Ts and Snow

(I should start thinking up puns on "Ts" and "tea"...)

More snow today. 2-4". I'm getting a bit tired of it, although Iknow this is good for the trees and soil and water tables. I just get my sidewalks and driveway cleared off and it snows again. I've only had one chance in about the past 4 weeks to clean up poop from the potty area out front, and then I got two shopping bags full. If it had stayed warm one more day, or if the sun had come out today, I probably could have collected another two bagsful. Now it looks like I can wait and collect THREE bagsful.

Well. At least I don't live somewhere like Buffalo, where I'd be talking in terms of feet rather than inches.

I don't believe I mentioned that TIMBER DID IT!!!!! He finally passed his Level Two Distance, and is now a Level Two Doggie! http://levels.nybble.net/community/hof/2?page=6 I'm so proud of him. Now I want to have Level Three Ts. Front, Finish, and Heel are going to flummox me--she approaches all three from a completely different angle than how I've taught those things in the past, and I don't think I have enough room in the house to use her method. We'll have to see.

I've been really working with Timber the past three or four days. He spends so much time alone in the bedroom, and when he does come out, he's so tentative--I've caught Taenzer giving him the evil eye more than once--so I've been giving him a lot of special Taenzer-free attention. I think I should try hard to keep that up, as it seems to help his confidence. He came out this morning and asked for a massage. He loves me to massage his neck and shoulders, and often likes it if I rub my thumbs down the muscles along his spine and squeeze up and down his forelegs. But he esp. loves having his neck rubbed, and as we get into it, his head will start to drop a bit, nose pointed down, and his ears get all relaxed and sideways, and if I keep it up long enough eventually he just collapses like a dynamited building. It's very cute, part of his sweetness. Taenzer doesn't particularly care for being massaged, but Timber l-o-v-e-s it, and I love it when he comes and asks me for it.

However, in order to keep the Taenzer green-eyed monster at bay, I have to be sure to reassure her she's my most precious brown-eyed girl. I've been telling her to stop picking on him whenever I catch her giving him the evil eye--in fact, when he hesitates, I now look at her to see what she's doing, and she's almost always telling him, more or less, "Come in here and I'll rip your heart out." Geez. She's not really evil, and they really do mostly get along; they play and rough-house a lot, and it just makes me all mushy inside to see her flip onto her back and gently, gently, hold one of his forelegs in her mouth. No pressure at all, doesn't even dent the fur. She's just a bit high-strung and a little insecure, and would like to resource-guard me. She was always sliding between me and Annie to block her, and she'd like to try it with Timber, but I'm onto her now.

KNITTING: No, I haven't abandoned it. Last night I found out I can play DVDs on my laptop, so I put one in and finished the leg of the Lemonade sock and turned the heel; tonight I start on the gussets. Problem is the battery didn't last long enough to finish the movie I was watching, which was annoying, and I have to get in and do some tinkering, because stuff keeps trying to run automatically while I'm trying to watch the movie. I'm a little concerned about trying to run the thing off the adapter, because the box gets incredibly hot. I suppose I could watch until the battery cuts out, then plug it in to finish.

I'm not getting along quite so fast with the tube sock. My excuse is that the yarn is so much thinner. If I were making regular socks, I'd probably do them on 0s (which reminds me--I think I'm going to have to work Schaefer Anne on 0s or even 00s, so I ought to order a few sets so I can have more than one pair going at once, once I finish these socks).