10/8/03

I think Marlene has learned I’m not going to take her shit. She claims I still missed some edits in the directory, which I don’t buy. I checked and re-checked my edits because I hate dealing with Marlene. If any mistakes were made it’s because she communicated them poorly to me. I have every last one of her e-mails and hardcopies too so I will have plenty of proof. Funny thing is though, her e-mail to me was very polite, she even thanked me for my time and said please. I don’t care even if she is being fake about it, at least she didn’t call me up and try to force me into submission like last time. I thinking e-mailing her boss and pointing out her mistakes to him got her attention. I have my hubby and coworker to thank for that, without them agreeing that I should involve her boss I would have just sent the e-mail to her. I don’t like to cause conflict. Sometimes though, I guess it’s necessary. I think Marlene has been knocked down a notch, we’ll see though. I’ve been pushed around by people like her my entire life and I’m sick of it.

We’re considering picking a kitten to keep, we hadn’t planned to do that, we were just going to keep whichever one didn’t find a home but number 2 is really growing on us. He’s really snuggly and kind of reminds us of our cat Kenny. Every time we go into their room he curls up on one of us and goes to sleep. We haven’t decided though for sure, I really love 4 too, she’s beautiful and 5 is a little charmer. 2 is also the one we had to take to the vet when he was only 2 days old. I wanted to keep him after that, I bonded with him quite a bit holding him on the ride there. Hoping the vet would be able to help his little bare tail. 1 already has a home, the woman my hubby used to work for is a cat lover, she loves black cats. She’s the perfect person to take one of the babies. #1 got a chance to go downstairs yesterday. He checked out the entire downstairs of our house. Oh boy was he one happy camper!!! He was charging all around the dining room. He even met Sara. Sara is so good around little animals. She got all down and submissive, she couldn’t get her head down low enough, lol. She kept trying and trying to get lower and lower. The kitten just stood there, all poofed up and he eventually lost interest in Sara.

After that adventure we took Sara for her walk. She LOVES her walk. We’re working on training her to heel. She’s not perfect but she’s a pleasure to walk now. She gets a little bit of doggy ADD once in awhile but we stop and she calms down and gets focused again. I would most definitely recommend a head collar for anyone having problems training their dog to walk on a loose leash. I couldn’t even take Sara out for the longest time, she pulled too hard, I had to dig my heels into the ground and use both hands to hold onto her. But now, no problem, she walks right beside us with slack in the leash. The next thing I want to work on is having her sit when we stop walking. She also needs to learn that she can’t just get distracted and run up to every person she see’s. It will come with time though. My original plan was to have her fully trained by 1 year. Trained as good as any show dog participating in Obedience. But things seem to go better when we just go at her pace and don’t force her to learn too much. We might still make it by a year though. We’ll see, we have until January. 🙂

You know what I hate about Wednesdays? It’s bill day. We get paid tomorrow so I get the bills ready and then mail them out after my deposit goes though. I HATE paying bills though, there’s too many! I’ll know exactly how much we have for our trip though after this though. We’re not as comfortable as I’d like to be going into this trip, but we’ll be fine. We’re not going to be doing a lot that costs much anyway. We won’t be able to do a lot on the road since we’ll have Sara. It helps that we’re going in the off-season, I was surprised, I managed to score a Suite at the La Quinta near my moms house for 65 dollars a night!!!

I’ve been trying to convince hubby we need to drive out to Chili’s for lunch. He hasn’t said “sure” yet though. *pout* He seems to just think I’m amusing. Like this morning I asked how the weather was and he said “chilly” and I said “mmmmm Chili’s”. I’ll probably let him pick between Chili’s and Applebee’s. I’m really craving chips and salsa though!!

This is the last weekend before our trip!! Hubbys last English class is Saturday. We’ve got to clean up the house, do the dishes that have been sitting forever, do ALLLLLL the laundry, change the oil in the car, get new wiper-refills and anything else that needs to be done before a long-ass drive. I’ve got to dig out all my little travel bags and stuff, I think a couple of them need to be tossed in the wash. I’ve also got to finish booking the hotel rooms for the drive back. I’m still waiting to hear from dad on the cat though. I’m booking pet friendly hotels and putting in the “comments” section that we’ll have pets and I need to know for sure how many on the drive back before I book. I discovered a lot more hotels allow pets than I thought. Some charge a fee, some don’t. Some only allow pets in certain rooms and on certain floors, some don’t care. La Quinta claims to be pet friendly nationwide. Most others seem to vary by location and in my searches that seems very true. For instance, we’re staying at a Howard Johnson in Ohio that charges $10 per pet. Looking in PA though for the trip back a Howard Johnson that would have been convenient charges $50.00 per pet. OUCH. A Comfort Inn we booked in Illinois charges no pet fee but doesn’t allow dogs in Suites or rooms with king sized beds. *shrug* La Quinta simply states that pets are allowed but that they expect you to be “Considerate of other guests”. Easy enough! If she was doing something that could possibly annoy another guest it would most likely be annoying us as well. That and we won’t be leaving her alone in the hotel at all. If we need to leave her alone to go somewhere we’ll be leaving her at my mom’s house. And you better believe we’ll have tons of chew toys, those keep her calm. We’re probably going to invest in some doggy diapers too, as weird as that sounds. She pee’s submissively and I would just die if she pee’d in the hotel lobby because someone decided to come pet her.

Anyway, I should get to work.