There's no time for blogging!

Well, apparently there is..a little. December is always too busy. Holiday preparations, house projects and the annual leaf removal all occur between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Add to that a few doggie incidents......

This is General Patton. Isn't he adorable? 

After being sprayed by a skunk......not so much.

So Friday night, by the ambient glow of car headlights, I was scrubbing "The General" in the back yard with a mixture of peroxide, baking soda and dish-washing detergent. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and apply fo-fo dog  shampoo, the tropical botanical one that makes your pet smell like a French whore. Not that I know what a French whore smells like, it's just a fitting descriptive. After a thorough rinsing...he just smelled like wet dog. I knew then that the skunk stink was vanquished! Meh.....not entirely....Saturday morning I was laying in bed before getting up, and he came in and laid on the floor for his morning petting...I rolled over on my stomach and put my head over the side of the bed, reached an arm out to provide some morning love, and Pheeww!

Still a little stinky he was. Nothing like a little skunk to get your feet on the cold floor in the morning. Patton, I said, you'll just have to air out today. We've got lots of leaves to blow off the yard.

That was our main project for the weekend, we have about 2 full acres of grass (read weeds) that we have to clear of leaves generated by 15 or 90 really large oak trees. This used to be a fall project extraordinaire, a memory that our kids will never forgive us for, as they were involved in the annual slow torture by leaf rake every year. Until I discovered "Big Windy"....400 mph of Honda driven breeziness! Rent this thing for 60 bucks a day and get the yard cleared in so much time. Sorry guys, I honestly didn't know "Big Windy" existed until a few years ago.

Irma loves it. Once she starts, she won't let it go. She won't even stop for water or to go to the bathroom. She asked for one for Christmas. I'm relegated to shoveling leaves into the tarp and dragging them into the woods. Which is admittedly something I should be doing, not her.

Sunday we completed more projects, some of them Christmas related.

The General had another animal adventure. I didn't get any pictures but he was barking like crazy and I looked out the window to see him chasing a fat raccoon around my car. The raccoon would turn and hiss and snarl at him and he would back off and then go after it again. I quickly called him in before he got bit, raccoons wandering across the yard in the middle of the day are not normal.

But the tree is up, the lights are on, and the view in from the front yard is festive!

Merry Christmas!