Day 45 and Thanksgiving Day

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!  Happy Thursday to those not celebrating because they already did at the start of this exercise!  

Yesterday, day 45, I told Facebook that I was thankful for books and movies, so that we don't always have to "live in the present".

Today, Thanksgiving Day, I gave a joke gratitude... I am thankful that I think I remember where I left my eyeglasses last night.  I was right.

You see, yesterday afternoon/evening was spent with "the pandemic five" plus the foster child.  We met at the pizza place across the street from the arena where the basketball game was to be played.  

It was a great time, the home team won (although the star player got injured in the first minute of the game and did not play beyond that... got poked in the eye).  But the little fella (foster kid) had a fine time, there were mom/son memories of his days playing roundball, shared with my co-grandma, and it was dark out when we headed home.  And it was a joy to watch the one young man show off his dunking skills, too.  Crowd was very appreciative.

Naturally, this kind of outing disrupted the order as well as the time of Ember's "last call". Between retrieving laundry from the basement and a couple of delivered packages from the porch, and ... and ... well, those of you of my generation will recognize that when we disrupt routine, odd things get left out.  In this case, the glasses were taken off to put in the eye drops, and left where I had set them, atop the microwave, safe from Ember's reach.  Clearly I got by without them to get the rest of the way to bed.

Oh, you're wondering about the battered measuring cup?  That's a story on its own merit, related to Ember and her terrible horrible very bad morning on Wednesday.  We started out having to be dragged away from an excavation project in a neighbor's yard, mommy's hands near frozen despite wearing gloves, and the final bit was mommy tying her shoe, and Ember decided this was an invitation to play tug.  Mommy was not prepared for this regression step, and stepped into the X-Pen, and grabbed the collar to pull Ember toward her to release the tension (to make it not so much a game)... but Ember responded by changing her hold to mom's arm!  Yikes.  She bit hard enough that when mommy overreacted, skin scraped off... blood spots on the sweatshirt, bandages applied to the arm.

The measuring cup was also a casualty in that whole episode... before?  After?  During?  Who knows, but she stole it off the counter and chewed it up.  Sigh.  We had not had a biting episode in a couple of months.  Stealing things off the counter?  Yeah, we're still working on that, and some weeks are better than others.  

Thanksgiving morning has been similarly challenging to the pup.  Ember lost her leash-walk privileges by displaying teeth when I started to put gloves on... not as in growl teeth, as in "taste it" teeth.   I don't want her doing this, so, I put the gloves away, tried again, repeat, three or four times before I had the oldest pair on my hands, and she let them be.  

We got as far as harness and leash on, gate down, when yikes!  I had left the hall closet door open after putting away my coat after the basketball game Wednesday evening.  Straight for the snow boots... Ember got one out with which to play tug or keep away... and mom got frustrated, and when I eventually got the boot back and put away... decided no walkies.  At least not yet.  

I went out on "poo patrol" and collected three bags of the stuff, from last night and this morning.  Three bags won't quite fit in the Schitty kit's rubber bag, so I had one of them dangling, and guess who wanted it.  I let her sniff and carry it for a while.  Eventually I got the poop into the pail in the garage reserved for this kind of waste, but I'd already decided she was too full of herself to trust myself and her on a leash out in the neighborhood.

I prepared and ate my own breakfast, putting Ember to bed for puppy nap #1 in the usual routine as I sat down with the oatmeal.  Then I came up to write this blog before I start with the pumpkin pie preparation... there's a six-year-old across town waiting to judge my efforts later in the day!  And hopefully, before then, I will find time to get Ember more properly exercised!

Life is Good.  Keep Sparking!