Busy day...

...but what else is new?

I dropped the boys off at school and then got a text from Ex1 asking me if I was coming to Sarah's honor roll assembly this morning. Which was happening in 20 minutes. 15 miles away.

So as I attempted to hightail it out of town to get there even remotely close to on time, I got stuck in the traffic (traffic? this town never has traffic!) from not one, but TWO accidents that happened within a block of each other. I took off and whipped (carefully) through some residential neighborhoods to get around the idiots traffic and got on my way again, only to get caught behind a bike that was pulling a buggy. Seriously. It was a bike. A regular old 10-speed type bike. With a buggy. And a guy who looked like he was really really tired who was pedaling along on his merry little way in front of me.

Needless to say, that didn't last long. I got around him as quickly as I could and took off again.

I made it to the school just as they called Sarah's name and she walked across the stage. Granted, I might have been wearing the clothes that I slept in last night (plus a sweatshirt over top) and I might have looked like absolute crap, but at least I did brush my teeth before I left the house and I did put some deodorant on (I think). And at least I was wearing sweats, and not pajama pants. And I was there.

So anyway, I left the school and headed back towards town, intent on getting stuff done that I really needed to do....

....oh look! My favorite bull was close to the road this time! Yes, I had to stop and take his picture again - but he wouldn't moooove out from behind the gate. *snicker*

(Speaking of this gorgeous guy, did you see the cover photo on my facebook page?)

I got back to town, and I did my civic duty.

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Notice the shirt? What a goober.

And then The Dude came over and took me out to lunch (wait, wasn't I supposed to be getting stuff done around the house today?) and .....

.... there are so many stories that I could tell about that lunch. But, I'm going to save some of them. There are stories about snorting whiz, peepee hands, having a keeper, and Vegas - but not necessarily in that order. One of the things that I love about him is that we laugh together. Constantly. We laugh with each other and at each other on a regular basis - and it's awesome.

After lunch, we got the oil changed in my van, which resulted in more fun - but truth be told I am just so thankful that he is willing and able to do this kind of stuff for me. And it's not even like he does it for me - we do this stuff together. And it's fun.


Did I mention that he always makes me laugh?

The last thing of the day was going to Sarah's first Scholar's Bowl. The Dude kept Alex and Daniel here at the house so that I could go by myself since I wasn't really sure what to expect - and it's a good thing too because they never would have stayed quiet for that long.

The kids on her team did well, but not as good as they needed to in order to win. But, this was their first time out and it was obvious that they were nervous, especially at the beginning. As the evening progressed, I could see their confidence building. I can't wait to see how well they do as the season (do they call it a season?) continues.

After I got home, The Dude took off to his place, I got the boys in bed, did a little bit of cleaning, and then set the mousetraps in the kitchen. I can hear something out there messing around, but I refuse to move from my spot until I hear a trap snap - which will hopefully be soon. The Dude actually witnessed the mouse stroll out of the laundry room and cruise around the kitchen for a few minutes before strolling back into the laundry room - so not only is he in my house uninvited, but he's brazen too. That will end, and it will not end in a good way for the mouse.

Rogue cows and friendly dogs

I went out sand plum picking again this morning (imagine that) - but it was far from a "normal" day in the thicket.

I got out there and immediately got busy. I had my goal of filling the two buckets that I had with me, and I really wanted to do it and still get back to town in time to walk to pick Daniel up from school. I was deep in the thicket, picking away, and after a while it dawned on me that the cows across the road were being really noisy. I didn't think too much about it at first, and just continued with what I was doing. I emerged from the side of the thicket a while later, and glanced down the road. I saw a lady who had pulled her car into the driveway, and she was talking to an officer from the sheriff's department, who was parked across the road in the ditch. Their voices were carrying, and I heard her say something about "I didn't want them to get hit, so I called" and then she left shortly after that.

I stood there for a moment, trying to figure out exactly what was happening. Then the officer moved his truck, and I spotted it - them, actually. Two cows, who were outside of the fence, right alongside the road. He was trying his best to shoo them toward the gate, but they weren't having any part of it. I giggled a little bit as I watched, thinking back to the days when I was constantly chasing horses like this. Just as I decided to hike down and help him, another vehicle came and stopped. And another, and another. People who were driving past just stopped their cars in the middle of the road and formed a roadblock, and were able to herd the cows back into their pasture unharmed.

Once everything was under control down the road, I turned around and started picking again. I was in my own little world, pondering the meaning of life or something, when out of the blue a dog started growling and barking right behind me. I jumped and turned around - as much as I could turn clutching my bucket full of sand plums and with my hair tangled in a branch - and saw a big black dog about five feet away from me, just on the edge of the thicket. And he was angry. I stood there for a moment, trying to decide what to do. Running wasn't an option, because I was wedged in there pretty tightly. I saw this same dog yesterday as I was getting ready to leave, and even though he did a lot of barking and growling, he didn't come near me even though he was only a few feet away from the van at the time. So I yelled at him. And I told him to go away. Because that's what you do when you're on the verge of being attacked by a crazed dog, right?

OK, he really wasn't crazed or anything, and he quickly got bored of barking at me while I was obviously trapped and not a threat to him, and so he trotted away. At the same time, I heard something else coming from right beside me, and looked down to see another dog who had actually braved the thicket and was standing at my feet. At this point, I didn't know whether to scream, cry, or laugh, so I just stood there looking at him. He looked at me for a moment, came a little closer, and proceeded to lick my hand.

At that point, I guess I had a new buddy. This dog did not leave my side for the rest of the morning. He would wriggle in and out of the thicket with me, and followed me everywhere that I went. He hung out with me, and I may or may not have found myself talking to him after a little while (hey, it's almost too quiet out there at times). He was actually a pretty cool dog - although I had to stop him from eating my plums a few times.

Anyway, with the distractions, I didn't get both buckets filled, but I did end up with another 43 pounds or so - so not bad for a morning's work. I need to go out a few more times and get as much as I can, but I may have to give it a day or two because my body is screaming at me from the exertion.

The rest of the day was normal-ish. I watched my friend's kids for a little bit while she went on a job interview, paid the bills, cleaned, worked on some more of the smoky laundry, made the last 4 batches of strawberry jelly after I cleaned up the mess from supper.....I still have to pack lunches and get stuff ready for tomorrow since it's going to be an early morning.

Saturday. Maybe I can take a nap on Saturday.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Update on the van situation: As of right now, I have just enough money to get the transmission replaced! I've been crunching numbers all day to see if it is going to be possible, because if I do it right now, things will be tight for the next month - however, I am going to either call the garage or stop by tomorrow and have them order the transmission and get the process started.

With any luck, I will have my wheels back in the next couple of weeks - and I couldn't have done it without everyone's help. It still seems more than a little surreal, but I think we might be able to do it! I will continue to post updates, I promise!

Police standoff - in my front yard

It started out as a normal enough day. I had 4 kids (Sarah spent the night with a friend) and we all got up and went to church. After church, we came home and watched the race.

At some point during the race, the kids got bored and so they went outside to play. A little while later, they came running in yelling that there were dogs in the backyard. That is not something that we deal with here very often, so I was immediately concerned. I went outside, not knowing what to expect. Sure enough, there were 3 rather large dogs running loose - 2 big black ones and a slightly smaller white one. They didn't appear to be aggressive, but I didn't want to take any chances. A quick glance at all of them showed me that they did have collars on, and they appeared to be clean and well-fed, so I didn't think that they were strays. With that assumption made, I started calling to them. The black ones came to me after a few minutes, and I was able to see that they had tags too - one had a tag from Alabama along with a tag with some in-state (but not local) phone numbers and one had a local phone number. I told Emily to go grab my phone while I held the dogs. I tried calling all of the numbers and couldn't get through to anyone.

In the meantime, the white dog started getting a little agitated. I don't know if he was just ticked off that I had his buddies or what, but I wasn't happy. I called 911 and was told that they don't have animal control officers working on the weekend, so unless the dogs were posing a threat, they wouldn't do anything about it. I informed them that I wasn't comfortable with them running around the neighborhood and the dispatcher sent an officer over. I stayed on the porch steps with the two black ones until he got here.

As soon as he stepped into my yard, the white dog lunged after him and started growling and barking at him. The officer immediately pulled his tazer out and aimed and yelled at the dog. The dog backed up but kept growling and snapping. The officer called for the animal control truck to get here NOW and just held the tazer there, ready to fire if necessary. He stood there like that until his backup arrived. I told the kids to get inside just in case things got ugly, but of course they were all standing in the front window watching.

The second officer pulled up in the truck and the white dog did the same thing to him. The black dogs - I was still holding them by their collars - started getting a little feistier but they didn't get aggressive so I just kept a hold of them. The officers tried to coax the white dog with treats and tried to get him with the catch pole, and it just wasn't working. It was really kind of funny - at one point they looked at me, still sitting on the steps holding these other 2 dogs, and asked if I was ok to just stay there. I just said that I was fine but if attacks started, I was out of there and they could fend for themselves! The one officer admitted that dogs just don't like him, so he was letting the other guy do all of the work, rather than making the situation worse.

The white dog finally ran over to me, and somehow I managed to shift both of the black dogs' collars into one hand and I snatched the white dog's collar with my other hand - so I now had 3 dogs by their collars, and two police officers looking at me like I was insane. They came over and got the white dog, since he was the one being difficult and they got him coaxed into the truck with minimal snapping and growling. I walked over to the truck with a black dog on each hand. The officer tried to get the first one into the truck and he didn't want to go, so he ended up just picking him up in his arms and putting him inside. The third dog - the one with 3 legs - just couldn't make the jump up into the truck and looked at the officers like he was saying "dude, you want me to get up there?" so the officer sighed, leaned over, and picked him up and put him in the truck too.

You can tell from the pictures that the dogs really weren't terribly ferocious - but that white dog did make me nervous. He was too jumpy and edgy and I just had visions of one of the kids moving the wrong way and having him attack - I questioned myself pretty hard before calling them in, but when I saw the white one's aggression toward the officers, I knew that I made the right call. And yes, the black ones had tags, but they were expired - and the white one had no tags whatsoever. The officers felt that there was enough information on the black dogs to track down the owners so I am confident that they will be returned to their home soon.

The one Emily has is the one with 3 legs.

Trying to call the phone numbers on the tags.

Is it too much to ask for a drama-free day???