Friday stuff...

Another week has gone by and here we are at nearly the end of the fourth month. I think mostly everyone in this part of the state will be relieved when this rainy April has ended. The landscape in many parts of Texas has been literally changed by the recent rain storms, and it will takes months of recovery for some people to get their lives back to normal. Except for soggy grass and hundreds of ant mounds around our property, everything here is fine.

Mickey Kitty continues to cry and meow and literally howl at times when he's outside looking for Gatsby. During the rain storms this week, I kept Mickey safe and dry in the garage, but he has access to the fenced-in coop when he wants to get some fresh air and look over the property. And that's when Mickey did most of his howling... he would just sit in that coop and cry for Gatsby. At times I was tempted to let Sweet Pea out into the garage and coop to keep Mickey company, but Sweet Pea is an inside cat and very clean, and I didn't want to change his house-cat status here for a temporary situation with Mickey. I'm sure, given more time, Mickey will get used to being an 'only cat' outside.

Savannah continues to be an extraordinary dog, and even though she's a year old now, she's still very much a puppy. With all of her 'big girl' behavior and her sweetness, she still has some crazy-puppy moments that leave me wondering where my mind was when I agreed to get another big dog. Gracie was 48 pounds at her highest weight years ago, and Savannah has already reached 65 pounds and looks to be still growing. I'm thankful that the vet's estimate of 80 pounds doesn't look possible now, but she could get to 70 pounds, and that's a lot of dog.

With the summer coming along quickly, my husband is talking of traveling... and the question now is what to do with Savannah. We called a professional pet-sitter, who took three days to return my call and then told me she wasn't even available for a meet-and-greet for two weeks. One of our friends had offered to take care of Savannah but that's way too much to ask of a friend who has her own business, her own dog, and her own husband and home to take care of without adding Savannah to her list of responsibilities. Taking care of our cats is a job enough for our friend, but an easy one. And being still quite young, Savannah can't stay in this house all day and all night with just an hour or two of company and going out for a walk. So now we're talking about boarding her in a kennel. Good grief. I hate to do this, especially after all the progress Savannah has made since we got her, but there seems to be no other solution. My husband and I will visit the local vet offices who offer boarding facilities, and we'll pick the one with the biggest kennels with outdoor access, and hope that Savannah doesn't think we've abandoned her when we go on a trip. I'm already dreading the day we have to leave her. We obviously didn't think of summer traveling when we agreed to get a puppy.

I've cancelled the weekly tea parties for a while, actually for the entire summer. Everyone seems to be busy with their own homes and families and obligations and most of the chairs around my dining room table were empty each week. Changing the tea day from Wednesday to Thursday didn't help much at all, except for one neighbor whose work schedule had changed. The craft-making didn't go over too well with everyone either, except for myself and two others.  On the last tea afternoon, we talked about making "Altered Art Journals" and three of us have already begun those... we plan to get together from time to time to work on the journals and compare our books and designs and get new ideas from one another.

As I type this, I'm listening to a symphony of barn swallows out on the porch. As always at this time of the year, the swallows have returned to renovate last year's nests and lay their eggs and feed their babies when they hatch. One industrious pair of swallows tried to build a nest on a very thin ledge by the garage door. My husband took pity on their impossible choice of location and he nailed up a piece of wood underneath the ledge to give the birds a good foundation. The result is an ever-growing nest by the garage door and two very content birds who watch us going in out of the garage.

Life is good. Even with all that rain. Especially for the swallows.