More bits and bytes than brains I think

I am being towed into the electronic domain of internet savvy bit by bit, byte by byte and pixel by pixel. I started this blog which I am enjoying very much, and now I have been inducted into the vblog population. I have filed my fingerprints onto the REVVER site http://www.revver.com/ under the name, you guessed it, TRAVELINYETI. There are some fun and informative MINUTE MESSAGES you can check out.
... So who do I give credit to for my newly found knowledge? My son-in-law (The Hot Springs Guy). He is patient and cool with my many questions all though it is much to soon to see if I will thank him or curse him. But I am gobbling up e-stuff now as if it were ice cream and pizza. I do suffer from frequent e-overload sometimes trying to keep up with the speed of satellite. I have decided to figure out my e-niche and e-njoy that part of it and leave the rest to the
e-xperts. Oh yeah, I just heard of this new thing called, uhh UTUB , no ... UTUBE, Think I'll give it a whirl.

Just wanted to touch basis with the world and wish everyone HAPPY HOLIDAYS to Sokker Grrl and the Hot Springs Guy.

My mom was green when green wasn't cool, or publicized

...Recently my husband decided to "finish" the basement. To finish means to pour 5 inches of cement during the dead of our North Idaho winter to create a floor. Floors are important to homes, so I said nothing about his timing. However, this meant turning off running water to the inside of our country home.
..."Five days," he promised. "Only five days without water." I grimmaced, bit my tongue and believed him.
...Our water was off for THREE WEEKS. No flushing toilets without the aid of a bucket, no washing dishes without the aid of several buckets. Water was heated on the stove because the hot water heater was disabled. You bet I grumbled and complained while I stood at the sink, heating and pouring water over the mound of dishes that had sat for six days. Standing at the sink, t-shirt soaked at the belly from disgruntled splashing my mind trickled back to another woman standing at a sink washing dishes. (All thought SHE had running hot water to fill her sink.) I was young, not too young to wash dishes just too short for the tallest stool. So my mom just let me watch and learn and let me slide an extra year. After the dishes were meticulously washed, dried and put away, she hooked up the washing machine. As this memory surfaced I started realizing I had the greenest, most earth concious mother in the world. Back when recycle and reuse wasn't even popular with environmentalists.
....I remember watching mom hook up hoses from that old wringer washer to the sink faucet; screwing it on like a garden hose. Then she yanked a long black tube from around its rotund belly and stuck that drain hose in the opposite sink. The washer tub was filled with hot soapy water and the morning ritual began. First came the white clothes because they were the cleanest, the water was at its hottest and bleach was not used for whites. During this morning tribute to clean mom never changed that water, not once. Water was too precious because you had to pay the city for every gallon you used even back then. So one helping of wash water and a second tub of rinse water did all the dirty clothes that had accumulated for a week. Next came baby clothes, towels, colored shirts and last of all my dads grimy work clothes. By this time you can imagine that water was pretty thick and took its time leaving the wash tub.
.....Mom's water wisdom didn't stop there. At our house wash day was also bath day for all of us five kids. That tepid rinse water didn't go to waste. First went baby since she was the cleanest, then on up the ladder from youngest to oldest. That rinse water and mom's gentle hands scrubbed our bodies, washed our hair and left us smelling like ... well better than when we went in.
.... I started to pull the plug on the sink, my pile of dirty dishes under controll and drying in my waterless dishwasher. But I didn't pull that plug, I scouped that greasy water back into the bucket and gave the toilet an extra complimentary flush. Too soon my water would be turned back on and I would revel in the luxury of indoor running hot water again. But I would also be relishing the memory of my mom scrubbing down baby and making every drop of water and love count.
.....

Where were you on your last birthday?

This is where I was. Who can be the first one to name the spot?

Aandoned puppies found new homes

All my adopted puppies found new homes. Just in time for Christmas.

Abandoned puppies, soapbox scrutiny

"That darn barn cat", raced through my mind, "getting in the trash ... again." My husband Marti eased our truck to a halt in front of the covered porch ready to scare it away .... again. But that darn cat raced up to meet us, black curly tail wagging and tiny pink tongue hanging out between a row of tiny sharp puppy teeth. "How ?? What on earth?" We live 25 miles out in the sticks off a road that only our closest friends, neighbors and a moose or two know about. So... how on earth did this tiny bundle of frolicking fur find its way to our doorstep? Before we could decode this mini-mystery his two sisters crawled out from under the porch, more timid than their slightly bigger brother but begging to join the hug-fest. They were chubby, obviously well fed, shiny coats, and not at all afraid of their newly discovered environment. They were not dirty or wet from all the rainfall and snow melt we recently had, so they didn't come via the muddy driveway or through the bushes surrounding our house.

.....There was only one answer to this query. Abandonment. Someone who knew where we lived and how to get here, had dumped this infant canine trio into our laps. It made me angry to think that an individual walking upright claiming to be human being had no sense of morality or accountability. It now became our responsibility to find homes for the defenseless threesome. A responsibility that some gutless-wonder out there could not own up to.

.....I don't know how this story ends yet. But what we are doing and what you can/should do if you find yourself in a predicament of not wanting the animals that you have, is first grow some balls then open a phone book;

.....1. Call your local humane society and let them know you have pets to giveaway.

.....2. Don't be cheap, place an ad in the local paper. There are many loving families out there who would love an adorable little puppy but cannot afford the adoption fees charged by animal shelters. The cost of someone adopting our new charges if they were at the shelter in our area would be $95.00 each. The animal shelter has them spayed/neutered, gives them all their puppy shots and now inserts a chip into them. (For tracking owners as much as pets I think, but that is a whole other soapbox for me.)

.....3. Be patient and find a loving home for them.

.....So why don't we keep them you ask? My husband and I both work 5 days a week (sometimes six). We are intelligent enough to know that at this time of our lives we are too busy for the added responsibility of a pet.

.....I will finish this saga later when I find the happy ending, and you can rest assure I will find a happy ending for Spirit, Blondie, and Cinnamon Bear. Oh crap I named them, Now I'm in big trouble.....