My little teddy bear

I took a nap this afternoon and Safari plopped down by me. I was laying on my side and wrapped my left arm around him. I slept like that, cuddling my kitty like a child hugs a teddy bear at night, for an hour. I adore my cat.

My heart's still beating fast

This is the most nervous I've ever been with a dog client. Funny thing is - the dogs belong to my fellow pet-sitting friend, Sherri! She has two rottweilers. LARGE rottweilers. Shade is the male. Savannah is the female.
Rotties are one of those breeds that tend to get a bad rap because they are known to be aggressive and dangerous. But, just like pit bulls, it really seems like it ALL depends on how they're raised. Well, Shade and Savannah are both very nice dogs. But yesterday when I was there while Sherri was still home, Savannah growled and barked at me a little bit when I tried to put her back into her crate. That made me nervous. But I stayed for about an hour and made friends with her. Shade is just a great big teddy bear.
But I was still a little nervous when I got there tonight to visit them. However, they were both perfectly-behaved and cooperated impeccably. I gave them lots of treats! : ) I only have one more visit with them, tomorrow morning. I'll feel much calmer for that one!
They are beautiful dogs.

I don't think he realizes....

...how much some of the things he says make me feel. The other day we were out at Circuit City and my dear husband asked if my perm (i.e. "texture wave"-hee!) was expensive. I said, "You don't wanna know." He was smart enough to not ask again. LoL! But the next thing he said was, "Well, it was worth it 'cause it looks awesome!" I looked at him with my mouth hangin' open and said, "You think it looks awesome?" (I knew he liked it but.....) And he said, "Oh yeah!" I may never forget that as long as I live. Like I said, I don't think he realizes just how great things like that make me feel!

Going to my second knitting meetup tonight. I'm so excited! The RSVP thing on meetup.com says there are gonna be at least ten of us there. It'll be fun to meet more new people! My friend Janice is picking me up at 6:30. She's a very nice lady and easy to talk to. I'm glad I met her!
It's cool having the meetup at Panera. It's nice to be able to get whatever we want to eat or drink while we knit or crochet. Last time I had an iced green tea. I was a green tea virgin before that. It was....different. I think I must've liked it 'cause I drank the whole thing. ; )
Tonight I'll probably get lemonade iced tea or something. I'm gonna take one of the skeins of the colorful, curly variegated yarn I got at the Yarn Market on Sunday tonight to work on a scarf. I want to make more things to sell. I absolutely love selling some of the things I knit and crochet! Anyway....a scarf knitted with this yarn is going to be breathtaking, and super soft.

Oh my gosh. Gracie. She's a new doggy friend of mine. Gracie is a 4-year-old English springer spaniel and her sister, Kelly, is an 11-year-old yellow lab mix. Kelly is beautiful and extremely sweet. A very dear dog who is, unfortunately, undergoing her third round of chemo for cancer. I want to weep when I think about that. Her vet says she probably doesn't have much longer. Gracie and Kelly are best friends. So Gracie - OH my gosh, I adore that dog. Which is funny, because I'm not a big fan of springer spaniels. But I am a HUGE fan of this one! She took to me right away yesterday when I met her for the first time. She has the most precious face - with big beautiful brown eyes - and the most amazing disposition. I gave both dogs a bone-shaped biscuit when I was there today and Gracie sat on the couch with her biscuit hangin' out of her mouth and stared at me until I sat down next to her! What an angel. Both of them. I'm so glad to be taking care of them!

Well I'm gonna get my stuff ready to take tonight and check on the lasagna in the oven (don't get excited - it's a frozen one. *snort*) OH!!! Devon's having a GIRL!!!!!!!!!! I knew it. I just KNEW it was a girl in there!!! I know she was really hoping for a girl. I am absolutely THRILLED for her and Mike!!!!!! That little girl is gonna be so flippin' adorable!!!

Slacker

What a slacker, eh? I haven't made an entry in here for a looong time! I think it's mainly cuz I've been so busy!

It's good that I'm typing right now, cuz my fingers keep traveling to the curls on my head and twisting. This way, my hands are occupied with the keyboard instead of my hair! I like having curly hair. It's *so* different than when it was straight. Now that I got the top layer re-permed today, I have to wait 48 hours to wash my hair - and that drives me nutso! I can't wait to wash it on Saturday! Tomorrow morning will be nice, though, cuz I just have to put a little bit of that Redken "Rewind" stuff in it and scrunch. Doesn't get much easier than that!

I left a gas element on on the stove tonight!! We ate dinner, then went to the Riverside Chocolate Factory, and when we got home it smelled funky in the house. Scott immediately went to the kitchen and discovered that I had left one of the burners on low. NOT good! I hate it when I do that!! So right now we have lots of windows open so that the place can air out. I was extremely relieved to see that both kitties were fine! If we had been gone too much longer and they had been in the closed-up house with the gas on, oh my. I can't even think about it. Thank you, God!

I had SUCH a good time on our little trip to Grand Haven last weekend!! It felt so good to just hang out and not have a care in the world. Steph and I laughed and laughed and laughed! Oh my gosh, when we get together it is a LAUGH fest. It doesn't take much to get her started, and I know just what kinds of things to do and say to make her just roll. It is an absolute riot! And her laughter is so contagious that I crack up just watching her laugh at me! LOL!!
On the night that we got there, we were just about to eat dinner and Uncle Terry said, "Why don't we join hands and pray before we eat?" It was him, me, Steph, Kenzie, and Jenny. Since there were five of us with our hands joined, Uncle Terry quietly said, "Pentagon" right before he started praying. Well, I thought he had said, "Penta God", which confused me greatly. I had heard several names for God -- Abba Father, Jehovah Jirah, Dear Lord...... But I had never heard Him referred to as "Penta God". So I looked up at Uncle Terry with a really bewildered look on my face and Steph happened to see me do that and she just about hit the floor, she was laughing so hard! She said my eyes got huge and my mouth was in an "O" shape and I looked hilarious. We laughed about that the whole time we were there. Crazy, I know. But that's us - very crazy.

I'm looking forward to next Thursday evening. That's the next knitting meetup group at Panera. I'm gonna try to have the afghan I'm working on done by then, so not entirely sure what I'll be taking to that meeting to work on - but it won't be difficult to decide on something!
Sherri and Therese did really well yesterday when I was teaching them to crochet. Well, Sherri did well....LOL - Therese just could *not* catch on to crocheting. It was quite amusing! So I thought maybe Therese would catch on to knitting better, and she totally did! Those two are such a riot! Anyway....I hope they continue to practice cuz they would make fun knitting and crocheting buddies!

Well, speaking of that, I think I'm gonna crochet for awhile now. This was a boring entry, but I'll come up with some good ones soon. I will. Really, I will. : )

Janet

Well, I met Janet and her daughter, Torrey, today for lunch. Janet's really nice! And Torrey, who's 11 years old, was a sweet girl. She was really shy at first but by the time we got to the restaurant she was talking a blue streak. : )
We had salad and pizza at Giardano's. It was SO good. Anyway....we chatted and ate pizza and drank Diet Cokes for a couple hours. It was cool! They're going back to Texas next Sunday so Torrey and her sister can go through one more year of school there. After the school year, they're planning to move up here permanently!
Two *really* cool things:
- Janet met her boyfriend, David, on eharmony.com. When I told her I met Scott online she was like, "No way!" LoL!
- Besides my mom, Janet is the ONLY other person I know who likes broccoli on pizza!
We're gonna go see "Must Love Dogs" next weekend before they head back to Texas! They're an animal-loving family. Another really cool thing!
It'll be great when they live here "full-time"!!

A new friend?

Saturday at 11:00 I'm meeting Janet. I got in contact with her through exercisefriends.com, which I think is a very cool website! She lives around here part of the year and in Texas for the other part. After her daughters finish one more school year in Texas, they plan to move up here permanently. Anyway, we both enjoy walking for exercise, so we're gonna meet (her 11yo daughter will be along) at a park in Island Lake on Saturday! We'll walk (if it's not a gazillion degrees) and then grab lunch somewhere. I'm so looking forward to meeting her and her daughter! It'll be so nice to know another person in the area, especially one who I can exercise with. I hope we get along well!

Also I'm in the process of trying to get a hold of Kelly, a girl who lives in Vernon Hills and loves to knit! Gotta love the world wide web, eh?! : )

A friend

I'm so glad I could be there for Sherri today. She called at 7:30 this morning, crying, and asked if we could meet for coffee because she desperately needed to talk. It's the first time she's done that and I was so glad that she felt she could come to me. Nutshell: She's going through a really rough time with her pet sitting partner, as well as with a few clients. She's also having infertility issues. She has had two miscarriages (one of them was when she was already four months along). She has a bunch of tests next week to find out why she can't carry a baby to term. Poor Sherri. I feel terrible that she's having trouble with that, and I pray that she and Brian will eventually be able to have a child. They would be terrific parents. I talked through some things with her over French toast and scrambled eggs, and she said it helped. I hope it truly did.

Tomorrow morning I have a new client consultation. Bobbi. I've talked with her on the phone twice and she is NOT a pleasant person. WOW. Life must absolutely suck when you're bitter and pessimistic all the time. She needs someone to visit her golden retreiver, Ben, several days a week as well as many weekends and holidays. Um. My business is *very* small. And I do have a life and am not willing to be at this woman's ever beckon call. Especially since she's so.....mean. Plus, she lives 20 minutes away. I explained to her that I work for myself - I don't have a partner or employees and I simply cannot commit to that kind of schedule. I wanted to tell her that up front instead of getting both of us into something that would be mutually frustrating. She is hopefully going to find another pet sitter (one that has several people working different shifts who can give her the service she needs). And I am still going to have the consultation with her tomorrow morning because I am willing to be a "backup" for Ben if/when the need should arise. I am totally content with that, since I imagine it would not be often at all.
But yeah, I'm afraid. This woman is gonna take a magnifying glass to every word of my contract and ask me sixteen questions about each sentence. She's that kind of person. May the force be with me.

So I'm almost done with season three of "Gilmore Girls" already. What WILL I do when I'm done? Season four doesn't come out til September 27! LoL! I'll survive. Actually, it'll be good...cuz I wanna get some serious work done on the two blankets I need to have crocheted by the end of August. I've been spending so much time watching these DVD's that I've hardly been crocheting at all! Tonight I watched four episodes and during the last two, I was laughing so hard I couldn't see straight. It's such spontaneous, wacky humor and I love it!!

My head itches.

Goodnight!