Cottonwood Festival, Movies, and Black Dog

Mom, Richard, and I went to the Cottonwood Festival last weekend. It was pretty nice, a little rainy but not too bad. It is held every year on Labor Day weekend here in Alamogordo (Alamogordo means fat cottonwood tree).

People kept saying that there were more booths than usual, but it seemed the same to me. We checked out most of the booths (didn't buy anything though), got green chile burritos, and then sat and listened to the live music. Richard's friend's step-dad plays sax in a band, and even though they were missing a member they went on and sounded great. They practice in their garage across the street, so I get to hear them on a regular basis (which I love). They usually play on my watering night, so I go out and water my plants and listen to music. Cool.

The next band played a variety of music, but mostly rock. They were pretty good too. Richard really enjoyed himself.

After the Cottonwood Festival we went to Lowes, where Richard the Spartan guarded the aisle.

It was a good thing too, there was a crazy purse wielding lady trying to get to the stepping stones!

This week our local theater was having a "back to school" special, so Richard and I went on a "not back to school" movie binge. We saw 4 movies in 2 days! We saw Clone Wars, Babylon AD, The Dark Knight, and Death Race. They were all pretty good, but Death Race surprised me the most, I loved it!

Alamogordo is having an infestation of stink bugs, they are everywhere! They were actually falling off of the roof of the theater!

This one was getting a free meal by canabalizing on of his squished comrades.

It is still raining lots here, so we still have shrooms....

And the last peice of news is that Black Dog is still (or again?) sick. She has lost 10 or so pounds and looks terribly skinny. She is finally eating again and not throwing up as much. Hopefully she will gain some weight back soon. I may just have to invest in Veterinary insurance if this keeps up! Poor old dog. Every time I think this is it for her she pulls through. I think the one time that I think she will be ok will be when she leaves us.

Mom, Richard and I were going to go to the State Fair next week, but I don't think that we can leave her. Dianna, Richard and the girls could take care of her medicine and let her out and all, but she needs to eat small amounts every few hours. I think we will have to skip it this year. That is ok, she is more important. She has had 14 good years, and you never know how much longer she (or any of us!) will be here. Cleo died while Richard and I were out of town 2 years ago and I haven't quite forgiven myself for that. We don't stay home all of the time in fear, but I don't think we should leave town while she is sickly.

Oh, and to end on a lighter note, here is one of our most recent buggy visitors. She came knocking on the skinny window next to the front door. The cats were going crazy inside!

Wanna Smurf?

I got a new Smurf watch, so cool! I am not sure "Wanna Smurf?" means to me what it is supposed to!

Homebodies

I was going to write that Richard and I had been homebodies lately, but really we usually are! Richard goes through phases where he likes more human contact, then less for a while. I do my best to provide what he needs. Lately he has wanted to stay home a lot, which is fine with me! Home is usually where I would rather be.




The other night he picked up one of my crossword puzzles and started to fill it out. He stopped when he hit a few that he didn't know. He said he was trying to do the clues all in order. I showed him some of my half-finished ones. I never do the clues in order. The next night he was looking at a Sudoku puzzle that I had laid out to work on later.
He really had never showed any interest in those type of puzzles before. I thought maybe word and number puzzles just wouldn't be his thing. I am kind of a puzzle-geek (well, really an all-around-geek!), but I know plenty of people who never enjoy that kind of thing. It would be fine with me if he never liked them. But now I think he just wasn't ready yet. Hmm, another thing that I am glad that he didn't have forced on him too early through school. This may be a passing interest, or he may become a puzzle-geek too. Either is fine with me.




The dogs have been doing so well. Richard and I have been helping them learn that the house doesn't need to be marked, and that neighbors don't like it when they bark at night, and that the cats don't like to have their butts sniffed while they are eating. They are really learning quickly. Shylo just loves having friends to play with.
The cats are tolerating them, and Ren, who used to be called Devil-Cat for her dog attacks, is actually liking them! It is amazing what the simple removal of a uterus will do. If anyone reading this doubts the benefits of spaying and neutering early, please reconsider! With uterus intact, Ren would attack any dog she saw (and I mean *violently* attack!), as well as any humans in the vicinity. Now, sans-uterus, she is the sweetest thing, she actually sleeps within a foot of the three dogs. It is incredible.











Sydney is adorable, a typical black lab puppy. She has a ton of energy. We found out that she came from Tularosa, the owners got rid of the whole litter of pups way too young. Syd was adopted, but the new family returned her to the Humane Society because she was getting on the counters to get food. Well, she was a puppy! And missing her mommy! And probably hungry! Anyway, she hasn't done that at all at our house. In fact she is really well mannered.



And then there is poor Uno, who was neutered at almost 2 years old, and doesn't understand why it isn't ok to mark his new home. He is a sweet dog, he just had those hormone producing testicles for way too long. Now he just has an empty scrotum (ever seen a dog that was neutered as an adult? pretty funny...) and that empty eye-socket. Maybe we should have named him Lucky, like that old joke.








Shorty, one of the cats that lives at mom's house, is watching Richard mow the lawn through mom's front window. I just thought this picture was cute.






Richard came to my rescue the other night. I have been kind of distraught because I could not find my Across the Universe DVD. At first I was annoyed, but its absence was really starting to upset me. I love it, and I was set to buy a new one. Richard remembered the broken DVD player, he thought it might be in there. Next thing I knew he had gotten it out and was taking it apart. There was my DVD! Yay!!
I was so thankful, and he continued to explore the insides of the DVD player. A happy ending!

Uno

Uno always has his head cocked to the side so he can see better from his one eye. He is so cute!

Shuttle Camp

Getting ready to launch.

Shuttle Camp

Richard "graduating" from Shuttle Camp.

New family members!

We got 2 new dogs. Uno is the little brown one that is missing an eye, Sydney is the black one, and then there is Shylo, the multicolored one. We have had her for a while. They are all getting along great, they have been playing lots with Shylo, and they all seem really happy. They even get along with the cats! This picture was taken by Lauren at the vets office. It is a really good one.

Shrooms!

It has been so wet, there are shrooms growing from the gate!

More yard stuff

Just some yard pics.

Yard stuff

Tarantulas

Pretty large tarantula, he was outside the hospital where I work. They are pretty common around here. After taking his picture I moved him into a big plant so he wouldn't get mushed.

Tarantula getting irritated

Tarantula rearing up, warning me to get away. :-)

Learn Nothing Day

Well, it is Learn Nothing Dayand unfortunately learning is still happening. So much for our break! Richard is off at Shuttle Camp learning loads. As for me, so far I have collected morning glory seeds, washed Richard's JuiJitsu uniform for tonights testing, and now I am on the computer. What a waste of the one day that we could take a vacation from learning!

Richard found a really cool beetle the other night on our front walkway. He was pretty slow, we wondered if he was going to molt.

But the next morning we found him dead.

We brought him into the house, we were going to look at him with our microscope viewer, it is this camera that puts microscopic images onto the TV. But, the cats found him first. I don't know if they ate him or just dragged him off to live under the couch with the dust hippos, but he is gone.

We also found these weird cocoon like things in the grass. Some sort of insect inside I am sure. We will have to wait and see.

This picture was taken at the races a few weeks ago. I just found it when transferring pictures from my phone. They are cousins, but they are more like brother and sister sometimes. They are so cute.

Oh! And Happy Birthday to Sandra Dodd, who thought of Learn Nothing Day!

Dogs, TKD, swimming phones

Richard has been dog sitting lately. First it was Toby, a sweet little Sheltie. He liked to chase the kitties, but got along great with Black Dog. We never introduced him to Shylo, but they probably would have done fine. Shylo has fought with Black Dog before, which makes me nervous, but they both want to be the Alpha females. That is why Black Dog lives at mom's house and Shylo lives at mine. They both do great with male dogs.
Toby's mom came home and now Richard is watching another dog. He has watched this one before, his name was Stanley then. He was just a puppy then, and his mom felt that Stanley didn't fit his personality. During the search for a new name he became Pupsie Pie. That isn't really what she was going to choose, but it is what stuck. We just call him Pupsie. He and Shylo have been having a great time together. This picture is through the screen, so it is a little grainy. They play all of the time. We haven't braved having the cats around with Pupsie. They go into their room (they have their own bedroom with beds, cat trees, cat box, and food and water of course) and the dogs come in. Pupsie has been sleeping in Richard's bedroom.

It has been interesting having a dog around who can go everywhere a cat can go. We are not used to small dogs! Here he is lounging on the back of Tim's chair, Richard is sitting in the chair.

It has been rainy lately. That always happens some around the 4th of July. It almost always rains before fireworks, nature trying to help out!
We have mushrooms in the front yard. It hasn't been moist enough for mushrooms in ages! You can see baby morning glories coming up too (and some weeds, and yes I know morning glories are weeds in other places, I just think that is weird though!). I haven't decided whether I will mow the lawn or just let the flowers grow. I imagine I will end up leaving them. I hate cutting down something so pretty.

Richard competed in (and helped judge!) our regional TaeKwonDo tournament a few weeks ago. He won a Gold medal in Sparring and a Gold medal in Extreme Forms, which is one that he makes up himself, and it has to have "extreme" moves in it like flips, rolls, and jumps. Here he is bowing to the judges and getting his medals. The tallest man in the center of his line of judges is Russ Ervin, the owner of the Las Cruces TKD school where the tournament was held.

We went up to the lake (Elephant Butte Lake, for those who don't know) for a week over the 4th of July. We had a good time. I sat on the beach a lot, and went for rides in the blue boat. Richard did LOTS of tubing, kneeboarding, fishing, boating and playing in the water. I would have pictures, but my phone went swimming! I thought I was done in the water for the day, and the wind came up as it often does at the lake. You just expect the wind to come up a little every day or so. Anyway, we got our stuff tied down pretty quickly with everyone pitching in, then went to help the neighbors. I jumped in the water to help the big Richard hold the neighbor's boat, and forgot that I had my phone! Ugh! So no 4th of July beach pictures. Unfortunately Lauren did the exact same thing a couple of days later! The price you pay for helping others I guess. We both got them replaced fairly quickly though. It was worth it for a good time at the lake with family.

Father's Day

On the Saturday before Father's Day Richard, mom, and I went to Ruidoso to see Tim. We went to the cemetary, watered the plants that Eric and Ness had planted, and spread some more seeds.

Right now he just has a metal marker, but Gary has picked a marble, flat headstone for him. I think it will mention his military service, and hopefully something about his surveying and family.

One of the bigger plants is blooming, I am not sure if it is a Texas Yucca or a Red Hot Poker, but I imagine that it is a Red Hot Poker since Tim loved those.

There are flowers everywhere, and elk and deer scat. Tim would like to know that he is with the wildlife in the mountains. It is beautiful there.

After the cemetary we went to the house for a while, then came back down the mountain for dinner and hot tubbing at Dianna and Richard's house. That was just awesome. I am so glad that my Richard has family so close!

Working, racing, missing Tim

Wednesday after work I took a nap then Richard and I did yardwork most of the afternoon. Most people I think don't like my wild front flower areas, but I like them, and that is what counts! I know it drove Tim crazy, he liked things neat and orderly.




Then Richard and I went to the Lake with Richard and Dianna Thursday. We had a good day, it is always nice being with them. We helped put new fabric on their awning, wish I had pictures of that!


After the awning we cleaned up mom's property a little, well, more than a little! We ended up with 6 trash bags full of sad dry bamboo. I would have brought it home to our compost pile but we also had trash mixed in.

Richard asked his Uncle Richard if duct tape solved all problems, since we are often teasing about that, this was Uncle's response:

We checked out the plants growing on mom's property, most native, some planted by mom and Tim, some just popped up. There was a tiny plant with the coolest seed pods, the seed pods were huge compared to the size of the plant.



My Richard had been up late working on a Lego project Wednesday night, and we got up pretty early to go to the lake. He worked hard at the lake, he enjoys physical work, but he was beat at the end of the day. Including the time he slept on the way home he slept almost 15 hours that night!


Friday night we went out to the races. We took mom, it was the first time that she had been in the pits since Tim passed away. She did okay until we saw Tim's old red race car that he had sold. It was the first time that it was out racing since Tim sold it. A couple bought it for their son to get started racing in, their son's name was............Richard! Crazy! They didn't paint it or anything, just took silver paint and changed the silver 77 to a 79. It was kind of emotional seeing it out there.

Richard hung out with Tommy over in the tech inspection area. Tommy and Richard's Uncle Richard are good friends, they went to high school together and work together. Richard is learning tons about race car set-up, track rules, as well as different ways to relate to people. Some of the drivers can come in kind of hot-tempered. Tommy is blunt but calm and cool.

You can't see much in this picture, that is the tech garage, and Richard is in there with Tommy and Cory, who is Tommy's son and has been a friend of Richard's for years.

I am glad that Richard is so out-going. He has been out to the track without me a few times this year with his engine-builder friend Bobby, so he has met quite a few of the drivers and crew. He was perfectly comfortable taking off on his own to talk to everyone in the pits. It is good networking for him, as he will be racing before too long!