True Love

What is true love? I have been thinking about that quite a bit. It's been a good couple of days. Busy, busy, busy. We had a fun Monday and Tuesday, good walks and fun with Samson. Paul is busy training for the Riverbank Run on Saturday so between good walks in the morning and a good run for him in the afternoon, he is doing well! My foot still continues to heel so I can throw the flat disk for Mr. Handsome and cycle my 6-10 miles.

Among our many blessing, we have great neighbors (on both sides), to the east, our furry neighbor, Annie. Annie is not only OUR furry neighbor but is Samson's furry girlfriend and true love. TRUE LOVE. Samson is at LEAST five times Annie's size. When he sees her, he will run to her yard, and lay down in the grass and wait. Annie will stand on HER porch and play with him, bite his ears, bark and lick his face. It is absolutely beautiful. He loves her so much.

I enjoy this time of year at school. The flowers are in full bloom. Paul and I are carpooling to help with the cost of gas AND trying to minimize our carbon footprint. While I was waiting for my ride, I took a couple of happy snaps of the beautiful flowers in bloom. They are just stunning!

So it's Tuesday, and we are almost midweek, drawing closer to the happy dance. Thursday night our Red Wings start the next round in one step closer the the Cup. Sir Stanley's Cup thank you. We are down to four teams. I can almost hardly stand it. It's that important. It's not life and death; it is MUCH more important that that, it's the Playoffs. Go Wings. Let's Go, Red Wings.

Busy, busy, busy

What a busy couple of days! On Friday, we had our so-long lunch for Sven. We have been joking that Paul is our Sven (like in the commercial) bringing us lunch, driving me to work, making me dinner and taking care of Handsome Boy, Samson. All of this ends on Monday at 7:45. Paul goes back to work and Sven, well, he dies. So long for now Sven. (Sob....)

We have been loving the weather. On Friday it was 85 and today it is 54 with a potential low of 37 tonight. Is that nuts? At least the snow showers are now just rain so we won't be looking at accumulating snow. Whew. Paul was going to try and cut the grass today but it was too wet and with potential snow, we held off. Oh, who am I kidding with the 'we'; he held off. ;) If it doesn't rain, he may be able to cut it tomorrow. We have two lawn mowers from all the moves, so I probably will get to help.

This afternoon was a very special occasion. My friend and colleague (and her family) hosted a lovely reception for her parents who were celebrating 50 year wedding anniversary. Paul and I loaded up the cameras and took approximately 300 pictures of cake, the kids, the family, the friends and attendees. It was a lovely event and we had an awesome time. Now, I just have to burn the pictures.

Red Wings are playing Colorado today and looking GOOD. Paul is making a wonderful tenderloin meal with creamed spinach (I LOVE creamed spinach). The wind is blowing like crazy and it is beautiful to watch the trees dance in the wind. Samson is still so hyper with all the world coming alive in spring and we need to keep him going. He is so much fun.

Enjoy the weekend!

Where to start?

Let's start with the Friday Happy Dance! Oh hooray, it's Friday. And that means the weekend. Woo hoo. Paul has been a cooking machine. Tonight, he made a wonderful flank steak with grilled asparagus and a Cesar salad. It was delicious. Last night, Paul grilled some rib eye steaks with Gorgonzola cheese. I hope that his cooking prowess isn't affected when he returns to the working world.

I miss a lot at work. Apparently, we had a wild turkey in our backyard. Paul has pictures and is hoarding (read NOT sharing) them so we have to wait until he decides to post. Harumph. Fortunately, Paul did not let Samson out to play with, or perhaps KILL said turkey so life on Argentina is peaceful. Apparently, I am the only person who did not know that turkeys could FLY. My VP, Henry, gave me a full history on the wild turkey, Dorothy (my friend and collaegue) spoke at length about how they fly and nest and when I got home, Paul gave me a lecture. Jeez. I thought turkeys just ran around. Who knew? Plus, I don't think that they are attractive birds.

We have a wonderful weekend headed our way. Friday night, we have dinner with friends and Saturday, a computer visit and probably lunch with another friend. We hope that the Red Wings can win a game and that the Tigers continue to work to win. We are almost there friends. It is ALMOST Friday.

The beauty of dirty windows

It's Sunday evening and Paul is on the mend. That's a good thing since he is the cook and his cooking is better than anything on the planet. He actually cooked tonight - Chicken Curry - and there is enough for leftovers and maybe even a lunch. Whew, no more take out. :D

Earlier in the day, I ran some errands since Paul was still in recovery, picking up edibles from D & W and some food for Samson, including a new bone. :) Samson still has some very funny habits including hoarding. When he gets a new toy/bone/Kong, he immediately runs away to test out his new "thing." When I gave him his new bone, he took it and ran to the backroom. I didn't see him for a bit. But later in the afternoon, when I was enjoying the quiet of the front room, the fireplace cracking and beautiful view from our window, our dirty window, he brought me his bone. He was sharing.

After he put his bone on my lap, he sat at the window and just stared outside. It must have been 2 or 3 minutes, Samson just sitting, staring out the window. It made me wonder about his time, the year prior to coming to live with us,whatever his life was like. But here he is now, staring out the window, marking it up with all kinds of nose prints, all five feet of the window. I thought about getting up and cleaning the window, but in that moment, decided that there was nothing more beautiful than his nose prints on a clean window.

When we said goodbye to Allie, we both thought it would be a long time before a furry quadraped joined our ranks. But we realized that we are dog-people and that our lives are not complete without the companionship of a furry soul, even if he makes our Pella windows dirty. We could BE so lucky.

Tomorrow, it's back to work. Maybe, just maybe, we are done with winter.

Saturday

We are living with the threat (or in my mind, promise) of a major snow storm. It isn't supposed to start until this afternoon, plenty of time to get home from this AM's adventures.

Today is Samson's first training session. We have cut up a bunch of string cheese. That was our trainer's first tip - puppy treats fill up dogs and make them less likely to be responsive since they are full! We also have our clickers - Samson responds to sound and the clickers really help reinforce the good behavior.

We have begun leaving him at the door frame of the kitchen. He is none too happy about being left out - barking at us from the dining area. He is a very dominant personality and we need to be VERY vigilant about making sure he KNOWS who is in charge.

Many more stories to follow. :)

Oh happy day!

For those of you not interested in dogs, this would be a good entry to skip.

Many of you have followed our trials with Samson, and it has seemed some days like two steps forward, and maybe 1 or 1 1/2 back. He has an affinity for socks and we have lost a couple. We are working hard at keeping the basement door closed (laundry) and the bedroom doors closed(other good smelling stuff) but once in a while, I slip and we lose an undergarment of some kind. ;) We also have to watch the Christmas decorations as he is VERY interested in those as well. We have cut way back on the holiday decor as it is much too tempting for him. :o

Last night, we were sitting around the TV watching the hockey game and LO AND BEHOLD, our dog, Samson, the one who HATES CRATES, walked, ON HIS OWN, into the crate. And turned around in it. And plopped down to sleep. ON HIS OWN!! Did I mention ON HIS OWN?? I was doing the happy dance, jumping up and down, shouting with glee, all in my mind. He pieced it together - the crate is a GOOD thing, a safe place, his bed, his comfort, his storage for toys. OH HAPPY DAY!

(Small translation for my non-furry family member friends - this means, in simplistic terms, that Samson no longer sees the crate as transport to another shelter/bad place rather, a good thing, another place where good things happen. This will aid us tremendously with travel to our training classes. Howling for a 30 minute drive could get VERY old)

I know that he was very tired...didn't have much of a nap yesterday, and desperately wanted to go to sleep. Big steps and oh joy, the happy dance! Woo hoo!!

Good things happen here

These are Paul's words for Sammy. Our lives have changed dramatically with Paul's retirement, the loss of our dog, Allie and the adoption of our new dog, Samson. When we lost Allie, we lost more than just a dog, our constant companion for 13 + years. We also lost a rhythm, a routine and our private "Allie' language. We lost all the silly names we called her, buried her funny foibles yet continued to clean up dog hair the wafted around the house. Not only did we mourn her passing, we missed talking to her. Unless you have a furry companion, I don't know that this could make any sense.

Allie would dream hard, so hard in fact that she would wake herself up. It was one of the funniest things that she did ... she would wake up and then look around, eventually settling her eyes upon one of us, accusing us of waking her up. At which point, Paul would say her to, 'Are you having furry little dreams?" She would put her head back down, with a loud snort, as if to say, don't wake me up again....

With the addition of Samson, we are creating a whole new language around him. He loves and I do mean LOVES his toys. He has many of the toys that Allie could no longer chew; among the toys are a buddha, a large Kong, several bones and a nylon ring that was a gift from our friend Catie. When Samson follows Paul into the kitchen, he says to Sammy, "Good things happen here." And they usually do ... a few snitches of turkey, a sample of bacon, a piece of toast that falls on the floor.

Good things happen here. A wonderful Thanksgiving, great neighbors, a good fire, a great job with fabulous people, a bright future. And now, a new furry friend that fills our heart, a little bittersweet but he doesn't know that he is living with a ghost. Allie would be happy that we opened our home to a lonely dog in need of a good home. And hopefully good people who found themselves in need of a little fur and love.

Thanksgiving morning reflections

What's for breakfast? I remember when parades used to be real parades. Marching bands, floats, funny clowns in little cars and dressed up turkeys waiving to the crowds and police on horses. Now 'parades' are broadway medleys, productions and lipsynced songs. Yuck.

We spent the morning playing Frisbee with Sammy. I don't know who had more fun - Sammy or the two of us! It took no time to train him to fetch - we used two Frisbees and he figured out immediately that if he returned one to us, Paul would throw the second one. That dog is SOOOO fast. He loves just tearing around the yard. We spent 20 minutes throwing the Frisbee before he even began to tire ....and we took him out a second time, and he had all the energy all over again!

Sometimes things work out better than we deserve. We are blessed with fabulous neighbors on both sides. Our neighbors to the east (Amy and Dennis) have a similar sized yard and we have no fence between our yards. It allows for good football and soccer games in the far back, as well as amazing room to run for our dogs. Annie is their dog and she is one of the cutest dogs that I have EVER seen. Annie used to sit by our back slider and bark and wait for Allie to come out so they could play. Allie was too old and Annie didn't understand that Allie couldn't run and play. It broke our hearts. Oddly, when we lost Allie, Annie would come nowhere near us ... even when we came by Amy and Dennis' house, Annie would run away from us. It was definitely a statement! But Annie met Sammy and they hit it off. Paul was out with our neighbor Amy, and Sammy and Annie were tearing around the backyard. We all win.

As I type, Sammy is collapsed on the floor. I am watching the Detroit Thanksgiving Day parade and we have a lovely fire going in the backroom.

Paul's apple pie is done and it looks fabulous. This is one of my favorite days of the year!