The $1,000 Dog Who Came To Play

Yesterday morning, I stepped outside to pitch some kitchen scraps out into the edge of the woods, when something caught my eye down at the bottom of the driveway.  I turned to look, and lo and behold, it was one of the biggest, fluffiest dogs I had ever seen in real life.  Maddie and Lucky were visiting with it.  The dogs spotted me, and they all came galloping.  I yelled for Jamie, and he came outside to check out the strange dog.  It had on a collar with a rabies tag, but no other identification.  So at least we knew it belonged to someone.  And we also noticed that it had been down at the lake, because its legs and underbelly were all wet.  But it was so fluffy that we couldn't even tell if it was male or female!  I watched it for a long time to see if it would pee, and that would be the tell-tale sign of its gender, but I never noticed it peeing.  It trotted around the house and played with Maddie and Lucky all day.  Finally, around suppertime, we started getting a little concerned, figuring that its owner might be wondering where it was.  Jamie called one of the guys who lives at the end of our road who is a huge dog lover, and has several of his own, to see if he knew anything about the dog.  Luckily, he did.  He told us that it belonged to his new neighbors who had just recently moved in, and that it has been jumping their fence.  He said he would come get it and take it back to its house.  So in a little while, he came, and we all talked about the dog for a little while.  The guy couldn't remember the dog's name (he just calls it "Big Boy" whenever it shows up at his house), and he couldn't remember what breed it was, but he told us that it was a very expensive dog.  Like around $1,000 expensive!  And also that the dog was only 10 months old!  I was blown away.  So he took the dog back down the road home to where it belonged, and I'm sure he told the dog's owners all about its roaming antics of the day.  I haven't seen "Big Boy" today, so hopefully his owners have figured out a way to keep him from running off.

Wow!  What a dog!

Fruit Of The Loom

A few minutes ago, Lilly looked up for a moment from her hand-held video game to ask me, "Mom, what's 'Fruit Of The Loom'"?  Laughing knowingly, I replied "Whyyy...where did you see that"?  And Lilly said "On Hunter's underwear".  (Hunter is a boy in Lilly's class who sits across from her).  So I asked Lilly "How did you see that"?  And she explained that she sees it all the time, because Hunter sits on his feet in his chair, and it causes his pants to get pulled down in the back, causing the words 'Fruit Of The Loom' to show for all the world to see.  I laughed again and told Lilly that 'Fruit Of The Loom' is the brand name of the underwear.  Then I asked Lilly if she let Hunter know that his 'bloomers' were showing, and she said "NOOO"!  I asked "Why not"?  And Lilly said that Hunter would be embarrassed, and he yells whenever he's embarrassed.

Good call, Lilly!  Good call!  Sometimes it's best to just turn the other cheek (even when it's someone else that should be turning theirs)!  ;)  LOL!

Lilly and the Birthstones

Lilly came home from school just a little while ago.  She was doing her homework at the coffee table, when she took a break from it to come over and have the following conversation with me:

Lilly:  "I wish my birthday was in April".

Me:  "Why"?

Lilly:  "Because the birthstone for April is a diamond".

Me:  "You know what?  I used to wish that very same thing when I was a little girl".

Lilly:  "What's your birthstone"?

Me (wrinkling my nose):  "A garnet...it's really really really dark red & I hate it".

Lilly:  "What's my birthstone, an emerald"?

Me:  "No, yours is green, but it's a peridot".

Lilly:  "Is it shiny like a diamond"?

Me:  "Well, kind of, but it's a really light, pretty green".

Lilly:  "Do you know what the WORST rock is"?

Me:  "What"?

Lilly:  "TALC".



LOL!  Here's hoping your birthstone isn't talc!  :D

YESSS! Being an Electricity Hitler Pays off BIG TIME! :D

I am PUMPED!  Remember how last month, my electricity bill was $195 (the highest it's ever been), and I decided to become an Electricity Hitler as an experiment to see if my wacky energy-saving ideas would help lower my next-month's electric bill?  Well, who's crazy now, because all of my weird efforts TOTALLY WORKED!  I got my electric bill today, and it's down to $142!  That's a savings of $53!!!  SIG HEIL!

To recap, all I did was the following:

• Keeping the thermostat on 66 (we have an electric heat pump), and using our gas logs along with the heat pump during the day, so the heat pump doesn't have to work as hard.
• Keeping the doors shut to rooms we're not using at the time.
• Closing all the window blinds in the house when the sun goes down in the evening, and opening the blinds back up again when the sun comes up in the morning.
• Keeping all lights in the house off, unless they're absolutely needed.
• Keeping everything unplugged that is possible (within reason), until needed, and then unplugging again after use.  Even if the item you have plugged in isn't turned on, it still uses energy.
• Turn off and open the dishwasher when it is just going into its drying cycle, and let the dishes air-dry.  This saves electricity, and adds warmth and moisture into the dry, wintertime air in the house.
• After using the oven, leave its door open to allow the heat to come into the room, instead of being wasted.
• Not using the clothes dryer very much; hanging up our laundry on the clothesline instead (luckily, our clothesline is under our covered porch, so we don't have to worry about the rain).  We also have one of those wooden drying racks that we use inside the house, too.
• Washing the clothes in Cold water instead of Warm or Hot.

So now that I've saved all that money, maybe now I can afford to buy myself a new pair of socks!  :/

(Please note that these socks will NOT go into the trash can, however; I will put them to good use as cleaning rags).

WASTE NOT, WANT NOT.

So I'm ecstatic that I saved a lot of money on my electric bill.  But with every success comes failures (and if you're me, you usually have nothing BUT failures).  So I finally got around to trying out the recipe for liquid hand soap that i saw in a Kindle book.  But since I didn't have a big enough container to hold it all, I halved the recipe.  I finely grated 1 1/2 bars of soap, added 3 cups of water, put it all in a pot, and cooked it on the stove until it was all dissolved, just like the recipe said to do.  And then i poured the concoction into a small plastic coffee can, to allow it to cool and set up for a couple of days before pouring into the pump liquid hand soap dispenser, again, just like the recipe said to do.

Great, right?

DING-DONG, YOU'RE WRONG.

EPIC FAILURE.  Now I'm stuck with a giant, cylindrical brick of soap, and I have no idea how to get it out of the coffee can.  (It's OK, you can laugh).  GEEZ!!!  What a disaster!

Well, ya win some, ya lose some.  :/

LOL!