Good grief, how long has it been?

My daughter is nearing 18. She's about to get her driver's license. She's already been accepted to half the colleges she applied to - I've already tried to gauge what kind of empty nest panic I might experience when she is out of the house however temporarily. I figure that the point of splitting time with her with her dad when I moved out was the worst change in our scheduling. I've already been through that. I just hope I get emails and remain her FaceBook friend so I can hear about what's going on with her.

Mul and I have been married for 4.5 years now. He's going back to school for a career change. I'm looking forward to him feeling less stress and enjoying his job more once he gets his new degree. He's been getting more involved with miniatures gaming and our large table downstairs is HALF covered by the painting equipment. Thank goodness for the magnifying lamp we got for an anniversary present a while back.

There's been an addition to our family - no more kids, sorry. Just a dog. Enter another male... yeah, when the girl goes to college, it's just me and a houseful of boys. He's a 'silly Spaniel' with the most darling and play-loving attitude. Once in a while, so long as we 'sing' to get him started, he'll call out with a soft howl, more musical than irritating. He'd love human food but we try to keep the portions very small and rare in their opportunities to be enjoyed. I finally found a short antler toy that he can worry with his incredibly strong teeth for more than a week without completely destroying it. There's another ready for his Christmas stocking.

I haven't thought what to get the cat-boyz yet... they have all the crinkly mice and bell balls that they can collect under the furniture. Each is still wonderful, the skinny one being noisy as ever and the fluffy one being adorable as usual. I realized recently that with the girl leaving soon, Mul and I will be outnumbered by our pets. As much as Mul and I might want to collect more sweet pets because we admire and love those breeds or find a rescue opportunity that our hearts' respond to, we've kept the number of animals equal to the number of humans. I heard the line in a movie once: something about the natives breeding naturally but eliminating any children beyond the second because when needing to travel in a hurry, two parents meant the survival of two children. Once we are a household of 2 humans + 3 animals, that line has been crossed. However, two of those pets fit into one carrying case, so I guess we don't have to get rid of anyone (this is meant jokingly - I love our family and the pets are members. They aren't going anywhere).

However, this means that we'll have to allow for the natural attrition of our pets to consider the next possible adoptions. Mul and I still fawn over Great Dane and Irish Wolfhound puppy pics. We just need to remember that having one Spaniel is not exactly practice for those playful, active, sometimes couch potato beasties. Our dog is so skilled and determined to find his stick/ball/toy when thrown across the yard, I've been considering checking out the search and rescue training that some owners put their pets through. I saw a demonstration when visiting the open house at the http://www.endangeredwolfcenter.org/ and was impressed by these loving house pets that could seek for hours if necessary whatever it was they were trained to find. Not all of them were corpse/cadaver dogs - some would just find whatever evidence of human presence they could. I thought about the spiraling seeking patterns that our Spaniel put himself through for a stick and thought about how often I forced him to stop looking for something to come back inside. Usually he didn't give up on his own. Heh, sometimes he's managed to find a ball that had been lost months before while looking for his recently thrown stick... I call that a win. He brings me back a toy, I tell him what a good boy he is and rub his back. I don't care what toy it is.

No - no real point to this entry but to show that I am still here, still typing.