrugged and said, “Eh, she’s just a dog. That’s what they do.”

I was not convinced and voiced similar reservations as I later watched her devour a bone of some sort.

Again, JD was not fazed. “She’s a dog, honey. That’s what they do.”

Early Saturday evening we loaded up and drove to my sister’s house so our drive on Sunday wouldn’t be quite so long.

Remember?

The house I’d only been to one other time.

This turned out to be a fortunate turn of events for my husband because in the middle of the night when Lucy threw up a giant ball of non-digested horse poop, had I been more familiar with my sister’s house, I quite possibly could have found a giant rolling pin and hit him squarely over the top of his sexy bald head.

That’s what I do.

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