This has been a really crazy year so far. Not a lot happening outside of work, except that whenever we are off we try to jam as much stuff into our time as we possibly can. Did I tell you that as soon as we bought the house here, the military told him that they could not give him the civilian job they paid to move us here for? It was horrible! Evidently, thanks to Congress and the damn government not signing a stupid budget, they did not have any money to pay his salary. So Ron started his own business for landscape and construction. He got his license as a professional irrigator. He advertised. We built his website. He received call after call to go do estimates for people wanting things done, but very few wanted to hire him.
And it wasn't just him, but he has about ten guys in his squadron in the reserves that have their own businesses and it's the same for them. No one in this economy wants to spend any money. They find out how much things cost and decide not to have the work done after all. So Ron is currently sending out resumes and submitting applications to find a job, since the economy has been so horrible that he hasn't even been given a chance to succeed at his business. He always takes things so hard, and I think he feels that he failed. I keep telling him that he's being too hard on himself, but he doesn't believe me. How can I get him to see that it was the economy, and not him? I haven't been able to so far, but if you have any ideas on that just share them with me.
Chloe had to be put down in April. She finally got to the point where her quality of life had pretty much vanished. Her cancer had begun to attack her brain, and her neurological functions were completely missing. Lizzie seemed to take it well, we thought, until we went camping with a couple who had two dogs. We saw Lizzie excited to go "hang out", running around playing and barking, and knew that she needed a friend. So on the way home I searched Craigslist for a dog for Ron, and then we did something totally unusual... we got ME a dog. Now, I'm not a dog person and have never had a dog of my own, and it was pretty strange. But it was obvious from day one that she chose me as her person. She learned so fast! She learned sit in one day, shake the next day, then I taught her to jump on command a few days later, followed by lay down, and "touch". For touch, we used a stick, and she got a treat every time she touched the tip of it with her paws or nose. A neat trick, because she figured out how to open the doors to let herself in from outside, and now I have to teach her to close doors using it. She knows it inside and out, but she has this little quirk... she has to let herself in, then come find me so that I can walk her to the door and tell her to close it. Mostly because she knows that if I see her do it, she gets a treat. Bad part: tonight, I was sitting on the couch watching tv and watched her open the front door and let herself OUT. A much harder trick, but one that has me REALLY worried... she can't close doors from the outside, so if we don't lock the doors then the cats can get out. GRRR! But, really, she's adorable... who could be mad at a face like this?
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