Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Summer has definitely arrived in Louisiana

Mark has gone back to work again, so it's just me and the gang.   Looks like it's going to be hot, hot, HOT all week.  Heat index today is supposed to somewhere above 110 degrees. 

Joey is back at LSU today for his second physical therapy session.  And it is a FINE day for swimming.  At least HE will be cool.  Well, actually, all the dogs are cool - they're all inside.  It's only Duke and Ladybug that I'm concerned about -- there is virtually no shade in that pasture until late afternoon.  And poor bug is such a dark color that I'm sure she's really REALLY hot.  I think I'm going to start leaving her in the cattle pen under the oak trees during the day and turn her back out into the pasture at night.  She has anhidrosis - that is, she can't sweat - so she needs to be kept as cool as possible.  As long as I don't make her work, she would probably be okay regardless, but hey -- it certainly can't hurt to provide her some shade, as well.  I WISH we could bring them home where there are trees in the pastures and they would have access to their stalls in an insulated barn with ventilation fans at will.  But last weekend when that guy was supposed to come finish up the grading around the pond and the "back 40," as Mark calls it, it poured down rain and was too wet for him to work . . . AGAIN.  So the fencing has been delayed . . . AGAIN. 

Now that we have Joey, we really need to get the dog area behind the house fenced at least, so that he and Rocky will have a large play area.  We hadn't really worried about it that much before since everyone but Rocky is too old to need a lot of space to run and Rocky gets plenty of exercise racing up and down the steps in the house (he LOVES doing that for some reason).  But now, we REALLY need a place where we can wear Joey out!  The boy is young and absolutely overflowing with energy!

Ran out of Niki's sensitive stomach dog food yesterday and they don't carry the stuff at any of the stores nearby, so I gave her just a tiny bit of the lamb and rice dry food that the rest of them eat mixed with her prescription canned food.  She's got the runs again already this morning.  Yuk!  Poor darling.  She really IS sensitive!  I won't make THAT mistake again.  

So MY evening is pretty well filled up.  Pick up Joey at LSU before 4:30, drive across town to buy Niki's food (lots of it this time).  Go by the glasses place  and pick up my new glasses that they called days ago to say are in.  Feed the horses, move Bug into the cattle pen and set up water and hay for her there, leave Al a note explaining why she's in there and asking him not to put her back out yet ... should be about 8 or so by then. 

Then when I get home I need to sit down and figure out how to add all our phones to our new Google Voice number.  Finally got an invitation from them today to get one.  Now whenever someone calls that number, ALL our phones (home phone, my cell, Mark's cell, my office phone - any numbers I want to add) will all ring at once until someone SOMEWHERE answers.  I LOVE that because our cell phones won't work inside the house, so depending on where we are, people can't always reach us.  This way it won't matter where we are -- NO MISSED CALLS!  And any messages left will be accessible from our computer and can be saved indefinitely --unlike our current message service that automatically deletes them after only 5 days . . . very problematic when Mark is offshore for 14 days at a time!

It's also cool that you can leave different voicemail messages for different people.  I'm really looking forward to getting time to sit down and see just what all this new phone system CAN do.

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