Laughter is the Best Medicine

At our house we have three indoor babies. My mother has a SchiTzu (Lola), I have a Yorkie (Ella Bella) and then we have a Miniture Poodle (Scrappy).

Animals are so funny, you treat them like your babies so they are actually a member of your family. And they are great company for my mother when she is at home during the day by herself. Each one of our babies have their own personalities and it feels like they are human kids most of the time. They eat at a certain time and get treats just like humans. In fact when I go to the store and buy dog food the bill is just about the same as when my kids were still at home.

I will start with Scrappy the Poodle, he is 9 years old and is like a grouchy old man, well of course in human years he is 49 years old, and over weight with a very short attention span and frequent trips outside to potty. He loves to eat and when he gets excited about something, he jumps up & down and looks like a small white oversized miniture sheep. He likes to smile and tries very hard to talk to you. I just can’t understand what he is saying.

Lola the SchiTzu, she is my mothers baby and I do mean baby. My mother adopeted her from a litter of puppies that my cousin had. She was a very laid back puppy and still is, which is good for my mother. Moving fast or getting excited all of the time is not a good thing for my mother. She has one speed and it is all her own, she will tell you that she will get there when she gets there. Lola follows my mother around the house like a shadow all day long. When my mother sits down, Lola lays down at my mothers feet with her head on my mothers feet. She is very quiet & sweet, I don’t think we ever heard her bark until she had been with us about a month. we have had her taken from our locked back yard in the past and we were very fortunate to get her back. I won’t tell you who took her but be very careful of maintance people working around your neighborhood.

Then there is my Ella Bella! She is my baby and thank goodness there is not another one like her, because she is very high maintance. When I am home she is perfect, but when I am gone, my mother tells me she becomes a bully to the other two and just wears her out. I must admit she does have a mind of her own, but we will wrestle and play together and just have a blast. She makes me laugh. She dances when I sing to her, I don’t know if it is because she like the singing or it is hurting her ears. She knows when it is bedtime and will stand and look at me and not move, regardless how long it is until I go to my bedroom. She has her own pillow and she will lay on it on my bed and look at me until I lay down. She is a blanket hog, if she is cold she will pull the blanket on top of her and snuggle up against me. She thinks she is a German Shephern in a Yorkie Body. She loves for me to toss her in the air and catch her. I would be lost without my little one. I adopted her when she was about 6 months old, from some people that purchased her in Texas and did not have the time to spend with her to train and love her.

When I take my mother out of the house we put our babies in their kennels. And when we return home, it is like you just got home from work and your children are at you, all at the same time yelling mommy mommy. Only they are barking their heads off like you have deserted them for days and you have only been gone 2 hours.

But we love them and they keep our lives interesting and they are wonderful companions.

Last week I noticed a very pregnant cat running through the neighborhood, actually running out of my mothers garage. This is very disturbing to me as I am known as the neighborhood relocater. Cats must be able to talk to each other, because it seems that my mothers garage is like Motel 6 for stray and abandoned pregnant cats. I can just hear them discusing their living arrangements with the new comers in the area, and pointing a paw to each house and discussing the times that dinner is put out for the animals that actually live in each house and when the new ones can show up and eat.

All but one cat in the area that we live in have been spayed or neutured. Except for one very fiesty male cat. I call him Frico the wonderer. I was feeling pretty good about no unwanted animals when I spyed a very pregnant calico female. She had to have been abodoned or dropped off in the area because I had not seen her before. It was Friday night and I already had a plan to set my animal traps with tuna in the can and take her to the vet down the street to adopt her & her kittens out.

I will never hurt and animal, just take then somewhere else where they can get shelter, food & water. I woke up Sat. morning feeling very sure of myself that I caught her and could take her to the vet and be at my grandchildrens scoccer games by 10:am.

What a shock when I checked my animal trap. I didn’t catch a very pregnant cat, it was a very big, ugly and very nasty smelling Possium. This is the 4th possium that I have caught but this one was twice the size of the other ones and much much uglier and mean looking. This one scared me. Since I was running short on time. I put the cage in my car and took it with me to the soccer games, I decided that my son in law could help me let this one loose in the woods.

The possium stunk so bad I was sick to my stomach by the time I got to the soccer field. I had all four of my windows rolled down on the highway so the wind would blow the smell out, but it still stunk. I asked my son in law to help me let it go in the woods and he put on a very brave face and said sure, I’ll help you. When it came time to open the cage my son in law stood about 5 foot behind me with my long ice scrapper in his hand to protect me if he needed to Of course by the time he would have gotten tp me I would have already been bitten.

Long story short, the possium has a new home and I have a cleaned out detailed car.

And how was your day.

How often do you laugh at yourself? I consider myself an intelligent woman, but I can do some pretty silly things, I am just glad that I can laugh at myself. I have some really good friends that use to call me just to get a good laugh.

I have been known to try and tackle jobs that I have never done before and somehow manage to get the job done but it might not have been the best way to get it done.

When I started driving, before I was allowed to take the car out by myself, after I have gotten my drivers license, I had to be shown how to take a tire off and put one back on. My father said that this was for my own benefit, just in case of emergencies. But I always called him or my brother anyway when I needed help. I was living out of state and decided that I needed an oil change, so I went to the store and bought the oil which was all I thought you needed at the time. (I didn’t realize that you also needed a new oil & air filter) I really though I was doing something, I put on my overalls, pulled the car up on the curb (I didn’t have a jack) got under the car with a bucket, unscrewed the bolt to the oil pain and oil went everywhere. Have you ever tried to move really fast in a very confined space, Its not very easy to do. When I calmed down, I heard my neighbor laughing really loud on his front porch so I crawled out from under the car to see what was so funny and he laughed even louder. I walked over to him and he had me look in a mirror and we both laughed until we cried. I was covered in oil from head to toe. He told me that when he saw what I was going to do he just couldn’t contain himself, he put a chair on his front porch and had to watch the show, I had such a look of determination on my face. And when he saw the oil running down the street he knew that I missed the bucket and droped the bolt. I lived there for two years and never had to do my own oil change again, he always volunteered to do it for me and I never said no!

I remember moving once and I had just gotten a brand new waterbed, I had never had one before and I was looking forward to a first time experience! You just fill it up with water and plug in the heater, Right? That would be true with just about anybody else but me. I set it up and screwed on the water hose to start the filling up process. I was really tired from moving, so I laid down on the floor in the next room. What a big mistake! I fell asleep for about 2 hours, I woke up with the sound of running water coming out of the next room. I went running in the next room and there was a water fall shooting out of where the hose was connected. My waterbed poped up and looked like a fresh baked loaf of bread. I disconnected the hose from the faucet and let it start draining, while I went to a rental shop to get a wet vac to save the carpet. When I got back the bed was about normal, so I started on the carpet, I was working furiouly trying to soak up the water from the carpet when the wet vac started shooting out sparks. Now I had sparks flying in a room with a waterbed that was made of rubber. Not a very good combination. Not to mention I was standing in water using electricity, electricution did cross my mind and it was not in my cards. I took the wet vac back to the rental store expained what happened, and the guy behind the counter started laughing so hard he fell down. Then he told me that the last time that wet vac was rented the same thing happened so he didn’t charge me for the rental. He said that the laugh covered the cost.

I would like to say that I do learn from my mistakes, but I am afraid I do have some repeats. This only makes me laugh at myself more

I always say that Laughter is Great for the Soul!

Does it always seem that you are being picked on by nature? We have parking lot that we park at, that is about two blocks away from our building, so I call it the South 4o. So when I refer to the South 40 this is what I am referring to.

Last night when I was walking to the South 40 after work, I was looking at the ground and noticed some unusual slimy wet spots and wondered what they were, when all of a sudden somthing is shooting accross infront of my face. I looked up in the trees and notice a rather large group of birds perched there trying to target practice on the people walking by. I found this really funny as I watched other people including myself pick up our pace to our car.

Today at lunch, I was driving and my best friend had her hand sticking out the downed window playing with the wind, when she was targeted by the birds. I thought that this was halarious. Are birds really smart enough to do this.

I had to remember back many moons ago when I was married and my husband had a recessed hairline. He was out in the yard working, raking leaves and hauling trash, when I heard this loud yell and saw foriegn objects flying through the air. I looked at him and he was targeted by a fast flying blackbird that had been eating mulberries, at least that is what I would say according to the color of it.

I had a convertible and was driving with my mother and had the top down, when in a moving vehicle I was targeted in my lap. My mother and I laughed until we both were crying. I had makeup running down my face just as we were pulling up at the drive up window at Del Rancho, and my mother wanted to know why the lady was looking at me so strange.

Life is too short not to enjoy the little things that bring a smile to our face, remember to stop and smell the roses and smile once in awhil at least make people wonder what you are thinking.