My Hunting Dog

My dog, Princeton is a hunting dog.  He spends a ton of his time "hunting" in the backyard.  We get the biggest kick out of watching him find his prey, point, and then tip-toe to catch it.  Very rarely does he actually catch anything (I guess that makes him a wanna be hunting dog), but nonetheless, it's still fun to watch!  If you don't recall, a little less than a month ago, my dog brought my attention to a nasty snake chillin' in my backyard.  He got my attention by having a very angry and repetitive bark.  At first, I wrote it off to him being a "dumb dog" and then had my hand quickly slapped when I opened the door and was greeted by the reptile from hell.

About a week ago, I was alarmed when I heard the same bark coming from him in our backyard.  I was nervous to go out and take a peek at his latest find, assuming there was another satan serpent snake in my backyard.  As I walked out to the backyard, I braced myself for what I was about to find...

Until I found this harmless turtle being tortured by my dog...

(Check out Princeton's hind legs as he "ferociously" attacks this turtle)

Once Princeton saw my reaction and how un-phased I was by this harmless turtle, he got a little braver. That's when he picked it up in his mouth (poor turtle) and pranced around the driveway with it.  It's a good thing we've been working on the command "Leave it!" and I was able to get him to stop terrorizing the poor fella' while I worked out a plan.  That plan involved me holding Princeton while I called my mom over to help me remove the turtle from our yard and relocate it to the woods near our house.

Here he (or she???) is, enjoying their ride to safety.

Free at last!

And, once again, to prove that Princeton is a hunter at heart, here he is preying on a fly.  My blinds didn't really appreciate the attention he showed them (and neither did I!)!
He is currently sleeping next to me on the couch, hunting something in his dreams (there's an occasionally growl, muffled bark and movement of his legs)!
Oh Princeton!  Our life was so boring before you came into it! :)

Unimportant (yet seemingly important) Problems

***Notice - this is a full out whine session.  I realize that I am blessed beyond belief and I truly have no reason to complain.  However, it's my party and I'll cry if I want to.  Continue at your own risk...

Last year, while Stephen and I were feverishly house hunting (we went to 12 houses in 1 day...okay, just thinking about that makes me too tired to finish this post..but I must....push on.....) a pool in the backyard wasn't even an option for us.  It wasn't until the *perfect* house came on the market (that happened to have a pool in the backyard) did we start thinking about being pool people.  We heard it all, "a pool's a lot of work!"  "not everyone wants a pool - it could make for a hard sell down the road..." "a pool's a lot of money!" and yet we continued on because we loved the house that much (and, let's face it, I'm a teacher and I LOVE to lay by the pool in the summer time.  L.O.V.E. it.  I had no qualms about being "pool girl" every summer for the rest of my life!).

When we closed on our house in early September, the pool had already been closed for the season.  We saw the pool before it was closed - it was picture perfect - crystal blue - clear and wonderful!  We also knew that it had a brand new liner installed that year - SCORE!  (I actually know nothing about this, but I've been told that liners are cause for lots of moo-lah and a new one meant nothing but great things).  So, needless to say, we've been living (maybe just me) in anticipation for the day that we would open the pool.  As the weather started to turn warmer, I began thinking about my days by the pool.  I even picked out great lounge chairs from Wally World and set my heart on them.  What made these lounge chairs so great were 3 things: they looked fabulous, they were incredibly comfortable, they were the CHEAPEST lounge chairs I could find (the 3rd reason was the most important reason for the Mister of the family).  I talked with Stephen about the possibilities of purchasing said lounge chairs and we decided that this was definitely something we could do with our tax return.  I should mention here that Stephen is a man that must be certain of all his decisions before he continues on with them.  This is a great quality in many ways, but not in the retail world.  You know how retail works - Hobby Lobby starts putting out their Christmas merchandise in July but Heaven forbid you try to find your Christmas items in December!  They're already working on summer by then!  So, by the time this girl convinced Mr. Certain-Pants-Man to go and buy the lounge chairs, they only had 3 (I wanted 4).  Wait for it...wait for it...and 2 of them were broken.  Ouch. Painful.  

I like to think I'm a hopeful person (however, there are a lot of days when that glass just sits half empty) and so I purchased that 1 chair thinking that surely they'd get more in.  I'm fairly certain that Walmart could have taken out a restraining order based on the number of times I came to their store.  I was showing up every other, sometimes even every day to check and see if they had anymore of these chairs.  And for those of you who were thinking I should call other Walmarts, did that too!  I even had friends in Lexington checking out ALL of the 3 Walmarts in their town.  No dice.  Ugh. (EVERYWHERE else I checked charged at least $30 more per chair - that's $120 more at the end of the day!)  Thanks Mr. Certain-Pants-Man.
(disclaimer: Mr. Certain-Pants-Man feels very badly about this and has apologized many times...unfortunately, the wound still burns....)

Here it is, June 18 and I am without lounge chairs for my pool.  I know: get over it.  I should actually get over it, because I have even bigger fish to fry besides these measly little chairs....

To add more salt to the wounds - Stephen and I went back and forth over whether or not we were going to try to open our pool ourselves or hire a pool company to do so.  After much discussion and thought, we went with route 2 and hired the people that his parents use to open their pool.  They came out on June 1 and "opened" our pool.  Notice how the word open is in quotation marks?  Well, let me explain to you why that is.  Two and a half weeks AFTER they came out and "opened" our pool I'm sitting here at my kitchen table looking at what looks more like a POND than a POOL.  That's right ladies and gentlemen, I have a green pool, a green, murky pool.  Yum. Mmmmmmm - refreshing!  You see why I said that these lounge chairs were the least of my pool problems???

So, to make a long story short - I need to quit complaining; quit whining and think about all the good things that are coming out of this.  #1. I'm being reminded in a quirky way how blessed I am - I mean I have a pond pool and the resources to try and get it up and running #2. I'm reminded of what great family and friends I have - friends who will drive around Lexington for me to look for lounge chairs and family that will come over and help me try to care for the pond pool and spend hours with me at the pool store #3. I'm making great new friends at Leslie's Pool Supply Store ;)

Do you feel sorry for me yet?  :-)

p.s. if you are an in-ground pool owner and would like to offer this poor gal some suggestions, she'd love to take them!

Hallelujah, Praise the Lord, Sound the Alarm!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have done what I previously thought was the impossible: I've completed this school year.  It was painful, slow and painfully slow, but I'm happy to say that I've done it...and I've learned a few lessons in the process.  Some things I've learned (that I've always known but I didn't know how true they were until I had the constant reminders this year):

*Change is hard and changing jobs is hard especially when you loved your old job and you really didn't    want to leave it.

*Children need structure.  C.O.N.S.T.A.N.T.L.Y. I knew this, but I didn't realize the huge difference between the amount of structure a child from a broken home needs versus a child from a home where mom and dad are both investing in them.

*I should never put things off. EVER. Do you know how many times I was up until 1-2am working on report cards that had to go home the next day?  Everytime Actually that never happened ;).

*My "to-do" list will NEVER be completely done; I shouldn't hold it against myself when I go to bed at night and there's not a "check" next to even item.

*I shouldn't let the way others treat or view me change the way I view myself.

*People are hard to love - all the more reason to try (who doesn't like a good challenge???).

*The job of a teacher is NEVER done (until summertime that is).  Actual teaching only represents about half of what's expected of me.

*I need more sleep as a teacher than any other job (except motherhood) and it actually hinders me from getting sleep (hmmm...starting to sound like this is motherhood...)

*I have infinitely less amount of patience when I'm tired.  infinitely.

*Living intentionally and working in an intentional manner is far better than flying by the seat of your pants - especially when teaching. (not that I've done the latter...)

I could keep going and going but I'm feeling a little sleepy and Catching Fire is catching my attention...you know, the book I bought LAST SUMMER but didn't have a second to read it during the school year - yeah, that one.

I Live In A Zoo...

...and not the kind of zoo I'd like to live in (although I'm unsure of what kind of zoo that would be!)!
On Friday, after school, Princeton was outside after I had gotten home from work. All of a sudden I started hearing him go nuts. He was barking his head off, a loud and quickly repeating bark. I know you're thinking, "yeah, he's a dog, big whoop." But Princeton's not a barker - it takes a lot to get him to bark, and at this time I started to wonder what in the world was going on. I got up to check things out and as I looked out the back door, I saw Princeton barking furiously AT the back door. What in the world?! I knew then that my dog had officially lost his mind. That's until I opened the door to go out and see what in good gravy was going on. I was still thinking Princeton had lost it until I saw the most horrid thing out of the corner of my eye...
A big ole snake. Uggggggghhhhh! I immediately started freaking out, P-ton style. I called Stephen and insisted he come home as soon as his car could get him there! I then proceeded to watch the snake and follow it until Stephen got there. There's something you should know about me: I live in the camp of snakes came straight from hell. In fact, I'm fairly certain my Bible tells me that.
Stephen came home and got straight to work hunting down my arch nemesis. He spent an hour pretending he was Indiana Jones before he accomplished the inevitable. He then proceeded to bring the dead snake (he did have the decency to bag it up) into the house to prove to me it was indeed dead...SICK! Who does that?!?!
So with all that being said, I've turned into a skiddish freak in my own backyard...here's to hoping I've seen all the snakes I'll ever see in this lifetime!