While the Mom person generally feeds me a scoop of my dog food in my trusty green china bowl, there are additional “bowls” that I get to at least lick when the Mom person is finished with them.

She eats from a lot of these and for some inexplicable reason throws them away afterwards. They come in a cardboard box and stay in the really cold part of the refrigerator until she’s ready to eat them. She must not want the Dad person to know she eats them, because she seldom eats them when he’s around. And if you ask me, his food is way more interesting than hers! There can’t be enough food in those bowls to keep her fed well.

The bowls are also kind of flimsy. My green bowl doesn’t bend and is not easily moved. This is ideal for licking them at the end of a meal. But the flimsy bowls slide all over the place and this is a problem, because the Mom person usually gives them to me when she’s finished eating the 5 bites of food in them.

Even with all the major work done on the inside of the cabin, one final task remained: Trim work. If we weren’t such a nice family, one could argue that there was still some lack of privacy in all of the bedrooms and bathrooms, because the baseboards and door trim had not been put up yet.

This project, unfortunately, began in the summertime last year…in Texas. Much of the work had to be done outside. Granted, we largely worked under porches, but it was still hot, sweaty work.

It wasn’t easy for the hubby and father-in-law–I wanted an arts and craftsman look trim-wise. Each door required 4 pieces of trim. Each window required 7 pieces of trim, including window bucks. Even in a small cabin like ours, that meant entire rooms filled with stacked trim pieces as the hubby and father-in-law routed each piece. And that doesn’t even include the baseboards!

Howdy, Word Lovers! Last week’s WOW was jocose. The DD says she knows this one. According to her, it means playful or silly. Let’s see if she’s right.

Merriam-Webster’s definition is: given to joking; merry; characterized by joking, or humorous. Pretty darn close–especially that silly part. Wish I had the daughter’s vocab!

What are your guesses for nescience? Comment below and see if you’re right next week!

Wednesday’s Post: Endless Trim…

The hubby’s family takes a destination family reunion vacation every three to four years. We have been to Virginia Beach, VA, Hilton Head, SC, Branson, MO, Estes Park, CO, Brown County, IN, and now, Bar Harbor, Maine! (I’ve probably forgotten a few, too.)

When one tries to get 36.5 people together in one location where none of us live, it’s an interesting “expedition,” both planning-wise and execution-wise. (When one of the homes you rented actually has “servants quarters,” you realize just how large this family has gotten!) Thankfully, the family “travels well” and when we hit “road bumps,” we muddle through it all together. Here’s my take on the lessons learned from the latest vacay with pretty much the entire family:

Welcome back, Word Lovers! Last week’s WOW (Word of the Week) was flocculate. Merriam-Webster Online says that flocculate is to cause to aggregate into a flocculent mass. Don’t you just love it when the dictionary does this to us–gives us a definition using another form of the very same word we didn’t know in the first place?! So, if you didn’t click on flocculent up above, here’s the definition for flocculent: resembling wool especially in loose fluffy organization or containing, consisting of, or occurring in the form of loosely aggregated particles or soft flakes.

The dining room isn’t my favorite place. I only go there if the Mom and Dad person work on my claws. I don’t know what I have done to deserve this, but it must be something really bad.

I try to convince them that it’s not necessary by lowering my head, looking dejected and slumping my whole body. I walk very, very slowly to the designated torture area. But the Mom person still makes me lay down, flips me over on my back and straddles my body with her legs.

She also holds down at least two of my legs, while the Dad person takes this loud, dusty whirring device and proceeds to grind down my claws on the other legs. The Mom person talks to me in a soothing voice, but that’s a big trick–while she’s talking to me like that, I’m shaking like a leaf.

The Mom person is stronger than she looks, for such a short person. She can, if required, completely immobilize my entire body! Did she go to school to learn that?

Well, my best laid plans for getting you some updated pics of the cabin did not occur. My latest health adventures prevented me from trekking to the cabin. I’d like to say that I will be there this next weekend to do just that, but I have other commitments on the plate and that just won’t happen until the end of this month–my apologies for the delay.

It’s ironic that I used the term “on the plate” because today I’m telling you about our fantastic kitchen and laundry room appliances. You need to know a few things first:

1. The hubby’s a great amateur chef. He likes better than average kitchen appliances.
2. I can cook and bake, but I can go 335 days without either activity, and be perfectly content.
3. The only time of year I cook and bake is at Thanksgiving and Christmas. The hubby and I go all out for those two holidays, food-wise. Thus, we need a LOT of room when we do so.
4. I like appliances that either self-clean or are easy to clean, since I’m “the maid.”

As you may have deduced, I drink a lot of water. Especially in the summertime. I seem to need a lot of water right after I come in from protecting my yard from the winged invaders. Quite obviously, it takes a lot of energy to ensure my people and my yard are safe from these vermin. That’s why I need the water after I come inside.

The Mom person can take a long time to refill my water bowl. I don’t understand why this is. She goes by it several times a day–the woman must be brain damaged.

But, I don’t seem to have to worry about that these days! The Mom person got me a new water bowl–it’s rather enormous and has this big bubble-like thing at the back of it.

I don’t know how the Mom person does this, but the water bowl never seems to run out of water anymore. No matter how much I drink, the water bowl stays full! It must be magic. 

Good morning, Word Lovers! Last week’s WOW was veld. According to Merriam-Webster Online, veld means a grassland especially of southern Africa usually with scattered shrubs or trees. The father-in-law was in “the vicinity” with his guess, but I don’t think any of us would have guessed that this term is specific to a particular geographic area.

This week’s WOW is flocculate. Here are my guesses for flocculate:

flocculate (ˈflä-kyə-ˌlāt) 1. the act of birds flocking together. 2. spraying probable ozone-depleting carcinogens on a Texan Christmas tree in an effort to keep all the needles from falling off the week before Christmas 3. speculating about who will get a birdie on the golf course next 4. a word one should say very, very carefully

What are your guesses for flocculate? Comment below!

Wednesday’s Post: Aiding a Kitchen…

You Might Also Like: Word of the Week: veld; Word of the Week: bloviate; and Word of the Week: agon

Thankfully, this log cabin of ours does NOT feature one thing true of the original log cabins in the U.S.–an outhouse. Thus, I actually deemed it fun deciding how to “outfit” our 2 bathrooms, our kitchen sink and our laundry sink.

I wanted the bathrooms to have that arts and craftsman “feel,” so I already had decided that the fixtures would all be white, as they would have been back in the arts and craftsman era.

As you might suspect, this is where the hubby’s engineering end of the build came into play with my aesthetics end. This was particularly true of two plumbing areas: faucets and toilets.

I have had a lot of bad luck with faucets throughout my life. Why? Because I listened to commissioned salesmen “voices” who sold me on Moen and other brands I knew I didn’t like in the first place. In my experience other brands leak remarkably soon after installation and become a cleaning nightmare in the process.