…for LG’s dear, now headless, dinosaur/lizard (she keeps changing her mind which one it is).

Spartacus, the dinolizard, was a loyal companion who loved to roar at unsuspecting people. His life was cut short by a giant dogosaurus named Melody.

We found him in the back yard missing his head, a foot and part of his tail. His owner, Little Girl, took it well, even though her mother was certain she would become verklempt.

LG, however, seemed certain that we could replace the dinolizard at the grocery store where we were going to shop for groceries.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t find another dinolizard, but we did find something she liked almost as well…

Rest in peace Spartacus the dinolizard.

Marlene’s family lost their Sparky today. And I normally wouldn’t write about someone else’s pet, but you see, Sparky used to be ours.

Mike found him one night wandering down the road, and Mike could never leave a dog wandering. Our BobDog was a stray and so was Boris who went to live with Mike’s brother. Sparky stayed with us for awhile, but our other dogs didn’t like him so much, so he ended up living with my dad. Until my dad got married and she who shall not be named banished him to the garage. So rather than have him live like that, he moved back in with us. However, our dogs and Sparky didn’t get along so well, so he ended up in “doggie prison” (the spare bedroom - but not with the doors closed - we just put up baby gates to keep him in there and separated from our dogs). While Mike was working on the house we live in now, he took Sparky up with him and that was Sparky’s freedom time. Sparky loved to run and run all over the two acres and Mike loved the company. (He later tried to take our other dogs up, but they weren’t too keen on the idea.)

During this time, we were trying to find another home for Sparky, because we knew it was unfair for him to have to live like that. And find a home he did. With Marlene and her family which includes four kids.

Sparky was finally where he belonged - with a family who loved him as much as he deserved. With kids to play with him (and wear him out) and freedom.

So, thank you Marlene for giving him a happy home and life, and most heartfelt condolences to all of you. We are crying right along with you.

I am sure that Majerle and Lady and Bob met him at the Rainbow Bridge and they are all running through the green grass together.

This morning, Mike went to the project house to get a worker started and then was coming home to do some work around here. I had just spoken to him on the telephone and he said he was almost home, but he didn’t arrive as quickly as I thought he should. I looked out the front window and thought I spied my car down the street in front of the neighbor’s house. I figured he had stopped to talk to the new owner (it was actually the contractor), so I thought LG and I would walk down and introduce ourselves as well.

When I opened the door to the garage to coax LG out (I had already opened the garage door), Melody took the opportunity to run out the door and start chasing the birds and rabbits she had been watching through the window this morning. I yelled her name and took off after her (we do have a fenced yard, but the gate was open for the cars to go in and out as usual). I ran to close the gate while she was chasing the wildlife, muttering not very nice words under my breath and dialing Mike on his phone as I went. The next thing I know he’s pulling up to the gate.

He told me he had heard me yell her name and told the contractor (who was on the phone anyway) “gotta go” and took off for home. Yes, it’s windy today. Yes, it’s 500-ish feet away. Yes, apparently I have a loud voice. What?

Right now I’m sitting on the front porch in the shade with a beautiful cool breeze blowing around me. Mike is working on the planters. LG is playing with sidewalk chalk, in the dirt, and chattering away. Melody is roaming the front yard chasing the birds and exploring. It’s a beautiful beautiful day and I wouldn’t want to be stuck inside today for anything. It will be summer hot soon enough and then the only time it will be semi-comfortable enough to go out will be at night. So for today, we’re going to enjoy spring in the desert. I’m sure there will be photos later! :)

The weather the last few days has been unbelievably gorgeous. Other than the wind tunnel we had to put up with on Tuesday. Which was the day after the pool cleaners cleaned the pool at the project house. Yeah, that was cool. Not.

This morning, the John Deere dealer came to our house to pay a service call on Mike’s riding lawn mower. LG saw the deer logo on the truck and said, “reindeer!”

While Mike was dealing with that, Marlene and I went for our Thursday morning walk with the two year olds in their strollers. Right as we got to the end of our street, a dog from across the street decided to start following us. I am really really nervous when it comes to dogs I don’t know (having been bitten when I was a kid) and even moreso with my child in a stroller at doggy face level. It wasn’t growling or acting aggressive in any way, but I was still nervous (and so was Marlene). It followed us for awhile and I kept yelling “GO HOME!” over my shoulder without stopping or gesturing, and finally it did. Marlene was telling me a really cool story about an Animal Planet show, but I have to admit I was a bit distracted because I was dwelling on the stupid dog for awhile. I did finally relax and forget about it though, and when we got back it was nowhere to be seen. Whew.

Then Marlene and Mike rehearsed a song for Good Friday, and I showed her my $16 of loot that I scored at Hancock Fabrics going out of business sale yesterday. You can get a lot of stuff for $16 when everything is 50% - 70% off the lowest ticketed price, even if you do have to buy a minimum of two yards of fabric in each cut.

I finished cleaning off my quilt table and got some quilting done, and finally LG was hungry and wanted “jelly sammich!” which translates to peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Well, actually she wanted “fruit snacks”, but I managed to convince her she would rather have a sandwich.

I looked up from what I was doing and realized she had eaten everything but the crust of her sandwich. She gets that from me, I guess, since I’ve never been much of a crust eater.

But then, after she had played with the bread and her Little People zoo animals for awhile, she ate the crust, too. She gets that from her dad.

It was so gorgeous outside, I couldn’t resist going out onto the back porch for a few minutes.

LG is getting entirely too curious. Yikes! (Yes her shoes are on the wrong feet. “I put shoes on self!”)

And finally, while LG was taking her nap, UPS delivered not one, but two packages! Wow, we never have that much excitement around here. One package was an envelope of paperwork from the insurance company.

The other was this box…

And here is what was inside (a thank you gift from the mortgage company that is working with us on the project house)…

I thought my story was over, but I just had to go coax Melody into the house because she was much too interested in the neighbors’ dog. (Not the neighbors that have the horses. The neighbors that think that it’s cool to play their stupid stereos at full blast with the doors of their cars open in their back yard where all I can hear is the thumping of the bass, which is one of the things we moved to get away from. GRRR!)

Anyway, there were two little kids out there. One a little girl who informed me that Max “loves the girls” and that he was “in love” with Melody. The other an even littler boy who decided that throwing rocks at his dog was the way to get him to behave. I told him not to do that. He said, “But he’s bad.” I told him that wasn’t the way we treated other living creatures. Would he want someone to throw rocks at him if he was bad? At least I got him to stop throwing rocks, but it makes me wonder. How did he learn to react to “bad behavior” with violence? I don’t really think I want to know the answer to that question.

Dear Little Girl,

For future reference, putting all the dog food from the food bowl into Melody’s water dish is not the same as putting cereal in a bowl full of milk.

Love,
Mama

This morning as we all wandered around the backyard, I looked through my camera lens and saw this:

And I thought - this is a good day to shoot in black and white…lol! Besides the obvious clashing clothing issue, the back yard is so brown and barren that it looks a lot better in black and white than it does in color. I did add a little warmth to these shots in iPhoto and adjusted the contrast and sharpness a bit, but other than that, it was just a beautiful day to shoot outside. The sun was shining, but there was just enough cloudiness to diffuse and soften the light a little.

I wonder sometimes what Little Girl will think about being the subject of so many photos when she gets older, but I hope she will appreciate the fact that she has inspired me to do something I never really liked to do before - actually learn how to use a camera and think about what I’m doing. Enough words, though, this is supposed to be a photo essay!

Another thing I love about black and white is that objects that would just look like junk in a color picture, look really cool and interesting in black and white - like the rusty old ladders in this photo.

She insisted on wearing her cowgirl skirt on top of her pants this morning.

Melody so rarely stands still.

I wrote a lot more about this photo of Little Girl here.

It was a beautiful morning to be out wandering around in the backyard exploring… (Read on …)

Will someone please explain to me why I thought it would be a good idea to take a Christmas card picture of a 2 year old child and a 1 year old dog? Because I’m really not sure where I got that idea. :P (Read on …)

Marlene and I got back to our twice weekly walks this morning, even though we were tired by the end of our little street. Hey! It’s been a few weeks! And we still did the whole circuit so there! I took along the early ballot that they sent me (which I didn’t ask for, but they sent me when I finally had them correct my address which has been wrong forever and which I will explain more about at the bottom of this post*) and dropped it off at the polling place which just happened to be right along our path. It was a four-page ballot, so having already filled it in last night and only having to drop it off and not have to stand there with a 23 month old trying to run away from me while I voted was a lot easier!

When LG and I got in the house after the walk, Melody didn’t greet us at the door like she normally does. I called her name thinking she’d come running, but still no Melody. I thought maybe Mike had let her loose in the big yard and forgot to bring her back in and close the gate, so I looked out the patio doors and saw her standing there. I couldn’t figure out why she didn’t just come in her doggie door, so I told her to “go around”. But she just kept standing there, so I went to see if maybe Mike had locked her out for some unknown reason. Uh no. But there was a pillow lodged in the doggie door which of course blocked her way in and out. Busted!

*When we built our house we had to also add a little street that wasn’t immediately added to maps and to databases and so on, so even though we were living on a Drive, we kept getting mail addressed to Avenue which the mail carriers would deliver to our house anyway because there was no such address on the Avenue that had our number and mail carriers tend to have more brains than databases do. Anyway, it took a couple of YEARS to get it all straightened out after much email and phone calls and letters and address changes and such. It was a royal pain in the butt. But one of the databases that didn’t recognize our Drive address at first was the county recorder, so all the voting materials came to Avenue. Mike changed his awhile back, but I was lazy and did not, so we got double of everything for awhile - one to him at Drive and one to me at Avenue. I finally got sick of it this year and called to change it and for whatever reason, when I did that, they decided to send me an early ballot. But you know what? I liked it. I’m totally getting an early ballot from now on, just so I don’t have to go through all the hassles. And that’s the end of that story. WAKE UP!

Dear Melody,

Today is your first birthday. You are the first dog I’ve ever had that I knew the actual birthdate for, so this is truly your actual birthday rather than the “birthdays” I gave to the other dogs that coincided with other important events so that I could remember them.

I remember the day we got you. I couldn’t wait any longer to get another dog after we lost the last of our three fur babies. We went all over the place and just when we were ready to give up, we found you and your litter mates. We thought about getting another one of your siblings as well, but they wouldn’t let us. It ended up being a good choice for us, but we did know the moment that we saw you looking at us through the cage of the Humane Society, that you were going to come home with us.

As much as it’s hard for me to admit it, because I miss Majerle, Lady, and Bob terribly, the time was probably right for them to go. They were our dogs - Mike’s and mine - and we really did need a dog that would also be Little Girl’s and as much as they did love her in their own way, they were too old to really have patience with a little girl who wanted to poke and prod and pull and hug and lay on them like she does with you.

You are definitely as much her dog as you are ours. You love her dearly and though at times you drive each other crazy, when she is not here you miss her. I can tell. And you? You are her Woof! Her Meddy. Her dog. Her best friend. She doesn’t like to leave the house without giving you a kiss and a hug.

Don’t get me wrong. You definitely have your faults, but they don’t matter nearly as much as the fact that you have never shown even a tiny bit of aggression to Little Girl. When they describe dogs for adoption, they say things like “good with small children”, and that certainly applies to you. You try to herd her. She doesn’t let you. You still try. And she tells you “no!” and “good girl” and “stay” and “sit” and “off” and “uh uh” and sometimes you even listen to her.

But the most important thing you do is walk beside her.

Thanks for being a part of our family Mel-Mel! We love you!

Love,
Your Family

So why am I blogging at 10 pm on a Friday night? Why am I not in bed relaxing? Where do I begin?

First, there were the ants. The ants that started stinging me as I was standing next to the bed getting things situated so I could crawl in. Instead of crawling in, I got stung by an army of black ants. And by army, I mean, ARMY. Big army of black frigging ants. Crawling all over the floor around my side of the bed. Not Mike’s side. MY side.

So I go and I find the ant and roach spray and I spray and I spray and I spray and I spray. And I think I’ve killed most of the suckers, so I go get the Swiffer to swiffer their rotten little carcasses up so I can crawl into bed. But guess what? I get back with the Swiffer and I swiffer my little heart out and I turn around and MORE FRIGGING ANTS. No idea where they are coming from but they are making me really pissed off because I JUST WANT TO GO TO BED. So I spray and I spray and I spray and I decide Mike can clean up the rest when he gets home.

And then I decide to take a shower because after you’ve been stung by ants, you really need to take a shower to get the creepy crawly feeling off of your skin. I turn on the water and I go check on Melody who I had locked out of the bedroom during the extermination. She is standing with two feet in LG’s bedroom, which she rarely does because she knows she is not allowed in there. LG was probably talking to her, so I’m not going to get too bent out of shape over that.

Warning: The next part of the post is not for the faint of stomach. Proceed with caution. (Read on …)

Melody is nudging at Little Girl who is holding a piece of paper and a pencil that she is scribbling on.

LG: NO!

Melody: Nudge nudge

LG: NO!

Melody: Nudge nudge

LG: NO! MINE!!!

Melody:

LG: Good girl.

• Yesterday, as we were dropping LG off at her grandparent’s house, she said Rochelle’s name for the first time without a prompt. But she pronounced it “Shashelle”. Which is totally what I’m going to call Rochelle from now on. ;)

• Today, after I got her up from her nap, I made a pit stop in the bathroom. Melody was on the other side of the door and LG was reaching her hand underneath the door to Melody. The next thing I know, a little paw appears under the door. Those two definitely love each other. ;)

Hope you’re all having a great Sunday!

My dog is so smart, that when she drags in a scorpion from the back yard, it’s already dead.

Ew.

Found: One dead baby scorpion about three feet away from where LG was standing. Mike thinks it was probably a victim of the pesticide he used out in the back yard after the tick was found in LG’s ear the night after I’d been gone on and off for most of the day. Did I ever mention that one? Anyway, he thinks Melody probably found the carcass and carried it in at some point. At least it was dead. But I was NOT a happy camper.

While we were at church last night, the Bad Girl:

• found a pillow next to the sofa and totally destroyed it - stuffing everywhere;
• shredded two magazines that were also next to the sofa;
• got hold of the remote control for the cable box (again) and chewed it some more, causing one of the little buttons to fall out.

The Good Girl:

• helped her Papa and Mama this morning by picking up every scrap of paper and stuffing that she could find on the floor and putting it in a little garbage bag.

Guess which one is going to get a dollar in her tip jar?