Never a Dull Moment 11/8/2010

You know that old saying – “It never rains that it doesn’t pour?” At our house right now, it is pouring!  Suddenly we have gone from “settlin’ in” to “good grief”!

Here’s what I had planned for each day of the coming week:  8 a.m. – Get up, get coffee, chat with Ted on the sunporch.  9 a.m. – Second cup of coffee, more chatting.  9:30 a.m.  Either walk 4 miles with Dawn or bike 9 miles with Ted.  11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.  Make beds, straighten up house (which always includes vacuuming, with Bear the free-shedding monster in the house), and do a load of clothes (if necessary) – then a leisurely lunch.    1-2 p.m.  Read until I fall asleep, which I always do.  2-5 p.m.  Free time – do whatever I want.  

Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it – no pressure (except to stay ahead of Bear in the hair department).  No stress (except deciding which coffee mug I want to drink out of each morning). 

Well, that was then, and this is now.  BIG CHANGE!

Last Thursday a contractor spent about two hours with us discussing some renovation work we needed to have done.  Nothing major . . . I thought.  Our old “popcorn” ceilings are beginning to crack and chip off, and they are really looking UGLY.  They had to be fixed before someone having dinner with us ended up with pieces of ceiling plaster in their mashed potatoes.   We also want to do some painting, but the window sills are peeling in several rooms, and that means scraping before painting.  And the wood floor in the sunroom really needs restaining and polyurethaning.  So we called in someone who had been recommended to us, and he dropped by Friday afternoon with his estimate. 

For the next three weeks our master bedroom, our den, our sunporch, and two bathrooms are going to be covered in plastic and therefore unusable.  That leaves the kitchen, dining room, a hall bathroom, and two bedrooms to live in – with two dogs who are used to having the run of the house and a husband who will no longer have his Lazy-Boy to watch TV (no room in either guest bedroom for that chair).  Needless to say, folks – I am going to have PLENTY to blog about from now until Thanksgiving.

Girls Night Out (GNO) at the ri’vah was Thursday evening, and about 15 ladies attended at Becky’s house.  There was enough food to feed an army, and we certainly didn’t want any of that to go to waste!

Take some friends . . .

 

. . . and a few more friends . . .

 

. . . add some yummy food, and what do you get?

 

Me! Glad to be home with ri'vah buddies for the winter!

Ted and I took another bike ride on Friday, and I wanted to show you the pecan trees that are fairly bursting with nuts.  We ride through several pecan groves, and unlike the trees I photographed last year, these haven’t lost their leaves OR their harvest.  I expect any day now to see the mechanical tree shakers in these groves – but they’re not quite ready yet. 

We pass through five or six huge pecan groves like this one on our bike rides. Pecan trees are members of the hickory family and can live 100 years. They start to produce nuts between 6-8 years of age.

 

A lot of the pecans are still "green" - still held tightly within their soft outer husks. The brown, hard shell forms inside that husk, and the pecan meat is inside that shell.

 

When the nuts get ripe, the soft husk splits into four pieces, . . .

 

. . . and the pecans fall out - just in time for Thanksgiving and pecan pie. Yummy!

On Saturday morning, I rose early and was in  Albany (about a 45-minute drive) by 8:30 a.m. to register for the 2-day Delta Society Pet Partners Team Training Course.  Before the dogs are brought in, we two-legged animals have to know a lot of information about the clients we will be serving (nursing homes, assisted living facilities, hospitals, schools, etc.).  Saturday was a lot of book work and some role playing with two dogs who have already passed the tests.  I’ll have a lot more information on Tuesday’s blog, but for now, here are a few pics from the first session.

The class was taught by Marty and Claire, who are both registered AAT (Animal Assisted Therapy) dog handlers and certified instructors. There were 15 of us in the class.

 

Claire and her AAT partner, Moses.

 

Happy Jack demonstrates how a therapy dog must remain relaxed while a stranger pets and brushes him.

 

Marty and her AAT partner, Happy Jack.  Marty’s therapy dog before Happy Jack was a yellow labrador retriever named Hero, who was voted the Pedigree Dog food 2006 Dog of the Year.  She lost Hero to cancer a couple of years ago, and Happy Jack now carries on the work Hero loved so much.

 

Hero, the 2006 Pedigree Dog Food Dog of the Year.

Hope you check out the new update on the Mackinac Island Blog at http://bree1972.wordpress.com.

I’ll have more to add on Tuesday about the last day of training, and I’ll also let you know how the first day of  “tearing the house apart” went.   See you then! 

Bear - the cool dude . . . and Maddie, ever watchful.