LOST: Mom's Sanity; Call Heather @ 555-HEL-PMEE If You Find it

Our yellow lab, Toby, went missing on Tuesday afternoon. He hadn't been neutered yet & I guess he wanted a fun adventure involving a female dog. He escaped out of our backyard fence, which was recently broken by some very strong wind. The boys & I were very worried about him. They made signs to hang in the neighborhood.

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By Gideon

                                             By Micah

By Seth

                            Justin had the only working car (he's been working on one of them) at work with him. So we walked the neighbor hood & surrounding areas, looking for Toby.

                              We walked & walked & walked..................

         ......................and walked & walked & walked.................

         .........................and stopped for a minute.....................

 ......................and walked some more until we were so tired we had to come home for a break.

 We went out again for a while. We walked & walked & walked a whole lot more. When I'd finally had enough, we came home again & I made lunch. I sent Seth out on his own to hang up the signs he had made. A neighbor man saw him hanging up signs & asked Seth what he was looking for. Seth said, "A yellow lab." The man said, "I think I can help you. This dog followed me home." He gave Toby back to Seth. Seth hugged the man & said, "You're my BEST friend!!!" & brought Toby home. 

We were all SSSOOOOOOOOO happy Toby was home, safe & sound.

                  (Always with the freakin' bunny ears!!! Sheesh. Toby's gonna be SO embarrassed when he sees this pic. I bet he didn't even know Jarod was doing that.)



So I promptly went out back & fixed the fence. 2 hrs later, Toby was missing again. I don't know how. I think he may have magic powers because I did a pretty good job on that fence. It was back to the drawing board, worrying about Toby. Worrying about my kids' potential broken hearts. Worrying about MY broken heart. Anxiety ran high yet again. Seth re-hung signs. The boys prayed. I made phone calls to vets & the humane society. I put an ad in Craigs' List. (Or maybe I did that the first time....I can't remember.) My sister & her kids arrived from Seattle (which is completely unrelated to the doggie story, except that she arrived in the middle of it all). I was very excited to see her, but I left & went out looking for Toby till almost 3 in the morning. Couldn't find him. Went home & went to bed, extremely sad & worried, but OH SO EXHAUSTED. Next day, a neighbor brought Toby to us, asking if he was ours. We have some amazingly nice neighbors..........this guy had kept him overnight to keep him from harm. We were SSSOOOOOO happy to have him back home. Safe & sound. Again. I didn't take pics. Just scroll back up to Jarod & Seth's happy faces when Toby came home the fist time. It was just like that. Again.

 (Isaac & Zander: the "twin cousins"........only 3 days apart. More to come, on the currently on-going cousin/Auntie visit, in a future blog post.)

In fact, I was SSSOOOO happy to see him that I promptly made an appointment to have him neutered Friday. Don't feel sorry for him, even with those pathetic puppy dog eyes. He made his OWN CHOICES. This is what happens to little doggies who can't control their inner animal. They get their masculinity taken from them & have to wear (horror of horrors): THE CONE OF SHAME!!!!!!!!!!!!! "Dun-dah-dun"

 I worked on some music in my "studio" this week. Practice for the band is coming along swimmingly. Except when it's not.

Jarod broke his arm on Thursday. Surprisingly, it's the first broken bone in the family. He was running & fell. Yup. That's it. Fractured his wrist & arm. Has to get a cast next week. At least he & Daddy got slushies on their father-son-ER-outing. I was glad my baby was OK, of course............but EXTREMELY glad that I didn't have to take him to the ER myself with all the kids this time.

                                      My 2 little invalids.

 Toby couldn't stand THE CONE OF SHAME any more. Our other dog, Scout, must have felt sorry for him because the teeth marks on the outside edge of THE CONE OF SHAME were most likely hers. Unless Seth felt sorry for him too. One can never be sure. But I found THIS outside today.

But I wasn't going to let that little setback keep me down. I paid an extra $8 for that thing, boy howdy!!! You thought the CONE OF SHAME was embarrassing before, Toby?

                                  How do ya feel NOW???


BTW......My Hobbit feet are swelling. Great.