a bear-tale.

You know the saying about something being a fish tale...you know, it was THISSSSSS big (with arms dramatically outstretched). so forget fishtales, this is Alaska!!  Let's change that to a bear-tale.

This week was my last Ruhi Book 8 Unit 1 class. It has been a real joy both to me and to Adam who gets to go hiking the night I am at class. He jokingly calls it God-class, but really, we both get to do magic for our souls---me through Ruhi and him through nature.

So this week i get home at 930, its dark outside and there's no sign of adam, neah or matt. i know they've gone to an area that's supposed to be closed because of a bear running over some guy (literally...not maiming) a couple weeks ago. when they finally appear at like 1015, they start telling me in excited voices how neah chased off two bears with her ferocious barking. i asked, "seriously?" like 8 times before they finally admitted that no, in fact, they didn't see any bears, although she did bark at some phantom in the bush that could have been a bear. or it could have been nothing. with her both are about equally plausible.

gullable, folks.  also, you would think i should have figured out when my spouse is not speaking the full truth....gullable.

Booties, bike, and a bear??

Sadly, this is going to be epically less dramatic than watching her prance, highstepping down the stairs. Here's Neah's first time running in the booties with the bike. Adam only had to run over her a couple times today ;) It does give you a good idea of the pulling that caused those damn blisters.

Oh, and the crazy neighbor downstairs says there was a good sized black bear in the back yard two days ago.....

pawgress report.

Here's Neah's Day Camp Report card:



Too bad Domino (her friend from last week, too) is the world's most slobbery English Sheep Dog EVER. Also, apparently Neah dominated the slide...because there's a window to the kitchen and she wanted attention from the humans.

two

my weekend can be summed up in two pictures:

This is mostly what we did all weekend. The boys stuck things in the fire to see if they would burn. We learned that pennies evaporate, bottles melt, so do marbles, and bottle caps don't change. Then they argued about who messed up the fire and tried to find ways to dry out damp wood.



Believe it not, within three minutes of getting her bone, the dog began to dig and promptly buried it. I had never seen a dog actually do that....god only knows where she learned it. But instinct is everything, so there was a massive pit that had to be filled in at the end of the weekend from repeated bone protecting.

southernisms

it may surprise those of you who didn't know me as a child or adolescent to discover i have a rather thick southern accent. it creeps up at inopportune times like when i lose my voice, am terribly sleepy or have been yelling at concerts. it is thick. my whole cadence changes and i sound like an entirely different person.

the first time (apart from "fixin to", numbers, southern states and naming single objects at a time) where i noticed i had picked up a weird word habit because of the accent was grilled cheese sandwiches---which until i was 13 i thought were GIRL-Led cheeses because little girls ate them. in my accent it always came out GRLLED cheese....so i never knew where the I went. ah the embarassement of high school lunches.

the monotone bland accent nonsense from nowadays was cultivated over years of practice at boarding school, where i systematically taught myself to speak without the accent--it drove my bff crazy. most of the time, i have no problem jumping back and forth between the two (southern and bland) and can occasionally throw in a third that sounds like english is my second language. i speak spanish with a chilean accent, depsite my best efforts otherwise.

anyways, this weekend i discovered another of my southernisms, which i am documenting here to prove i was right. our campsite (see blog posts later this week) was covered in granddaddy long-legged spiders. of course, when i called them that Adam and Matt immediately announced i had the name wrong and that they were called daddy long legs. nor did they let me live it down for three days.

because i do not like being wrong, i looked it up.

Tahdow.

No. I didn't get it wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pholcidae and http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_130290.asp both agree with my name choice. so there.

how to embarrass your pet 101

Heh. Adam and I were DYING laughing in pet smart when we first put them on her. Here's to my dressage dog.

first day of day camp

this morning i got up, went through the morning routine and hustled neah out to the car, bringing along some food and treats. she clearly thought i had lost my mind since she never goes anywhere this early. we walked into pet smart where neah anxiously relieved herself on the floor (yeah, great way to start the morning). she then proceeded to bark and shy away from the people at puppy day camp. finally, the nice girl there asked if she was better when i wasn't around--that they had another dog who is overprotective of its "father", but is fine as soon as dad goes away. i replied i didn't actually know, but i was more than willing to wander away.


forgive the crummy phone picture.


i headed up the aisle and the barking stopped. lo and behold, as soon as i was out of sight neah the ferocious turned into neah the love bug, kissing the pet smart people and wanting to be petted. it seems I am the problem.

i called (like all anxious pet parents) to check up on her a couple hours later. They said she was busy herding an english sheepdog, wrestling and playing and doing great.

i figure this feeling must be just the slightest akin to all those parent friends of mine who dropped their children off for the first day at school---you hope they do well, make friends and don't pee on the wrong things. Often they freak out until mom dissappears, then no worries.

anyone want to share their first day of preschool stories to make me feel less crazy?