No snow

OK, Jim Cantore from the Weather Channel.  You promised us  snow - now where is it?  You promised this morning while I was getting ready for work. You warned us Texans that we were definitely going to have snow.

I looked out my office windows at 5 minute intervals all day. At noon, I see a little flurry of flakes, and then it's gone. Is that ALL we're going to get?  Now the sun is out. There better be some white stuff on the ground when I wake up in the morning or comes the WHOOP.  And I know where you work, Cantore.

SNOW!!!

Howdy, how're ya'll doin' this mornin'?  Well, I'm fine as frog's hair split 4 ways!  That's purty fine! That's what my daddy always sez.

The weather man is saying it's going to SNOW here in Texas today!!!   We're so excited!!!  We hardly ever get to see snow even when there's a little bit around our area.

Here's my professional opinion, if you're interested, since I am well-versed in meteorology (JK) -

Tyler sits between two big lakes and there are more not too far off.  I think there's a thing  I made up called "the lake effect" (not like the one up in the Great Lakes area).  I don't know if these large lake bodies of water keep the temps a bit warmer or if there are air currents swirling around doing something weird to the atmosphere, but we just don't get much snow. It has to be a really good cold snow system moving through this area to get more than a dusting. 

The same is true in the tornado season. Tyler, Jacksonville, Bullard, Chapel Hill and Whitehouse sit between these two lakes.  If there's a tornado in East Texas, it's gonna come right thru here, you can bet your kids on it.  I've lived in this area all my life. We've not had the big killer tornados (thank the Lord) like in Wichita Falls or Oklahoma, but they do alot of damage nevertheless.  We've had our property/house damaged 3 different times. We had one come across our property about 5 years ago and did $40,000 worth of damage to our house.  Dadgum huge pine tree fell perpendicularly across the top of my house & crashed the roof in - flooded the entire front of the house. Hey, I got a totally new kitchen, new appliances, flooring, dining room, breakfast area, roof, gutters, septic system, trees taken out, more stuff out of it. Just wish a tornado would do some home improvements on the rest of my house! snicker-snicker! I stand outside during a storm and say, "cooooooome over here, tornado, thisaway!"

Anyway, this is tornado alley between the two lakes.  Every time we have a tornado alert, you can look on the radar map, and track just about exactly where it's gonna go - between the two lakes!

They are promising us snow today!  We'll see.... it sure would be nice to go Christmas shopping this evening with my husband in the snow and maybe take in "Blindside". I HAVE to go see that movie!

That's my professional meteorological opinion and I'm stickin' to it.

THE "RAT"

For the next coupla weeks, I'm Rat-sitting.  No, no, no - it has nothing to do with my gopher count, which by the way is up to 15 - did you notice?  Five more and I get a black belt in gopher kwan do.  No, my dears, I mean THIS RAT -

This little Rat belongs to my daughter, Princess.  Princess is taking finals this week and next week, and I was  finnagled into rat-sitting for the duration.  Princess called me yesterday when she went back to college and said she really slept well, and it was quiet.  The RAT likes to bark, and loves to play with her "mommy" there at college. "Mommy" is usually busy, so Rat gets into stuff and does really mischievious things to get attention.  Here's the RAT in her fairy princess outfit for Halloween. OOOOO!  Isn't she scarey???

The Rat is a merle Pomeranian and her real name is Bella, but she's such a pill and she reminds me of a little grey rat, hence, I call her Rat.  It's actually kind of stuck. (don't think Princess likes that name tho...)

Here's a saucy grin. You can tell she's just plotting some kind of sneaky activity "Oh what can I do next!!!"

It's like having a little bitty powerful cyclone in the house. And you can bet there's a trail of destruction left in the wake of Hurricane Rat!

She generally wears this cheeky expression most of the time.  She has a game called Gladiator Dog & has a couple of stuffed animals that she slings around in the air and growls like a big dog! I'm sure she's thinking she's ripping their bellies open and their guts are spilling out all over the floor. She loves the applause and the standing ovation.  She likes to use them as pillows.  She likes her chewy bones, and she LOVES to torment our chihuahua, Bug. 

Bug likes to lay on the couch and Rat comes up to the edge and just looks at her and wags her tail.  Bug's lips curl back, the ears go back, and the growling and barking start.  Rat takes off through the house with Bug in high pursuit.  Then she'll turn and face Bug, and they start mock-fighting and biting and growling and Bug's hair is standing up on her back. Tony and I yell for peace and quiet.  We usually have to separate these two because the Rat won't leave Bug alone for one minute.

Here're some shots of Rat in the pasture on the farm this past weekend.  She's very cute isn't she?  Kinda reminds me of one of those big fat spotted ticks.  She DID look like a fat hairy tick when she was a puppy.

Monday night when I was giving Tony a haircut, Rat found and destroyed into a million zillion pieces Tony's headphones for his computer.  Just like a child, if we hear (rather don't hear) her get quiet, you can pretty much bet she's into something. Worse than a two-year-old.  She loves to get into people's dirty laundry - socks, underwear, t-shirts, kleenexes, toilet paper, Q-tips, trash, you name it.  She eats everything she can get in her mouth - paper, pens, pencils, combs, coins, paper plates, Coke boxes, etc. If we were to do an X-ray of her stomach, no tellin' what we'd find.

Rat has some power struggle issues as to who is in charge.  Oh she minds me - she knows I'm an alpha female. I've had enough dogs to know how to get my bluff in early. The Rat thinks Princess is her litter mate, therefore, the Rat thinks SHE's in charge of their relationship.  Maybe it'll do her some good to stay with me for a while?  Princess is going to have to take charge.

Here she is in her Christmas finery.  Amazingly, she's left her elf collar on and hasn't bothered it.  I'm actually quite pleased with how she's avoided ruining the new Christmas tree up to now. But it's only been 3 days.  I think she just hasn't noticed it yet OR that there are some balls hanging within her reach. Hope I haven't spoken too soon!  Bite my tongue!

Princess informed me this weekend that when she gets into nursing school next fall, guess where Rat needs to stay so she can devote 24-7 to her studies?

Bear with me. Trying to get caught up - be back soon!

Learning How to Cook

(don't know where  the idea for this post came from, maybe from Debbie at In His Pasture, her post about the biscuits brought this to mind...)

Imagine if you will about 26 years ago, a young wife and mother, in her first home.  She and her young husband have scrimped and saved and done without, and finally put a down payment on a tiny but new home.  She is so proud of her little house. It's small, but new, and she got to pick out the colors, the carpet, the flooring, the wallpaper and paint. They bought it at just the right stage. It's a pretty little house - 3 little bedrooms, 2 little bathrooms, a little kitchen, a little living room, and a little utility room.  She has a new washer and dryer, a new queen size mattress set and she even found some garage sale bunk beds for her little son's room.  She is expecting baby #2.  She's planted some flowers and some tiny shrubs in the front flower bed, and her husband has put together a little swingset in the back yard and a little sandbox for their little boy to play in.

For their Christmas present that year, the young wife's in-laws have bought them a new-fangled contraption for the kitchen - a microwave oven!  She is so proud!  They've been on the market for a little while, but she knew nothing about them.  She was so excited to begin using her microwave because she knew now she was a thoroughly modern housewife. 

She planned a wonderful dinner one evening for her husband who worked hard all day.  He came in about 5:30 and sat down to watch the news on their little TV set and hold their little boy in his lap.  The young wife was so content in her little kitchen and feeling all Susie-homemaker-ish and everything was perfect in her world.  She needed some boiled eggs for what she was preparing for dinner and she thought to herself, 'well, it would be so much faster and more efficient if I give my new microwave a try and boil my eggs in it!'

So, she placed a couple of eggs in a little dish in the microwave and set the timer.  Then she went back to work on her meal preparation smiling to herself.

BAM!!!!!

She practically jumped out of her skin and screamed like she'd been shot!  Her husband came running into the little kitchen yelling, "what happened????"  There she was holding her hands over her little ears with a horrified look on her face.  There was fragments of EGG all over her, all over the little floor, all over the little walls, all over the ceiling, all inside the microwave!!!

She burst into tears!  The egg explosion had blown the door open to the microwave and had blown the eggs to kingdom come and back again!  What a mess!  Their little boy stood there looking dumbfounded.  Then, her dear sweet little husband took her shoulders in his hands and guided her out of the kitchen.  She sobbed into his neck, and he put his arms around her trying to keep from laughing.  "It's NOT funny!" she said between her sniveling and snubbing.  "I know, honey, it's not," he smiled. "Don't worry about it. I'll clean it up."  And he did!

I found pieces of egg in places that I never knew it went when we got ready to move to another house 5 years later....