Living on the Edge

Maybe this isn't really a joke!

I've gotten this email before.  It makes you stop and think along with a little chuckle.  I didn't write this, just reposting the email....so, please don't be mad at me my dear attorney friends!

Think about this:

1. Cows

2. The Constitution

3.  The Ten Commandments

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Cows

Does anyone find it amazing that during the mad cow epidemic our government could track a single cow, born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she slept in the state of Washington?  And then tracked her calves to their stalls. But they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around our country.  Maybe we should give each of them a cow!

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The Constitution

The leaders in D.C. keep talking about drafting a constitution for Iraq...Why don't we just give them ours?  It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and we aren't using it anymore!

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The 10 Commandments

The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse or Congress is that...

You can't post "Thou Shalt Not Steal", "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery," and "Thou Shall Not Lie," in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians...it creates a hostile work environment.

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The email ends with this warning:  "If you don't want to forward this for fear of offending someone...You are Part of the Problem!  It's time for America to speak up!"

Anyone that knows me, knows that I'm always up for the challenge     >giggle<  So I'm passing this along! :-)

Apartment Life Etiquette

Apartment living just plain sucks.  Sorry, there is no other way to sum it up.  This is a family blog...so I have to try and keep it clean!  This afternoon I came home.  The neighbor's 400 kids were playing right outside our bedroom window...IN OUR WINDOW WELL!!  Just on the other side of that glass was my husband, trying valiantly to sleep after working a graveyard shift (then coming home to care for our sick daughter). 

Our daughter, who has been home sick all week was trying to sleep as well.  They are running around yelling and hollering.  They pile up rocks on the walkways, leave shoes and socks on the lawn, and food wrappers in the bushes.  

Then there is the neighbor above us.  They watch their granddaughter (about 2 1/2) who does not sit the whole time she is there.  She runs, jumps, hops, rolls, and thumps across the floor!  In addition they have a daughter who is about 10.  She rides her scooter in the house (they deny that one--but that's the only thing that could make that noise) and also runs, jumps, hops and moves constantly through the apartment. 
Dad is very heavy footed and mom has a cleaning obsession--we hear her vacuuming at all hours of the day and night.

Yes, I've talked to parents.  I get a cold stare, a dumbfounded look, denials and "that's just what apartment life is" kind of answers.  I am thankful that we live on the bottom floor.  I would hate to make so much noise as to make someone else's life difficult.  I googled (I love doing that!) apartment life etiquette and got this link.  I found a couple other links, but this one was the most comprehensive.  I feel better after reading it because I thought I was being too picky...but apparently the common sense etiquette we live by as residents...is what should be expected of everyone!  Ha! so there!

Here is what I would love to post for my neighbors: 

Dear neighbors....clean up after your pets.  Try a shorter leash and have your dog stop barking hysterically at my dogs. (which by the way could swallow your dogs whole!) 

Clean up after your kids too and teach them to play politely inside and outside of your apartment!  And if you choose to live in an apartment with 4 or more kids...keep in mind that your acceptable noise level is not the same in a house as it is in an apartment!

Please respect that your floor is someone else's ceiling!  You wouldn't like it if I walked through my apartment all day thumping on the ceiling with a mop head...so stop thudding through yours! 

Parking...if you have more than two cars...park in the guest parking!  Unless your 12 year old has a driver's license, you don't need 3 of the parking spots in front of our building...we need to be able to park close enough to carry our groceries in without doing a half marathon!  And guest parking is called that so you know to have them park there!

Bags of trash belong in the dumpster. I would be happy to give you directions to the closest dump for all the uncrushed boxes and old furniture that you discard.  If you would like to give me your apartment number, I would be happy to leave my bag of trash by your door for you to hold on to until the dumpster is emptied on Friday.

So there!  How I would love to post this!  Maybe I should make a pitcher of margaritas this weekend and see what happens....

I apologize for my crankiness...Ok, it's Wednesday and it's been a long week.  No work on the house in a week...thoughts of moving have overtaken us.  A sick kid, an overtired husband and too many teacher's meetings the last couple weeks!  So thanks for letting me vent!  Now I have to go walk my dogs...again...since we don't have a back yard presently!

China one-dog law has owners hot under collar

via www.msnbc.msn.com

So the Chinese are up in arms over this law. They are choosing to ignore the policy or find ways around it...but they've resigned themselves to only one child?! What?

Why does China enact these ridiculous laws without an option for what to do with the product from those that don't follow the laws.  So will they start impounding dogs and putting them in pound-like facilities...or worse yet, euthanize them?  

Does this mean that Americans will be going to China to give these unwanted pets a home?  Or will they be sending dogs home as a free gift with families who give their unwanted children homes.

Saturday was a busy day

By the time we finally got home Saturday evening, I was wiped out!  I think I'm ready to start going to bed early and get ready for the school routine starting tonight!! 

Every morning starts with the dog walk:

 

This is the sad look Buddy gives me until I say "walk?"

Next CC and I headed out to the farmer's market.  We didn't get there as early as I had hoped and we missed the chocolate croissants at the bakery booth.  :-(  Such a bummer!  So instead, CC found a treasure:

 

And I took pictures of the colorful veggies and flowers....

 

 

Then we came home, picked up DD and headed to the land to see the trench.  See yesterday's post.

Then we headed to the storage unit to find a suitcase, my canning pot (couldn't find it), and our couch.  The other day when I was there I discovered that some new neighbors were visiting our storage unit....by way of little poops on my expensive couch!!  MICE!!  ick!  I hate mice...that's a long story from when I worked and lived in a cabin on Donner Summit. 

So we bought a little special treat for them....

Peanut butter!  By way of a special little mouse plate! :-)

 

Mouse Traps!

 

 

Yum Yum...some nice tasty peanut butter!  We stuck with the snap traps because the poison kills the animals that eat the mice.

So after setting up the little mouse diner...we headed back home and then got ready for church followed by our first dinner out in over a month!  Yeah, no dishes.  So instead of cleaning a kitchen, I got to come home and play with my pictures on my laptop snuggled up in my jammies. 

The Girl's Got IT!

Q is so creative.  She is becoming quite the artist.  She is very aware of details when she draws.  She drew the most detailed layout of her land and home when she 'grows up' and has her own place.  It was amazing.  If I can get her to let me scan it, I'll post it.

One area where I have to take a deep breath...and hold it....is her clothing creativity.  I am posting the picture as an example:

 

A picture is worth a thousand words, or in this case, 4 words:  stars, plaid, stripes and zebra....

You go girl!

A Different Kind of Drug Problem

I had to share this one.  It came from my mom by way of my inbox this morning.  Its timing is funny because I just posted about a book on my other Blog, NW Mom Compass. It's about parenting your children as Free Range kids.  I think this part addresses the responsibility question!

The other day, someone at a store in our town read that a Methamphetamine lab had been found in an old farmhouse in the adjoining county, and he asked me a rhetorical question, "Why didn't we have a drug problem when you and I were growing up?"

 

I replied, I had a drug problem when I was young:  I was drug to church on Sunday morning.  I was drug to church for weddings and funerals.  I was drug to family reunions and community socials no matter the weather.

 

I was drug by my ears when I was disrespectful to adults.  I was also drug to the woodshed when I disobeyed my parents, told a lie, brought home a bad report card, did not speak with respect, spoke ill of the teacher or the preacher, or if I didn't put forth my best effort in everything that was asked of me.

 

I was drug to the kitchen sink to have my mouth washed out with soap if I uttered a profanity.  I was drug out to pull weeds in mom's garden and flower beds and cockleburs out of dad's fields.  I was drug to the homes of family, friends and neighbors to help out some poor soul who had no one to mow the yard, repair the clothesline, or chop some firewood, and if my mother had ever known that I took a single dime as a tip for this kindness, she would have drug me back to the woodshed.

 

Those drugs are still in my veins and they affect my behavior in everything I do, say, or think.  They are stronger than cocaine, crack, or heroin; and, if today's children had this kind of drug problem, America would be a better place.

 

God bless the parents who drugged us!

Funny Signs

I remember reading a story about how a large number of shirts are designed and printed in other countries by individuals who are not native English speakers.  These shirts have odd spellings and phrasing that often don't make sense or are spelled wrong.  Then they end up in stores like Mervyn's (when they were open) and Walmart and other stores like that and we can chuckle at them.

Teaching 1st grade means reading similar writings where the grammar or spelling just doesn't come out the way the writer wanted it to.  It can be pretty funny. Sometimes embarrassing if the young writer were to know what they actually wrote. It sure can liven up a 1st grade teacher meeting! :-)   I have a great one to share...if I could just find where I put it.  (It's the middle of summer and we moved at the end of the school year so I haven't come across it yet).

But driving around town, I've come across a few signs that make me stop and wonder if possibly anyone proofread what they wrote.  Maybe some others of you will find them funny too.

I love this one....wondering if they would take my kids...

 

How about this one....

I think this would make it tough for Walt to buy decent shoes!  Square feet?

Well, maybe this one does mean what it says....it is farm country after all.

Alexis Cohen Died....

So it's Sunday afternoon. Kind of muggy and yucky out today. The downpour of rain woke me up at 2:30 last night, so I'm a bit tired today. Wading through bills and piles of papers to sort, I hopped online and one of the news articles caught my eye. I'm not a huge American Idol fan. But the headline that one of its hopefuls died in a car accident caught my attention. I was thinking it would be someone who actually made it on the show as a finalist, but alas it was just one of the quirky youth that didn't have a chance in heck. It was one of those odd birds that they place on the show for our entertainment or to make you appreciate the ones that can really sing. Well this 23 year old young lady didn't make it. She didn't take it too well after she left the audition room and had many words and gestures to share. This video below was a funny version of her 'no thanks' speech after her audition. They have some other funny ones too....like the sham wow one! Enjoy!

Erethizon dorsatum vs canine

So we have lived in Eastern Washington for almost 4 years now.  Our home has been on the edge of Riverside State Park...a area that includes both Ponderosa Pine and river habitats.  If you go back to my older posts you'll see we've met moose, deer, fox, coyote, marmuts, muskrat and a variety of other creatures that we pleasantly share the neighborhood with (after all, it was theirs first!).

One little critter that we haven't seen much of is the porcupine.  Pine forests are their habitat so you'd think we'd be seeing them more often.  I think we've only seen them twice.  One HUGE one walking straight down the middle of Charles Road.  He was literally walking along the yellow line in the middle of the road.  Guess he thought he would be out of the way there no matter which way a car should come...or he was trying to prove he was sober...not sure.

One other time we saw two of them on the island across from our neighborhood park.  It was spring and they were either having a heated territory debate about whose island it was...or it's the noise they make when they are in heated passion for the opposite sex...not sure.

In our little acre of heaven we have seen NO porcupines in almost four years of life.  The dogs, 3 at one time and now two, have never had a single face to face...or face to quill experience.  I was feeling pretty darn lucky....should I say almost smug about it.  Like we have such smart dogs, that even if they did come to nibble on our pines, they wouldn't dream of messing with them because they had an innate ability to avoid them.

Well...they proved me wrong on June 6th!  They showed me that they weren't proving these past 3 years that they were too smart to mess with a porcupine...instead it was just that the opportunity had not presented itself yet!  And so it finally did at 11:30 Saturday night!  Ugh!

When I heard them barking at the back fence, I thought it was probably a coyote or fox or even the worst case scenario...a skunk! (perfect! I thought, giving skunk baths in a house we are trying to sell!)  So when I saw them circling something in the trees I was about to head over to shoo it away with a couple of rocks.  But before I could step off the deck, the first yelp came.  Not from the cornered creature, but from one of our dogs...then came the second yelp and when I called the dogs...they came running.  I resigned myself to what it was as I watched the shadowed figure circle between my two dogs.

Needless to say, when they got close enough for me to see their muzzles suddenly turned fuzzy, covered  in what looked like walrus whiskers, I went running!  They were coming right toward me! (of course they couldn't have done it before the porcupine got them!)  Watching our dogs frantically try to rub the quills out was horrible.  They were in pain and frantic...there was blood and drool flying everywhere!

 

Scenarios were running through my mind...how in the world would I get these two beasts to a vet in the state they were in.  They would destroy my Explorer.  There was no way anyone could hold them because everytime they got near us...they poked us!  Unfortunately, my husband was at work all night with the truck.  So it was just going to be mom to the rescue!

My first stop was the phone book to look up an emergency clinic...thankfully there was one about 25 minutes away in Spokane.  Next I managed to get the dog kennel from the garage into the back of my Explorer because Lucy is kennel trained.  She was the easy one.  Got the kennel in the car, and all 75 pounds of her and 50+ quills hopped right into it.  The tough one was Buddy.  As soon as he saw Lucy jump in, he did too.  Unfortunately an 85 pound dog in distress jumps in to the only logical seat in the car....the driver's seat!  Guess he was ready to take himself to the vet at this point!

Three tries and three seats later, I got him into the back of the car next to Lucy and the kennel.  Thank heavens Ford put tie downs in the back of an Explorer! I'm sure this was not what they had envisioned when Henry Ford said, 'hey let's put tie downs in the back for cargo!".  So I picked the quills from the driver seat and headed to the vet at 11:50 at night.

Well after 3:00 a.m. and $500 later...the quills were gone...mostly. Just so you know. When your dogs have as many quills as ours did (Buddy had to have close to 100 all over his lower jaw and in his gums) they (the vet) can't get them all.  The dogs tend to rub them and break them off so that they are embedded and have to work their way out.  And the funny thing is, they have little barbs, so they don't back out, they move forward...and some of them we discovered travel quite a ways forward.

The first two weeks we found quills in all sorts of places around the house and in the garage. They would also appear coming out of Buddy's chin and Lucy would cough and sneeze because they were working their way through the roof of her mouth!

It's been about 5 weeks now after the incident and believe it or not, we just pulled another one out of each of them!   Now we get to see if they are smart and have learned from their expensive, painful lesson.  I sure have!  If they do it again, I may have to think whether they were meant to Live on the Edge with us!

Rathdrum Parade 2009 Part 2

Here is the second part of the pictures from the parade yesterday.  If I caught any of your loved ones in my pictures for the day, let me know and I'll be happy to email you the picture!

 

What real teachers do in the summer?  Hang out with more kids of course!  This is one of my fellow teachers from our 1st grade teaching team.

 

Even the trains wanted to get into the parade!

 

Is this the short bus? We apparently have very small children in town. just kidding!

 

Oh here is the real bus...CC is looking on...she doesn't have to ride one because her mama drives her to school now every day :-)

 

And in a small town...they still throw candy to the kids...or on a hot day, frozen otter pops hit the spot!

 

Q really liked this car...it's yellow!

 

The Octo-mom will need this bike for her kids in a few years!

 

Some more pretty horses...and riders!  But more horses means....

 

Horse poop to clean up!  These horses apparently ate plenty this morning!

 

The Lakeland Soccer Club must have just seen the movie, UP!  Fortunately, enough of the girls were sucking the helium that they didn't float away!

 

So many opportunities for the kids to be in the parade...soccer club....

 

Dance and cheerleading teams...

 

And in the Inland Northwest there are lots of church groups.  This one is from Sheperd of the Hills Lutheran right here in Rathdrum.

 

Animals are also a big part of any parade.  Who can't resist a cute miniature horse?  The girls are already planning which animals they want to do for 4-H! 

 

If they had their way, our 6 acres would resemble the Ark!

 

Hey DD...look at the toys the Kootenai County Sheriffs Department gets to play with!

 

Watching this pony walk...it looked like it was part moose!  It had the longest legs that had the same awkward looking gait as a moose.  It was really weird.

 

This little guy was sooo adorable!  Athol has a great bagpipe and drum group.  They were a delight to listen to....and there was a woman playing the bagpipes too!

 

You'll notice they were wearing sunglasses....

 

not sure if these were prescription or not!

 

Another dance/cheer group.  This made my mommy hackles rise cuz I hate when they do lifts over pavement.  One fall to the asphalt and a young life could be dramatically altered forever!  But they were good.

 

Very North Idaho...there are Democrats in Rathdrum.  I actually know some of them, but they weren't represented in this parade.

 

This was a cool entry...looked like it drove right out of the show M*A*S*H*.

 

The people standing next to me said that the gentleman in the uniform was really a retired 3 star general!  He had quite a presence that's for sure.

 

My favorite...it's a garden shop!  Only thing better would have been if they had passed those plants out!

 

Cool old car...and great advertisement.  The Old Rathdrum Jail is open for tours.  We toured it after the parade.  Fun history....I can't wait to share that in future posts.  I hear Rathdrum has some claims to fame.

 

And this parade ended with all the fire engines in town :-)  I'm sorry if you missed the fun this year.

Next July, come on out and enjoy the fun in North Idaho for Rathdrum Days 2010.