Living Large In Our Little House

When we recently vis­ited some of our friends in Kansas City, they proudly showed off their newly remod­eled kitchen. One of the first things she pointed out was her cookie sheet cabinet.

I took a new appre­ci­a­tion for the fact that I was at least smart enough to install one of these in Our Little House.

I don’t care how you plan, there’s always some­thing you for­get in a con­struc­tion project. Our friends down the road even for­got to design a linen closet into their home although he is a builder and they’ve flipped sev­eral houses in their lives.

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The call came on Monday morning.

The man who had come to our house sev­eral weeks ago, decided he wanted Buddy and reim­bursed us for what we spent on him at the vet, was com­ing back to pick him up. He had been trav­el­ing through­out the past few weeks and I told him he could leave Buddy with us until he got back and could con­cen­trate on build­ing a rela­tion­ship with his new 4-legged boy.

This was our first fos­ter­ing expe­ri­ence, mostly because I felt I couldn’t do it and would get too attached. After all, 3 of our 4 cur­rent dogs were to go into a res­cue, but once I had them, I couldn’t let them go.

I knew from almost the begin­ning that Buddy wasn’t ours and so I tried not to let a bond develop. I read arti­cles on fos­ter­ing dogs, I tried the tricks other fos­ters use. I tried to con­cen­trate on his faults (this was hard, as he was truly one of the best dogs we’ve ever had). I tried to remind myself I didn’t like male dogs (again, hard since he didn’t find it nec­es­sary to pee on every­thing). I told myself we didn’t have the space (but he had found a bed and cor­ner all his own).

Buddy was doing well here, he had come out of his shell and wasn’t quite as shy. He had almost quit duck­ing every time we reached to pet him. He had a rou­tine, got along well with the other dogs and even joined in howl­ing ses­sions before mealtime.

By last week­end, our friends were ask­ing if we were just going to give the money back the new owner paid on the vet bills and tell him we couldn’t give him up.
We thought about it.

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Thanks to Steffi, our German exchange daugh­ter and her fam­ily in Munich, we now have a new tra­di­tion at The Little House.

When we vis­ited Steffi’s fam­ily three years ago to attend her wed­ding, we spent a cou­ple of evenings at her mother’s flat.

After the meal and good con­ver­sa­tion (some of which had to be trans­lated for us), her mother, Barbara, brought out a lit­tle album.

Everyone was required to write a lit­tle some­thing mem­o­rable about the evening. Barbara’s book was brim­ming with quips dat­ing back years, all writ­ten for pos­ter­ity. Some of the peo­ple, such as her par­ents, were no longer with them, but they had the album of mem­o­ries. Steffi and Barbara told us that pulling out that album was like reliv­ing a fun-filled get together all over again.

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Yesterday, I had to com­plete yet another very unpleas­ant task at the bank.

I’ve learned these past 18 months since Dale’s very unex­pected lay-off from the good job from which we expected he would even­tu­ally retire — that there is some­thing worse than pay­ing bills — not being able to pay them.

Yet, when I hopped in my 1988 “Baby Blazer” and drove off into the sunny but cool day, my cares melted away.

We Americans have long had a love affair with our cars, and I'm no dif­fer­ent. When I was a younger woman, I wanted, more than any­thing, a "Baby Blazer," those smaller Blazers Chevrolet used to make.

In 1988, we bit the bul­let and for nearly $400 a month for 4 years, which was a lot of money for these 20-something newly weds, I got one.

She was my first and only auto­mo­bile love.

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