Haai!

In Afrikaans haai is hello (pronounced Ha-i). So....a great big Haai to you all!!!

I just woke up...actually I was woken up by my dog. He always wakes me up when he needs to go outside by sitting at the side of the bed that I am facing and then he howls until I wake up. I wish I could set him like an alarm clock, those suckers don't wake me up at all. If they do, I hit the snooze and sleep through the next alarm.

I've always had that problem with sleeping. When I was a little girl, I would realize that I had to go to the bathroom and then I'd fall back to sleep and dream that I did. Of course, I had, but not in the bathroom. I wet my bed until I was 9. They say that it has something to do with an immature bladder but I say it's just that I sleep like I'm in a coma.

Rick would wake up if the cat meowed gently...I would sleep through a sonic boom.

Oh, speaking of which, one day while I was in Florida taking care of Jean, she and I heard a loud grumbling sound that made the building shake. We stopped for a moment to wonder what it was but quickly forgot about it. A couple of minutes later, my father came into the living room and said that the shuttle was landing and we should turn the channel to watch it. I guess the sound we heard over Tampa was the shuttle headed to Cape Kennedy. I've seen the space lab...does anyone else remember when you could watch it cross over the sky? That was SO cool!

I live near an Air Force base and when I first got here, I would hear jets so loud that I would fall to the ground...and I had been sitting in a chair! The sound scared me so badly that my body just slid down off of the chair in a self protection mode. I don't know what the heck that was but it still flies about occasionally. I'm used to it now.

Anyway, I'm up. I didn't plan on getting up so early but I can't go back to sleep once I come out of the coma. So, I'll just find something to do this morning.

Yesterday I went shopping with a BUNCH of really, really good coupons for Iams...a cat food that I would NEVER pay full price for. But my cats ate the stuff today and they seem to love it. It doesn't look anymore like real fish than the Aristocrat brand that I usually feed them...but they seem to like it.

I wish Payton was that easy to feed. That dog would let his food sit there all day until it was so funky that he wouldn't eat it...ever. So, I'd have to toss the old food and make some more. Apparently, he only eats when he's starving and then, only when the food is fresh.

Then, I noticed that he LOVES people food. So, I had to start feeding him double cheese burgers and table scraps. I mix the scraps up in his food, but the double cheese burgers are a treat I let him eat without Alpo and Kibbles 'n Bits all around it. He prefers McDonald's but the other day I was passing a Wendy's so I tried one of theirs and he liked that as well.

The other night my sister came by and I made us both t-bone steaks. Payton was in doggy heaven. Neither one of us could finish those huge steaks so we just gave them to Payton with the bones. He spent the rest of the evening chewing on them. That is one spoiled rotten dog.

But he is a smart dog too. We spend most of our evenings together and since I don't have anything else to do, I teach him stupid tricks. I think the dumbest trick is where he licks his chops when I say, "Chops!" That was a tough trick to teach him but it he learned it. I've run out of things to teach him so now I need to come up with some others. Do you guys have any stupid pet tricks that I could teach Payton? He does all the usual tricks.

The funny thing is, he doesn't like treats so he "performs" for a hug and an ear scratch alone. That makes him happy.

I taught him to dance a long time ago and now, whenever I turn music on, he jumps up on me to dance. Yesterday when he did it he accidentally clawed my chin. So, now I have a divot in my chin...I hope it heals without leaving a huge hole there. It's bad enough that I have a nasty scab on the SAME spot where I had a sore a couple of weeks ago. That thing was finally healing and then Payton scratched the entire thing off of my face. So, I'm back to wearing a Spongebob band-aid on my chin.

Well, I think I should go suck coffee and do laundry so that I can head outside and mow the stupid grass.

Have a lovely morning and I'll be back soon!