Well I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! Unfortunately I haven't been able to get down to Pella to see Dad - yet. I had planned to go down the Saturday before Christmas - then yesterday.
We had a Christmas Eve service at church and then a couple invited me over to their house for food and fellowship and to stay over night. It worked out that Jim's brother Greg used to be our Assistant Pastor at LWF and is now "planting" a church in Altoona. Well, Greg and his crew crashed the party which included his awesome wife and five kids :) We started to watch "It's A Wonderful Life" - got to the scene after George and Mary walk home after taking their swim in the gym swimming pool and switched to "Narnia". Not sure how far we got in that movie.
Christmas I was invited to another friend's family meal and back to her parent's house for opening of presents (I was even included which was a surprise) and then playing a game before I headed home. I truly have an awesome church family!
I hope everyone has a very safe New Year's Eve and New Year's. I'll probably be staying home tomorrow night and that's ok. Mike and I started a tradition we learned from Kenneth and Gloria Copeland or Jesse Duplantis - we take communion at midnight to welcome the new year in. I've done this by myself the past two New Year's Eves and will do it again tomorrow night. So it's orange juice and a cracker - it's the intent that counts :)
And I can't believe it will be 2013! I remember Mike working for the City of WDM when it was Y2K (2000) and how they had to prepare to have backup generators for things in case dispatch for police/fire/ems went down because of the computers not knowing how to "communicate" a year that wasn't 19XX. People stock piling food, generators, etc., and nothing came of it. That was 13 years ago - holy cow!
We've had two snows so far this winter - the first one the "big one" so far with a foot of snow? I can't remember now but it was a lot. The other snow was a light dusting that with today's temps above freezing the sun melted quite a bit before I got home from church. I had to run an errand, fill the gas tank of the car (I like to only let it get to half a tank in the winter when I'm driving around town and then fill it up) and the gas nozzle stopped at $19.00 even. Couldn't have done that if I tried - stopping on an even number. And since it was above freezing I ran the car through the auto car wash with the dryer option to get some of the crud off the car. When I got home I pushed the shovel around on the driveway, sidewalk and steps to get the rest of the snow and ice taken care of. As I've blogged before, snow is a four-letter word in my vocabulary but if the rest of the snows are like this last one, I think I could handle winter :)
Well, I haven't put this on Facebook yet but will after finishing this post - I gave Cruz back to the rescue group I adopted her from a few weeks ago. She was a good dog but there were different things that weren't working out. A big one is that she was such a young dog and I don't like going out in the cold that I wouldn't walk her like she needed, so to be fair to her she needed a family that would run off her energy. Plus she was starting to chew the wood on the windowsill next to her crate in the living room - and while that wouldn't be the reason to give her back to the rescue group - I was concerned at the amount of wood that was gone vs the amount of wood scraps I found on the back stairway. That meant most of that wood went in her tummy. And then there was the back stairway issue - she would open my kitchen door within seconds of me walking into the basement and sometimes the kitchen door would shut behind her trapping her on the steps. Those steps are COLD in the winter and I didn't want her stuck in that cold area for hours on end.
While I do miss her and the night she was picked up by her new foster mom was the first night since moving into this house in 1985 that there was not a pet in it (cat or dog) - God worked it out how Cruz was able to get into a foster home so quickly. The house is pretty quiet but it's ok.
Last night I didn't sleep very well and I "wrestled with God" about maybe getting another dog. A smaller and older dog that if I let it out in the backyard to do it's business that would be enough exercise for it during the winter. I had it all planned to head to the Animal Rescue League (ARL) to find my dog after church. I'd put my other large collapsable (sp?) crate in the living room where Cruz' had been. I'd bring my dog home, put up the crate and then head to WalMart for supplies (leash, collar, toys, food, etc.). Then.....I thought about how a dog ties me down. While Mike and I loved having Lucy (the dog before the greyhounds) and then Butler and Milly - they really tied us down. Now that I'm on my own - it's just that much more to deal with by myself. If I wanted to be gone on my annual Girls Weekend in October - could someone come and stay with the dog in the house or would I have to kennel it for two nights - let alone going away for a week's vacation.
So I thought, "a cat, that's what I'll get, cats are low maintenance" but I didn't want it to be a real long-hair, sheddy cat and it had to have a good personality aka wanting to be around me and not aloof. So I thought it through about God having the right cat for me at the ARL. You can leave a cat for a long weekend, if I would be gone a week all I'd need to do is find someone or someones that would be willing to check on it maybe three times during the week. I had a cat growing up, Mike and I had four cats at one time before Lucy, so I like cats....but they just aren't the same as a dog.
So I was back to getting a dog - but then really thinking about being tied down. How I wouldn't have been able to spend the night Christmas Eve at my friend's house. I don't mind kenneling a dog but with Mike he'd get off work early sometimes and get the dog taken care of before I even got home - with it just being me I'd have to take the dog to the kennel and then pick it up. If I kenneled at my vet, the only time I could pick the dog up on Sunday would be when the person would be at the office checking on all the animals that were being boarded and who knows when that would be.
So then I was back to a cat but not 100% sold on it and that's when I realized that "poop, I need to think about this some more before running off and just getting a cat".
That said - enjoy the two pix. Cruz had been gone at least two weeks before I looked up and saw Wubba sitting on the window in the back stairway. How she got Wubba up there is beyond me but it made me laugh. The first picture shows Wubba on the window. The second picture is a shot of the stairway so you can see how high up this window really is..............she was a Goober.
