man alive...

I am going back and putting labels on all of my past posts... WHEW, that might just take me until...... FOREVER!

Nothing exciting happening.... wrapping up my last days at the evil night job... praying I passed my AEPA and that i can start at the school as planned....

Waiting for Sedona's OFA results to come back.... and that's killing me slowly too.....

Started doing the whole online dating thing again.... so far it's yielded a bunch of sex crazed fools who must think that "dating" means having sex.... *sigh* back to the drawing board yet again ...

The dogs are all well... thankfully :) Sedona is still holding her beautiful coat, and with no show in sight for at least another month, i begin to wonder how awful she may look then! LOL Dakota is blowing his coat like the wind.... I still need to get him trained up some more before taking him back in the Rally ring.... he might be appearing in a Calendar soon... I'll keep you all posted :) Chance is blowing his coat too (is it a boy thing? :-)) and is learning to sit, down, and stay finally. He's actually a smart dog, despite the doofy looks he gives ;-)

I will be updating more next week.... I"m off M-Th :) And the weekend too!! :)

OH, and I got a call from Paul today.... Savannah went WB for 2 points today in Bandon!!!! :) YAY!!!

some life updates

I know that 95% of my posts are about my dogs... but they *are* my life... so ;-)

But this one is going to be about me and all thats been going on in the last few months...

Many of you know about the wonderful guy I was dating, Joey. Yep. Was. As with the guy before him, one day we just stopped talking. We were supposed to go away for a weekend together and he never called again... I sent him a text message asking if he was ok, and I never heard anything back. Cest la vie.

Have had some health issues as of late which have really thrown me (and my doctors) for a loop. I'm hardly keeping any food down... even crackers are going right through. (oh, and this is over the course of 2 months!) Doc says based on that information i should be losing weight, but instead, I'm gaining. Nice huh?
I'm having numbness in my legs that the doc isn't sure where it's coming from, so we took an x-ray of my back.
I have a vision thing going on called Micropsia. Had never heard of it before until I saw it on ABC Primetime (I think I mentioned this earlier). That has the doctor stumped and she wants me to see an optometrist. I tried telling her it has nothing to do with my eyes, but she still wanted me to see him anyway.
When I was talking to the doc about my tummy issues, she said "do you have a gastro doc you'd like to see?" and I welled up with tears (no kidding) and said "yes, but he's in Portland!!!!" So I have an appt with a gastroenterologist (sp?) next month to see if HE can figure out what the heck my tummy is doing. I"m starting to think it was a medicine I was on... cuz I've been off it for a week and my tummy is actually doing a lot better. I'm doing my own experiments on myself now :) Great fun!

I'm settling into my job, but the schedule is still wacky. Not having every weekend off makes it hard to get to dog shows, but I'm working it out the best I can.

Getting excited (here with go with dog talk) for the shows in two weekends... Working the puppy on the table more and more. Sedona hops up there like she's an old seasoned pro.... I hope she does better now that she's older...

The neighborhood is starting to be adorned in Halloween garb... i LOVE my neighborhood during the holidays... SO many of my neighbors decorate... as of this weekend I have 5 houses down my street decorated... another on my way out to the main road... I'm sure they will start popping up more and more as we get closer to Halloween. I don't decorate for Halloween, but I will be home to give out candy. There were SO many trick-or-treaters last year that I ran out of candy in an hour or so. I so badly want to dress the dogs up as a "royal court" with a king, queen or princess and a court jester... Unfortunately I'm on an extremely tight budget that does not allow for the insanely overpriced Halloween costumes from the store... I'm trying to figure out how to do it... any ideas guys? I'm not looking for them to be super extravagant... just a couple of robes for the older kids, and a neck thing and maybe paw things (like scrunchies) for the baby kid. Ideas?

The temps are starting to drop here in the desert... the last few nights have been actually getting chilly when I sit outside with the dogs around midnight or so... it's a NICE change. Last week we were cooler during the day than this week... today was 96 in Tempe, but surprisingly enough it does NOT feel hot... i know, i know... but it feels SOOO much nicer than the zillion degrees we were having...

I found out that Ron Buxton will be judging a sweeps in March for the Canada Del Oro shows in Tucson (I think)... all my brain could think of was how long he had Carbon and knowing how much he loved him... and my Chancey resembles his papa enough (especially in the eyes) that I think Ron could fall for him too :) The combination of Chance's resemblance to his dad and the fact that he truly is an exceptional puppy with incredible movement, I think we might have a good chance under Ron :) Tho Chance won't be a puppy by that time (he'll be 1 in February), we'll still be in sweeps :) I can't wait! :)

I guess that's enough rambling for me for now... if you've made it this far, CONGRATS!!!! :)
Corgi nuzzles and licks from Kota, Sedona & Chance

a life update

I've not been talkative for a while... I've been busier than I could imagine....

Let me catch you up!

In mid June I started getting to know someone online. HE found ME actually... I gave up looking to be honest. We emailed and whatnot for a month and finally met in person mid July, when he greeted me with flowers at a nice Italian restaurant (aww). We've seen each other regularly since then, and things are progressing better than I could have expected.

His name is Joe and he is such a sweet person. He's 36 and has a daughter who he has full custody of. He's such a gentleman (opening doors, bringing the flowers etc) and we have such great times when we are together! We both smile like idiots and laugh and *sigh* :) It's nice. Really nice. It's been a long time since these "girly" feelings have come out... They were stashed in the back of the closet and had huge dust bunnies on them!

So between my job (60 hrs one week, 20 the next), progressing nicely with a 3.79 GPA in my Masters of Education program and dating this wonderful man.... AND the fur kids too.... I'm a busy girl!

Chance is 6 months old today (pictures to come later on a different blog post) and is just an amazing dog. I'm head over heals in love with him :)

Sedona is now 15 months old, has her coat back and found some body somewhere along the road. She's been incredibly sweet and lovey to me lately, which is a nice change from her :) I can't wait to get her back in the ring.... I have good feelings :)

Dakota is well... Dakota. I am a little worried however, because with more and more regularity he and Kim's Sharpei-mix, Jazmine, seem to have a "tiff". I wouldn't call it an out and out "fight" I guess, because it's something usually relatively quick and nasty, but doesn't happen again, and they're ok afterwards... sniffing and licking and wagging and co-existing... but almost every time Kota has broken skin on her. Kim says it's common with Sharpei's... that they have pretty thin skin, but I just am not sure what Kota's malfunction is. We agree that it's not always Kota starting it (which I know), but it still bothers me that he's being aggressive like that with her. Do you guys think it's just a dominance thing? It stresses me out obviously, especially given the infamous "Ollie-incident".

So in general, life is good... I saw Nickleback and Daughtry on Monday with Joey, which was INCREDIBLE to say the least.

It's nice that life doesn't suck anymore ;-)

a really annoying problem

My desktop had rebooted sometime during the day today and I came back to it not working right. I can't get many programs to run and I can't figure out why. I'm running a virus scan on it right now in hopes it finds the offending program.

I have a paper due for my COM class tomorrow... so thank goodness for the laptop which is saving my ass right now...

Don't think I posted about my recent bad date ... name is Chris, and he went crazy after 1 date on Saturday. On Sunday he started harrassing me because I was logged into my Match.com account. Not sure why he felt that he had any right to do so, but he started asking me why i was logged in and then when i gave him my answer, he called me a liar. When I told him we shouldnt' talk anymore, he told me to f*ck off and I hung up. He then, that night, sent me an email asking if I was willing to forgive and forget. WHAT??!! I told him no, of course. What is it with me and finding the winner in the crowd?? *sigh*

Talked to my ex's father tonight about my car... he thinks that my accident happened correctly... the airbags shouldn't have gone off, given the information I gave him and the pictures he saw. He's an engineer and is incredibly smart. It was good to talk to him again, I hadn't heard from him since Jason and broke up in 99... 7 years later, and it was like no time passed at all :) I always really liked him.

My COM class is pretty confusing right now.... lots of posting to forums and trying to keep up. I had 2 questions to answer and will have to post my paper by tomorrow at 11:59pm. It's weird, this whole online class thing. I'm sure I'll have an update in a week or so ;-)

Time for bed.

a first date and christmas lites

i went out on a date with a new guy last night... his name is Chris. he's 36 and a native of the Valley... nice guy. We went to see the light display at the Mormon temple in Mesa. It was a good place to meet for a first date... swarming with people and for goodness sakes, it's a church! LOL We hung out and talked and such afterwards. I didn't get home until about 2am...
We'll likely go out again, but he wanted to come over today... just didn't feel comfortable with that. Plus, I wanted to be alone today :)
I had plans!
I pulled out all of my Christmas stuff yesterday when Nicole was over (after our shopping excursion). Lucky for me, my neighbor was outside washing his truck when I decided to start looking at how to hang the lights on the house :) I've never done it before, and I must have looked like a moron, so he offered to help. He pulled his big truck in the driveway and put his ladder in the bed of the truck and helped me hang the lights even on the highest peak of the garage. :) So I have pretty lights hung on the outside of my house and then I put some in the bushes and around the front door. I put them on a timer so they're on from like 5:30pm until 11:30 or so :) I'm putting up decorations here in the house and am debating about whether to put the tree up. It might go up later. I bought a $30 fake tree at Walmart yesterday... the one I had was only 3 feet tall... this one is 6.5 feet tall :)
I think I'm going to make some lunch and enjoy having the windows and doors open... such a nice clear, beautiful fall day. All weather reports are saying it's 68 degrees, but I swear it's warmer than that.... it's lovely though :)
I'll post pictures of the house once it's dark and I can take pictures of it all lit up :)

saying goodbye

I said a final goodbye to Brent tonight.... it's too bad, because boy was he hot, and BOY did we have a connection, but in the end, he ended up just not being as great as I had thought he was originally... :( Not to mention he was not really ok with having dogs in the house (as i look down and see the kids snuggled against each other... S on her back and K nuzzled in next to her)... isn't this where they're supposed to be??? ;-)
Back to the drawing board in terms of guys... overall, not a bad experience, just not the right one.... yet. It's too bad, because there was an incredible connection between the two of us... Oh well. there will be others.

car details, new school endeavors and a new man!

I met a WONDERFUL guy......we’ve gone out a few times and I’m just completely captivated by him, and the best part, he feels the same about me! He just moved here from Kansas City, MO, but get this, HE WANTS TO LIVE IN THE PNW ASAP!!!!!!! we decided tonight that we’re going to go ahead and try this whole “being a couple” thing out ;-) We just clicked...immediate chemistry… we want and like and desire so many of the same things! He’s so wonderful…. He makes me feel wonderful and we have SO much in common! I can’t wait to share him with the group! I just KNOW that he’ll be around… I have a feeling in my gut that I’ve never had before…

So the next exciting thing that happened this week is that I signed up with the University of Phoenix online and will be starting work on my Masters in Healthcare Administration on 11/28 provided all goes well with Financial Aid! :) SO excited about this!!!!!!!

And then the bad news….

I was in a car accident on Friday… creamed the living SHIT out of my Element. I was driving home from work on Friday and a cow was finishing crossing the road on my right… then out of my peripheral vision to my left I saw another cow dart out in the complete darkness. There was no where I could go.. nothing I could do. I hit it in the chest area on my drivers side.. the whole front end of my Element is JACKED, and the body must have hit the side too, because there is damage to the doors (and there was cow poo down the side too). Airbags didn’t go off, despite the fact that I hit said 500 lb cow at between 50-60 miles per hour. Glad tho, because if they had, I might not be home typing this right now. I’m sore in the legs and neck a bit, but other than that, I’m fine. Car had to be towed away and Kathy Davis (Dwysan Cardigans) came to get me and took me home. Love Cardigan people sometimes!! I have to get a rental tomorrow and will make arrangements to get my car from the tow lot to the body shop… I have pictures from the accident site on a disposable that was given to me, but haven’t developed them yet… it was pretty bad, and given that I’m 2 weeks out of my sisters 8^th anniversary of dying in a car accident, I’ve been up and down a lot this weekend in the emotion category.

So there ya have it… my week in a quick wrap up…

the silver lining of yesterday

A few days ago i met a guy... a really great guy... his name is Brent. We had our first "date" yesterday. We met for lunch and took a walk around the neighborhood. We had planned to go north and go hiking today... doesn't look like that's going to happen now... :(
We really connected... and he wants to live in the PNW too! Extra points! Tall, blonde, blue eyes and the sweetest funniest nicest guy i've met in a long time.

recap on yesterdays trips and other thoughts

I had the most wonderful day yesterday... I woke up at 5am, left the house at 6am and drove to Sedona. It took me 3.5 hours to get there, but I kept telling myself that it was ok... I was in no hurry. It was much cooler there than it was in the valley, which I loved. I loved the smell of the Northern air.
Our first stop was in my old "stomping" grounds out along Dry Creek Road. It's MUCH less populated so I knew I wouldn't be running into people all over. I wanted to take pictures of the dogs on the red rocks, and I did. We wandered around there for about 25 minutes then we headed north into Oak Creek Canyon. The canyon is known for it's tree covered highway (89a) and the beautiful red rock mountains that tower above. We stopped at the West Fork hiking trail and wandered around there for quite a while (2.5 hours). I often had to stop myself from walking fast and thinking fast. I reminded myself that I was in no hurry and that I needed to relax and enjoy my day. I took time to take deep breaths of the clear air and to listen to the sounds of the forest. It was amazing. I took tons of pictures and really enjoyed myself. It was magically calming and soothing. On the way back from the hike, we stopped along the creek (off the path) and I sat out on big red rocks while the dogs played in the creek. It was so .... soothing? no. Calming? no. it was almost like a repair of my soul. Weird? maybe.
On my drive back, i hated to leave the beauty and the tranquility of the area but I knew I could carry the thoughts back with me.... and that I did :) I got a call from the Higley Unified School District and scheduled an interview with them for 10/24 at 3:45pm. It would be nice to get that job because it would take me back into IT and it would make me A LOT closer to home. I'll keep good thoughts and relaxing vibes going until I get that interview taken care of.
Then when I was just entering phoenix, around 3pm, I called the guy I've seen off and on from work. I called him to see if we could get together. He didn't call back until after 6pm. When he DID call, he wanted me to go to his house. I told him I didn't want to drive anymore he was whiney. He's very high maintenance. he pouted, but I was unrelenting. I didn't want to drive anymore. He whined some more, but I proceeded to make my dinner and do some knitting.
Then talking with another friend here at work today, we were talking about love and how when we're looking for it, we only get disappointment, but when we stop searching, it comes to us. I disagree. I haven't been looking, and I happened upon this whiney co-worker guy who is FUN, but for some reason grates on my nerves sometimes. Maybe I'm just not ready? Geez, it's been a long time since the x and I broke up... but I guess everyone deals with things in their own time. I stopped looking when I realized that I wasn't ready, which was quite a while ago. this other co-worker said he's going ot make me some copies of some CD's to listen to... I'll see if that helps. I would LIKE another relationship, but I don't think I'm ready yet. I get lonely sometimes, yes, but more than that, I actually enjoy being alone. Eh. I was just bothered by the whiney guy. He should have offered, if he wanted to see me so bad, to drive out to my house (in my opinion) rather than telling me that I was just coming up with excuses. That really annoyed me. There was no excuse. I didn't want to drive anymore. End of story. Why must men be so frickin' GRRRRRRR.

am i bad?

"I'd like him, and him, and him, and him :) "

I've never been one to focus my attention on more than one guy at a time, but maybe it's a result of being BURNED so damned bad. A few guys from work have caught my attention... one I think might be a pipe dream, but he just gave me his number and said "we need to hang sometime, call me" so.... the other, well... I can't help but wonder whether he's in it for the fun of the chase.
Either way, I'll just roll with the punches and try to get a life... ;-) I need to stop blaming the fact that i don't have a life on my dogs. :P

Boys are interesting... tho a strange breed. I'll keep them at a distance, but they sure are fun to play with ;-)

(hee hee hee)