Home on the Range

I'm outside this morning at 8am drinking my morning cup of tea, enjoying the silence, listening to the birdies chirp and generally relaxing in the oasis of my backyard. Suddenly, the red-neck neighbours behind and to one side of us CRANK the stereo! I'm transported into the middle of a honky-tonk bar! WTH?

Don't get me wrong here, I love country music and can be as red-neck as a cowboy from Texas myself but not at 8am on Sunday morning! I can't see into their backyard because it's heavily treed and hedged but the sound clearly travels. I can also hear them screaming at their kids and dog all the time.

They've also built a fire pit that they light up most nights {so illegal here in the city} and they have loud parties on the weekends until the wee hours of the morning. Those nights they play stuff like Kid Rock, Limp Biskit etc. Again, great tunes when I don't have to cringe when my kid hears the F-bomb dropped. We've walked by the front of their house on our nightly jaunts with the dog and wow, what a mess. Kids toys and junk all over the yard, weeds as high as my waist, dog crap everywhere, broken chain link fence and 2 dead rusted out cars. How can people live like that?

No matter where I have lived and some of the places were pretty sketchy, I've always taken care of my property, kept it clean and picked up, mowed the lawn etc. My house isn't the snazzyist on the street but it looks 'kept up'. It's a pride thing I guess.

So in other news. Tahoe had her vet appointment and the 5 month old dog weighs 42lbs! The kid weighs 36lbs. YIKES! How big is the damn dog going to get!?!? She is so strong that when she pulls on her leash my arm damn near gets ripped out of it's socket. I have blisters on my hand from the leash pulling. We had a child/dog collision yesterday the was pretty spectacular. Little J was running in one direction, Tahoe was running full blast for the ball I threw for her and well, someone should have zigged or zagged but they didn't and BLAMO! Houston we have a problem. Kid went flying through the air and the dog landed on top of him. Once it was determined that Little J was indeed not injured I laughed so hard, tears were streaming down my face. I only wish I had videoed it. I'm such a mean mommy. :)

Tahoe has discovered the wonder of The Sprinkler. She loves it! I worry about how much water she actually drinks! No way in heck does she get to come into the house until she's peed several times. The kitchen floor is covered in mud. After the dog got nice and wet, she decided to hang out in the freshly turned garden. MUD MUD MUD from snout to tail. My golden lab was now chocolate brown. She won't stand still long enough for me to hose her off and no way can I lift a wriggling 40lb dog into my bathtub, nor do I want to! The bathtub gets dirty enough with just the kid. I'm hoping that as she dries it will just flake off. Does this work?





Ass-hat went fishing for the weekend so I was left to do the outside chores. Little J's birthday party is at the end of the month and we need to get the backyard into shape. I power washed the deck, planted the garden, washed the outside windows and oh so thoughtfully moved the bags of shingles to the front of the gate so Ass-hat gets the hint to take them to the dump. It takes me twice as long to get anything done with the dog and kid 'helping' me. Why are my gardening tools so damn interesting to both boy and beast? I was constantly retrieving a tool from one of them.

I am way to pretty to work this hard!

I leave you now to continue my day of cleaning, I hope ya'll had a funner weekend than me!