I was shocked to receive a phone call last night that the hubby of a very dear friend passed away unexpectedly in his sleep two days ago.  He was only fifty three years old, and he left behind a wife and several daughters; one being only the tender age of twelve years of age.  This man had no life insurance or death benefits of any kind and was the family breadwinner.  Chances are that the family will lose their house in a few months because they do not have the resources to hold on to that. 

This is a very sad situation and I would like to strongly encourage anyone out there that is reading this that they should buy enough life insurance to at least pay off their house should they die.

With the economy the way it is today, I want to make absolutely sure that I am getting the best value for my hard earned dollar when I have to spend it.  This applies to every aspect of my daily life, from groceries, to clothes and shoes, laundry supplies, to home improvement, and even to work on my car.  That means that I am spending the extra time to research the credentials of everyone and everything that I possibly can.  Was it Ben Franklin who said “A penny saved is a penny earned”?  Well, I’m not earning enough pennies, that is for sure, so I need to save all those I can get my hands on!

Boy, let me tell you, cooking a pork anything in the crock-pot stinks up the house so badly! Yesterday I decided to cook a pork shoulder during the day, so we could have shredded pork barbecue sandwiches a few times this week. But I didn’t want to stink up the house, everyone was home and I knew that they would all complain about how badly the house smelled while it was cooking. And a pork shoulder has to cook a long time – one hour on high, then seven to nine hours on low!

So I decided to cook it in the crock-pot in our garage, where the stink wouldn’t bother us. It worked out just fine, I kept the big garage door open to help the stink escape the garage, and a fan blowing to circulate the air out as much as possible. So I plan to do that in the future, too, when cooking something stinky in the crock-pot!

In an earlier post, you might have seen two pictures of my little white doggie, PITA.  He came to live with us a year ago.  He was a stray, wandered into our yard on the coldest day of the year.  He was so small; I thought he was a puppy.  I took pity on the little guy and decided to let him in the house so I could call his owners to come get him.  Long story short, he had no identification on him.  I called all the neighbors, the local animal shelters, the area vets, the police, all the local breeders, and the newspapers.  No one ever claimed him, and so he became a member of our family.

When he came to us, he was not housebroken or obedience trained in any way.  That’s one reason I thought he was a puppy.  Turns out that he was NOT a puppy, he had all his adult teeth!  But, apparently he was kenneled outdoors with other dogs, and never trained.  We found out that he was deaf and partially blind!

That made training the little guy very challenging, since he can’t hear, and can barely see!

So far, we have made great progress in the housebreaking department, and have trained him with hand signals (and treats!) to walk with a leash, come, sit, shake hands (paws) and lie down.  We are working on the fetch, but he only will do it as long as he is interested in playing tug of war with us when he brings the toy back to us.  I’d like to train him to do more tricks, but he is resisting the roll over training.