On strange dreams and sleeping alone...

Some nights it's probably a good thing I sleep alone and last night was one of them, although I'm sure my bed partner last night would beg to differ.

And if you're curious about my aforementioned bed partner, here he is, waiting for me to get out of bed:

I can't remember the crazy dream I was having last night but it involved elements of slimy puppies in bed with me. Now, if it were cute, cuddly, rolly-polly puppies the dream would have been fine. But these were slimy puppies and I think they were dead.

Anyway, I woke up feeling something on my shoulder and the next thing I knew, I was batting and swatting it away, all the while getting tangled up in the covers and wondering (in my sleep-haze) why slimy puppies were on me.

It was Marley's foot.

He woke up as startled as I was, wondering why I was hitting at him and trying to get away from him as quickly as possible.

He slept on the floor the rest of the night.

I still don't remember what the dream was or how it originated but hopefully it won't be a recurring dream, for Marley's sake. It didn't scar him too bad, though, because I woke up to him curled up at my feet.

Home Again

I had a wonderful four days of being home with the family and spending the last ten days with various and sundry members of the clan.

Now it's back to my life. And it feels...quiet.

But since it's been more then a week since I've posted here, I figured I'd hit a few highlights of the last few days:

1) I have a Blackberry Curve and I'm in love to the point that I don't ever want to part with it. Let's just say I keep a hawk-eye on my purse and if I get nervous about where the BB is, I put it in my pocket so I can feel it whenever I want.

2) My hair is dyed a cherry chocolate red with orange highlights.

3) I jammed my finger playing football. Three days and $112 later, it's not broken. But it's black, swollen and crooked. It's crooked in the right way, though. It curves down so I can still type with it in a stiff, henpeck, fluid sort of way.

4) I'm wearing the best pair of Maurices pants ever.

5) My new dog should be here in a couple weeks.

6) The puppies are all healthy and growing strong.

7) I don't have to work an obscene amount of hours anymore thanks to the arrival of the new sports editor.

On that note, I'm going home.
Get this: it's 5:15 and I'm going home.

Baby Talk

I know you are all as crazy over puppies as I am (*smile*) so here's a video to help pass the time.



I was on my way home yesterday and looked out over the mountains and realized this was the most of the Black Range I've been able to see. Must have something to do with precipitation and the way the clouds were. Anyway, I pulled over and snapped this picture. These are the mountains that my house sits at the base of.

Check, check, check, no check

Hire a sports guy - check (did that Monday)
Buy my dream German Shepherd - check (did that Tuesday)
Cry angry tears because I couldn't get my pilot lights to stay lit - check (did that Wednesday)
Deliver 7 Aussie pups - check (did that Thursday)

It's amazing how, out of all those glorious things, it's the one piddly thing in the middle that drew my emotion Wednesday night.

Okay, so I'm a girl.

But at that moment, when I'm laying on my stomach in front of the hot water heater, flame thrower in hand, trying to make sense of the directions and it's not working, and I really just want to take a bath and enjoy the luxury of, oh you know, hot water - at that moment angry tears burned my eyes and I grumbled about the "f*&^ing directions" and the "damn hot water heater" and I think I even (gently) tossed the flame thrower on the table in hopeless retreat.

So I can't do everything. And lighting pilot lights is one of those things.

"Where is a man when you need one?" was the real question running through my mind. When you actually need one for all the handiness that makes them, well, different from me, you can't find one.

My co-worker mused over lunch:
"Holly, I just can't figure it out. I mean, you stay up all night to deliver puppies, you're a ranching girl, you cook, and you STILL can't snag yourself a good cowboy? Not even to light your pilot lights?"

Yeah, that's how bad it's gotten, Sam. I can't even get a damn pilot light lit.

As if my honey-do list wasn't long enough after 25 years of...waiting, I've got one more thing to add before the order is shipped:

MUST LIGHT FIRE

The interpretation is yours to make.

While you're making it, I'm heading home to make a truce with the flame thrower I (gently) tossed on the table last night and try this whole thing over again. You know, with as much flame and propane as I've been mixing in the house over the past two days it's a wonder there hasn't been an explosion on my road.

I found a lake...

I love lakes.

After spending the past 5 years living 20 minutes from 175,000 acres of lake and spending as much waking (and sleeping) time on or near it as possible, you won't be surprised to hear that I almost cried yesterday when the dogs and I topped a hill and saw this:


Honestly, we all thought we'd died and gone to heaven.

I promptly dug my book out of my bag, grabbed the dog's leashes and my (pink, 5-mega-pixel) camera, let them out of the station wagon and away we went. The first thing Marley did was take a swim but he did it so promptly I missed getting his first swim in....3 months...on film. So you'll just have to take my word that he was a very, very, very happy dog as you can kind of tell by this (slightly stoic) expression on his face:


While Marley thought about swimming across the little lake to visit the fishers...


...Jada was embarking on lake adventures of her own, staring at the bubbly green algae that abounded where we were:

For those who are curious as to what this New Mexico lake looks like in its entirety, the following are for you:



So after the dogs played and I'd read some, I decided to check out some trails around there, thinking, in my old Kentucky ways, that I was sitting on acre upon acre of public land to be used and enjoyed by, well, the public. But it wasn't so:

As you can tell, Jada is very confused as to why I stopped and turned around. We did walk on the side of the mountain where there were no signs. I was cautious, though. People in New Mexico like guns.

I felt slightly confined because it seemed every way I'd turned that day for a good hike it was thwarted. Before we found the lake, I drove to what is called the City of Rocks State Park, which is about 25 minutes from my house. I'd been told by a friend that you had to pay $5 to park; it outraged me when she told me and it certainly outraged me when I saw the sign for myself. I mean, my taxes are already paying for the whole park and I have to pay $5 to park? Are you kidding me?

But they weren't.

So I snapped a picture, pulled over on this side of the stupid sign and let the dogs out to pee. A ranger was promptly over in his Polaris thingie asking if I was going into the park. No, sir, as a matter of fact I'm not.

Mostly because:
1) I didn't have $5 on me and
2) I wasn't going to pay it

Besides, the City of Rocks looked stupid anyway:


But the good news is: we stayed at the lake for almost 2 hours and then went home where I continued reading my book on the porch:


And the dogs slept near me and I think Marley is saying 'thank you' here:

Photo of the Day

I took this picture with my trusty little pink 5 megapixel digital camera that always stays in my purse. Thankfully I took it with me to the game because the people who I thought were going to be there taking pictures for me weren't.
Not too bad of a shot for an $80 camera.
This was snapped right before I had to move before getting side-swiped.

Time Out!

We take a moment from our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this message: Holly is losing her mind in the office.

Not really.

What I thought could possible be a day off has turned into a 9 hour work day and I'm sitting here trying to pull on my football hat and churn out a good ------------------------------------->
For the ones who know anything about sports and what my life has centered around for the past 3 weeks, you'll know what that last word is.



Illustration of how I felt about my day off not being a day off ----------------->
In better news, Brooke called me at the ass-crack of dawn this morning, which roused me out of bed, which proved beneficial because I got errands done before coming into work. Otherwise I'd have slept way too late. Thank you Brooke!!







This is something I'm very happy about --------------------------------->
If you're going to be hanging out with at all in the next, oh, 2 months, you're going to be hearing a lot about puppies! And actually, even if you're not able to hang out with me in person, you're still going to hear a lot about puppies (Kristin!) :)








My plan for tomorrow ---------------->
My team and I are covering 3 first round state championship high school games. Wow. We're good.













Do you know what's coming? ------>













Yes, The Nose came with me all the way from Kentucky!!! -------------->















I'm going to finish the football preview and go home. ------------>















In other news, and I don't have pictures to back this up, I had to cook dinner for my dogs last night. Two days in a row, I forgot to go buy dog food so when I got home at 1 a.m., I made them stove-top oatmeal and mixed in lunch meat and cooked bacon/bacon grease. They were quite pleased with the concoction and I CANNOT forget to get dog food tonight on my way home!