Another day of holiday break from school - another day of waking up before 5:00. Something about me is so wrong.
I am still trying to recover from the holidays and the deluge of dogs we had over the last week. Siyah went home on Monday night and my FIL will pick up his fat basset today. That will bring us down to the (manageable?) number of ten again. Dobie, one of the fosters, will be going soon to another foster to learn some mouth manners. Little bugger bites me every time I put him in the crate. I don't know if the crate holds a traumatic memory for him or what, but I don't know how to correct that and he'll have better chances with someone else.
So anyway I'm gearing up for the end of the year stuff...new filing system, taxes, and all that jazz and I keep thinking, wow, it just don't seem like a whole YEAR since I last did this. They pass by so fast now. I hate taxes. Really I do (said in my best Henrietta Hen voice). Every year I tweak my filing system to make things a bit easier. I figure by the time I'm 60 I should have it worked out pretty good. Paper kills me.
And Doug has decided to have a New Year's party. How's that for advance notice?

Christmas Eve brought us a car load of elves delivering puppies that had been driven ten hours to get to us. This pup is as much as six years old and near starved to death. He lived in a wooden crate with holes in the top and bottom and stacked three high - the ones on the bottom lived (if you can call it that) on what food managed to fall through the crates from above. Every bone in his body shows and his little legs are hardly bigger than my thumb. Picking him up can easily feel like he is going to break in two. We've decided to name him Peanut - though we have a hard time not calling him Starvin' Marvin. He will stay with us until he is healthy enough for shots and neutering then he will be available for adoption through the min pin rescue. He is a sweet little bundle. Every time I look at him I feel rage that someone can let an animal - let alone three hundred animals - live this way just so they can make a fast buck. My family thinks I'm completely insane taking three more dogs when I already have seven of my own. But I look at these guys and know that I can make a difference. This little man won't know hungry like this again. He'll never live outside in a crate where his meal consists mainly of his own poo. It might be crazy but it matters.  

This old man was taken from a puppy mill along with almost THREE HUNDRED other dogs. He is between 10 and 16 years old and has lived all his life in a crate. He doesn't even have a name (we just call him old man for the moment). He has probably just a few months of life left and he will live what remains with us because he should at least know a home before his life is through. The girls have cast their vote for naming him Grissom, while I'm leaning toward Winston or something equally dignified.
 

One more pile of partially stitched-together pieces of material await the stitching and I'll be done. I sneak away to the sewing room as often as I can to work on this last piece of Christmas gift which I like to call Hell in heavy flannel. I thought if I'd sewn a coat - a honest to goodness, actual, warm coat - even after not sewing for ten years, and it turned out good, I could surely sew one big headed dog print BAG, couldn't I?
Wrong.
Well, not wrong, because I am getting it done but OH. MY. GOODNESS. it's been a booger. I've learned that patterns for 'accessories' tend to be severely lacking in the CLEAR instructions department. I caught myself looking at the picture, which was almost incomprehensible in itself, then reading the instructions and thinking, WHAT? Now I can't spend much time complaining because the bag (even though it was me that made it) is awesome, and Leirin is going to love it come Christmas morning. Shhhh, don't tell. It's a surprise. The bottom is pinned and ready to be sewn (lined with nice, sturdy cardboard, I might add) and all that's left to finish today is trim around the top and the straps. Taa Daaaaa! I'm so proud of me.
Oh, I forgot, I have to run elastic in Em's pajama pants too. Shoot, and I thought I was this close to being done.
As is usual, the solstice passed by in the rush for Christmas with little more than a nod from me and the girls. I seldom manage to find the time for the quieter of the spiritual side of things at this time of year. I guess it is fitting that by the time of the solstice, I'm thoroughly mired in the seemingly eternal night before Christmas. But ultimately, the rush of this time of year is a good reminder of how the wheel turns and life continues on.
Today we will be receiving three foster min pins. Three. I was contacted by a friend that I met shortly after we moved here. She knew I do rescue, though not as part of an organization. They've recently taken in 300 min pins from a puppy mill and they are hard pressed to find fosters for an influx of this many dogs from one place. These poor little dogs existed on a diet of, well, you don't really want to know what most of them had to eat when housed in wooden crates with holes in the top and bottom and stacked three high (food was poured through the top and each dog received what didn't fall through the bottom of their crate). They are being picked up from North Carolina today so they can be brought in before the holiday and they won't have to stay in that horrible place anymore. It adds a big old rush for me to get a place ready for them - most likely a special diet from the vet, a room of their own where they can adjust to the hustle and bustle of this house before being set upon by our friendly brood, and other supplies.
And I still have to wrap gifts.

Corri is getting into the holiday spirit. Do you have your merry on yet? 

Perspective

We spent the weekend visiting Doug's uncle - my most favorite person in his entire family. People often describe someone as being "a joy" and Uncle Terry is. I first met him when Doug and I were dating. After I had met Doug's parents, the next step was meeting Uncle Terry and Aunt Maggie. Uncle Terry just oozes childishness. He was in his late 70s when I first met him but, aside from my own grandma, I've never met someone so full of fire and foolishness.
When Doug and his dad took me to the pond to show me how to fish, nobody got a bigger belly laugh when I sat on the bank and outfished the two fishermen 13-1. It became one of his favorite stories. A few weeks after we returned home, Uncle Terry sent mail with pictures of my big catch - an impressive string of good-sized bass. Any time he and Maggie came to visit, he showed up with noise toys for the kids and lots of treats and toys for the animals because Uncle Terry just loves dogs (and he's much too kind hearted to leave the cats out). Visits were looked forward to with much excitement and anticipation. Uncle Terry had a knack for finding the most cool gifts - like the parrot that spoke or the bird that mounted on the ceiling and flew in circles from the string that kept it safely attached.
Aunt Maggie became ill several years ago - fluid on the brain - and she required many surgeries and trips to the doctor for shunts and treatments of one kind or another. For the last years of her life, Uncle Terry waited on her hand and foot, and his health suffered greatly as a result. When we saw him at the funeral, he was only a shadow of the man he'd once been...so heavily medicated and beaten down by life that he could hardly summon the energy to speak. We were very happy to arrive and find him so much closer to the man we remembered from long ago before Maggie became ill. He isn't the same, of course, a lot of time has gone by and his health is in quick decline. He is in constant pain. He battles bouts of severe depression. And he is lonely. Anyone would be after losing the person they'd spent more than fifty years with.
He called before we left for the trip down and asked me for pictures of our new house. He's so disappointed that he can't travel to come see us. So I cleared the camera memory card and I took pictures all through the house inside and out. He was so pleased to see all the room we have now and know the kids can go outside without fear of being run over by speeding students, and that they now have bicycles, and the dogs can run far enough to make their tongues fall out of their mouths with great panting.
The visit was wonderful. He dug out old cassette tapes of Doug when he was just a little boy. Uncle Terry liked to 'interview' people and record it for posterity. He had a voice so powerful he could have beat out any of the top news anchors today for their jobs had he ever been interested in such a thing. He told stories of Aunt Maggie's travels and adventures he'd had, and of course he told tales of Doug as a kid. He and Maggie never had children and Doug and his sister were as good as their own. Maggie had an important career, Terry did too. He designed bridges and she had a government job.
Saturday night I was in the room Jacob was sleeping in. Actually, I was waiting on whoever was in the bathroom to get out so I could get in there. I noticed several pictures on the wall that I've never paid attention to before when I've gone to visit. Doug and I have always slept in one of the other bedrooms and I guess I've just walked right past the door to this room without paying attention to the treasures it held. one wall was covered with all kinds of certificates with important looking seals and signatures. A certificate that noted Aunt Maggie had flown on Air Force One as a guest of the president. Another certificate that was given to her as one of the members of the president's delegation when Nixon visited China in 1972. And there, between the framed certificates, was a picture of Nixon and his crew, Maggie included, standing on the Great Wall of China. Jacob is very interested in the great wall and in this picture you could see it stretch out for what seemed like miles and miles over the hills behind the people. A large frame held a map that detailed all of her travels with the president and their missions. Another certificate with a very cool seal on it said that she was at the launch of Apollo II in July of 1969 as a guest of NASA and the Vice President of the United States. Just above this hung a picture of the launch and another picture of each of the astronauts and signed by each. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins...my brother's heros. I don't think I ever realized before all the really cool things she had done. The desk held a personal diary of her trip to China. Uncle Terry offered to make copies of it for me to have when Jake and I study China. Things like this will surely make it more interesting for both of us. Pieces of actual history that she was involved - incredible things that she has seen and been a part of. I wish I'd had the sense to ask her more about it.
Uncle Terry told us stories, he gave me the bottle (empty, of course) of wine she was given by the Chinese government and a really cool tin of Chinese cigarettes. It finally made sense why she'd chose to decorate her living room with Chinese art and furniture...beautiful pieces she got to find and fall in love with while she was there.
We got ready to leave this afternoon. The kids had been loaded into the car and the rooms we stayed in had returned to their normal state. Terry walked us to the door to say goodbye and he started to cry. "I may not ever see you again," he said, and we both knew - though we desperately hoped against it - that it might be true.
And we stood there not knowing what to say or do except to hug him and tell him that we love him and we will be sure to come back soon. We left, still wondering what we could have said, knowing that nothing will change the course that is set now, wishing we had spent more time before when more of it was available. But it hadn't seemed so important then...there was always time. Now there isn't, and we may very well not see him again. The pain in his eyes when he looked at Doug for what he was sure was probably the very last time, it haunts me tonight. It makes me ache. I feel like such a fool for missing all those opportunities we've let slip by. Time catches up with us. It runs out. And we never see it coming until we are right there at the finish line.

I've come to the conclusion that I must be the most easily led astray person in the entire world. I'm a freaky this close to the holidays with mucho grande piles of things to be made (as in hand-crafted by my hands) and what do I do? I build a cat house. No, silly thing, not that kind of cat house. The kind cold little kitties hunker down in to stay protected from the cold weather because they can't come inside because they will pee on anything rectangular shaped (that does include the litter box) and because I feel guilty because Fatty Cat is lacking in the levels of intellegence required to go sleep in the attic of the open building that Simon and Mosquito sleep in.
I feel guilty, and so I build.
Oh and while I'm at it, I might as well sign up for Flylady again because, well, I've pretty much sucked flying solo. My house will attest to that. Jake's sitting in the kitchen floor, merrily painting away at the new cat house and I'm shining the kitchen sink (and I washed the kitchen curtains for good measure because my goodness they looked horrible with that grape jelly stain that got splashed up on them during canning season once I got the jelly stains scrubbed out of the backsplash).
Two hours until after school pick up. Maybe there is time to cut out one pattern. Just as soon as I finish that sink.

I've had ceiling fans packed in boxes and ready to hang for the last six months. All that time they've sat in whatever closet I could find the space to store them because I have this thing about heights. And electricity. I don't want to do either. So Thursday night Poppie came over and stayed the night with us so we could spend the day Friday hanging fans. Pop can do that now because it appears he is officially retired. Yay Pop!
I love my pop. He's an extraordinary man. He helps me with all kinds of house stuff, but that's not why I love him. He is always helping somebody - while letting his own to-do list go. He makes time to spend with us. He visits every Friday and we have dinner together. He plans vacations with my mom (they've been divorced for 29 years) so they can spend time away with the grandkids. He's a big kid himself. He's the master of the rip-off machine...those bog boxes full of toys with crane hooks that don't close tight enough to actually lift anything...he's got a system and he can win something almost every time. No matter that he may sit there and feed the machine $10.00 to win a couple of cheap little toys. It's the thrill of the game, the giggling like little kids, it's the excitement over such a little thing that can be so major for kids...and my pop is good at it.
When Doug called Friday afternoon and asked if I wanted to sneak out for what would probably be our one chance to go shop for gifts together, Pop stayed home with the kids and we planned to meet for dinner. We got to spend a really fun four hours shopping for gifts for the kids. Our first holiday shopping trip for gifts in ten years. Normally, Doug has to work, and though we have shopped on the same day, all of his shopping usually happens on that day. We split up the kids and head off in different directions. It was wonderful having this evening alone to match kids and gift ideas. Until we got to Emily.
Emily works with her dad on Saturdays if she isn't spending the weekend at her nany's. She usually comes home with a little ceramic gift bought with money she earned that day - usually she buys something for Leirin or Jacob, but sometimes she finds something that reminds her of my grandma or her nany, so she buys it for them. And she's brought lots of things for me. She saves the rest of the money she earns and once every couple of months, she adds another hundred dollars to her savings account.
I've shopped with her on several occasions this year, and each time we go I watch her as she browses, hoping to get clues to what she'd really like. And every time we've gone, each squeal of delight over finding something is followed by her placing it in the buggy - with her own purchases. Not one of them is for her.
Not. One.
Not one time has she considered buying something for herself, except the latest Hillary Duff CD. She puts the receipt for everything she buys into the little box. One out of every ten receipts shows something bought for herself. Just one.
So Friday night Doug and I walked around the stores looking for things each of the kids would enjoy. Leirin is easy for me because her tastes are changing. She turns to more adult things to entertain herself - dramas on television and in books, no make up yet, but she loves lotions and bath things that smell good, painting her nails and jewelry. That makes buying for her very simple and opens up another world of things that are suitable for her.
Jake is also easy. Remote control cars, Spiderman, Yugi-Oh, and Pokemon, comic books, Captain Underpants, Gameboy games...it's all good. And makes him one easy to shop for kid.
But shopping for Emily soon became a heartache.
As we walked through the stores looking for something we thought she would enjoy we realized we didn't know what she wanted. I started to ache, really ache, thinking that I overlooked her often enough that I really do not know her well enough to shop for her. I felt like such a bad mom walking around with a buggy full of gifts the oldest and youngest were sure to enjoy and it pained me so to think that I had allowed Emily to become the lost one - the middle child. Have I ignored her?
We met Pop and the kids for dinner just after 8:00. Still empty-handed on the Emily gift front. When we got home I called my mom so I could talk to Em before she went to bed (she spent the weekend there). Emily answered the phone, her voice full of excitement as she told me about the gifts she bought each of the children in her class and the gifts for each of the fourth grade teachers. Even the wickedly mean little girl named Lauren that has hurt Emily's feelings enough to make her come home and cry about it more times than I care to count got a well thought out, sweet and thoughtful gift. At this point Emily has bought, with her own money, gifts for more than 40 people. She has bought nothing, NOTHING for herself. And I sat here as she told me about each gift, which she came home and wrapped all by herself, and my heart broke because I had not been able to think of a single thing to buy for a little girl with a heart like that.
I feel like such an awful mom.

I can't seem to keep up with anything thesedays, let alone blogging. Years from now I'm going to look back on my printed out blog pages (no I don't really do that) and wonder if I was abducted by aliens or something in the fall of 2004. It would be more interesting than what goes on in real life lately. I spend my time, just like my dog - twirling around in circles hoping my head will catch up with my ass. No progress on that front yet.

It seems like everybody wants a little piece of me the last few weeks. Santa wants me shopping for great little gifties. Of course the kids want me shopping for great little gifties too, and of course they have lots of other unreasonable requests like clean underwear. GAH! Animals want food, Doug wants taxes ready to be filed within a reasonable time period and naturally I'm supposed to put the hooey-dooey on every piece of paper I pack into the little box in hopes it will somehow keep us from owing money this year. Yards and yards of fleece scream from the sewing room. I hear the muffled muttering as I walk through to feed the guinea pigs for like the hundred thousandth time (no wonder they're called pigs). They say things like "I'm never going to be a Spiderman robe. Never!"
And the big-headed dog material says, "You think that's bad. I won't even make it to being a bag. A BAG! IT'S TWO SIDE SEAMS AND A HEM! THAT'S IT!"
So then the stuffing that has waited for nearly two weeks to be poked into a small opening left in the side-seam of a pillow gets in on the act and I feel just awful.
All this creativity happening and I have yet to come up with an idea for gifts for the grandmothers, my father-in-law, or my sisters-in-law and their little boy.
I'm never going to make it.

Emily's teachers are after me to set up a time to 'meet'. It's beginning to irritate me to hear Emily tell about her one teacher and how she rolls her eyes when she finds out that my available time slots do not line up with hers, yet again. Something tells me I'll be lucky to come out of that meeting without having snatched that woman bald-headed.

I took Emily out of the AR reading program at school because it was killing her desire to read. It's a reading incentive program. An extra, for cripes sakes. So when I talked to the curriculum coordinator for the school and explained the problem she said "No problem. It's certainly not good if it's having that effect on her." I was so excited. But now the teachers want to make a plan. A PLAN. And I can't, for the life of me, get them to understand that Em has a reading plan already and has no need for anyone to interfere with it. She reads what she wants because she wants and in doing so, she ENJOYS reading.
But noooooo, we gotta have a plan.

They are educated people but they can't seem to get the idea through their head that the AR program is most suited to reluctant readers. Kids that don't want to read normally can fairly easily be motivated to do so using the point goals and tests for rewards. Emily is not that kind of reader. She loves to read. But she's passing over the books she WANTS to read in order to choose lower level books that she can finish in time to meet the goal for the week. Not meeting the reading goal is BAD. It's just awful when you FAIL to meet your reading goal. And she hates reading those books because they are not the ones she wants to read in the first place. When she is finished reading a book she wants to TALK about it and relive the emotion of the story.
Em is a REAL reader but the set-up of this program is doing its best to turn that around. So they'll let me drop the AR program but they are still insisting on a plan.

Give me a break.

Somebody is just not listening to me.

Since Em has had the restrictions of the AR program lifted from her she has enjoyed reading again without anyone forcing her or monitoring her progress. I suggested she read The Outsiders because it's a favorite story of mine and it is nowhere to be found on her AR list and there'll be no test. She's plugging right along, telling me in voice full of emotion about Ponyboy and Johnnie going to Dallas for help after Bob was killed.

"Can he help them?"

"Where will they go?"

"Do you think Ponyboy is cute? I think I like him."

This is reading. No plan. No problem.

It isn't quite finished but I'm sure proud of the job I've done on Leirin's coat. I have to cut the sleeves off and hem the bottom band and add the buttons still. I'm getting there!