Saturday Morning Grab Bag

Some odds and ends to get a bit caught up. This is an R-word–free weekend and there are lots of chores that have been piling up that I've promised to work on.

Instead, I've decided to do this post. (Warning: This is going to wander all over the place. Sorry.)

Speaking of wandering all over the place, which of these dogs does not like to get wet? It has been very dry around here this winter - the hills are still brown and the trails are mostly mud-free. But the day we took the dogs for a nice walk, it was threatening rain (turned out to be all threat, no action) so Dove the Wonder Dog begged to wear her slicker.

One of the lights went out in the kitchen. We replaced the bulbs but that didn't help. So I cleverly came up with this solution. After spending the night out on the deck, I replaced the ballast and the light is back to boring old normal. And I'm no longer sleeping out on the deck.

There's this fun running group up in San Francisco called the Dolphin South End Running Club (DSE for short). They put on a race nearly every Sunday at a variety of great locations up in the city. One of the coolest things is that the races generally cost $5 to enter - less if you join their club.

At the end of the year they have an awards ceremony, which Ultra Woof (on the left with her Mulan costume uniform, complete with Mushu the dragon) calls the DSE Prom. If you run a certain number of races and volunteer once or twice, you can get a trophy at the Prom. Both grandkids, Weird Haired Mom, and Mrs Notthat all qualified for trophies this year. (Mr Notthat's dislike of driving in the city precluded him from attending enough races to qualify.)

By the way, the guy on the right is The Endorphin Dude - a runner who you normally see wearing a cape and a huge smile. He announced at last year's Prom that he was starting a quest of running 52 marathons in 2011, which would qualify him for Titanium status in the Marathon Maniacs group. A bold statement from a guy that, a couple of years ago, couldn't locate his TV remote because of all the pizza boxes and Cheetos bags on his couch. Against a lot of odds and despite a number of crushing setbacks, he made it. The guy is amazing! And he's Grandkid Second Born's hero - GSB stayed close to him all night, in this case making himself useful as a table.

This event was long and included a lot of people talking. The grandkids were great though - both hung in there and behaved amazingly well. The promise of getting trophies had them on their best behavior.

The only bad part of the evening was that, due to a clerical error, Mrs Notthat did not actually get a trophy, and instead got a certificate. This was a pretty big bummer, but seeing how happy the grandkids were made up for that disappointment. I heard that they both wanted to sleep with their trophies, and couldn't wait to take them to school and show them off. They were vibrating with excitement over these things! And why not - it's really amazing that they earned these through a lot of work and early morning wake-ups.

Kaya has a LOT of energy. A LOT of energy. That energy can lead to some mischief (see below). So I have been trying to use up some of that energy each morning by teaching her to catch frisbees. She was getting pretty good at it, but has recently started having more fun just knocking them down.

On a day when I didn't play frisbee with her, we came home to find that Kaya had been trying to work out how to watch her favorite nature shows. So we are learning to carefully put things away when we leave (a couple of Mrs Notthat's favorite running jackets have also been targeted, and socks - that dog LOVES socks).

When I get up in the morning (I'm always up first), both dogs always come flying down the hallway to greet me. On Friday, Dove was conspicuous in her absence, which worried me a bit. I guessed that she had been accidentally locked in the garage or the spare bedroom again, but after a quick check of all the likely places she might be, I couldn't find her.

After showering, I got dressed expecting the worst - something very serious must have happened to cause her to not be around. A fight with a possum. Eating a poison apple. Something.

But when I headed out of the bedroom, she was standing there, wagging her tail, and acting very much like she hadn't come across any possums or poison apples. I was astounded - I REALLY had looked hard for her and hadn't seen her anywhere.

Then The Boy pointed out her new sleeping place.

Kaya destroyed her first dog bed (making an impressive mess) in her first few days here. We bought her a new bed and within minutes she had a hole in it and was furiously trying to empty it of its stuffing. (Biggest stuffed toy she had EVER seen!) We had these old patio furniture cushions out on the deck, so I brought one in as her next sacrificial bed while we tried to figure out what to do next. But she didn't destroy it. We're not sure if she's done destroying things (HA!) or if it is indestructible, but it has been hanging in there nicely.

And now as a bonus, Dove has decided to take advantage of it too.

It had never occurred to me to look in between the cushions for her, and apparently she didn't hear me get up (or, more likely, she was too warm to bother getting up), and failed to greet me.

But now I know better.

And now I'm mostly caught up on pictures. (As long as I don't look too hard.)

That's it - move along...