Are they tennis balls? Or Walnuts?

I have a huge walnut tree in my backyard. It makes for a decent shade tree but it also is a huge pain when it comes time to clean the yard of leaves and walnuts. It

drips sticky stuff all summer and so anything in the yard tends to be sticky. It drops literally thousands of walnuts in the fall. Luckily it only produces nuts every other year.

I tried to clean some of the walnuts up this evening. They were falling even as I as picking them up! It seems impossible to pick up all the crappy walnuts. I was worried that they were going to hit me in the head and knock me out!

Marley, however, keeps me quite entertained. She seems to believe that whenever a walnut falls - it may be a tennis ball. As soon as she hears one fall - she runs over and pounces on it. She seems disappointed to find out that it's simply another walnut. There's already a thousand on the grass (well maybe 500 now that I did some work out there). It must really be disappointing to her that it's not actually raining tennis balls. Dylan is of course, just scared of the walnuts when they fall. He really is afraid of anything that moves!

When I first bought this house, there were 5000 walnuts. It looked like they hadn't been cleaned up in years. Now that I am through my first 2 years of owning this place, I realize that the walnut tree is just so big that it drops 5000 walnuts in the fall. I have the joy of getting down on my hands and knees to try to clean them up. They get buried in the lawn so I have to literally pat it down to make sure they are all picked up. Of course, there are already more falling so I am not sure what good all this work does. I'll have to do it again next week and the week after that. Oh and I only got about a 1/4 of the yard done anyway. I hope that 1/4 stays somewhat clean so we can do some box work out there tomorrow. We are expecting some of our friends from Tip Tail to come and do some training tomorrow evening!

Sometimes I miss being a renter. I never realized how much work it was to own a house. Now I own two and man do I hate doing yardwork. Maybe next year I will be able to afford to hire someone to do it. That's probably wishful thinking though!

WW Poor Pathetic Dylan.

He'd like everyone to believe he is deprived.

Taking it off Together Tuesday

I did great at the beginning of the week but then the lasagna happened. I lost all focus at the end of the week but pulled it together on the weekend. I ended up pulling a -2.4 lb loss. That's still more than I was two weeks ago. So hopefully this week will go a bit better. I've not been feeling well and I actually drank my first soda in two months. My hope is that the Ginger Ale will help calm my upset stomach - even though it's full of junk and empty calories. I think I may have caught a stomach bug from my nephew. At least I am not feeling like eating crappy greasy food right now!



This week our contest is sponsored by Clara who writes the Coming Back to Life! She is offering a hand made tote as a prize this week! Here is a picture! Oh it is SOOO cute and perfect for fall!



The names of this week's "losers" were dropped into a coffee cup and this week's WINNER is Julie!

Congrats to Grace for being this week's biggest loser of 3.2 pounds!! Be sure to cruise over to her blog and congratulate her!

Chris - 2 LOSS
Tammy - 1 LOSS
Life With Hashi-Thyroid Blog - no report
Grace - 3.2 LOSS
Leigh - 2.5 GAIN
Clara - 2.5 GAIN
Dette - 1.0 GAIN
Julie - 0.6 LOSS
Cheryl - NO CHANGE
Audrey - no report
Christy - 2.4 LOSS
Tina - 1.4 GAIN
Danielle - NO CHANGE
Jessie - NO CHANGE
Steph - no report

And welcome back CYN who is reporting no change this week.

This week's total - 0.8 LOSS!

My blog is moving.

My blog is moving...It will take a few days but it will soon be My Spoiled Mutts. Thanks so much to my friend Cynthia for helping set it up!! I'm excited to have my own site soon! Keep watching! I may still post on this blog until the other is up and running.

The nicest guy...

I had a rough morning today. I woke up with miserable allergies that didn't go away until I got to work. When I arrived here, I realized I left my lunch and dinner sitting on the kitchen counter. I have to work a long day on Mondays I pack two meals with me. Money is tight so I didn't want to go out to eat. I also didn't want my dogs to think it was okay to feast on my roasted food.

To make matters worse, I lost a bunch of data on my computer and was freaking out all morning. Stuff that could totally screw up my work life for a good couple of weeks until I restored it all.

Paul was going to pick D&M up for the day since I have to work both jobs. I asked him to stick my lunch in the fridge so at least it wouldn't be ruined. He was nice enough to bring it across town to me at work! And he brought my princess Marley with him (and Sage and Leon too). So I got lunch, I got to see Paul, and got some loves from the puppies! It was so incredibly nice of him to drive so far. He brought the dogs so he could walk them at the Dimple Dell Gulch that's not too far from my work here.

Ohhh and when I got back from visiting with Paul and the dogs, someone had restored all my lost data. All in all, the day has gotten a lot better than the way it started. I'm so lucky to have met such a nice guy who is willing to go out of his way to help me - even without being asked.

Eating Healthy

I've been trying, when possible, to make some healthy meals. I'm a horrible cook and I usually end up eating something that doesn't taste very good as a result of my attempt to cook something healthy.

I love veggies and I was a vegetarian until about a year and a half ago. So veggies are a good easy and healthy thing for me to eat. I mostly eat them raw because I don't know how to cook them.

I got this recipe from Chris but I improvised. I didn't add any peppers and I added portabello mushrooms and yellow squash and carrots and tomatoes. Oh and some whole garlic cloves too. The recipe called for salt and pepper but I don't like pepper much and I am trying to cut down on sodium so I used garlic powder instead. My house stinks but it tasted yummy so it's worth it.

Oh, and D&M always eat healthy. It's sooo easy for me to deny them the yummy treats that people offer. Yet I can't turn them down when yummy treats are offered to me. I wish someone made all my decisions on what I could eat. It really isn't difficult to keep a dog at a decent weight if you just make wise choices for them. Healthy food and small but healthful treats for training and reward is all it really takes. Exercise is good too!!

I really love raw feeding these two. It's good for them and my vet insists on it. They get some healthy kibble too since I work for a pet food company. They usually eat it in the morning for breakfast though. It's about time I start feeding some chicken now that it is cooling down. That will be nice since it's a bit cheaper than beef. My friend got some raw green tripe and she said her dogs love it. I may have to buy some one of these days but I can't handle feeding it.

Glad we all had a healthy and yummy dinner. Tomorrow is a weigh in day and I haven't had a great week so hopefully the low calorie dinner tonight will help a bit.

Relaxation Time

Dylan and I attended a Relaxation class yesterday at Four Legged Scholars yesterday. It was a really interesting course that talked about using Tie Downs to teach a dog to relax. Johanna also did a guided meditation with the people and their dogs!

During our guided meditation Dylan told me that he would like to play more flyball and that he wants me to pay more attention to him when we are just hanging around at home. He also would like me to get the living room cleaned so that we have more space to play in there.

So today I am trying to get motivated to clean. Well, I was working on paying bills etc, but now I am procrastinating by blogging. I really hate how messy my house is but I also hate cleaning!!