"Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn't hurt the untroubled spirit either." ~ Elizabeth Zimmerman

1/10/12

Adventures With Cable

I have been quite busy of late. Mostly cleaning. I won't go into details why, but my daughter is now paying us back $1300 by working for us cleaning the house from top to bottom since she doesn't have a real job. Think in terms of spring cleaning type activity going on here. It would be nice if I could say "clean this room" and walk away, but it's not that easy. I have to instruct her how I want it cleaned, and at the same time she's cleaning I'm going through everything taken out of cupboards and boxes and getting rid of things we don't need or use any more. So it's taking up a lot of my time. Somehow, it doesn't seem right that I should be working so much harder when it's the daughter who's the one in trouble. My kitchen hasn't been this clean in quite awhile though, and daughter took a rather stuffed car load of items to Goodwill yesterday.

Last Thursday and Friday we started working on my knitting room, which hasn't been a knitting room since I closed my yarn shop. It's been a storage room. I want it back. I want to set up one of my knitting machines so I can use it. Can't do that until I get that room cleaned out. It's been 6 years since I closed the shop. It's amazing how much of that stuff I brought home, like office supplies and whatnot, I don't want or need any more. I actually unloaded a whole closet full of stuff on to Goodwill.

I also can now see how much knitting machine yarn I have. Sheesh! I need to get my machines going!

The room is not done yet, but progress has been made.

We have a bit of snow. Last week Sweet Hubby ordered a new Touring bike, custom built. The day after he gave them the required deposit, it started snowing. So he probably won't get to ride that new bike until spring.

Cable is adapting to her new home. She's definitely to the point that she's accepted it, happily. She loves it here at the Parkarosa. So now she's started the misbehaving.

On Friday, she stole a pork chop off the platter that was sitting on the kitchen counter after dinner. Just grabbed that sucker and ran with it. She also has been caught licking dirty plates on the counter. She is so much bigger than the Iggies were! She stands up on her hind legs and the kitchen counter is clearly available for her amusement. It's going to take some adjusting on our part to keep things away from her, and she has to learn to keep away from the kitchen counter.

On Sunday Sweet Hubby took her for a walk on the Parkarosa. I told him not to let her off the leash yet. It's too early. He didn't listen. Somewhere in the woods she ditched him. So he spent time trying to find her. In the meantime, she'd come home and was waiting for him outside in the yard. My daughter saw her out there trotting around the yard, but assumed her father was out there with Cable. It's good that she came home after ditching Sweet Hubby, rather than taking off down the road like she did the first week we had her.

Later that day we decided to take Cable over to brother-in-law Dan's house to meet their dog Tripper. It is important that Tripper and Cable be friends because we do so much together. Well, it didn't start off so good. Tripper attacked (which is not normal for him) Cable because he was startled to find a strange dog in his house. We pulled them apart. Then Cable was afraid of Tripper, hiding behind me and growling at him for awhile. We leashed Tripper up to prevent any more fighting and took both dogs outside for a walk together. Within an hour they were all happy and playing together and having a good time. I am so relieved.

Me? Misbehave?

Yesterday I had to go into Coeur d'Alene so I locked Cable in the bathroom with her bed, a blanket, a chew toy, a bone, and her lizard stuffy while we were gone. Oh boy! When I got home and opened the door, she'd been a bad girl. She ate a goodly portion of the toilet paper, and managed to drag most everything off the bathroom counter, including a couple bottles of my medication. She'd chewed the plastic bottle of one of them into pieces. Pills were all over the floor. It scared the bejeezers out of me! I gathered all the pills and carefully counted them. ALL were accounted for. She didn't eat any of them! She just ate the plastic bottle they came in. Nothing harmful got into her. I think we were pretty lucky there. Leaving her in there wasn't a good idea.

She also got her collar off and chewed it into pieces. She is now sporting a brand new much heavier and somewhat tighter collar. I don't think she'll be chewing through this one. We are going to be purchasing a crate for her later this week. She can't be trusted on her own when we leave her to go somewhere. I think, though, in time, that will change as she learns where her boundaries are. She's such a smart girl. I've got her retrieving now, and she comes immediately when she's called every time which is great!

I am going to be getting a wire collapsible crate for her. She is such a big dog she'll need a big crate. We don't have room in this house for a large crate sitting around all the time. At the feed store, in Rathdrum, they showed me this really cool crate that collapses flat so it can be easily set up, taken down, and stored. Sounds perfect for us.

I have been knitting and beading too, but there's nothing to show because I promptly frogged it all and started over. I'll get into that more tomorrow.

Live long and prosper. \\//


1 comment:

  1. where do you live? and more importantly, where is your goodwill? I may need to stop by there ;)

    Have fun cleaning! need to do some of that myself.

    ReplyDelete