Potpourri Friday

We are accustomed to finding a catch in every promise, but Jesus' stories of extravagant grace include no catch, no loophole disqualifying us from God's love. Each has at its core an ending too good to be true - or so good it must be true. Philip Yancey

Ever since I mentioned in this post that it never rains here, all it has done is blow and rain. I'm not kidding you! And I feel so bad for the people in Georgia who need rain - if I could I would send some your way. Except our farmers might not let me send much because they have a thing about collecting the rain for the crops they intend to grow next year.

My husband took a week of vacation this week to work on things around the house. He blew the sprinkler lines out, he is fixing some of our gates, and he has spent a great amount of time working on the hot tub, trying to reconnect it all again since we built a larger patio. That particular project hasn't gone as smoothly as he thought. In fact he is very frustrated and we still don't have any hot water to soak in while we observe all this wind and rain. I appreciate all the hard work he is doing. I really do. But do you have any idea how miserable it is to know your husband is on vacation and, well, you are not? He gets much more vacation time than I do each year and if he doesn't use it he loses it. So I don't blame him. I would take it too. Definitely. But oh how I would love to be home with him, helping him work on all those projects and even adding a few of my own. But he has been really sweet about it. This week he has made the bed every morning and has supper ready every evening. That just about makes it all okay.

Last weekend I had my very first football party at my house. I didn't intend to have a party but my two daughters and sons-in-law showed up to watch the game since they now think their mom has gone plum crazy because she likes to watch football. And I had a couple of new recipes that I have wanted to try and it seemed like the perfect time. So I made sweet and sour meatballs and spicy shrimp. And lots of ice water because the spicy shrimp was REALLY spicy. And good. (When I think of it I will have to post the sweet and sour meatball recipe - it was so good. You can find the spicy shrimp recipe here. This Pioneer Woman can really cook!) And we all hunkered down and watched Boise State play Nevada in an extremely close and exciting game. Boise State finally one it in 4, yes I said FOUR overtimes. Whew! It was great fun.

This week I had the great A Day (or two) in the Life of a Groomer experience. I usually do my own dog grooming because it is so outrageously expensive. But about once a year I take them in for a professional job because it helps get all the lines and angles right again and gives me a "template" of sorts to follow for several months until it all becomes indeterminable and I have to start over. The problem is I can never find a groomer that does a job good enough for me. But I have heard lots of raves about this particular groomer in a town near mine so we made appointments, I dropped them off on my way to work, gave them way too much money and later in the day my husband picked them up. I called home to see how they looked.

Me: "So how do the dogs look?"

Hubby: "Weeeelllll..... I'm not really sure."

Me: "Excuse me?"

Hubby: "Weeeellll.....I can't really see a difference in one and the other, weeelllll...."

Me: "Well what?"

Hubby: "It doesn't look too good."

Great. I go home and he is right. One of the dogs they never even touched and the other was butchered. I called them right up and expressed my unhappiness. To their credit they were very kind about it. The lady told me to bring them in first thing in the morning, she would personally greet me, and we would go over each dog to see what I wanted. And sure enough, she met me at the door. Now the thing was, this lady, as kind as she was, only had one tooth in the front and it was waving at me. It was very distracting. To say the least. I gave her a picture of a dog with the hair cut I wanted and she said, "Oh, you want a yorkie cut!". Ummm. well, yes. That would be the idea SINCE THEY ARE YORKIES!. Maybe I should have said, "No, I want a St. Bernard cut". For Pete's sakes! Anyway, she took careful notes, apologized profusely, and took my dogs away. All the while I was being careful to dodge the tooth in case it came flying my direction. At lunchtime I went to pick them up. I was nervous. I was worried. I was sweating. The one-toothed lady was no where in sight. Pretty soon they brought me my dogs and they were absolutely adorable! Just exactly what I had in mind. Again, they apologized and were very nice about the whole thing. Apparently they were training someone new and they kept saying something about miscommunication. Oh well, I will try it again next year. I have often thought I should just take some dog grooming lessons and go into business myself. I could work at home and set my own hours. But judging by the looks of the toothless lady - it must not be a very lucrative business.

This weekend I am working in the yard, redesigning some flower beds and cleaning some other up for the winter. It will be hard work and it is supposed to rain again. But I am looking forward to it anyway. Maybe the hot tub will be ready by the end of the day!