Millie!

It's classic, isn't it? My pup has a basket with toys of every shape and size. Squeaky, chewable, tough, soft, with delicious tags to tear off, with flavors of beef, bacon, chicken, peanut butter. And what does she choose to do when I lose myself in my rose notes this morning over breakfast?

Indignant that I should again demand space in the corner chair, she goes off in search of trouble, settling after a while on the small wool covered stool I added yesterday. I really need to put my feet up when I am sitting on the couch. The stool is cheap and though innocuous and not especially beautiful, it is just the right height and some poor underpaid women in India or maybe Vietnam, I cant remember, made wool covers for these pieces, making them very comfortable, especially with the coming winter, where wool seems so perfectly hygge! 

When the room is quiet, very quiet, and I do not see a pup stretched out somewhere close by taking a beauty nap, I know that I must stop everything and go to see what is getting destroyed behind my back. But the thing is, the house is pretty Millie proof. Oh, she has been known to go upstairs and mess up my bed, and recently, she just loves to lift the Turkish (or is it Moroccan?) rug and go after the pad that I put down underneath to keep it from sliding when she has her zoomies. And yes, several of the throw pillows on the couch have corners chewed off, but otherwise, what other trouble could Millie possibly get into?! 

I didn't figure on her excitement over the arrival of the new stool.

Millie!

It is the first time that I actually raise my voice at her. A very loud NO follows. She looks at me inquisitively. What does it even mean, this word "no?" I heard it once at Doggie Daycare when the trainer caught me picking up another dog's poop to see what it tastes like, but at home? Could it be that my mommy is shouting at me??  She shrugs it off as a possible weird noise humans sometimes make and returns to sniff the stool cover. But by now I'm prepared -- bitter apple spray! (Have you ever tasted that stuff? I have. It's disgusting. Worse than dog poop, though I admit to never having tried the latter.)

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I feel this morning like one does after drinking way too much wine the night before: I am dealing with the post-rose-purchase hangover. Getting nine new roses last night during the very tense live rose sale (online) was exhilarating. You have to be on your toes and take some risks! I did, and (thank goodness) it paid off. However, going outside today to survey the landscape was daunting. Oh, there's room for them in the side yard and when they bloom, people walking the path that abuts that space will have a lovely rose garden to sniff and admire (unless I kill all the new plants, which is not impossible of course). But extending that rose garden means that I will have ten more holes to dig in the toughest soil on the property, and of course, I will have to remove all that sod as well, and I will have to rearrange the rose plan because now I have sizing and color issues afresh to address.

And so, while Millie is at day care, griping about her weird human mama to the other dogs, I set to it. And yes, it takes me over an hour to remove a few inches of sod and dig just one hole. And carting away the stones and the clay and the sod, uphill, because I'm planting at the bottom of an incline -- that's another chunk of time. When I am done, I have to sprint/speed to get to the boys' school on time.

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I try to come up with a special adventure for Fridays when I have all three kids after school (otherwise, the boys glue themselves to their tablet until their time runs out, after which they complain that their time has run out). Since today is a wet day (yet again), I take them to Barnes & Noble Bookstore. 

 (Sandpiper likes to be prepared for big rains)

 

It's rare that kids these days go to bookstores and indeed, Sandpiper was a little uncertain about the purpose of the excursion. When I told him he could pick out a book or two or three -- something he didn't have at home, he spent a good chunk of our time there lifting random books from the stacks, one at a time, and asking if they had it at home. 

 

 

 

The older two quickly lose themselves in their own searches. 

 

 

 

It's a huge bookstore and I have to admit -- there were times when I did not know where at least two of the three kids were, but eventually we found each other and found good books and we took our sizable stack to the Starbucks there, and the kids got treats and we did what I had done so very often just a few decades ago -- we sat at the table, sipping, munching, and looking through our precious loot. 

 

 

When I was nearing retirement, I thought this is what I would be doing once work stopped: looking at books at a bookstore cafe for hours on end.  Shows you how inaccurate our predictions are about our future.

 

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Millie and I come home to a bunch of boxes with roses in them. I want to work on this mega gardening project this weekend, but of course, it looks like it's going to be pretty wet out there. 

Eh, who can predict anything these days! One day at a time. Right now there are roses and there is a yard and soon those two will come together to form a rose garden.

That is the hope.

with so much love...