Vickie and John are over at one of his brothers' place for their (huge) family Christmas gathering tonight. Both his mother and dad passed away over the last couple years, so there's no "traditional" location for their celebrations as there once was.
I had no real desire to go along with them. Instead, I spent the evening over at the barn grooming the horses and filling feed containers. Doesn't sound all that wonderful, but I really enjoyed it. It was already dark by the time I got over there and everyone else had already come and gone by then. Their horses were all inside in their stalls, too, so after ours were in, the entire barn was full of horses happily eating their hay and napping, while lovely traditional Christmas carols were playing on the barn radio that usually plays country music that I find less than wonderful. The barn cat was stretched out on top of the hay and didn't even bother the "barn skunk" as it wandered through to its "room" (it lives between the exterior barn wall and the wall of the office) while I was measuring out feed. Cozy. Very nice evening.
Well, actually I DID have a few minutes of panic a little while ago. When I came home from the barn, I went in to feed Rocky and Joey and didn't see Joey anywhere. I thought I must have left him outside before I went to the barn, although I was pretty sure I remembered bringing them both in. But I keep those two in our master bedroom/bath area, so there wasn't anywhere he could be hiding, really, so I went outside to look for him. Nothing. I walked along the fence line to see if there were any breaks but couldn't see anything. By then I was beginning to panic! Did someone steal him? How could that happen with all the gates padlocked? So I raced back inside and grabbed my boots getting ready to head out and try and see if he could have somehow gotten out. But when I sat down on the window seat to put the boots on . . . oops! I sat on Joey! He had managed to get INSIDE the comforter folded up on the window seat without changing the folds on it in the least! I have NO idea how the heck he could have gotten in there like that! But other than moving over when I sat on him, he still didn't bother to get up! Here's a picture of that comforter WITH Joey inside!! And that was taken AFTER I pulled it back to see him under there. When I was still looking for him, it was even more neatly folded! Why can't he COME when he's called! Jeez! But he's like a little kid -- it takes a lot to get him to settle down and go to sleep, but once he's sleeping NOTHING wakes him up.
For that matter, our dogs all have some pretty strange sleeping habits. I pulled all the cushions off of the love seat up in the library and threw a comforter over it so Boo could sleep on there. So where was HE sleeping this evening? . . .
Yep -- on the hard floor UNDER the table NEXT to his bed.
And Rocky? If I try and make him go into the crate he has an absolute FIT. It takes several people to get him inside a crate because he will fight it every step of the way. But where does he sleep? IN the crate. As long as you don't TELL him to go in there, and you don't close the door -- he loves it. But then, I kind of identify with that myself. No matter how much I want to do something, if someone tries to MAKE me do it, I'm going to pitch a fit. Guess the boy fits right in, come to think of it.
Here's Idgy keeping an eye on things out the front window. She is such a sweetheart. Her little Christmas harness has "nice" on the front (as opposed to the "naughty" on one of their other dogs' outfit).
Look how cute.
Mark's rig made it to its goal location earlier today, and when he called this evening they had only a few more hours to go before it would be jacked all the way up, so he was going to be able to get to bed no later than midnight. So his evening wasn't too bad either, as Christmas eve's at work go, anyway.
Tomorrow Vickie and John will be headed back over to Opelousas for Christmas with Judy and Oren and the Claflin clan. I'm staying home tomorrow, too. Mark and I will be going over there after he gets home, but I can do without the whole Christmas thing. I guess no matter how old some of us get, we just never really get over that "only child" thing where you just aren't into huge family gatherings. At least that's true for me anyway.
It's supposed to rain sometime after midnight tonight. But if it doesn't get too wet and yucky, tomorrow I'll saddle up Lizzy and ride for a while. The temperature is supposed to be nice, anyway -- in the upper 60's or 70's, I think. Aaaaah -- Louisiana is a FINE place.
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