Good Things List

I forget how I found it or who wrote it... 
Wait! I remember now... 
It was my cousin's sister-in-law and somehow it showed up in my feed on facebook... 


Anyways - she wrote a list of 52 things. From what I can guess, each week she wrote something she was really thankful for or was the highlight of the week. "Thank You Lord for Your Provision" is what it's called and I think I'm gonna try it. 


So should you - even if you're not religious. Because at the end of the year when you're stressed out from all the Holiday madness and just want to pack up and run home as fast as you safely can - it'd be nice to realize all the awesomeness that has happened. 


And if she ever happens to read this and get offended that I stole her idea without knowing her.... I'm sorry?

Feedback?

I don't know how many or who reads it - but what do you think of this new setup for my blog? Will you be totally bored if I start blogging about nothing like I am now? If so - come back sometime after January 2. I braved Black Friday at Wal-Mart this year and got a KitchenAid stand mixer. Husband and self are compiling a mental list of all the things to make.

Current length of list: 1 mile

SO EXCITED!!!!!

Looks like this and the best thing is that it is assembled by hand in America. Go Team.

Our Squirrel

 Yes. I know that the title says "Squirrel" and the pictures say "Hamster"

I quit posting because we're back in our apartment and the only wildlife we have is our hamster (which I'm really quite happy about) and the wild cats that live in the vacant lot next door. We got Ted (aka Ted the Squirrel) for Valentines day last year from my mom-in-law. The guy at Petco was really cool and let us each hold one while we figured out which kind to get. He was even nice enough to flick the different kinds to see if they would bite. From this we learned that Dwarf Hamsters are the best. 

However, this was not a good time to learn that Ted apparently is a kamikaze. He waited for me to quit looking for half a second and dove out of my hands and landed on the floor a good 4+ feet below. I felt so bad that we decided to make it up to him by giving him his own little house. 

He sleeps all day... Likes to kick the bedding out of the cage... He runs on his squeaky wheel once all the lights have been turned out and he's convinced we won't be turning them on soon... And he occasionally smells funny... But he's cute and soft, so we clean his cage and give him food and water. And when we're gone for a few days - we make sure we put the thermostat on so he doesn't freeze. (This is a big deal because I'm pretty much anti-heater which lets our apartment get pretty chilly some days.)


I forget how the squirrel got in his name. I'm guessing because I kept randomly calling him a squirrel or chipmunk more than a hamster. 


I had to take a ton of pictures to get this many that were not blurry and actually had his face in it. Those were the pre-Canon Rebel Awesomeness days. 


I need a new title for this blog. We don't have naturally occurring animals and it's too cold to do extensive adventuring outside so the whole NatGeo thing is gonna have to go :( But that's fine. I'll get rid of a blog title if it means that snakes and tarantulas aren't a regular part of my life. 

Back in the city...

I guess if I'm going to keep blogging, I need to come up with a new name. If you have a suggestion - please toss it my way :-)


I just had a mini epiphany, and since I just had it, it's going to be rough and quite possibly make no sense at all. The end thought was something along the lines of "Wow, I finally used something I learned in College!" And it's something along the lines that all B's are better than A's & C's. While your GPA comes out the same - B's look prettier (in my opinion) on the transcript. While "C's (do in fact) get degrees!", they stick out and always manage to come up in an interview. Maybe it's just an Accounting thing...


Anyways, after moving back to our little apartment that had gone uncared for for a full 3 months, the cleaning adventure had potential for being compared to Dante's Inferno. While I never read the book, it doesn't sound happy. After working in the bedroom for a good hour or so, I decided my work was about B quality. I could put in another hour and get an A, but currently, the spare bedroom is about a D. Minus. From a really nice teacher. 


So therein lies my epiphany - instead of nit picking and getting an A+ room, I'll do what I did in school. Get each project up to about B quality, then rotate around and slowly get them all up to par! I know it's lame for me to be writing about cleaning - but maybe it will help you next time you have a super messy house and don't know what to do. And if you think that's bad...


Highlight of my day: Finding my favorite sheets after looking for about 3 hours. They were in a plastic bag I saw earlier in the back of my closet but was too lazy to look in because I assumed it was full of old clothes...

Squirrel Family Robinson

For some reason I've had the phrase "Swiss Family Robinson" stuck in my head for a couple days even though I had no idea what it refers to. Thank you Google once again for not only transcribing my voice mails and texting them to me, but letting me know that its a 1960s movie about a family that is actually Swiss. Maybe it is my subconscious telling me to add it to my Netflix cue....


Enough about the movie.... Look at this little Squirrel family we found this weekend as we were driving in! We call our land a "Nature Preserve" so we get to see lots of squirrels, birds, butterflies, lizards, toads, cotton tails, and jack rabbits. We think there are about 3 in this clan. I'll be ticked if a stupid snake comes along and eats the babies like I saw on some NatGeo videos on YouTube....

Awwww.....  Don't you just wanna go find them some nuts or something to eat?

Ssssssnakes!

Luckily, I only have two snake adventures to write about, and hopefully that will be the total of all I have to write about. Ever. 


The rattlesnake one was pretty cool. Husband was leaving for work at "Way Too Early" 'o clock when he randomly stopped and started walking back to the house. He asked me for a shovel so I ran across the yard barefoot to get it for him. Next thing I see, Husband is taking the African Warrior stance and throwing the shovel into the brush repeatedly. Like this...

(This is perfect! Thank you Google Images!!!)

In no time, rattlesnake went bye-bye and we put the rattles in salt so we can fill them and add them to the collection. I wasn't allowed to go looking for it after he left though since the head can still bite and he didn't have time to take care of that. I love my husband!

Later was a bull snake, who is Rattlesnake's secretly sissy cousin. It looks like a rattler, sounds like one too, but it's not. 

Unfortunately, for this guy, he was so good at it and mom-in-law was so traumatized from almost sitting on it, that he had to take one for the team. Sorry. But on the happy side, now all his little friends are on the no-kill list as long as they aren't too close to the house and husband is home. 

Horse Dog

I need to thank the cosmos for waiting until my husband is either home from work for the day or off for the weekend to send random creatures into the yard. I'm sure about 80% of these I wouldn't be able to handle on my own. Especially snakes. Ick again. This is the first back tracking adventure to tell you about the horse.


Sadly, I don't have a picture since it was late, thus I was tired, it was dark, and the flash would have probably scared the buhjeezus out of the horse. So I'll find one on google....

He looked kinda like this, slightly different. Point is - there was a horse running up and down the fence for a couple hours before dinner and by the time we finished dinner, we found him grazing along the fence that goes around the grassy yards. Luckily, he was a sweet thing and was eating the weeds for us and let us come up and pet him. We went to his owners house first, but since it was late, we weren't sure if they were asleep or not there. So we got back home, and we decided we might as well just take him home and put him in their front yard so they can get him in the morning. My husband remembered that there was a really long dog leash in the shed, so we looped it around its neck and led him home. 

Really good horse to be honest. He stayed right behind husband, quite often bumping his back with his nose. He was just as scared as I was of the guard dog that came out to greet us, but luckily his owner was awake this time and got him back to his pen. Apparently the horse isn't too smart, but he's currently in the process of getting ready to be ridable. Not sure if there is any technical term.

It was like walking a giant dog, except a bit bigger. I was actually surprised how small it was. Granted, last time I saw a horse, I barely came up to its shoulder (about 8 years old); so being able to easily see over its back was quite a shocker. I guess things got smaller as I grew up.