Never a dull moment, part 3: MAX

This is the day Max came to live with us. He's really not grumpy.

Our lives have been so busy and crazy, I haven't had the energy to post ...  but here I am because little Max deserves the attention, too.

Two weeks after we got Emma, little Max came to live with us. His name is actually Max Chumlee. Yes, Jordie approves of the Chumlee part. 

He's never had trouble relaxing.

Picture pose.

He's hilarious, really.

Max and Emma surveying their domain. 

Anyway, Max is just about the sweetest thing ever. It took me two seconds to fall in love with that little face. Together, Max and Emma are perfect. They play and play and play and play ... and sleep. And then it starts all over again.

Indy is coming along. He's glad they bug each other more than they bug him. He's somewhat of a grumpy old man, though. As a result, Dorsey and I do everything we can to shield him and to pay special attention to him. Indy gets his own walks, and he gets to sleep with us. The little ones don't. 

And, Indy is finally being more playful with them. I think the situation will be about perfect when the babies are less rambunctious. 

One thing is absolutely certain. The puppies love Indy. Max sleeps cuddled next to him as much as possible. Emma is nose to nose with him.

Dorsey is in dog heaven.

For now, we are super busy tending to our circus and our monkeys. It's a wild ride!

Never a dull moment, part 2

I never intended to antique my cabinets ...  I only meant to patch a hole in the wall ... 

I have lots of thoughts about HGTV, but I'll just say this for now: I love it and I've created a mess in my house and in my head because I watch too much of it. (Chip and JoAnna, and Drew and Jonathon. Love them!)

On top of a new puppy (another of which will be here TOMORROW), we are in the middle of some remodel jobs. We already did the kitchen floor ... but then everything grew from there. Without knocking down any walls (yet), we have decided to update and do the best we can with what we've got ... both to enjoy now and in the event we ever move. 

Anyway, I'm going to tell the rest of this story in pictures. MY OCD-ness has just about driven me over the edge. I sincerely need my house to get back together soon. And I do mean NEED.

After the kitchen floor, we decided to go ahead and move forward with granite countertops and a travertine backsplash. This resulted in me thinking my cabinets no longer looked right, so I took on the project of antiquing them (see pic above). Still not finished, by the way. 

Backsplash gets installed and the kitchen countertops have to be cleared off. Mess everywhere.

Kitchen cabinet stuff in the dining room, AND my project for the laundry room that is also being redone with the same brick floor as the kitchen. See pics to follow.

Cleared out the laundry room. Moved everything (cat litter stuff) to Dorsey's office.

Dorsey really enjoys sharing space with cat crap.

And so we decided to also brick the upstairs bathroom, which of course, required removing cabinets and the toilet. Guess where they are?

Why yes, there IS a toilet in the bedroom. (And that toilet is about to end up by the Dumpster because we decided to get a better one. Isn't that romantic?)

The price outside of regular dollars for this project is temporary (I hope) insanity and stressed out pets. 

Never a dull moment, part one

Emma Rose

This little beauty came to live with us last Friday. She's now 10 weeks old, and we chose to name her Emma Rose because she's so pretty. And, yes, she's as sweet as her face looks.

Seal Pup

Two toys for Emma

When we first decided to get a puppy, I thought we should get a male and female from the same litter. I wanted to have two puppies because I never, if we can avoid it, want another doggy to go through the horrible grief that Indy has suffered since we lost Koda. (And just as Indy grieved, Koda grieved when Buffett died. That, too, was awful.)

For eight years, Indy had Koda. She was his girl, and that was clear. They had 10 gorgeous puppies together. When Koda died, he changed. The puppy in him left, for the most part. He stopped eating. He moped.

We showered him with love and attention and have continued to take him on two walks a day. He loves his walks, and he seems to enjoy the extra attention he gets from us.

But he's not the same. (I get it, Indy, I do.)

Several people told us that sometimes, getting another dog breathes new life into the dog left behind. We decided to try it, but like I said ... I wanted two to avoid the terrible awful.

I thought I had found my brother and sister puppies, but it turns out those people were scammers. (No puppies; they just wanted deposit money. Jerks. I turned them in to Craig's List.)

Everywhere else I looked, there was only a male, or a female, or two males. We thought getting two males from a Waco litter would be OK, but Dorsey wasn't so sure. He wanted to meet the doggies first, but he was going out of town. And I knew deep down, he wanted another little girl dog.

So, I took a chance and went back to the people who had the one female left (kinda pricey, so I passed her up at first).

I sent Dorsey her picture ... he was upstairs and I was downstairs.

All of a sudden I hear him shout, "OH! She's so BEAUTIFUL!"

So, I said, "You want her without meeting her, don't you?"

The answer was yes, and so little Emma became our puppy that day. She came from a litter in Lubbock, and the owners met us in Plainview.

It's been so much fun since then. Indy has been unsure, but he's coming around and seems to enjoy her when she's not nipping at his face. (The cats are horrified, and Allie hasn't figured out that if she doesn't run, the puppy can't chase her.)

He's already teaching her bad habits. Koda never ran through sprinklers or stuck her face at the base of one while it was on. Emma is following in Indy's paw prints. 

See? He's coming around.

Still ... having only Emma doesn't take care of my concern of future unbearable grief for the doggy left behind.

So puppy No. 2 — a male from Oklahoma — is joining us July 1. He will be eight weeks. We figure that someday in the future ... way future ... we will breed them.

Our job for now is to make sure Indy stays No. 1 Dog and Pack Leader. We will continue to give him "Indy Only" time with us. And maybe the puppies will play with each other, rather than nip at and annoy Indy?

We shall see as the adventure continues ...

While we can never replace Koda and don't want to, we know life can be great moving forward ... for both Indy and us. As long as things work out, the plan for us after experiencing Indy's terrible grief is to have three dogs at a time. It might be extra work, but I think it will be worth it.

To be continued ...

She's so amazingly cute!

My new normal

I wasn't having fun at that moment. In fact, I texted Dorsey: "I'm DONE!"

So much has happened in the almost-month since I last posted. The most significant thing, I suppose, was surviving my second antique show ... this one in Richmond, IN.  This is how it happened, and this is what I learned:

First leg of the trip. Lovely, right?

Loading up. Tornado hit 6 miles from us.

New brick floor while I was gone. Could not be happier.

Greatest find so far. c.1810 New England corner cupboard, original paint

• Just me and Mary: We did it!
• Just me pulling our 11X14 trailer for 15 hours each way: I can do it. Keep packing that cooler with healthy food. 
• Listening to two David Baldacci books along the way: Love Baldacci and appreciate books on CD soooooooo much! (Do audio books count as reading?)
• Experiencing part of the country I've never seen before: This may be the best part of this business venture. Travel travel travel!
• Denting a wheel cover on the trailer the very first day of the trip: Make wide turns, especially at the gas station. 
• Unloading 90 percent of the trailer for the show all by myself: I can do it.
• Loading and unloading in the rain and tornado warnings: That sucked. But even then it was funny. Don't wear flip flops.
• Learning more about the antique business from my mother-in-law and others: Love learning. Must stay positive at all times. 
• Buying the most gorgeous corner cupboard I've ever seen: Probably won't be able to sell this antique. Dorsey and I love it!
• Unloading 90 percent of the trailer back into the house and shop upon returning home: I rock.
• Redecorating my entire house once I returned: Whew! I kinda like doing that.
• 
  

  

  Redecorating can be great fun!

• Getting a brand new kitchen floor ... which I love and adore and love love love: Why didn't I do that sooner? :-) ALWAYS do renovations when you don't have to be there in the mess ... if you suffer from OCD!
• Shows will be much better and less stressful when Dorsey can go, too: I'm strong, but, damn, it's hard work and I'm not getting any younger! And Mary is 88 years old and should NOT be doing this stuff. (She can PACK a trailer!)

I think I'm finding my life's new "normal." :-)

When crying is inconvenient ...

Hold me, Mama. I'll make you feel better. — Socks

Sometimes when I wait too long to post, those things that mattered to me at the time don't seem important anymore ... either because it takes too much energy to remember it all like it was and how it felt, or because I can't even remember anymore.

So first things first: I'm sitting right in the middle of the anniversary of my parents' deaths. Mom died May 13 last year, and Dad died May 23.

I feel as though I've been on a roller coaster of inexplicable emotions. I'm happy one minute ... on top of the world with all the possibilities, and then I'm bawling the next. I'll smile at happy memories, and then I'll cry when I think of the last several months of my parents' lives. I still feel angry when I picture my parents doing the normal things they did, and then realize they aren't here anymore. I continue to think, "This isn't the way it was supposed to be." Every day holds something in it that belongs to my parents. Every day.

Mostly, though, I find myself just being irritable ... unless I'm being distracted with activities, such as cleaning, redecorating, watching Jordie's baseball games, traveling, listening to audiobooks on the road, watching HGTV, or as it has been a lot lately, hanging out with my sister.

The anniversary week of my mom's death, I spent several days at Kim's. We ran errands, got our nails and toes done, went to eat several times, and hung out with Kim's other "sister" Melissa. Then I spent last week, up until yesterday, with Kim in Hutchinson, Kan., to watch Jordie and his team play baseball. We watched games, wandered through downtown, found neat little local eateries and took Jordie out to eat. (Hutchinson isn't a bad little place!)

I've found, however, that these distractions only postpone reality. When not engaged in distractions, I'm truly awful.

The fact is, it would be easier to just cry and cry and cry and cry ... except it's never convenient to do that. Being around people and crying is uncomfortable for everyone, including me; crying in the car makes seeing and concentrating difficult; even crying in front of pets seems to make the pets uncomfortable. Crying also gives me a massive headache. The day before Mother's Day, I went to the cemetery and spent a couple of hours ... I sat for quite awhile, but only after I cleaned the bird crap off the headstone and pulled all the dandelions from their burial plots. (I suppose I should go again soon, just for the sake of upkeep.) I cried for Mom. I cried for Dad. I cried for Koda. And my head hurt for two days after that visit.

Crying is inconvenient, painful and unwanted. Period.

So here I am today, plodding through each activity and making lists of things I need to accomplish in the upcoming days and weeks. I put one foot in front of the other, with some footsteps more graceful than others.

That's just how it goes, and today isn't all that graceful.