Despite what those eastern ground mammals say, in Oregon we have the forecast of more winter. Which would be good since we’ve been cold and dry for weeks, and I for one am waiting for our regular winter rain!

hibernating hedgehog says


Before Wilma asks, we’re about to eat black-eyed peas. And we’ve spent the day doing things we’d like to do the rest of the year. We planted two trees. I cut out a dress for Logan, and hope to actually start sewing it tonight. John and I both read to Logan (that’s a daily occurrence anyway). John and Logan built a “house” with some PVC and a blanket in the yard, and we ate lunch there. John and Logan worked in the yard organizing, neatening and throwing away things. I removed yet another item peed on by the cat from inside the house. The cat is going to get to spend his nights outside for a while. And the dogs, in good form, have protected us from several invisible threats and some boxes stacked on top of John’s car.

Oh, and I’m making a point of posting here, in hopes that I’ll remember to continue to do so regularly.

I hope 2007 finds you all healthy happy and content and that you see it through that way too!

Occasionally the dogs do things that wear themselves out enough that they forget they might want to eat at night. Exhausted sleeping dogs at the time we might normally feed them means we opt out of feeding them on the Let Sleeping Dogs Lie principle. So the routine is disrupted and they don’t eat, they don’t go out after eating, and the house is quiet. Yesterday two of them went running in the pasture when they were supposed to be staying home quietly in the yard, so yesterday was one of those days.


Last night Logan and I went to bed before John. So I was falling asleep, and had her finally to the point where she’d stopped talking every five seconds, and I heard a dog pacing.


And I thought he’d stop and flop down somewhere. But the pacing continued. And I thought I’d fall asleep. More pacing. Still more pacing.


Suddenly I realized Andy was a dog who wasn’t about to lie down, but a dog who really, really needed to go outside.


So I got up, told Logan to stay settled down, flipped on one light. Tromped to the stairs, flipped on another light, and started down the stairs. Which brought John out from the library and his video to see what was the matter. (Out on the rooftop there arose such a clatter I flew from my bed… no that’s a different story, right.)


John let Andy-Dog out. I went back to bed. John announced Andy was peeing on a bush right outside the door. Logan now wide awake again started telling me about the scary thought of dinosaur-giraffes that she’d come up with that could give her bad dreams.


Bulletin from John: dog is still peeing.


I encouraged Logan to think about other things, stop bouncing around like an orangutan and settle down.


Logan tells me she’d been almost asleep before I got up to deal with the dog, and I agree and explain that Papa couldn’t hear that the dog needed to go out over his video.


John tells us the dog is still peeing.


Logan negotiates to have a dim light left on to keep the dinosaur-giraffes at bay and I agree on the condition that she then STOP TALKING to me and lie still to go to sleep.


We listen to John begin to coax the dog back inside with a treat.


Andy is the least dog like and most likely-to-have-been-mistreated-before-we-owned-him of our three dogs. He likes corners. He likes to be outside out of the way, so long as he doesn’t have to move to much. He gets excited about dog food type things, and cavorts stiff leggedly once every day or two if the other dogs are excited, although he never seems to quite know why. He doesn’t seem to understand asking to go out, but he will go stand silently by the door occasionally, before peeing on the floor. So we let him out whenever he is active and seems to be interested in the door.


He’s John’s favorite dog.






If you click the picture it will reload somewhat bigger.


And we are now sporting a satellite internet connection, replacing our 12kbs speed with something like 300 kbs, so I’m going to go load other layouts and see what I can find that’s less pink.


If I forget and end up with big pictures that are hard on dialup, let me know.



And I can’t customize it for anything. I found where I can set the date and time to appear as I want them — too bad, it doesn’t have a place where the date and time show except where it puts them, in it’s own style by the comments. I put in the whole Dreams and Bones song quote — and it overflowed into the entry text. No way to adjust it. So much for that idea. Ah well. It’s a short term set up.

We have finished the first half of the school year. Logan regales in being one of the “big kids” in kindergarten. She is actively planning her career as a “grader” (as in first grader, second grader etc), which should begin next year. She knows who will move up to first grade next year from her class, unless they go to another school, but is foggy about who from other classes. And understands that it does depend on the teacher being a good match for her.

Well, two days and two random computer crashes later I’m going to post this and come back to writing about Logan and school when I have more time to sit at the computer between crashes. But I got two comments so far!

Ok, here it is — slap dash put together, and pink for Logan’s viewing pleasure. I’m not writing much cause we’re supposed to be working on holiday gifts right now, and instead I’m fussing with blogging things. I’ll add more later on, today I hope. Maybe even pictures depending on how or water logged phone line holds out. We have flood warnings all over the place, which haven’t caused any changes at all here, but could cause the phone to go out if the ground gets soggy enough.