gottawonder

Today I am grateful for:

My Sweetie was able to leave very early this morning, to visit his parents. About the same time as he would normally leave for work, so it probably felt pretty normal for him.

I got a good sleep, which is truly one of the best things in life.

I felt a wave of the "AGGH OUR HOUSE IS FILTHY" anxiety, so I cleaned stuff.

I did the dishes and cleaned the counter/stove, I picked up all the rags that seem to pile up in odd places (we're always wiping things up with a rag and leaving it in a corner by the garbage for "later") and washed those, I changed the cat litter and vacuumed the area around it. Then I replaced the vacuum bag, and did other vacuuming.

It is a thing of awe, to hold a five pound bag of what is known to be mostly hair and dander, some dirt we tracked in, but mainly hair and dander. Imagine if we were having a rough stretch and hadn't been able to clean our floors the last couple of months. We would have that five pound bag, plus probably twenty more (I still sweep every day) on our floors.

I say that because I just watched a video about a person with ADHD who said that when things are rough for her, she can go a very long time without cleaning. Honestly, her story was kind of horrifying, though we're not supposed to judge.

I washed the sheets we changed the other day.

I went outside to do chores, and let everyone out into their pastures.

I pulled a five gallon pail of carrots, and will have to figure out how to store them. We still have another big row of carrots in the garden, but there's no point bringing them in if I can't store them anywhere...maybe in the garage? They have to come in, as it will be freezing soon.

Then I worked with Dandy. He was more patient today with harnessing and hitching, and I did take my time with him again today and gave him lots of praise for being still.

I long-lined him first, a couple of times around the pasture. Then I hitched him. He did well with both.

Then I came inside, and just relaxed and snoozed a bit.

I did eat the jar of mushroom/barley soup in a jar, the nice soup from the ghetto grocery store, and it was really good. You'd think it was home made. A TON of barley and real slabs of mushroom. Worth the five bucks.

I got a text from a fellow we were friends with when we lived in Wyoming. His Mom was my Honor's program instructor, his Dad was my Geology/Anthropology instructor, and we were friends with them in general.

We've kept up via Facebook mostly, over the years.

He and his wife are going to be in the area this month, and he said we should try to meet up.

I think this is so cool, to finally get to meet his wife, and to see him again after 18 years.

So, we're texting a bit figuring out what we could do, keeping in mind that they will have their dogs with them.

Part of me would like them to come to our house, but I've seen pictures of the dogs, and I know one of them liked to kill squirrels and such. I really don't want the stress of having dogs at our place that might kill one of our cats, or perhaps the goats.

I had two beautiful little goats killed by a different friend's dogs when we first moved here, and I will never get over that. His two dogs were OUR BUDDIES, and the first moment I took my eyes off of them, they chewed a hole in the side of the little barn where I had put the goats for safety, and killed them both by snapping their necks.

People don't ever believe that their dogs are capable of such things, but those two dogs were just a pair of sweet house mutts, and they did it in five minutes.

I also had the neighbor's dogs attack goats I got after that, and nearly killed one. I got a friend of ours to shoot the one dog, and would have done the other too if it hadn't run away.

My tolerance for other people's dogs on our property is pretty low.

I did talk to my Sweetie when he arrived, to let me know he got there safely, and again before he headed to bed.