If I have have any doubts about who rules this house, all I have to do is look at the way I start my day.

1. Get up and go open the doggie door.
2. Run for the bathroom and get Pip to come in with me so she doesn’t go into Lukas’ room and wake him up.
3. Go to the kitchen after getting Squeak out of Lukas’ bedroom and get the bedroom doors shut up so the boys can sleep a while longer. Feed the dogs their can of dog food, one spoonful at a time, with them taking turns.
4. Head out with all three dogs and try to get Squeak to do all of her business outside. Supervise so Suka doesn’t try playing with either of the little ones while they’re taking care of business.
5. Head on back to the kitchen and divide up a can of cat food into three dishes, one for K.C., one for Honey (my studio cat), and one for the outside cats. Put them in their respective spots.
6. Make my coffee and head to the studio to catch up on my email and the news.

This past week was a long, trying one. Wednesday we had our oldest dog, Chester, put down. He was 14 and couldn’t keep any food down anymore. He wasn’t an in-your-face dog like Suka, he was just always there, looking for a treat or a pat, and I miss him.
Here he is taking a nap with me,

and he was such a cat magnet,



Saturday we went down to the farm to work on getting the trailer house cleaned out. The old house is no more, it’s been bulldozed into a pit and replaced with a pole shed, and as soon as we get the trailer house cleaned out, that will be hauled away. It’s a sad process.
We worked on the middle bedroom, and got it down to bare floor. Towards the end of Mom’s life, she saved so many things, plastic bags, pieces of aluminum foil, magazine offers... and every box had to be gone through. One box had photographs from the 40s and 50s, I felt like I’d hit a jackpot when we found it.

My brother Bob has a tractor there to haul things around, so Scott and Scottie got to drive it. Two little boys in second heaven... :)


Yesterday the boys came up and we worked on fencing in the woods. I was using the tractor to push down saplings and raspberry plants, and this is what happens when you don’t pay attention to what you’re doing,

I was watched over, enough said.

And a saucy Oriole, checking me out through the window,