You're not the only one with mixed emotions...

Murphy's Law typically states, "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."  

Muphry's Law, in comparison, tells us that "If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written."

Other proven yet relatively insignificant facts: the day we leave to go out of town, a property will come up for sale that meets our criteria and we will miss out on it because we will be out of town. This happened last month when we went to the Black Hills, and also last week when we went to Memphis.,

Oh, well.  The hubby and I both have a strong conviction that if it doesn't happen, it wasn't meant to be.  In regards to lots of things, but I'm primarily speaking about the house-hunting thing here.  So when we get that call (figuratively speaking) two hours before our scheduled appointment, letting us know the showing has been cancelled because the sellers accepted another offer, that means it wasn't meant to be. We don't know why, but it wasn't.  Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die.

We looked at two houses this week.  One of them was, well, it looked better online than it did in person.  Although it was mighty interesting in person as well.  I've learned something about myself on this house search -- I want to live in an interesting house.  I discovered this when I was trying to describe to a friend why I wasn't enthused about a particular house that looked good "on paper" but I just wasn't really excited about the possibility of making an offer on -- it was just a boring house.  I don't want to live in a boring house for the rest of my life.  Or ever.  

I think that's my problem with apartments, too.  I've only lived in one apartment in my life (not counting the one we lived in temporarily in Illinois when I was pregnant with Stone, because Peder needed a place to live while working and house-hunting and I still lived and worked in St. Paul) and the layout was exactly the same as every other apartment in the building. And it was boring. You just can't get creative with three rooms.  Here's the living room, here's the kitchen/dining room, here's the bedroom.  Wow! So exciting.  But I knew I wouldn't be living there forever and it was only $385 per month (which was still a good portion of my income back in 1994...) so, whatever. I like houses with character.

The first house we looked at this week definitely had character. It definitely needed some interior updating (of the decorating type) but for most of the showing we were like -- OK, we could work with this.  Then we got to the basement. Not the interesting finished basement with the wood paneling and brick fireplace that had a Very Brady feel, but the cave basement like the one we have.  It was a lot like our current basement. In fact, it was a lot like our current basement was during the Flood of 2020.  (Side note: we have since installed a sump pump in our basement and it has remained dry, never mind the fact that we are in a drought...) OK, slight exaggeration.  But it did have a nice water feature that wasn't advertised.  I was bummed, because that was a Definite No.  It was about that time I admitted to myself that I'd been ignoring the smell of mold that permeated the house.  Denial ain't just a river!

But the second house we looked at...I don't want to say much about it yet because we're making an offer on it and I don't want to jinx anything.  Because even though I do believe in faith and destiny, I'm also still very superstitious about certain things.  And I also tend to get my hopes up very easily and even though I'm telling myself right now that I'll be alright if this doesn't go through, I know I'll be bummed.  Anyway...keep your fingers crossed for us if you would, please, okay?  At one point in my life I would've been like, oh my gosh I am going to just DIE if we don't get this house!! But right now I'm like, I would love to get this house and I really hope we get it but if we don't...we'll keep looking.  I won't die. Life will go on.  

Fingers. Crossed.  

There is at least one other offer on it already. The sellers are reviewing the offers on Monday morning.  

Anyway, so we went to Memphis last week. Graceland was even more amazing than I thought it would be!  We also went to Tupelo, which is where Elvis was born, and saw his birthplace. As in the actual home where he was born.  But if you're FB friends with me, you've seen all the pics already -- or you have access to the pics, anyway.  I have to say, one of the coolest things EVER for me was when we were touring Sun Studios (where Elvis got his start, but also the site of so many other cool things) in the very same recording studio where Elvis recorded "That's Alright," and the tour guide played the actual song...y'all, I got goosebumps and watery eyes.  It was the most incredible experience.  To be in the very same room where that song was recorded, and to be listening to it... I was so geeked out after that!  OK, I was geeked out the day before that when we toured Graceland, because we had the VIP tour so we got to see his cars and motorcycles and all kinds of cool stuff.  We were there for about six hours.  

Alright, I just got word that our realtor sent some papers over for us to look at and approve. AAAHHHHH!  Here we go on a ride I thought I'd never be taking again. Wish us luck!

Insert witty title here.

 So many things, I don't even know where to start!

I'm an emotional wreck lately.  I'm also almost out of phentermine so have been cutting my dose back to make it last longer, I wonder if that has anything to do with it?  I have to see my doctor before she'll renew my prescription, and every time I think of that, it's a time like right now when I can't exactly call and make an appointment because it's Saturday afternoon and their office is closed.  Hold on, I'm going to set a reminder on my phone for Monday at 8am so I remember to call and make that appointment. BRB

There. That's done.  Ok, so, yeah.  I'm spiraling downward again, and I can blame it on a few different things:

1. My birthday is on Friday.  Yay!  I don't want to be "older" anymore.  I know, I know; "it's better than the alternative," and honestly I'm not really one of those people who is all anti-birthday (because honestly I'm one of those people who is all about having a day about ME, ha ha ha).  I just get emotional thinking about everyone getting older.  Mostly my parents.

But on a good note, our anniversary is also on Friday!  Yep, that's right, kids; in case you didn't already know, my hubby and I share the same birthday (same year, too) and we got married on that day, on our 22nd birthdays.  This isn't just any old anniversary, though; this year will be our 25th anniversary!  WOO-HOO!!  Take that, all you losers who said we wouldn't make it.  

Actually, I'm only aware of one loser who said we wouldn't make it: my hubby's ex-girlfriend.  😂  If there were others who shared that sentiment, I don't know who they were, and I don't really care anymore because, like I said...twenty-five years, bitches.  

2. The one-year anniversary of Luger's death is next Saturday.  I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!!!  Max is doing well but he turned 9 at the beginning of the summer and is obviously not a young dog anymore.  That makes me sad.

Alright. I'll quit making a list.  I'm just frustrated lately.  It seems like every time we find a house we like, the sellers accept an offer on it literally hours before we are scheduled to see it.  I know I've written about this before, and it's only happened one more time since then, but it is so very heart-breaking.  There was this house that's been on my list since the beginning of the summer that we finally decided to go look at, and I was looking forward to it but was just waiting all day for that message to come through saying our showing was cancelled.  I didn't see any messages, so I left work "on time" (which is another story) and got home and one of the first things I said to my hubby was some joke along the lines of how funny it was that we didn't get a message from our realtor yet saying the showing was cancelled.

The hubby just looked at me and didn't laugh or smile and said, "Didn't you get his message?"

I was like -- "ARE YOU F***ING KIDDING ME?!?" only I said the real "f" word, because I'm super classy like that 😇.  Checked my phone and, sure enough, there was the message that came through at about 1:30pm that day saying that a contingent offer had been accepted on the house the day prior BUT we were still welcome to tour it in case the contingency stipulation fell through.  So we went ahead and toured it anyway, which was painful because I liked the place more than I thought I would and more than I wanted to given that it's unlikely we'll get a chance to make an offer.

It just seems like everything that comes up for sale lately is either 100-200k more than we want to pay, or the house needs too much work.  And it's frustrating because when I look at places that have sold in the last 6-12 months, there are places that meet the Trifecta of Happiness but we weren't looking at that time.  I don't understand it.  Even the place we looked at this week...on the county website, it is appraised at HALF of what they are asking for it.  Where do people come up with these asking prices?!?  Alright, I'll quit now. We'll find our place.  I have faith! 

Another frustration is work.  I don't know what to do about it. Our office is moving to a new building about 10-15 minutes farther away from where we currently are, and I have this fear that I'm going to hate the drive.  I know it's only 15 minutes farther, but that's an extra 30 minutes of my day in the car.  And we're planning on moving soon, most likely farther away from the cities, which will add even more time to my commute.  I still get to work from home about half the time (depending on the week), but who knows how long that will last.  I'm trying not to worry too much about it until there's something to worry about, but I do need to be prepared.  The big move is less than a month away now.  I love my job!  To be honest, I have looked at other options, like remote jobs, but I don't think I could leave my job.  I love my patients.  I enjoy working with the providers I work with.  I feel like this is where I belong, making connections with real people whom I get to see in person occasionally and focusing on one specialty.  I don't know; we'll see.  I will know if/when the time is right, and it's not.  It's tough right now because our department is short-staffed and some of our providers who have been there from the beginning have recently left or retired....I won't go into all the details but it's just a very busy time regardless of COVID and we are all feeling it. And it's not going to be over for a while.  But that's the nature of nursing, isn't it?!

Sigh.

There have been some really good things going on, too, and for those I am incredibly grateful!

I got to spend a couple of days with my in-laws -- I know you're thinking that should go under the "frustrating" part, ha ha, but it was actually a really fun time.  Our niece (my hubby's brother's daughter) is getting married in October so we aunts on this branch of the family tree had a shower for her earlier this month, and I helped my sister-in-laws (or should that be sisters-in-law?) with the shower.  If you really know me, you know that I'm super shy and not the kind of person to jump in and say, Yes! I will help plan a party! because I'm just not a party-planning kind of person. So I surprised even myself when I did just that.  Well, my SIL sent out an email asking for help picking up some of the items and I offered to help set up etc. as well. I'm so glad I did! It was nice to just spend some time with them (my husband's sisters).  I have a horrible relationship with my own sister, so maybe part of that was just craving a sisterly relationship.  Regardless, it was a highlight for me, and the shower turned out wonderfully, and I wish I could spend more time with my husband's sisters and am so thankful that they treat me like one of the family.  

We got the camper back!  This actually happened the day of the bridal shower, which was a Saturday. I was bummed because I wanted to go with to pick it up -- we were going to make a camping trip out of it!  Alas, that did not happen.  The hubby ended up getting up at the butt-crack of dawn and driving solo across the entire state of Wisconsin in order to get to the shop before they closed at noon (and not be the guy who rolls in at 11:58am).  He waffled about whether to drive back the same day, or get a campsite for the night, and ultimately decided to come back the same day.  It's about a 5.5 hour drive one-way, for perspective, but he got it done and we got the camper back, and (since I know you're dying to know this!) he stopped at the nearest dumping station ASAP and emptied the black and grey tanks and amazingly, no permanent damage has been done!  WHEW.  So relieved! You don't even want to know what I was imagining...

Anywho, so since we got the camper back just about 11 days before our vacation to the Black Hills, the hubby was able to call and cancel our hotel reservations and re-make campground reservations instead.  Not the same campground reservations as we'd originally had, but that didn't matter; what did matter is that we were going to be camping in the Black Hills and all was again right with the world! 

We just got back from that trip earlier this week. It was amazing!  Although, I'm not going to say "I told you so!" but when the hubby said we were going to drive from home to Hill City in one day, even though I told him that my Dad would always make it a 2-day trip when we went out there... well, I did try a couple of times to convince him otherwise.  However, he made an excellent point: we only had 5 days for our trip.  Besides, the last time I was there was 30 years ago, so maybe I was just remembering it differently.  And, unlike when we drove out there when I was a kid, there are TWO drivers, so we could share the driving and it wouldn't be so bad, right?

We made it in one day.  It was a long day, and we ended up leaving a day earlier than we'd planned because we didn't want to spend the last day driving 12 hours again, but we still had a great time and did all the things we wanted to do this time.  :)  Like I said above, my family used to go out there every year when I was little, but I hadn't been there in about 30 years.  In a way, it felt like I was going home after a very long absence.  I was kind of leery of taking this trip at first, kind of afraid that the hubby wouldn't like it after all the hype from my parents (who absolutely LOVE the Black Hills) and afraid that it wouldn't be as cool now as it was in my memories.  But I needn't have worried.  He enjoyed it very much, and I found it all -- the history, the scenery, and especially the wildlife -- even more interesting than I ever did as a kid.  Of course, I found the touristy crap even more hokey, too... but the scenery more than made up for that.  I was kind of sad that there were no Indians with horses standing on the corner of the touristy little Wild West towns; I don't know if they're not there anymore because tourist season is winding down, or because of COVID, or for liability reasons, or what, but I did love going through those towns and seeing the horses and the hokey little horse-drawn wagons pulling tourists down the street, when I was little.

ANYWAY...so we got back from that, with no major issues with the camper!  There are always minor issues with the camper.  There is some kind of black thin fabric underneath it, I don't know what it's purpose is, but it has been falling off probably since the first trip out.  We stopped at one gas station and a whole big section of this fabric was literally hanging on by a thread under the camper.  Also, some of the trim around one of the wheel wells came off.  Just driving it.  But nothing major.  When we bought our camper, even the salesperson said that this brand is known for churning these campers out as quickly as possible and cutting corners in order to do so, so honestly, we know they're not the highest quality out there.  "You get what you pay for," right?  And we got a great deal on this camper.  :) I love our camper, but it's got quality issues.  Little, annoying things so far *knock on wood*.  But it doesn't leak and it pulls straight, and it's fun.  We're getting our money's worth out of it, and we know it's not going to last forever, and we know it's not going to be our last camper.  But we had to upgrade from the Shasta Friendship 16, because we're old (haha) and enjoy the finer things in life, such as real mattresses and indoor plumbing.  

We're going on another vacation this week.  So weird, we just got back and now we're going again, and it's not even work-related!  We're not camping this time, bummer.  We're flying to Memphis for the long weekend (and to celebrate our birthaversaries).  Not sure what we'll do there, other than tour Graceland.  I guess we'll see!  I'm not looking forward to flying at all.  Airplanes are too germy, and I felt that way even before COVID.  After we went to Hawaii, I was so sick afterward -- I had strep and bronchitis and if you know me and my man-cold self, I felt like I was on my deathbed.  From being in a stupid germy tin can for 12 hours.  Ever since then, being in airplanes gives me the heebie-jeebies, imagining all that recirculated (GERMY!) air going around and around for hours and hours.  At least this time, we'll have masks.  

The other rotten thing that's happened lately that I really don't want to talk about yet because I WILL start to cry is that my BFF moved to the other side of the country.  I've known for a few years that this was coming, eventually, but it was one of those things that just suddenly hit me at once because I was like, it's not like she's dropping off the face of the planet and I'll never get to talk to her again; we mostly text and message each other anyway (because I don't do phone calls), so it'll still be like that, we'll just be farther away and won't be able to have spontaneous trips to Hobby Lobby or the casino.  But now that it's actually happened, I don't want to talk about it right now. 

On that note, oh! One other good thing that's happened lately. I've been losing weight :D again :D :D and am almost back down under 200!  I was hoping to be under 200 by my birthday...which is, when? Weren't you paying attention?? I've only mentioned it like twice already!!  UGH.  It's like no one even reads anything I write.  That's OK, I write for myself more than anything, anyway.  I was hoping to be under 200 by my birthday, and it's going to be close but I don't think I'll make it.  But I think it's a noticeable difference since the beginning of the year, and even if other people don't notice it, clothes that were once snug on me are now loose-fitting, and I can see parts of my kneecaps that used to be encased in fatty-fat-fat, and my elbows have points again, and my shoes are almost too big again, and I think I'm down at least one chin.  I don't know for sure how much I've lost because my scale at home is a piece of crap and isn't very accurate, but by the scale at work I've lost 20 pounds since the beginning of summer.  Go, me!  I'm not done yet, I have a lot more to lose.  And this time I am going to keep it off!!

Alright, that's all I have for now.  TTYL!

Changes aren't permanent...

...but change is!!

Remember when we were in school, and got to the ages where we started signing things for our friends before school was out for the summer? I think it started around 5th or 6th grade when we'd hand out the little wallet-sized prints of our school pictures to our friends and classmates, and we'd write cute little messages on the back and stuff.  I'm sure that practice is long obsolete thanks to digital photos, smartphones, and social media, but back then, sharing school pics was a vital tool in documenting our year, before we had yearbooks.  

*blows dust off rocking chair*

And back when I was in school, we didn't get yearbooks until the 7th grade, which was known as "junior high school".  And they were paperback, not hardcover.  And our junior high school was only two grades, 7th and 8th.  Before that, we were in elementary school, and after that, we were in high school.  It was a simpler time.  We didn't need to be told we were in the middle; we already knew.

😄😄😄

If we wanted to have "yearbooks" before 7th grade, we might've taken what was left of a notebook and had our friends sign it.  Of course, we'd tear out the pages of actual, like, notes and stuff, first.  Maybe we'd even go buy a brand new, cute notebook for the occasion, but likely not because school supplies were expensive during the off-season.  Maybe we'd use a folder or our Trapper Keeper or something other than a notebook for our friends to sign, instead.  Regardless, no matter what it was we were signing, or when, someone would undoubtedly write: "Stay as sweet as you are!"

Gag me with a spoon! :P

There were other variations: Stay as nice as you are, stay as smart as you are, Stay as cute as you are, Stay just the way you are, but the sentiment was the same: don't ever change.  In fact, those words were used sometimes, too: "Don't ever change!"  At the time, that seemed like such a nice thing to say.  But now?  WTAF!?  Why would you tell me not to change?!  What made you think I wanted to be a quiet, nerdy, shy little pipsqueak rule-following teacher's pet with crippling social anxiety who was afraid to stand up for herself for the rest of her life?!?

Sorry, then-friends.  I did not stay as sweet as I was.  Life happened, as it does to the best of us.  I didn't stay as smart, either; I got SMARTER! Ha, ha, ha.  Alright, whatever.  This is not what I intended to sit down and write about.

The house hunt continues.  I need to come up with a better name for it than "the house hunt".  Something will come to me soon.  It's kind of scary: as I write this, sitting just out of arm's reach is a stack of paperwork that declares our intentions to make our little home sweet home the property of someone else.  This place where we've lived for the last 17 years, that up until recently I thought was going to be our home forever.  I'm not going to lie and say that moving from here has ever been an easy decision, and we're only in the very beginning processes!  But taking these first few steps to make it REAL are making it seem, you know...real.  So real that it's making me teary-eyed while typing this.  Dammit!  This isn't even the hard part yet.  The hard part will be packing up our things and leaving one day.

I don't think I've mentioned yet that my workplace is also moving, very soon.  In about a month, to be exact.  From downtown St. Paul, to Roseville.  From the 2nd floor of a 5-floor medical specialty building on the campus of a busy medical area (seriously -- 2 hospitals and 3 medical specialty buildings (maybe more, I'm too lazy to actually count them all right now) in a busy metro location, to the first floor of a 2-floor suburban-like brand new medical building, surrounded by mostly retail and chain restaurants.  It will be interesting, but truth be told, I'm scared as hell.  Change is scary.  When we moved from the city out here to a small town, I was scared that we would hate it once we actually got here.  When I left the hospital for my current job, I was scared that I would hate it once I actually got there.  So you can guess how I'm feeling about the upcoming clinic move.  It's a longer drive for me.  A different work environment.  It'll be like starting a new job, except we'll all be starting a new job at once.  And I won't have my own office anymore, pout.  I mean, it'll still be the same job, with the same people and the same patients.  Just a different place.  It'll be fine.  But it's change. 

Speaking of change...I was going to share a few more things that other people should know (if they don't already) about house hunting that I've learned recently, mm-kay?

1. If the basement is semi-finished, but has recently had the carpet pulled up and the drywall removed, it probably flooded.

2. Likewise, if the drywall on the basement walls is missing the bottom half, it probably flooded.

3. When looking at online listings, cross-reference everything.  If you find something you like on a site like Zillow, go to the originating site to double-check the status.

4. Do NOT, under any circumstances, get your hopes up about anything, ever.

5. And if you're buying a house from your parents, try not to talk about all the changes you plan to make as soon as your parents move out because it might make your mom sad because she's a sap like that sometimes, ok Stone?.

And one more topic change, because I seem to be typing awfully fast today, we FINALLY got our camper back!  I don't think I wrote about that in here, did I?  *pause for review* Egads, I did NOT!  Well, sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip...

Road America 2021.  Yee-HAW!!  4th of July weekend! Road America is this awesome racetrack located here in our very own state of residence where, long story short, the NASCAR Cup Series returned to race this year after a looooong absence (crap, I can't remember how long now! 58 years? 59 years?) and we were there!  We went to Road America (or RA for short) last year for the first time for the NASCAR, um, "other" series (alright, it's the Xfinity Cup Series but I still want to call it the Busch Series even though it's been the Xfinity Cup Series for most of my adult life) and had the time of our lives.  RA has kick-ass campground facilities as well as being a truly unique place to watch a race, and before the race was even over last year we'd decided we had to return again.  So when we found out shortly afterward that the Cup Series was returning this year, there wasn't even a question as to whether we would go or not.  We love us some NASCAR, and we love us some camping, so BAM!  Bring it on!

And so, RA brought it, and we brought it, too.  We packed it all up in our trusty little Forest River Wildwood X-Lite camper and our trusty little Chevy Silverado crew cab pickup, and headed east. Road America or BUST!!  (I so wanted to write that on the camper windows.  I can turn into a crazy NASCAR fan on a dime. You wouldn't believe it. And no alcohol is involved!!)  

As you do when travelling whilst pulling a camper (or any trailer, really), whenever you stop for gas, or "rest", or anything in between, you get out and check everything to make sure it looks good.  You make sure everything is still attached and nothing is falling apart, that the doors are still closed and the tires are still inflated, etc. etc.  I've been doing this since I was little.  I don't always know what I'm looking for, lol, but sometimes I know when things don't look "right".  Kind of like when I open up the hood and look at a car's engine compartment.  But, I digress.

Everything looked fine the whole way there.  The trip was uneventful, but long.  5 hours or so.  We finally got there, and waited in line to get in (which wasn't too bad), and the hubby got the camper backed into our spot (which also wasn't too bad, says the person who can't back a trailer to save her life) and it was when we were getting the camper settled and leveled that I noticed It.  One of the wheels on the left side. The hub cap was missing and it looked...wrong.  Again, I couldn't say exactly what was wrong with it, but I knew it was wrong, and the fact that it's got dual axles so it was literally right next to a completely normal wheel helped proved my point: it looked very wrong.  So I called my hubby over to show him.

The fact that he didn't say anything at first scared me.  "Is that bad?" I asked.

It was probably a good thing I couldn't see his face.  "Yep."

"How bad?"  

I don't remember if he didn't answer, or just didn't answer soon enough for me.

"Are we stuck here?"

"Yep."

And that, boys and girls, was the official Beginning of the Story.  

To sum the rest of it up, it turned out that we lost the wheel bearing and were very blessed that we didn't lose the tire!  And the last time we had stopped and checked everything was about 20 minutes away from the campground, so....WHEW! God was watching out for us!!

There are a few side stories to this.  The camper is still under warranty, so the hubby called that day (mind you, this was the Thursday before the 4th of July weekend) and the nice lady he talked to made arrangements for a tow truck to pick up the camper on Monday and take it to a local dealership to be repaired.  No problem, we could either stick around and wait for it, or come back the next weekend and get it, depending on how long it would take.  Not ideal, but not the worst thing to happen. Frustrating, yes, but we were there to have fun so we were going to have fun!! (Eventually!)

So, Monday morning came around, and when the tow truck driver called to confirm they were coming, they said that they weren't sure they could tow a camper.  They thought we had a motorhome, not a travel trailer.  They'd call back and let us know.  In the meantime, hubby tried calling the dealership where we were supposed to be taking the camper to confirm that they knew we were coming.  At first there was no answer, but it was also just before 8am -- still, we weren't sure if they were open or not, since it was the Monday after 4th of July and a lot of places were observing the holiday that day.  After some tense moments, hubby confirmed that no, the dealership was NOT expecting us; and oh yeah, by the way, they also did not service travel trailers, anyway.  Nice!  So, while waiting for a call back from the tow truck people, the hubby found a local RV repair shop and confirmed that they could take a look at our camper. Sometime that week.  In the meantime, the tow truck people called and said they were sending out a different truck.  

The other truck got there, and instead of being a flatbed truck like we'd thought, it was just a service van. Turns out, the guy just kind of chocked up the bad wheel so we could still tow the camper, and we limped it along like that to the shop.  But wait! We went to the wrong shop at first.  Because the place had two locations.  One is the showroom and parts center, and one is the shop.  The website wasn't totally clear on that.  Since the number we called was the showroom and parts center, that's where we went.  The shop was another half hour away.  Fun, fun, fun!

We FINALLY got the camper to the shop and dropped it off.  And headed home without it.  Later that week, the hubby got a call letting us know that they'd need to replace the whole frickin' axle.  Apparently, it got so hot that the axle welded to the wheel (?) and they needed to replace the whole axle.  The hubby said Of course, do it, we're not driving it home the way it is.  They said it would be about 6 weeks to get the axle in stock.  What were we going to say?!  We had no choice.  

The problem was, we were planning on going camping in South Dakota in about six weeks.  Who knew if we'd have the camper back by then? At that rate, it didn't seem likely.  So, we cancelled our camping reservations and changed them to hotel reservations.  I was bummed.  It's just not the same!!  

BUT, and now I really have to wrap this up....last Friday, the hubby got a text that the camper was finished! So he went the next day and picked it up, and was able to cancel the hotel reservations and find a couple of campsites, and South Dakota camping trip is BACK ON!!!  

And here's another thing we learned: you CAN leave the black and grey tanks half-full (or so) for about a month in the summer without being dumped without any permanent damage!!  No solids, though.  Just liquids.  

TTFN!

The Trifecta of Happiness.

Boy oh boy, the things you can learn on the interwebs, I tell you what.  Just now, for instance, in the space of about 0.59 seconds (give or take), I learned that the Trifecta of Happiness is:

• Oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin; and/or
• Good friendships, a lover, and work; and/or
• The body, mind, and soul.

Technical alert: I didn't actually learn all of that in 0.59 seconds.  I wish I could learn that quickly! I should've said that I was able to pull up that information via my favorite search engine in 0.59 seconds.  

It's a curious phenomenon, this idea that things always need to happen in threes.  I tend to roll my eyes when people say things like, "You know things always happen in threes!" because I tend to think that things only happen in threes when people go looking for things to happen in threes.  I have nothing against the number three; it's one of my favorite numbers.  It's an odd number, and it looks like a backward capital E or a sideways M or W; what's not to love?!  I suppose the fact that I was born on the 3rd of the month that is 3 squared has something to do with that, too.  (Alas, I was born in an even year.  BUT, if you add up the numbers in the year I was born until you get a single digit, that single digit will be...wait for it...3! Whoa. I just figured that one out right now.)

And haven't you ever noticed that when giving examples of something, or asked to describe someone or something, people tend to list three things? 

...No? You don't notice this?  It's just me, and it usually sticks out to me due to incorrect or inconsistent comma usage?  Alright then.  Point taken.

Seriously!  Notice it sometime.  Just humor me.

😆😆😆

Alright.  My point being that the house hunt continues, and at times it's frustrating due to the inability to find what I have decided to call the Trifecta of Happiness.  This was before I knew that term was already used for other things, so I thought I was being creative and witty.  Damn internet, stealing the wind out of my sails.  But, I digress, and only have about ten minutes left of my lunch break, so without further ado, I present: The Trifecta of Happiness in House-Hunting:

• The House. Pretty obvious, right? Although I use the term "house-hunting" for lack of a better term -- another technicality call here, because we're not just looking for a house. But that's the rest of the list.  In our search, we are looking for a house that we don't want to tear down and rebuild.  One that is pretty much the way we want it.  Turn-key.  
• The Land.  At least 5 acres, preferably 10 or more, and some of it must be suitable for horses.  Guess we could add "The Location" in here as well, because we don't want to be in town (you'd think that goes without saying, but we found a place that was 10 acres in town...) and we also want to be within driving distance of our jobs and church and families.  And "The Outbuildings" because we'd like some of those, too.  An attached garage would be nice.  A detached garage would be nice, too.  ("As well as", not "instead of".  We have a lot of vehicles.)  We also need, at the very least, a lean-to for the horses and a hay barn.  As always, more is better, but a 12-stall horse barn might be too much.
• The Price.  The amount that the bank is willing to loan us and the amount we are willing to borrow from the bank are two very different numbers, the greater figure being in the bank's favor.  In other words, I'll take it back to one of my favorite sayings: "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."  

So far, we are able to find 2 out of the 3 on a pretty consistent basis.  Which is encouraging, but also frustrating.  There are some great houses in great locations out there that are just a tad out of our price range...or acreage close-by that is affordable but with terrible houses on them...le sigh.  I just gotta keep having faith that we will find our next castle.  :)  It would be nice to take that last bulleted item out of the equation...

C'est la vie.

True story: I'm the funniest person I know.  Are you kidding me? I'm freaking hilarious!  I crack myself up all, the, time.  I'm one of those people who reads my own texts, and laughs out loud.  Literally.  If I didn't have such stage fright, I'd seriously consider trying out as a stand-up comic.  

Alright, alright; maybe I'm not THE funniest person I know.  But I am pretty funny.  Good thing looks don't count for everything!

See? I can't turn it off.  😅

(And I don't really think I could cut it as a stand-up comic.  I couldn't take the rejection and the heckling.)

My joke for this week is: if you have a house for sale and aren't getting any offers on it, let me know!  My hubby and I will show interest in it, and I guarantee that someone else will show up and make an offer on it.  I mean, it's happened three times to us in the last few months now, so, I think it's more than coincidence at this point.

It's kind of funny.  We get a little bit closer every time.  The first time was at the very beginning of when we were trying to decide if we should look at other places or not.  We finally decided to take that leap and look at a place that we liked, and the day we contacted someone to see if we could look at it, we were told an offer had been accepted on it that day.  This place had been on the market (according to the info on the internet) for a good month or so, I don't remember exactly, but it's not like it had just gone up for sale that week or anything.  We laughed at our timing, chalked it up to "it wasn't meant to be," and moved on.

The second time, we actually made it to the showing, and we liked the place, but weren't struck with the "oh my gosh we HAVE to make an offer right now!" bug that day.  There were things we both liked, there were things he liked that I didn't, and things I liked that he didn't, and things we wanted to change, and we went back and forth about it for a good week or so before we agreed we should make an offer on it.  Then, guess what?  That horrible word, "Pending," showed up on the online listing.  At first I was like -- Oh, good.  Someone is getting a really nice home.  And then I went through a stage of, I really hope it falls through because I WANT THAT HOUSE!!  And now I'm back to, Oh, good. Someone is getting a really nice home, but it's not for us.  

This most recent time, I really thought was going to be It.  This is a place that, actually my friend sent the listing to me a few months ago, but it was out of our price range at that time.  Which was unfortunate because it sounded like an awesome place, and I might just be saying that because it was totally set up for horses 😍.  Nevertheless, it stayed on my radar, and recently the price dropped down enough so that it was actually in our price range.  Then, suddenly, the hubby was interested in it.  (OK, I know he might read this, so I will point out that I'm being slightly overdramatic. I mean, he is the realist in our relationship, so naturally it wouldn't have been on his radar until it met all (or most) of the criteria.)  We looked at it, and naturally The Realist was less impressed than The Horsey Girl was.  In his defense, he knows 59,000x's more about what makes a house a "good" house than I do, and apparently also cares more about layout than I do, which is totally fine.  I don't disagree with the points he makes about how a house is laid out or what makes one better than another at all.  There's a reason he's a construction guru and I'm a nurse.  ANYWAY, given a little time and conversation, we both agreed that it was a nice place, though; on paper, it had what we both wanted in a home, and it was a lot more acreage than what we have now, and we were ready to make that jump.  We just wanted one more in-depth showing to check out things we hadn't looked at the first time, and then assuming that all went well we were going to write up an offer.  We had/have a contingent plan for selling the place where we live now.  It just seemed like it was going to happen.  And then?  About three hours before the scheduled showing, our realtor messaged us that the showing was cancelled because the property had been sold.

Talk about a roller coaster of emotions!!  When I read that, I literally said, "Noooo!" out loud.  Luckily, I was in my office at work and I wasn't that loud, and no one really noticed.  Then, I felt a little heartbroken, even though I promised myself I wouldn't feel heartbroken if it fell through at any point. Then, I felt really guilty for feeling heartbroken -- like I was betraying our current home, or something.  I do like our current home.  The house itself needs some work, that's true.  But I love our land and all of our trees.  I was going to be sad to move to a place with hardly any trees and was already trying to figure out where to start planting more trees and when, if we moved to that other place.  

So, that's the way the cookie crumbles. I'm not saying that we're definitely not going to move now.  We're still looking.  Things change from week to week as far as what's available.  The last few weeks have been a whirlwind because it seemed like there were so many great places available that we had a hard time choosing.  This week, I feel like we've learned a lot, maybe raised our standards a bit, and there aren't as many choices.  But that's okay.  It's always changing.  Maybe we'll find a place, maybe we'll end up staying here.  We'll have this place paid off in a few more years, maybe the cost of building materials will be down by then and we can afford to build the house we really want.  You never know what God has in store for us.

On that note, I should get back to work.  TTFN!

Truth be told

 

I love this song! I first heard it the last time I was... well, I'm not sure how to best word this; I wanted to say "in a depressive funk" but that doesn't sound quite right.  "Having a flare-up of my depression" is clinically more accurate, I suppose, and also helps support the fact that depression is an actual disease and not just a state of mind.  "Crashing and burning" would be another accurate description, but that's just me trying to make light of what was a very NOT enlightened period of time.  

You get the point. It was not too many months ago, either.  I heard this song and I wanted to cry. I couldn't, because I was emotionally numb, but I wanted to.  It spoke to me.  

I say I'm fine, yeah I'm fine, oh I'm fine, yes I'm fine,

But I'm not; I'm broken.

And when it's out of control, I say it's under control,

But it's not; and you know it.

I don't know why it's so hard to admit it.

Being honest is the only way to fix it.

There's no failure, no fall, there's no sin you don't already know,

So let the truth be told.

Because, I know, right?!?  That's it, right there. That's how I feel when I'm crashing and burning having a flare-up of my depression.  Why is it so hard to admit that things aren't fine? Why do I feel like my worries and fears aren't worth mentioning?  I would never, ever, ever tell anyone that their concerns weren't valid, so why do I try not to make a big deal out of what lies on my own heart?

Lie number one: you're supposed to have it all together.

I know. I'm an adult now.  I've been one for a while.  I've been married forever (over half my life), I've got an adult child, life is supposed to be my bitch right now.  Right?  

Why'd it get so quiet??

Here, watch a video.

Really, and I do mean this sincerely, I am fine right now.  I've been wanting to share this song for a while.  Mental-health-wise, things are going great!  What a difference medication compliance makes!  Do as I say and not as I do, kids.  😷  Although, the other morning I had a random near-panic-attack and I'm still not sure why.  

I've always had stage fright. Ever since as long as I can remember, even way back in kindergarten, I've been super nervous being up on stage in front of an audience.  Or in front of a class, alone or in a small group.  I would be literally sick and kind of zone out when I had to give reports in school.  Just hearing the words "oral report" would make my stomach drop to the ground.  I don't know how I ever managed to sing duets at choir concerts in high school, or even sing in the choir at all for that matter.  It didn't get much better when I got older and supposedly more confident in myself, either.  When I was barely 18-19ish (or maybe even 17ish, I don't remember anymore), part of my job was training new cashiers at Wards.  I would have classes of like a dozen people and I have to talk to them alllllll night. I don't know how I did that.  

Anyway, in an effort to break out of my comfort zone and get over my stage fright, I decided to start volunteering to lector at church.  I was nervous at first, and was feeling all the usual anxiety and zoning out and everything, but I was also learning how to get over that, and making myself calm down and it was getting easier and I was feeling much more at ease and not afraid of reading in front of groups of people again, when the pandemic hit and we stopped doing in-person church services for a while.  

Well, we started doing in-person church services again recently.  (In the meantime, we'd been doing drive-up church, but that's a different topic!)  And a few weeks ago, started taking volunteers for lectoring again, so I signed up right away.  Last week was my turn again.  It wasn't even my first time this summer doing it.  I don't know what it was exactly, but once I got up there, I suddenly couldn't catch my breath.  There weren't any difficult words in the Scripture I was reading, it wasn't even a long passage, but I felt like I couldn't catch my breath and it was all I could do to keep standing upright and I was sure everyone could hear my voice wavering and cracking.  As soon as I was done, I sat back down and broke out into a sweat. I looked at my pulse on my FitBit and it was about 120.  Which is waaaaay too high!  It was weird.  

Anyway. Welcome to my life.  I better get back to work now.  TTYL!

Be vewy, vewy quiet! I'm hunting...

 

Betcha thought I was gonna say "wabbits", eh?  😊

For one thing -- ew.  My issue with hunting wabbits is dealing with the dead animal afterward.  I don't like dealing with dead animals.  It took me years to be able to handle raw chicken from the grocery store, and it still makes me queasy (sometime I'll tell you about our adventures in raising and butchering our own chickens...).  It's not that I couldn't shoot it -- I'm a crack shot and although I do consider myself an animal lover, I don't find wabbits (or rabbits) particulary endearing. I don't hate them and want them all to die, but out here, they're just kind of...idk...there.  I don't think they're that cute.  If I had a garden, they'd be in it, trying to destroy it, which would annoy me.  My cats like to catch and eat rabbits, and will leave parts of them around for me every now and then (thanks, guys).  We used to have a dog that loved finding rabbit nests, and then playing with the baby bunnies.  And by "playing" I don't mean the cute little Disneyesque image of happy little animals frolicking together in furry woodland creature harmony, I mean Magnum would stick his snout into those nests and flush out the baby bunnies, and then pick them up in the air and toss them around like toys.  Did you know baby bunnies can scream?  I didn't, until Magnum found his first nest of baby bunnies.   Man oh man.

But that's not where I wanted to go with this post.  I've been hunting, alright.  Not wabbits, and not hunting high and low (ha! or should I say, a-ha!).  We have been somewhat half-heartedly house hunting.

How difficult is it to hunt a house? They can't hide very well, they're easy to sneak up on, and they're easy to hit.  Haven't you ever heard the saying about not being able to hit the broad side of a barn? I guess that's a little different, but the concept is similar. 

It's odd, though, because for the first time in our lives, we're in the very odd position of looking at houses when we don't need to move.  Truth be told, I have wanted to write about this for a while, to figure some of these thoughts out, but just haven't felt up to it yet.  (Because the main reason I write is not for your entertainment, believe it or not, but for my own sanity! In which case, I've got a LOT of catching up to do, ba-ha-ha-haaaa).  I suppose one could argue that we technically have never "needed" to move, but one would just be stalling for time by doing so at this point.  Like one is now, by rambling on and picking nits and using all sorts of extraneous filler words and such like that.

The thing is, we do like where we live now. We like the area, we're pretty content with the location of our little plot of land, the way it's set up, our commute times to places like work and church and places of convenience and entertainment, and of course family and friends, and the overall feeling of relative privacy and seclusion we have (except that we live on a 2-lane highway).  The house needs updating, which we knew when we bought it 17 years ago. We had always planned on either fixing up/adding on to the existing house, or building a new house here.  We just keep putting it off and putting it off for various reasons I don't need to list here.  

Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but in the last year or so, the cost of building materials has skyrocketed.  It's insane.  We basically came to the conclusion that it would cost about the same amount of money to buy a new place as it would to build a new house.  So we half-heartedly started looking to see what was out there -- you know, for shits and giggles.  Of course, it's a seller's market right now, which is not the greatest time to be looking to buy a house, but on the flip side, it's a great time to be trying to sell a house.  The ol' conundrum of, if we could get xyz for our house, we'd have xyz more to put toward an even better house!  

I've always enjoyed house hunting.  Which is strange, because I'm not a fan of shopping in general.  Maybe it's because I lived in the same house for 19 years when I was growing up and always craved moving to a different place.  Maybe it's the whole idea of "packing up and starting over" at a certain point.  Whatever the appeal, I don't mind keeping on top of sales ads, hoping to find that perfect deal.  

Which...we have not found yet.  It's been a very interesting search, though.  Every other time we've been looking to buy a house, we've looked for fixer-uppers.  It's hard for me to get out of that mindset, because this time, that's not what we want.  This time, we want a place that's already fixed up.  We want to save ourselves all that time and work, if possible.  I'm not considering things like painting the walls as "fixing up" because that's decorating; I mean things like building the fricking walls.  (And yes, we have looked at places that needed walls built. In the bathroom.  You could've at least shown that picture in the ad...)  

I'm getting a lot better at deciphering real estate ads.  Allow me to share some things I've learned recently, that anyone who is looking for a home OR marketing one for sale might want to keep in mind:

• You have to look for what is NOT pictured.  If the ad says it's a 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom house, make sure all of those are accounted for in the photos.  
• And if there are no photos of the inside of the house whatsoever, be wary.  
• If the description in the ad talks more about how nice the land and the outbuildings are, be wary.  
• It probably goes without saying that staged pictures make a place look much, much better than un-staged pictures do.  (Yes, we all know that homes are lived-in, but we don't really want to see your pile of mail and miscellaneous papers on the table when looking at pictures of places we're considering spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on!)  
• Oh, another thing, the photos should focus more on the house's features and less on the cute decorations inside.  I don't care if you got wine from Vino in the Valley and set it up on a cute little bistro table on the back deck with a pair of wine glasses on a cute white tablecloth, I want to see how big that back deck really is in that photo!  
• Have at least one other person look at the photos. They will catch things you miss.  (Like carpeted walls...true story. I sent an ad to my hubby just this morning, of a place I've looked at online at least six times, and his reaction was "is that a carpeted wall?".  I totally missed it. Six times.)
• There is no such thing as smell-o-vision, but if you think you can smell a photo, you probably can.

That's all I've got for now.  All that being said, I do want to reiterate what I said above about the fact that we do like where we live and would love to stay in this area.  And as we keep reminding each other, when one or the other of us gets our hopes up about the potential of a certain property and then we go tour it and it turns out to not have lived up to our expectations, "There's absolutely nothing wrong with staying right here!"  Moving is a pain in the ass, especially when you have not just a house worth of stuff to move, but also two horses and no horse trailer, several cars (most of which are running and driveable), and two barns worth of stuff, too.  Moving would be as much work as building a damn new house.  But I want central air. LOLOLOL

Later, gators.

Journaling is good for your health. Who knew?!

 

According to this article that I just read, journaling is good for your health, if you're a nurse.  According to this article that I sort of skimmed over, journaling is good for your health, if you have depression and anxiety.  And just for the sake of inclusion, I even found an article that says journaling is good for everyone.  Because on the internet, you can find articles that say just about anything you want, whether you like it or not.  

So in my last entry, you learned that I used to draw. I suppose I still can draw, I just haven't tried for a while. I made the progression from line drawings of horses all facing the same direction to line drawings of cars when I got a little older and my interests changed. Come to think of it, I probably had the tendency to draw the cars facing left, as well.  I mean, that's what you see when you're going to the driver's door, right correct?  Who cares what the passenger side looks like! I can't say for sure, though. My point being, the last time I tried drawing something was probably 5-10 years ago. I was back to horses then, and some dogs, and a few cats.  Facing all sorts of directions ;)  I like to think I got better but who knows?  It's fun, but I find I have the same issue with drawing as I do with coloring: I don't always have the patience to sit there and carefully make thousands of tiny lines that have to be just perfect.  And they DO have to be just perfect.  That's why I've only tried to draw people maybe three times in my life?  If you get one little proportion off, forget about it.  I don't want to be responsible for creating monsters.  Maybe that's why I only have one child (ha! ha! ha!).

Oddly enough, I've never been one to draw in my journals.  I've seen examples of other journals where people make them all cute and scrapbook-like and such, but that's never been my style.  My style has always been freeflow, write whatever is on my mind at that moment and be done, or sort out my thoughts kind of thing.  When I started journaling waaaaaaay back when, I never intended for anyone ever to see anything I ever wrote.  Then again, I was, like, 12 years old or something and I would have oh my gawd just like totally died if I'd have known then that one day I'd be, like, writing a journal and posting it online for, like, everyone to read, or something.

Anyway...working from home today.  I suppose, lunch break is now over and I should get back to work.  TTFN!

It's a cruel, cruel summer...

Not really, I'm just going with the first song that comes to mind, otherwise I'll just sit here wasting precious time trying to think of a title. My lunch break is only so long, you know. (BTW, that's a reference to the Bananarama song.  I didn't think I needed to point that out until I went to find an image and Googled "cruel summer" and learned that it's apparently a show or something?  Hi. I live in a cave where I don't stay on top of what's popular in entertainment.)

And today's photo cred goes to ME, thank you very much.  I purposely put the sun in the corner because when I was little, that's how I drew pictures.  The sun was always in the corner. It was generally more in the corner than this one is, but give me a break, I was literally looking directly at the sun to get this shot.  I risked blindness just to get this shot, so I could make this joke about how I used to draw pictures.  Yellow sun in the corner (usually with a smiley face, and fancy sunbeams, depending on what else was in the pictures), blue sky, and green grass.  This is the foundation of most of my childhood illustrations, in reality, right here.  Too bad there wasn't a square house with a door and a window on the first floor and two windows on the second floor, with a triangle roof and a chimney that always had smoke coming out of it, two REALLY TALL flowers next to it (one tulip and one rose -- or if I was feeling fancy, maybe a daisy too), a dog house, and maybe a car and some people.  

My illustrations improved, eventually.  Once I learned how to draw horses.  Although 99% of the horses I drew were facing left.  (Their right, my left.)  I don't really know why, but that's how it was.  That's the near side, you know.  That's probably why they all faced that way.  When I was little, I read everything I could get my hands on about horses, and since everything I read said the near side was the side horses were supposed to be lead from, I guess it only made sense that I drew them from that perspective.

Crazy. I sat down here having no idea what I was going to ramble about, and now I find myself analyzing drawing habits I developed as an, I don't know, 6-7- 8-year-old? You just never know how my mind will roam.

You know what I've never been good at, though? Coloring.  I just don't have the patience.  I remember one time in kindergarten, we had to color a circle and I had to re-do it because it was too messy.  On one hand, I was horrified because an authority figure was dissatisfied with me; but mostly I was annoyed because I didn't see the point of coloring a circle, and it took so much fricking time to sit and carefully stay inside the lines, and dammit I had better things to do. If they wanted a blue circle, why didn't they just draw it on blue paper and cut it out, instead of drawing it on white paper and coloring it?!  

As a kid, we had coloring books.  Of course we did, everyone did.  I'd find a picture I liked, and start coloring it, and then get bored real quick and go do something else.  I might go back and finish it later, I might not.  I probably didn't.  My Mom probably ended up throwing away lots of coloring books with partially finished pictures on my account.

So I was as surprised as anyone when the "adult" coloring craze hit a few years ago, and I ended up with a few books along the way.  I guess I forgot that I don't have the patience for coloring.  I guess I thought maybe it'd be something to just poke along at, bit by bit, or something to work on when I was on the night shift.  (Yeah, because I had LOTS of patience then!)  I don't know.  I've tried it a few times.  I still don't have the patience or interest to sit down and color a whole picture at once, but I can do a little bit now and then.  I'm more of a doodler.  You should see the pad of paper I keep by my phone.  I can hardly talk on the phone without scribbling on paper.  Usually it's pertinent notes, but if the conversation turns to things I don't need to write down, I'll just doodle.  

Oh, well.  Speaking of taking notes and talking on the phone, I should get back to work.  TTFN!

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

Why can't Christmas be in the summer?  

Let me rephrase that: why couldn't I have been born and raised where Christmas is in the summer?!  I mean, this is perfect weather for it! I think I would have a lot more so-called "Christmas spirit" if Christmas was during this time of year, when it's warmer outside, and the world around us is full of life and green plants growing outside and energy and warmth, and we can have our windows open to let in the warm summer breezes, and people are less likely to be sick, and traveling is generally a lot easier because the weather is a lot less likely to interfere with road conditions, and it's warmer and there are more things to do outside so when people come over, everyone doesn't have to be crammed inside like sardines, and it's warmer outside, and I'm just all-around happier in general.

Or maybe that's just the meds.  Either way, it's 99*F outside right now (with a "real feel" which I believe is the same as a heat index) of 105*F, and I'm sitting in the house with the curtains drawn and the lights off and the fans on and some of the windows open, sipping a diet Coke and enjoying the quiet.  I just finished tidying up the house and I'm in a pretty damn good mood.  My ever-faithful canine companion is resting on the couch on the other side of the room.  My hubby and son are out helping some good friends of ours move.  If not for the fact that my house was way overdue for some attention, I would have gone with.  But I'm not much good for lifting heavy things. Especially in the heat.

I had the house in pretty good shape, which is another good sign that my meds are kicking in again.  When I first started working from home, it was "fun" to spend my breaks cleaning the house, but now when I work from home I spend my breaks working so I can be done sooner, just like I do at work.  (Only I never seem to get done sooner. ha, ha.)  

Today, for the first time ever, I took the dog outside without his leash or collar on. It's funny because when we first moved out here, we had Portia.  Portia was an awesome dog!  She was about 6 when we moved out here, and had lived in the city all her life up until then, but we let her run around off the leash all the time and she always listened to us and never ran into the road.  (We live on a 2-lane highway where the speed limit is 55mph.)  We never worried about her running away, but we were always outside with her when she was outside.  I don't remember if we had a tie-out for her to just go out and use the bathroom or not, once we moved out here.  I know we did in the city, because she could jump fences like no one's business.  She did that twice after we got her, and ran away those two times, too. But came back on her own.  Oh, Portia...what a nut.  

Then we got Magnum. He was about 4 months old when we got him. He was, like, the most easily trainable dog we have EVER had (I blame that on the lab in him, since every other dog we've has been a Boxer and he was half Boxer, half Lab).  We kept him on a tie-out at first until we did some training with him. He did run out into the road once. I remember it clear as day.  We were out in the yard and the hubby got into his car and drove away, and goofball dummy Magnum started running after him.  Right down the driveway and onto the road.  He didn't go far before he turned around and came back like, What?!?  Numbnuts!  Thank God nothing happened (other than me losing my voice from yelling at the dumb dog, I'm sure.)  I think that was the only time.  He was such a people-pleaser.  Never worried about him running away, either.  

And then, we got Luger.  Luger is the reason we have a dog yard with a chain-link fence.  We were told Luger was obedience-trained and that Luger got along with cats.  Those were lies!  Luger had a very strong prey drive and never met a cat he didn't want to kill.  We've pretty much always had cats, too, although we haven't had any indoor cats since we got Luger.  (He killed one of them. I don't want to talk about it.)  I never did trust Luger off-leash.  The only times he was off-leash were when he broke his collar, broke the tie-out, or ran out of the door before we could stop him.  As I said, he had a VERY strong prey drive, and even when he got older and even though he was also a people-pleaser, nothing would get in his way when he saw a cat.  

I take that back -- he was off-leash once when I was on my way home from nursing school clinicals about an hour away, and the boy had come home from school and was letting the dogs out, and absent-mindedly hooked Magnum up to the tie-out instead of Luger and opened the door to let the other dog out (can't blame him...they were both brindle, mistakes happen) and Luger took off like the young, energetic pup he was while Magnum, as I was told, sat there politely and obediently looking at the boy like, "I'm a good dog, right? Right? Right?"  Poor kid.  I remember he called me, sobbing, saying he put the wrong dog on the tie-out and Luger had run away across the road and he couldn't find him.  He felt so bad! I think that was the worst part for me, was how bad the boy felt.  He was just in like 5th grade or so at the time.  Long story short, I found Luger shortly after I got home...in the corn field across the road from our house.  And he had apparently found something long dead and had rolled in it.  And so I picked him up in my beautiful pride and joy, my 2007 Chevy Monte Carlo, and brought him and his rancid-smelling self home, and all was well.  Dogs can be bathed, car interiors can be cleaned, and life goes on.

Here's the thing, though - tie-outs are nice, but they break.  And they get cold, and freeze.  And people like us start to feel bad when the dog can't ever be off the tie-out because that's just not fair. So, one fine day, my awesome hubby and the boy got some chain-link fence and made a dog yard, so all we have to do now to let the dogs out is open the patio door, and bam! They can go outside and have room to run around.

Anyway, since we had that set-up when we got Max, we just never tried him off-leash in the yard.  He doesn't have the prey drive that Luger had (honestly, I've never seen a dog with the prey drive Luger had) and he's also more obedient than Luger was, so I always kinda thought he'd be ok off-leash, but never wanted to try it when Luger was around, because that's not fair.  Yes, I'm one of THOSE dog people, ha ha.  But seriously.  I've testing Max out a few times earlier, we take him out for walks around the yard all the time and I'll drop the leash and see what he does, and he's been fine.  He's good around the cats, he acts like he's going to chase them but when he's close to them he doesn't actually do anything, he just sniffs them.  So earlier this afternoon, I was taking something to the barn, and when I had the door open, Maxwell was standing there looking at me.  And I was like -- what the heck? Let's see what happens.  It's too hot for him to want to stay out there too long, anyway.  

Wanna know what happened? Nothing!  He's such a good boy.  He followed me out to the barn.  (I was actually taking my old desk chair out there, because I got a new one a few weeks ago and there's no room for the old one in here, so I thought I'd put the old one in the barn so I have a place to sit and pet the cats when I'm out there.  It makes sense in my head.)  He sniffered things and followed me when I called him, and stayed away from the road, and then I took him out in the field behind the old barn and tried to get him to run around and play a little bit, but it's hot out so I didn't try too hard.  Then we came back to the house, and now he's zonked out on the couch.  Sound asleep.  He's had a busy morning/early afternoon trying to keep track of everyone.  

I almost think I'm ready to get another dog. Almost.  When I was tidying up earlier today, I came across a box of Luger's leftover medication, that I couldn't bear to get rid of last fall.  Even though I thought it was stupid to keep a box of medication that someone else could make use of, just because the thought of getting rid of it felt like I was ripping my heart out of my chest with my bare hands and handing it off to some random stranger, which made absolutely no sense at all.  I just couldn't do it, though.  But today, I got rid of it.  Of course, the medication is now expired so I threw it away, but it didn't really hurt to do so.  It didn't make me feel like I was ripping out a vital organ or anything.  It just made me a little sad (not even a lot sad, just a little) thinking about how I used to have to give those pills to Luger every day.  

Alright, I think that's about enough writing from me for now.  The hubby got a new pressure washer yesterday and I am dying to try it out!! (Not kidding, either!)  I also want to get some yard work done.  And I need to get some laundry done.  And it's still hot and humid out.  Ugh! IDK where to start. I'll figure something out. TTYL!