Giving Thanks

If you guys only knew how many blog posts I mentally write in my head every day that somehow never make it to actually being let out. It’s a lot.  There are about a million thing vying for my attention these days, and it’s hard to keep them in priority order.

I haven’t forgotten about the cruise…honestly.  I’ll finish all those details sometime soon.  And ‘Tiny Talk Tuesday’…well, I have a whole folder of sticky notes with scribbled down things the kids have said.  Tuesdays are hard though.  Busy days.  You know.

I hope you all enjoyed Thanksgiving with your families.  My Dad came out from Pennsylvania for a few days.  We had a nice visit and I even cooked.  I touched the raw turkey!  This is great progress for me. Not only did I touch it repeatedly getting it ready to go in the roaster, I didn’t cringe or get the chills when I touched it.  Like I said, progress.  However, since my Dad, Rebekah, and I were the only ones that actually ate the turkey, it won’t be something on our normal family menu.

The excitement continues as our Black Friday ‘deal’ is still with us.  Phil and Marissa went out at the crack of dawn to shop.  The rest of us slept in our warm beds until a reasonable 9am.  My Dad needed some new winter boots though, so we went to Meijer before noon to make use of a coupon.  When we got home and pulled into the driveway, there was a little dog running between our front door and our sidewalk.  He ran right over to the van.  Alisha was with us and jumped out to grab him.  He had no tags, but had a collar on.  He looks a lot like our shih-tzu, but we’re not sure of the breed.  We took him in our house since it was so cold out.  Our poor dog, Patches, is terrified of other dogs, and has barely moved since Friday.  We called the police to let them know we’d found this dog, then took him to our local vet to be scanned to see if he had a chip in him.  He did not.  So, for the time being, we have another dog.

The kids are thrilled about this, and even though our local shelter has a no-kill policy, we just can’t bring ourselves to take him there.  He’s been given the temporary name of Reilly, with the nickname of ‘monster’.  Not because he’s a bad dog…not at all! He’s actually a very good dog.  Housebroken, hasn’t barked (not even once), and friendly.  We call him monster because he eats like one, and Patches is literally terrified of him.  If we can’t find his owners, we’re not sure what we’ll do.  We can’t have Patches live like this.   Reilly could care less about Patches.  He completely leaves him alone, yet Patches acts like he’s about to eat him alive, cowering in the corner and everything.  Most of the time Patches play possum.  If Reilly walks into the room Patches will stand perfectly still (tail down) and not even blink.  You can almost hear him thinking, “If I don’t move, he won’t see me.”  It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Phil posted some local ads online saying we found a small dog, and people are responding. No luck yet though.  We know some family has got to be missing their dog.  We would!  So, for now we’ll take care of him like he was ours and how we would want someone to take care of our dog if he were lost.  Reilly was very recently groomed, so we know he’s a well-cared for pet.

I have to tell you the irony of all of this though.  Patches’ old dog bed was getting pretty old, so I told Phil to buy a new one if he saw a good deal when he was out shopping.  So he did.  He brought it home hours before Reilly showed up.  Also, Alisha had been looking through all the sale ads making her Christmas list before Reilly showed up, and put on there, “another dog.”  Then this perfect little dog show up on our doorstep??  Well, I don’t believe, but…Santa??

Our temporary dog...Reilly.