Seriously, who the hell had the bright idea of blogging every day? What idiot thought she could get the Christmas shopping done, get used to getting up early, get her sleepy-head toddler up in the morning, work all day, cook dinner, take care of the now-crabby-ass toddler, blah blah blah...what the HELL was I thinking???

So, no blogs for several days. Still not done with Christmas shopping. Not even close. My kiddo is still fighting some sort of cold or something-fever one day, fine the next. coughing, runny nose 'Mama, Mama, MAMA! My nose is eeeeeeeeeeeeeeecccchhhyyy!' (itchy) For the love of pete, I love the kid, but she is getting on my last frayed nerve with the whining and crying and snotting and coughing. Sigh. Why do we have kids? And here I am, up late, exhausted, and trying to blog so as to keep my own promise, TO MYSELF. Ridiculous.

Blog, smlog. Oh, and dog-

My dogs have officially gone crazy. Seriously. They have finally lost the last of their cute little brain cells. They used to have 23.13 acres to roam, sniff, frolock, etc. Now they have .13 acres, and I think it has finally gotten to their heads. All last week my older lab, who is always so good on any given day, got out every day. Several times every day. Just roaming the neighborhood, terrorizing the high-society neighbors. Add the cold, the rain, the clogged french drain, and you've got the perfect mess: a muddy, cold, needy 75 lb. dog. So, I had to lock him in my garage, and spend about 40 minutes trying to brush the mud off of him. And dumb me, I leave my other lab outside, thinking, 'oh, she can't get far-she's chunky-monkey, and she's got a gimp leg!' HA! HA-says my dog.

I wake up Saturday morning to...silence. Usually she whines at the back door-'food, food, food-it's been a whole 12 hours since I last ate!!!' But there was silence. So, I go to inspect, and she's gone.

Now, in the past, she was the dog I always had to worry about. She always got out when she was a puppy. She was caught more times than I can count, down the street, 'frolocking' with a damn bassett hound. I used to stand on my back porch and just YELL her damn name over and over, only to notice that she was in the far back corner of my property, chowing down on cow crap. ugh. This is the same dog that also loved to roll around in cow crap, oh, and the same dog that got hit by a car while out frolocking one early morning.

But, I thought the fact that she is now overweight, combined with the fact that she has a 12 inch metal plate in her front leg..would keep her from digging out.

It did.

She couldn't dig. She can't actually bend that leg so well, so no digging here.

She broke out.

As in, broke my fence.

Slammed her fat butt into the fence and broke free.

I found her lying on my front porch, covered in mud. Must have felt the need to roll around in the mess her brother left behind when he dug out.

So at this point, I had two dogs, wet, muddy, miserable, in my garage. Not really a good place to keep them, seeing as the dumb dog of the bunch once ate rat poison.(that is a blog for another day!) I'm not too comfortable leaving her in the garage  with a bunch of chemicals. So, my dogs are now on vacation.

I shipped them off to my mother's house, until they (the contractors?) finish my yard, my fence, and fix my french drain. Oh, and I guess we need some new sod now too.