Welcome to the Neighborhood

I had full intentions of posting much more often than this, but life has been crazy! As if the dogs weren't enough to keep us occupied, we have been Christmas shopping, decorating and raking leaves...... oh the story that brings to mind.
Seems the people that lived in our house before us must have been Saints. At least that is how all the neighbors (over 85) remember them. Every sentance begins with "The 'Blanks' used to do this....." "When the 'Blanks' lived there, they did it this way......" "You should have seen it when the 'Blanks' lived there". Need I go on???
Well this past weekend one of the other neighbors informed us that we could deposit our leaves in a pile (already begun) across the street from us. The city will pick them up there next week. "Great!" we thought. "Everyone puts them there, or down the road a bit" we were informed. So we began on Saturday the task of gathering leaves from our 1 3/4 acre lot, and we raked, and we blew, and we mowed, and we used the tarp. At one point on Saturday the 80 something neighbor we "lookout for" across the street came out to get her mail and said hello, NOTHING ELSE. So we assumed everything was ok. When we finally finshed clearing all the leaves from the front and back yard on Sunday (YES, SUNDAY!!!) we were exhausted and starving. So we were starting to fix something to eat, we had beat the rain and it was getting dark.
Just then, the phone rang, caller ID said a name I didn't recognize. I answered and a feeble voice said "Sheri??" (strange, someone I don't know, calling me by my first name.........I wonder who told her my name AND gave her my phone number????)
"Yes?" "This is Mrs. Soandso, I live next door to Mrs. Busybody across the street from you." Ah, here it comes. "I don't mean to sound unneighborly, but I don't appreciate you putting your leaves in my vacant lot".
Now, if you know me, you know I am not going to yell, cuss and scream at an 85 year old widow woman, but everything inside of me was doing just that. I polietly told her that it would not have happened if I had not been told to do so by a neighbor, and that it would not happen again. And to please introduce herself to us when she sees us out walking our dogs. She proceeded to tell me that she has MEANT to introduce herself to us, but she has been TOO BUSY!!!!
TOO BUSY!! How can you be TOO BUSY at 85??? We both work 45 hours a week, plus have a house to take care of, and have been working on another house for months, I have had surgery this summer and have been recovering, and take care of two wild animals!!! AND SHE IS TOO BUSY????? "Yes ma'am, I understand busy, we both work full time and it is dark by the time we get home at night and that is why we have to spend all weekend working in the yard raking leaves. I promise it won't happen again. Thank you for calling" WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD.

AT LAST

It has taken me several days to get the blog page set up, but I think it is ready to go. Those of you that know me, know that I am not computer literate enough to create a great fancy blog page like some of the ones I see on line, but this is my best attempt for now. I must say, I am pretty of proud of it for a beginner.

We have been very busy the past few months with the new addition to our quiet, peaceful, serene lives. It all started back around my birthday when I told Randall that I wanted a puppy for my birthday. Much to my surprise he said "look in the paper and see what you can find, we will get one today". YIKES! I wasn't really expecting that. But even more surprising was when he said, "You know, I have always liked English Springer Spaniels, do you think raising two puppies would be much harder than one?" Oh have I lived to regret the next words out of my mouth....."two can't be that much harder than one, besides, they will have each other to play with". AGGHHHHHH
That same weekend we found Conan, our Chocolate Labrador and Booger, our black and white English Springer Spaniel. Since the end of August, we have spent a fortune on vet bills, obedience classes and now an Invisible Fence. Our lives have become a shouting match of SIT, NO, OFF, NO, STOP IT, NO, NO, NOOOOOOO. And every now and then, they are just calm enough, and just sweet enough to lay their heads in our lap and let us stroke them and love them and think..... Someday this will all be worthwhile.