Cute

This morning I was busily packing up the car to leave for work and school while the boys played together in the living room. When I came back in to collect them, Gabriel was sitting and just watching Joel run around like a crazy person. He turned to me with a big ole smile on his face and said, "Mommy, that's the best baby that ever came out of your tummy!"

I love that kid. I told him that they BOTH were.

Christmas 2011 pictures

Dreams of somewhere else.

As much as I love the city I live in, living in Texas has become very problematic to me. We spend the whole summer sweltering and miserable. It's too hot to even go swimming for gosh sakes. So we gripe and complain and can't wait for cooler weather.

Then the cooler weather comes and we have a couple of months of happiness before the seasonal allergies really kick in. Then Gabriel, Joel and I start our round robin of continual runny noses, coughing, fever and generally miserable states. Even though we all need fresh air, I hesitate to go outside because I feel like the air is poisoning us. I never open the windows, even on nice days when it would be wonderful to air out the house. We diligently empty and refill the humidifiers nightly. We spend around $100+ extra per month on prescription and over-the-counter medicines. We take the boys' temperatures so much we start just leaving the thermometers on the counter after washing them off instead of putting them back in the cabinet. We buy AT LEAST the three-pack of Kleenex boxes every stinking week.

I sometimes get tired of seeing the boys like this, and take them to the doctor, only to be told that it just needs to run its course. How I hate wasting that co-pay. Or sometimes the doctor will think they've been sick too long and must have a sinus infection, and give them antibiotics. I am not one to advocate antibiotics when they're not needed, but I must confess I am a happy soul when this happens because I know we will have at least one of us that feels better for a couple of weeks. Then it starts over again.

I went to have the allergy testing done in September and found out that I'm not allergic to mountain cedar, like I thought all of these years. On a scale of 1 to 4, I had ones on a great many things, twos on a couple of grasses and a mold, a three for dog hair (which almost made me utter a great big WTF in the allergist's examining room), and a four for a very common kind of mold. I'm assuming that dead oak leaves must have this mold, because after I raked leaves for 20 minutes one day back just after the holidays, my allergies ramped up and I've been battling ever since. It also may not be helping that we decided on a long-haired dog. At first he didn't seem to shed, but now when I brush him quite a bit of hair is coming off of him. He doesn't seem to lose it in big tufts that drift around the house like Molly did, though, so I don't think I can blame much of my suffering on Tucker.

What I can blame it on is freakish weather changes, sometimes damp and sometimes dry wind, and very little freezing weather. Hmmmmm. Sounds like just plain ole Texas winters. Living somewhere with cooler temperatures in the summer and vegetation that doesn't make me want a sinus transplant sounds so refreshing. Canada isn't too far away, is it really? And it's not really THAT cold, is it?

Mountain men they will never be...

...and I'm not so sure that's a good thing anymore.

Let me try to explain the genesis of my crazy thinking.

I think we have done a good job in starting the boys off on the right foot academically. They love to read, learn, and ask questions. I think as parents one of our main goals is to help them get "book smart". We want them to WANT to go school, make great grades, and get into a fantastic college. But what about common sense stuff? Or practical life lessons? Neither one of us can work on cars, figure out how to fix plumbing problems, or build things with wood. The only things I feel I can contribute on a practical level (besides basics like doing laundry) is to teach them about gardening, and possibly growing their own food.

But what if they need more than that to survive one day? What if something catastrophic occurs to take away our comfortable and relatively easy way of life? What if the food or water supply was contaminated or rendered somehow unsafe? Every time a story breaks about bacteria infecting people from a food source it scares the crap out of me. I think we have a tendency to hold onto blind faith that whatever is on the shelves of our grocery store is 100% safe to eat. Or what if global warming kicks in sooner rather than later, and drought becomes the norm? All of a sudden there's not enough food to feed everyone, and things start to get ugly.

Paranoid thinking, maybe, but not completely farfetched.

A couple of years ago, we were kind of sad to realize that there was no one to take Gabriel (this was before Joel) fishing. Well, we could take them, and I know how to attach a lure to the line and cast it. But if I ever caught a fish I wouldn't know the first thing about releasing it, let alone keeping it to clean, filet and serve for supper. My Uncle Robert used to take my family fishing, and although he threw most of what we caught back, he would sometimes keep one of the bigger ones and we would have some beautiful fresh fish filets for dinner that night. My mom, coming from a family of uncles on her dad's side that actually fished the Gulf commercially, claims she used to know how to clean them, but isn't too jazzed about trying it again. My dad would go fishing with his grandfather, Daddy Buck, but Dad never had the patience to actually sit and fish. He loved to hike, so that's what he would do while his grandfather fished.

Uncle Robert and his brothers all hunted too, and and could skin and butcher a deer without thinking about it. After all, their father (my maternal great grandfather) had been a butcher for his career. I have second and third cousins who killed their first buck before they were 10 years old. I used to play just outside my Uncle Robert's smokehouse, where he had different cuts of venison hanging everywhere and the smell was sometimes horrible, sometimes heavenly. But my parents never got into the hunting way of life. In fact, my Dad may have gone along on some hunting trips when he first started meeting my mother's family, but never had the stomach for killing another living creature. Which is the way I feel about it too.

Jav's dad never got into hunting or fishing either, and Jav himself was too busy playing baseball to worry about the outdoorsy stuff. So the boys have little or no knowledge to gain from their dad. Which up until now wouldn't really have bothered me. I've been a hater of guns and hunting for some time now. When we started having children, I just assumed they'd grow up in a gun-free home. That included toy guns, in my opinion. So other than a tiny plastic water gun that didn't work that someone gave him last summer, Gabriel hasn't had the word "gun" in his vocabulary. But he recently went to a classmates' cowboy-themed birthday party where the party favors were a hat, bandana and plastic water gun. He had a great time once he got home getting dressed up, especially once I told him there were some boots in his closet that someone gave us that probably almost fit him now. Then he told me while driving to school one morning this week that one of Tita and Tito's neighbors has a BB gun in his garage. How, I asked, did he know this? Because Tito took him to say "Happy New Year" and the man let him hold the BB gun, and may have even let him shoot it. The details are sketchy.

But the thing is, I am starting to wonder if they might someday NEED to know how to hunt or fish for their own food.

We would love for the boys to get involved in Boy Scouts, and my dad and I are on the verge of taking Gabriel on his first hike at the Fort Worth Nature Center. But even if they love it, it doesn't mean they'd end up even more outdoorsy. I asked Jav what he thought about getting them a BB gun when they're a little older, but only to shoot at targets in the back yard. He thinks I'm crazy in thinking that they won't try to aim at any animals. I wondered about archery electives, or taking them skeet shooting. At least they could practice at hitting a target. But the thing is, you could practice on non-living things your whole life, but it wouldn't give you ANY sense of what it would be like to actually track and kill a living creature.

There is a scene in "Into the Wild" that really grabbed me. It's towards the end of the movie, and college boy Chris McCandless has hitchhiked all the way to Alaska in his quest to turn his back on the establishment. He has read countless books on surviving in the wilderness. He kills a moose and is attempting to skin and butcher the animal before the meat starts to rot and becomes inedible. And this is where he realizes that reading things out of a book, no matter how fierce your determination to do them, is not the same as real life experience. He fails, and I felt his agony of realizing that not only did he kill that majestic animal for nothing, but that he may have blown his chance of finding real food for a long, long time.

So would the boys be able to turn into Mountain Men in a pinch, without having grown up going hunting and fishing? Probably not. I guess we need to hope that they become so successful after college that they have the money to hire someone to do it for them. And I'll have to keep pondering that BB gun issue.

Tucker

In early November, we finally decided it was high time to get another dog. We lost Molly all the way back in July. And along with missing having that furry companion around who is just so glad to see you every time you turn around, I missed having the security of a dog in the backyard and house. We recently had a steady stream of daytime break-ins in our neighborhood, where the thieves took big-screen TVs, laptops, jewelry, etc... They usually hit between 1 and 5 in the afternoon, but never in occupied homes, and never in houses with dogs. I swear having a dog is a better deterrent than an alaram system.

We narrowed our types of dog mixes that we wanted to German Shepherd, Doberman, and maybe Rottweiler, although we read some disturbing things about having Rotties with kids that made that group a big maybe. We decided that if it was a German Shepherd we would be ok with a slightly older dog (no more than 3), but a Doberman or Rottie would need to be a puppy so we could train it from day one. We did some research online, asked some questions to our vet, and then Jav went to the Humane Society to check out some of the ones we were interested in. It was a grueling process to see all of the sweet dogs needing homes, and I couldn't spend any time on the Fort Worth Animal Control site. There were so many, and half the time they wouldn't even bother to determine much about the dog to try to get it adopted. Depressing.

Jav came home talking about a dog that wasn't on their website. His name was Stallone, and he was a 5-month-old Rottie mix. He thought that of all the dogs he observed, this one was the calmest and seemed to be sweet and well-behaved. He also fell in love with a Husky mix that was 7 or 8. And he was the one insisting that we not get an older dog. Hah! When he went back the next day, the Husky mix was gone, but Stallone was still there. Some of the Humane Society employees, the ones who really work with the dogs and KNOW, claimed that he seemed to be a really great dog. He decided to get him, but they don't let you have the dog right away. Most dogs they have to spay or neuter before you can take them home. We asked that since he was only 5 months, could we please let our vet take care of that once he was six months old. They said sure.

Well, I went to pick the dog up with the boys two days later. When I walked in the girl started telling me that since he had surgery he didn't need to eat much that night, etc. They had neutered him. I was pretty upset, then they brought him down the hall. Other than his coloring, he didn't look like a Rottie. Not big enough. He was woozy, which was to be expected, but he was also coughing. I've always heard that heartworms can cause coughing. I put him in the car, and proceeded to try and drive home while crying and trying to call the vet's office. The front desk girl assured me that it might just be kennel cough, which many dogs that come from shelters end up with. I had an appointment to see the vet the next day and tried to be patient. And not too upset with Jav. After all, I was too emotional to go with him to help with his decision and was totally trusting him. I couldn't really blame him for choosing a too small, sick dog, could I?

Dr. Norris determined that he did have kennel cough, made worse by the anesthesia of the surgery (it would take him a month and tons of meds to get over it), he was probably closer to 6 or 7 months old, and thought he might have some Gordon Setter in him due to his beautiful coat, and feathering around his ears and haunches. He also thought that his temperament was amazing for a young, very sick dog. He made me feel so much better I could have kissed him! I also knew that I didn't want to keep the name Stallone. He obviously was NOT a Stallone. After some deliberating we decided on Jake. I still think this is a perfect name for him, but then we made the ridiculous decision to change it because one of Jav's close friends has a son named Jake. I would not be mad in the least if someone I knew named their dog after one of the boys. But we changed it to Tucker. Which now has stuck.

We knew that a puppy would cost us some money up front. But we never imagined that along with the kennel cough meds, he would end up needing meds for tapeworm, and then most recently mange. Sigh and double sigh and triple sigh!!!!! He only has it around his face, common for puppies whose mother may have been infected with the parasite. So he's on a six month trial to see if this one type of heartworm medication works to clear it up. It's very expensive of course.

Then there's all of the things he has chewed up. Numerous puzzle pieces, about 20 socks, some Christmas ornaments with hooks spit out to the side, thank God, an old tiki torch stand, a wooden handle of a rake, the ends of the pooper scooper set handles, some plastic flower bed siding, an old soaker hose, the camera USB cable and my new Nook USB cable. Those last two cost some money to replace. Every time I look in the yard he has found something else to chew on that he's not supposed to. We've been walking him almost every day and I try to throw the ball with him to burn off some energy. I've spent oodles more money on countless chew toys, most of which he chews for a couple of days then either gets tired of them or I have to throw them away because he's chewed a hole in them or something.

So instead of ending up with one of the breeds we talked about, we have this crazy mix of a dog. The girl who bathes him said she noticed qualities of about six different breeds, including Basset Hound (long tail, big feet and short legs), Chow Chow (dark spots on tongue), Golden Retriever (shape of head and beautiful coat), Dachshund (coloring), and even, yes, Rottie. The way he's been chewing that didn't surprise me.

So, instead of a big dog, we have a medium sized dog (he's gone from 33 to 41 pounds) with short legs. He has a LOUD bark, but instead of a good watchdog, we have a dog that barks whenever the other neighborhood dogs bark. Which I guess could be ok. I was pretty upset with the Humane Society about 1) how sick the dog was when they let him be adopted and 2) the fact that they fudged about his age and his breed background. Jav says if I were to see how hard those people work for NO pay trying to find homes for all those animals that I would be a little more sympathetic. He's probably right, but still.

He's been nipping at Gabriel pretty bad, too. It's so interesting to me that Joel must give off some signal that he won't put up with that nonsense, because Tucker never bothers him with nipping. Gabriel is more sensitive and nervous about telling him NO and Tucker takes full advantage. So of course Gabriel is not too happy with Tucker. He asked me yesterday if Tucker would be getting sick anytime soon so Daddy could go pick out another dog. Ouch.

All of these are things we need to work on. We need to take him to a class, but are so tapped out from all the vet trips that we just don't have the money. And despite all of the negative things I've mentioned, I think he is a really cool dog and will end up being a great pet for our family. He is very laid back and has the sweetest temperament. He seems content being outside or inside. He LOVES Jav and his little hiney goes crazy back and forth with that huge tail when he comes home from work. He already follows me all around the house. He is really good at walking. Everyone at the vet's office dotes on him, thinks he is beautiful dog, and has a fantastic temperament. ESPECIALLY with kids. So I guess Jav really did a terrific job.