2008 February 02 | Suzanne Earley

In my previous post, I made a big deal out of feeling kind of weird after we left the Humane Society, and then I didn’t actually tell you what the conversation was about. I wasn’t even sure I was going to share, but since Leah asked, I’ll go ahead and tell you.

There was a question on the form that asked where your pet will live and sleep — indoors or outdoors.

Well, our pets sleep indoors and primarily live indoors. But what Mark added was something to the effect that if we are gone and it is NICE OUT the dogs get left outside in a kennel.

And what the adoption counselor said was “We place all of our dogs in homes that will keep them indoors.”

Well, first off: why does your form even ask the question then? There should have been a line at the top that says “we only place pets in homes that will keep them indoors.”

I tried to explain that all we meant was that if we are leaving our property and it is NICE OUT the dogs are left outside. We don’t leave them out overnight or if it is cold or rainy or super windy. She said something like “Well, it is our policy to place pets in indoor situations and this is something I’ll have to think about. This dog is smaller and shouldn’t be left outside if it is cold.”

Hello?

I tried again: Well, we only leave them outside when it is NICE OUT, and on a day like today — our dog is INSIDE.

She didn’t exactly say we were approved, but did tell us that we could call in the morning to find out if the dog had been adopted by the other family.

It could be that we were reading more into it than there was, but we both kind of walked away with the same impression.

I don’t envy the humane society it’s job — I know that they are just trying to do the best job they can, and they have to protect their animals, but it just felt weird to us. Quite frankly, we think we have a pretty good deal going for the pets that come to live with us, and if the humane society doesn’t agree, we’ll visit another shelter and try again.

On to something else:

Shimelle’s prompt for day 2 was really hard. Yesterday’s seemed so easy, I’m still not sure I like how this one turned out. I think I might be making it more difficult than it needs to be. Or something.

Night all!

Suzanne

My memory, that is.

Way back in the days of my misspent youth, when I would be reading a book and needed to put it down, I was able to look at the page number, close the book up, and when I came back to the book, I would remember what page I had been on. Seriously.

These days, I’m lucky to FIND the book, let alone remember what page I was reading. I think I can pretty much tie the degradation of my memory to the birth of my twin boys.

Knowing this about myself, you would think that I would try harder to (a) remember to use a bookmark when reading or (b) write important things down.

For example: several weeks ago I was working on my cousin’s wedding quilt. I ran out of thread. I knew that I would be attending Road to California shortly thereafter, so I planned on getting some new thread from Superior Threads at the show.

Which I did.

I got several cones of the light neutrals since I was always running low on those.

Last night, I decided to finish the wedding quilt and got it loaded back on the longarm and marked everything that needed to be marked.

And then I started quilting. I knew for a fact that the thread color I needed was number 402. I knew it. Positive.

Until I stopped to check tension and noticed that the thread seemed a little bit yellow on the white fabric. And upon closer inspection: obviously different from the thread I had been using previously.

See, what I really needed was color number 401. Not 402. And if I had written this down, I wouldn’t have to be spending stinkin-forever unstitching a section. It’s not a very big section, but big enough.

Thankfully I had purchased both colors, so I don’t have to wait for thread, just have to wait to get the unstitching finished.

My darling husband asked if I really needed to worry about it. For half a second I considered using the different thread color, but it’s ju-u-u-u-ust enough different that it really is noticeable.

Phooey.

I won’t tell you about all of the other signs that prove that I need to work on writing things down in order to remember them. I don’t want to embarrass myself too badly.

We are also not sure that the Humane Society trusted us this afternoon. We are thinking about getting a second dog, and went to see if any of the dogs at the humane society would fit our needs. We had already filled out the pre-adoption survey and then spent quite a bit of time taking several different dogs outside to try to get to know them a little bit. We found one that we thought we’d like to take home, but were a little disappointed to learn that there was a hold on her — another family had until the end of the day to consider adopting her. In the meantime the Adoption Counselor had to review our form, and we left feeling a little bit…odd…about one of the questions she had for us. I started to get really defensive about it, and I’m not really sure she understood our answer. We think she ended up approving us, but like I said, it was a little bit weird.

Anyway, we’ll know tomorrow if the dog we were thinking about is even available (or if they’ll even allow us to adopt one of their dogs) and at that point Mark will have to take Katie up to the facility to have the 2 dogs meet. I hope Katie doesn’t ruin our chances for us.

Well, I’ve probably spent more than enough time avoiding my unsewing job. Back to work.

Suzanne