Hair ties or not?

Not only do we have the largest quantity of estrogen in the Northern hemisphere I think we have the largest quantity of hair: long thick dark brown/black and mounds of it.  It blocks, clogs and clings to everything.  I find the drains don’t drain as fast as they did two years ago.  I find black wads of hair in the washing machine, drier and some days it is stuck to my feet wrapped around my toes.  The bathrooms look like they need a shave or brush.  If I find it in the bathroom sink in the morning when I go to brush my teeth everyone gets up.  Mostly by my yelling, because the kids do not get up as early as I do they have learned to keep the hair out of the bathroom sinks I use in the mornings.  I always layer my cloths in the winter for warmth this usually includes a layer of hair stuck to the underside of my sweatshirts and sweaters I try to keep the outside plucked free. I can find the offending hairs stuck to the sofa, chairs, throws and afghan blankets.  Can we all say long haired dog jammies, I never know if I should comb them or shave them.  Most folks struggle with dog hair on everything I struggle with kid’s hair on everything.  I must add that none of this is mine. I only have 10 hairs and they are all grey. I count them often so I know they are all still there.  The one thing we all use is hair ties. Even my ten hairs are kept pulled back.  Now this is where the issues begin, where are all the hair ties?  I buy a pack of twenty and they are gone in a month.  Absolutely no one knows where they are or what happened to them.  I would hide mine so I would have it for the next day and it would be missing before sun up the next day.  One of the girls thought it was a new fashion statement to wear 10 or so around her wrist like one would wear gold and silver.  So of course she got the brunt of my yelling and I would make her go to her room and look for the lost hair ties. She might come up with two if I was lucky but mostly she would be empty handed on her return. I became desperate and pulled out all the stops. I started hooking one to the watch I wear every night so I would have it in the morning.  This was a good plan till the dogs decided that they need a chew toy in the middle of the night and while I slept they chewed leaving me without a hair tie the next morning. My desperation got the better of me so when I would get home I would take it off and hook it over the gear shift in the car, next time I left the house just go to the car and viola.  But going to work without brushing my hair, because I did not have time to go back into the house for the brush, was even more frustrating.    I found myself back at the store buying two packs this time. I hoped that they would last a couple of months; I cannot begin to tell you how surprised I was when they only lasted three weeks.  I’m sure the girls would not call it surprised.  I don’t believe the words I used have been put in a dictionary yet.  I mean the pack and all were gone. In the past they took the hair ties and left the packaging in the draw, like it would help by not taking it all. I was late for work because I was on the hunt. I was going to find out who took all the hair ties. My searches lead me to a big glob of black and brown goo under the kitchen table, topped with yellow slim. A closer look took me to the edge of the Damn Dog insanity.  It was a pack of twenty hair ties chewed swallow and puked up. Now the packaging was gone but the plastic wire that kept them together was still in tacked the ties themselves looked as if they were chew like a wad of gum.  How they got them out of the bathroom vanity drawer would be a Damn Dog secret.  I still do not know who the offending dog was as there were no health issues attached to this pile of vile. But again I was off to the store to buying more hair ties.  And I dare not think of the other lost ties.

To my girls I love you. Mom

As Christmas approaches I find myself reflecting back on my life and how I have conducted myself. I realize I have not always been able to express myself in a manner that has always been positive. I was brought up with a huge sense of fairness and the power that giving is so much stronger than receiving.  Honesty, love and respect for all of God creatures. For this I thank my Mother and Father.  Who taught us all girls and boys how we needed to take care of ourselves and the world around us, to not be a burden on society. 

I have tried to live my life as I was brought up.  I had my moments of total self indulgence and took advantage of my single life.  Living life to the fullest and thought if I did not impose on the world around me I was in compliance with my teachings.   Unfortunately this came back to bite me.  Now I am giving back to the society from which I lived and had fun in.    I do not have regrets on any of my past life. What I do have is regrets that I do not let my kids know how much they mean to me and how they have change my life for the better.  I have been so blessed having all these kids who have put up with my anger, frustration and health issues. Humans can do the most unspeakable things to each other, our species have committed such atrocities that it is often hard to believe such evil exist.   The thing is we are very resilient and learned how to survive. To this fact I have witnessed how the sprite can come through all of the atrocities of a life we cannot even begin to know about. I want to honor my kids and thank them for understanding all of my short comings. I wish I could promise that I will not do the same things again; I do not profess to be able to keep promises like this.  I want my kids to know that they mean the world to me and because I am not as warm and fussy as most, it hasn’t kept me from loving them to death. They are the best kids one could ever want.  My craziness comes from waiting so long in life to take on this endeavored, and the patients one needs and I do not possess.   I absolutely, am so happy that my higher power saw fit to bring us all together kids, dogs and the craziness that come with it. I truly have a wonderful life and to my kids I Love you all more than life itself: To the Damn dogs’ ditto, you have not done me in yet…..

It's going to be a Damn night at the Damn dog house

Well as it appears the Damn Dogs like my blogging too.  While I am blogging they are being Damn Dogs.  I have no idea how they got the jar of peanuts and I really can not figure out how the got the top of the peanut jar. But it looks like it's gone to be a long night at the Damn Dog house. This jar was full,

Technology Pit

I have caught myself doing the same thing I yell at my kids for doing. I am sitting in my room chatting and posting on my kids face book, all the while they are just above me in the living room, kitchen or a bedroom.  I say to them this is crazy you’re all in the same house how come you can’t interact face to face.  They tell me they are learning how to spell better this way.  Are you kidding me? LOL, u2, bff and any other acronyms you can come up with is not a word. They will argue that times have changed and texting is the new way of life and computers and the internet is the way of the future. Now I can remember life before people expected us to be available 24/7.  When we referred to the bathroom as the library because it was when most used this time as a great way to read while nature took its course.  Now with 10 dogs this will never happen at my house they all think they need to be in there with you.  If you lock them out they just scratch till you go crazy. So I leave the door ajar and they run in and out till I am crazy the whole time jumping in my lap, for the love of GAWD one of these days one of them are going right in. This behavior does cause one to make things quick, so no time to read or relax, fending off jumping dogs does not allow for anything other than hurry.

I look back two years ago when the 5^th grade teacher told me that my daughter will not learn to cursive write because it is assumed they learned it much earlier in their education, and the fact be known schools were thinking of dropping cursive writing from the curriculum that is taught in schools because no one will need it.  Everyone Texted or typed so they won’t ever need to. Now I was in shock to say the least.  But most of all this statement made me take a look at what my kids are really learning.  Now they cannot read a clock unless it is digital.  They complain that they need to use my cell phone because if they need to call me there are no pay phones, I cannot confirm this but the fact they said it took me by surprise. Wow 25 years ago the first cell phones where coming out. How did we live through those times of no cell phones.  I bought them watches in hopes that they could learn to tell time on a regular clock. The older ones say why do they need to, the cell phones have the time on them.  The younger ones only care what time it is when they need to leave the house at a certain time.  So they just use the remote for the TV, push select on the remote and it will display the time on the screen.  Now that little action happens at least 5 times in the morning alone. Wow as I type this I just done the math and no wonder I have to buy new batteries every month.

 The constant stimulation the kids today live with or can’t live without amazes me.  I find that I look for times of quite with the only sounds being made. are from nature.  The kids sit in front of the TV with MP3 player plugged into one ear and working on the computer. The cell phone at ready or the iPod in one hand texting someone and the other hand posting someone on face book.  I cannot stand in the checkout lane at the market in peace without listening to some stranger’s phone conversation. We get in the car and the kids go right for the radio before I can start it.  If we are traveling they all have the DVD players MP3’s and iPods and less we forget the cell phone.  I can drive for hundreds of mile literally hours without anything but my thoughts to entertain me.  The kids have a hard time getting through a 10 minute ride to the market.

Last week one of the kids told me they could not figure out percentages without the calculator.  Heaven forbid if we have a cataclysmic disaster and there was a brown/black out these kids won’t be able to survive.  I think this all started out so subtle that we didn’t even know how dependent we had become on all this technology. I have totally fallen in the technology pit as it has now become apparent that I am getting as bad as them, when I am sitting here texting the kids sitting just above my head.

Convict calls

Where I work has undergone some major changes in the last 5 year. We grew so fast that we had to just rent warehousing space to keep us going with a plan in the works to build a new facility to house all of us under one roof.  We out grew the space before the building was finished.  Now in the old facility I had my own office on the dock had heat and air lots of space.  They bought a big parcel of land with a huge warehouse on it with the plans to extend out from the warehouse with manufacturing space. I was then moved out to the new warehouse so they could us my area to make more manufacturing space till we could all move into the new building.  The new warehouse did not have an office so my desk was put up front in the offices up there.  I use a bicycle to get back and forth to my receiving area and my office.  One day my boss says I should be closer to my team members and the receiving area and moved my desk out next to the dock door no heat no air no walls.  After much complaining about the noise and adverse weather conditions that kept me mummified in the winter and sweat drenched in summer. He built me an office and said I would share with three of my fellow co-workers, not a problem. The office was built between two dock doors with 5 big windows a door and no roof.  Well we were told that the new building was going to have the latest technology and we were going green, just think how nice it will be. I waited through the construction of the new building along with its noise, dust dirt and adverse weather conditions to find out that none of the new facility was going to do anything for me.  They threw out the old furniture everyone got new to match with the décor we got the hand me down stuff to pick through and furnish the office with no roof, no air and no heat. The three of us grew to love that office we were hidden away from everyone no one came out to the warehouse leaving the climate controlled space they all now had.  Everyone was put in cubicles, gone were the days of individual offices.  For about four years we’ve been in that little office until This past Monday we were move again this time they are remodeling the warehouse offices and we are being moved to a new office with a trucker’s door and new entry way for them. We are in some old cubs that were in the old facility out in the middle of the warehouse all of us awaiting our new digs.  We’re thinking a couple of months but have now heard some of the contractors saying 4 or more.  I could complain for days but just know it is not a place any of us wants to be.  The cubs are two panel sides with one tinted window between the two rows of us.  My co-works and I cannot communicate over the cube because of the noise level that surrounds us. Forklifts honking the sounds of machinery and a Ginormous heater that is right by us, keeps the noise decimal pretty high.  So we have reverted to calling each other several times a day rather than try yelling over the cube or running around it.  So the other day my co-worker and I are looking through the tinted glass make silly had jesters and talking on the phone with each other, when a team member walks by and stops, just looking at us. As we hung up and looked at him he said are you making convict calls. This comment took us both by surprise and sent us into a bought of laughter that drew attention from others in the two rows of cubes.   We now look at each other through the glass and just pick up the phone and call like the convicts on TV.  So the other night we are watching an episode of a crime drama on TV when there’s a scene with the window phone from a prison and I said to the girls “ This is what Mom and Julie do at work” and one of the girls reply “Do you and Julie go to jail too.  Just kidding it’s a joke…. Ya! Like I can explain that one.

Be careful what you ask for...

I was raised back in the day when women wore their badge of honor on the cloths line for all to see.  We scrubbed all those whites till they shined.  And don’t even think of hanging cloths out to dry if they were dull, grey, or just plain not bright and white.  We were taught that white socks that got black from no shoes or dirty shoes, you did not wash them with the other whites as the dirt would spread to the white cloths and sheets making them dull.  Socks where washed in a tub of soapy bleach water and scrubbed on the board twice.  Now I am sure this seems a little over the top, but back in the day my Mom was so proud of her laundry and we could not bring shame to the laundry that hung out for the world and neighbors to see.  I had this engrained into my head,  now that I don’t hang things out nor do I wash the sock separate from other whites I still need to have all my whites, White.  So letting kids do the laundry is scary to me, because most of my clothes are older than them.  I go shopping one time a year and try to extend that to every two or three years.  I would rather have open heart surgery than go shopping, so I do all the laundry so no one messes up any of my cloths. 

My mornings are the same, put dogs out, use the facilities take cloths out of washer put them in dryer.  Put another load in washer then let dogs in, make coffee and unload dishwasher while waiting on coffee and toast.  So far I have been able to keep up with the laundry but now with 6 full time people and 1 part time person in the house I have not been able to catch up with the laundry and I am getting swallowed up in it.  My laundry room is almost as big as my old house so room is not a problem it’s the mountain of laundry that finds its way to basement.  I started doing two loads a day and it seems to be getting worse not better.   I only wash the cloths I do not put them in the laundry room nor do I take them out.  After they are done I fold them and put them on this big table in the laundry room. The girls have to come down sort through them and get theirs, of course if it’s not their cloths they just heap them in another pile till the next girl come down and she will again sort through the pile and move the other cloths to another pile as she sorts.  The cloths on the table go from a neat pile to a heap of moving waded up bundle of unrecognizable cloth.  Yelling does not faze them or any of the other things I could think of to correct this problem.  They are always complaining about something missing.  My answer is you bring it in here you take it out, I only wash them.  Now I find that the moving pile on the table will disappear every now and again when the law is laid out, no one leaves this house till all the clean clothes are taken to your rooms. This is the time when the, I can’t find my stuff, starts.  They all wear each other’s cloth’s, they call it shopping, in someone else’s room. Even on trips they shop in each other’s suitcase.  I have no idea whose cloths are whose.  I tell them don’t take single socks only take them in pairs so we can find lost socks.  This works now I have a basket full of lonely socks and no one knows whose sock belong to who, so many of the pairs of socks just keep moving around the table in the moving heap till the heap disappears, so all can go on their marry ways.  Now it’s easier to have mom buy new socks instead of looking for the lost ones or checking out each other’s rooms.  We now have a new rule you will all go bare foot before I buy any more socks.     I have to admit we need to be careful what we ask for, because we just might get it.    I now have a basket full of sock to match the basket of lonely ones.  Now as they cleaned their rooms looking for said socks they found a lot of other cloths that have been under things, in things, behind things and we now don’t know if they’re dirty or not so it all goes to the basement all 5 rooms of the stuff.  The mountain of dirty cloths is now as big as Everest. 

Thursday we had snow storm 8 plus inches then it rained all weekend now I have 4 inches of water in the laundry room and Mt Everest in the middle of it all.  So much for white cloths being white now, the bleeding going on in that pile, will take more than a surgeon to stop it.  But they found the socks.

Senior Damn Dogs are the Damnest.....

My Archie does not follow the typical mold of an Older dog.  He mostly goes about his day under the radar he does not interact with the other dogs he likes to hang out in my favorite chair in my room that he claimed years ago along with my down comforter, the later I have taken back.  He only wants what he wants he goes around with out any sense of fear, pain, or care of  his surroundings in any way.  He acts as if he can not hear and his one eye is cloudy but I know he sees just fine or he has a hell of a nose. They say, when one of the senses is lost the others get stronger, Now his nose is the only thing left so I am sure he can smell a fly, fart across the room. Archie, being my first Chinese Crested is the one that started my love affair with the breed.  I have always looked as his eccentricity as an interesting new twist to my life. He gets into everything and all we have to do is leave the room. He tattles on one of my other dogs to get his chair back. He hikes his right leg, takes a few steps and twist a little to the other side, and hikes his left leg.  He does it with such ease that it looks choreographed. Now as I am yelling, put that leg down! he moves on to his next mark and he is hiking one leg or the other before I can clean the first spot. As I am trying to keep one step a head of him I am actually a mile behind.  Most days, I don't think  he is at home, when I look at him. Till he finds his next attraction that makes me think his cunning has been honed over the years to a fine tuned art.  I think I have found a means of containing his cunning ways to only find out I am few days late of that cunning maturity and he has gotten even better than last. I love this dog to death, he has been the center of many laughs and many headaches over the years. He has always been the alpha dog but will shared that spot with other of my own pack.  My pack has stayed strong, till as of late, I have noticed he has just walked away from his position and gone about things in his own way, not completely aware of his surroundings or not caring about his surrounding.  He has become the epitome of a dawdling old man. No offense to my male readers. I make my assumptions from my grandfathers.   Today's latest adventure left me feeling like I wanted to take him out. Seriously, take him out. I have spent over an hour cleaning up after the old boy and my frustration has hit all new levels.  I have now felt the need to write as it takes the edge off, and my edge being as sharp as it has ever been, I thought it better than Taking him out.  I look back at some of his antics and can laugh now.  I would like to share some of them with you. Enjoy a bit of my Archie.

 http://youtu.be/mrkHyD-3fyQ