I have 5 dogs now.  Annie was my parent's dog. A rescue; she is a huge ass hunting dog cross. No manners, she'll rush past you out a door or through a gate and keep going at top speed until you get in a car and catch her.  She slept with my mom. She sang with my mom.  Trix was always saying that she didn't know what she would have done, after my dad died, without Annie.  So, I owe that dog a good life, but its hard because she is the first dog ever that I don't like.  Pushy, clumsy, seemingly….stupid? An eating, humping, escaping machine.  Now that she's an orphan, though, I'm finding that I don't dislike her as much as when she was an 80 pound threat to my mother's safety. I want to rename her Judy, but I won't.

Scout and I went out to Dianne's on New Years and celebrated on sheep.  I think Scout is like a child who can't concentrate on instructions, jumps ahead based on a pattern of past expectations and where she assumes it will lead.  I was a kid like that.  Still can't read a manual. I look at the pictures of the finished product.  Scout has pictures of a finished product in her head. I need to make sure we have the same picture. I love her.

I am a poor housekeeper. I hate that sort of thing.  I'm not good at it.  I appreciate other people's neat and orderly living conditions…but I just can't get there from here.  I'll do anything to avoid the actual work.  A few years ago, I bought a BOOK on housekeeping…it is as big as a convection oven, NO PICTURES, all text on organizing and cleaning your home.  I have never been able to make myself even glance at the index.  I think i hoped it would do more than just sit there and expect to be read.  I hired housekeepers for awhile, through a 'service', but it made me feel so evil inside to have other women  cleaning my shit that I started staying home to help them…giving them stuff. Our washer…our dryer…clothing.  Pretty soon they didn't clean.  They'd just hang out and smoke.  Seriously.  THEN I got ANGRY.  I'm irrational like that.  Here I was wearing the same old wet hand washed clothing and the housekeepers didn't even dust anymore.   I fired them.  Now I have 5 dogs.  When the breeze flows through my house, the dog hair clouds create their own weather.

Today, instead of cleaning my house, I signed up for an expensive online writing class through Stanford.  Creative non-fiction.  Maybe I'll write my own housekeeping manual. It will be only slightly smaller and nothing in the book will actually get around to pertaining to housekeeping. 

I am hoping to get Zeke out to Jodi's today and work him on sheep.  He hasn't been regularly worked since last spring/early summer.   He's my best friend dog.  He's not great on stock, and he argues constantly with me, but because he thinks its for my own good. Everything Zeke does, except eating the cat food, is for the Good of Family.   He sleeps with his head on my shoulder, gently licking my chin in the morning. He's pure sweetness and light. 
Fucking biggest shedder I've got, though.