What I did during my summer vacation

Okay, it's been a while since I've written. For the most part all of my posts over the summer were pre-written and just scheduled to post themselves during the summer months. So in my own way I took the summer off to pursue other endeavors. And, although my pre-scheduled posts stopped over a month ago I've been facing a kind of writer's block. Okay, it's not been so much that I haven't had anything to say but more that I didn't feel confident enough to say it. Now, I have enough confidence or at the very least have suspended my feelings of insecurity long enough to sit down and write.

Geocaching.

A new hobby that I copied from my brother. Well, it's a new hobby to me. Pretty much it's treasure hunting but without all the trial and error and most of it being error. With Geocaching you are pretty much given the spot and have to do a little searching around. I have no idea why I really enjoy this, I do it almost every day with my keys. Although with geocaching you get to see places you never knew existed and you are also able to show others your favorite places. Our kids love it because it's a little adventure and for the most part they will always walk away with a toy of some kind. Look into it if you are an outdoorish kind of person or just want a reasonably cheap hobby. I love the idea of buying one piece of equipment then not having to buy anything after that. Although the website does want you to pay $30 a year for a subscription so you can get extra search features, but compared to the crap you have to buy for cycling, it's chump change.

Alone Time

The big thing that happened this summer was that my family went to Perú, without me. As I have stated previously it was mainly about the money and secondly about the time. My wife wanted to spend a month down there and I couldn't get the time off. So, I thought I would be a supportive husband and tough out the month alone.

Bad idea, oh, I'm sure every husband dreams of having so much time to himself. I can't think of anything worse. Well, at least now. The first couple of days were kinda fun, but, as soon as the novelty of it wears off then it's like living my own private hell. Suddenly, I realized that the only reason why I was getting up in the morning was to go to work. Not a good realization. My wife didn't communicate with me as often as I would have liked, after all she was now surrounded by family that she hadn't seen in years, therefore was easily distracted. To be perfectly honest, my wife is easily distracted by anything that has the hint of being shiny. So that added to my already weakened emotional state.

Suffice it to say, it was not fun.

Ay Chihuahua!

Last year we had a wonderful dog named Shelby. We had him for about four months and he was the best dog a family could ever ask for. Since I am not a dog person that says a lot. Ever since poor Shelby got ran over my family has been wanting to get a new dog. There is something that a pet brings into a home that you can't really describe. Before my wife and kids ran off to Peru for a month a neighbor of ours had a litter that she needed to get rid of. She has like 15 dogs, 8 of which are chihuahuas. She usually breeds the chihuahuas but a terrier got with one of the females and she didn't really want to sell those so she offered one to us when they got old enough to leave the mother. After my family got back my wife went over to our neighbor's house to see about the puppy, and as my wife is always surprising me, she came back with two.

My wife told me that our neighbor wasn't planning on giving us both of them, in fact my wife didn't even know about the second one. When my wife went over to check on the puppy that we were going to get the neighbor couldn't bear separating the brother and sister pair. So she offered my wife both. So my wife brought both of them over to me and asked me if we could keep both. I think only a statue could have said no. There is my beautiful wife holding two cute, baby chihuahuas. I had to say okay, I really didn't have a choice.

So here I am, trying to recover from my summer and get back in the swing of things. I have so much more to say. But I think the fact that I lost the habit has really been dragging on getting it written down. So I think I will post this as-is in an attempt to get back into the rhythm.

Lets end this year by killing something.

Well... Hm... This post isn't one that I've really been looking forward to writing but I should write it anyway at least for my own benefit. My dog died on Sunday, he was ran over by a car that didn't even bother to stop or brake just outside our house. We found his broken body a few minutes after it happened.

My wife absolutely loves dogs, I figure the reason for this is because though out her life she has always had a dog. Her mom dropped her off at her grandparents house when she was really young and she was practically raised by her grandparents and her 13 aunts and uncles, but her childhood was not exactly happy. Most of her aunts didn't want her there and were very mean to her. One was so mean that to this day you can see the scars on my wife's hands. Nevertheless there was always a dog at her house, and she loved it. Her only memory of her biological father was when he came to visit her and he brought a dog with him, she never saw him because her mother rushed her out of the room while her mother shooed him away, but my wife remembers clearly playing with the dog under a bed. In fact some of my wife's most happy memories of her childhood has something to do with dogs. So the death of our current dog was devastating to her, and the worst part is that we can't get another for a while.

So although I did love that dog, it hurts me more seeing my wife hurting. I've never seen anyone get so attached to an animal like her she did and as I've stated above I think she has some good reasons for getting so attached.

On top of my wife's pain I took it upon myself to try and explain to my daughter that her dog wasn't coming back. My question is how far do you go to get the message across before you start to be just a jerk about it? I explained to her that the reason we don't let her go out in the road is because she might get hit by a car. Then I told her that her dog went into the road and isn't coming back, and that he's now with Jesus. She cried with us for a while and I felt that she understood but I think she thinks he's lost. I tell her that he's not going to come back and that Jesus is in heaven and so is her dog. She still can't get past the idea that he's lost. I thought about showing her the body, but I really began to think that I was crossing a line at that point. My wife and I decided that there really isn't any point in pushing it. Death isn't something we believe that there is any hurry to learn about, she has her whole life to learn about it.

Farewell my little furball, you'll be missed.

A couple of frustrations

There are a lot of things that set me off. Over the years I can safely say that this list has gone down but still there are a couple of things that really get my garments in a bunch.

Stay on Task!
I recently took a calling to teach the 4-6 year-olds in primary. I did it back when I first got home off my mission so I felt that I could certainly do it again. My big problem is with the Primary presidency. First, if you have any announcements for the teachers you can do it over the podium and the beginning of primary. Second, once sharing time starts you and all your councilors are doing a certain job. You don't go off to do other things or talk with other teachers. You can take care of business before or after church, sharing time is about the kids, give them the attention they deserve. Third, if there aren't enough teachers to keep the kids calm, then get more teachers. I shouldn't be the only adult during sharing time trying to keep the kids in their seats and paying some kind of attention. Forth, if I'm teaching a class then you should wait until after if you need to tell me something. There is no reason to interrupt my class to tell me to prepare a game for the Halloween party.

Just like Banker's hours, just shorter.
So I've been preparing myself to go back to college this next year and as I do so I've been trying to find out what classes I should be taking. So I got an e-mail informing me of the academic counseling and that I could call from 8-5 so I called at 4:00pm. Turns out all the councilors leave a little earlier than 4:00pm. At least they still had a secretary to tell everyone that they don't work their whole shift.

Good Boys, Good Boys what you gonna do?
So we got a dog a couple of months ago and overall he's been great. The one problem is that when we leave him home he barks to almost no end. We got a complaint from a neighbor so we started to tie him up in the garage when we leave. Well, the other day we left the garage door open. When we came back two hours later we found the animal control officers leaving a nasty-gram (ie. your pre-citation) the cop was very obtuse about the whole thing and as cops usually are very arrogant. Suffice it to say that I've never had a good relationship with cops. I've always been on the good side of the law, but when they pass sixteen-year-olds out past curfew to grab a guy heading home on his bike after midnight then I start wondering about their intentions. They've even pulled me over for not stopping behind the white line at a stop sign, hey I usually do it but this one is set way to far back. Nevertheless, there is a house not a block away that everyone knows is a drug house and the cops are hanging around my house to give me a citation for a dog that was barking for no more than two hours and doesn't do it hardly at all.

It's so much fun bieng a Dog owner

If you've spent anytime looking at those wonderful pictures that I have on my little slide show then you know that I have a dog.  There is one primary reason we own a dog and that is because my wife loves dogs.  She grew up with dogs and some of her fondest memories of her childhood have to do with her dogs.

We had a dog once before but she ran away.  We believe that she was stolen, but we don't have any good evidence so we are just going to say that she ran away.  Anyway, it's been a few years since we've had a dog and I finally gave in, again, to have a dog.

The best part about having a dog is the house training.  I can never get sarcasm to come out the way I want it to when I write it down.  Nevertheless, it took a couple of weeks but our little Shelby is house trained and only has accidents when we don't pick up on the signs he wants to go out.

Well, yesterday since it was my day off my wife and I stayed up late and watched a movie. ("Hitman" to be exact, not a bad filc, but not for the faint of heart and not to be watched more than once.)  Once the movie was over we went to our bed where our daughter has taken up residence ever since our son was born and also where Shelby sleeps.  My wife crawled over my daughter and left the opposite side of the bed for me.  Once I walked around to the other side of the bed and sat down I came to the very sudden and horrible realization that our dog had vomited in the bed.  I immediately shuffled off to the shower leaving my wife to clean up the mess.  Sitting in dog vomit I think excuses one from having to clean it up.