No Store Does More!

Today has been a fantastic day, but before I tell you about it let me back up and briefly tell you about the last four days, even though yesterday could fill an entire encyclopedia, because I had so much fun with Sandy and Patty.

Last Friday night when I posted on my blog I forgot to tell you that Nancy D., the super nice woman who lives in Medina, who adopted Pumpkin from us called me. "Nancy, I adopted Pumpkin from y'all back in February, but I am not calling you because we want to return her. She is a wonderful dog and she is very happy, but I need to ask you a favor....Thank you so much. Bye."

Nancy had rescued a sweet six-years-old dog, that is housebroken with great manners, awhile back and had been fostering her while she tried to find her a home and she asked me if we could help her by posting Oofa up on our web site to help her find a super home and thirty minutes after receiving Nancy's e-mail, Pat Symchych, our incredibly talented web master had posted Oofa's picture and Nancy's words about her up on utopiarescue.com.

And this is what she wrote:

"Female mid-size dog with a beautiful cinnamon brown short-hair coat. This sweet dog has had one owner since she was a few months old. She is spayed and has all her shots, dental exams, even rattlesnake vaccine. Physically she was taken very good care of but emotionally, she was left out in a large pen away from people. We have taken her in as a foster dog to see what the ideal situation would be for her. Turns out she loves to be with people. She makes a great companion. She enjoys being ever present but doesn’t demand to be pet constantly. She does well with other dogs but would probably do best in single dog family. She is not aggressive at all with people. Her old owners had 10 year olds girls that the dog was good with. She barks when strangers come up so would make a good companion/watch dog."

 So, if you would like to adopt Oofa please contact me at the rescue ranch and I will put you in touch with Nancy. Oofa is a beautiful dog.

Saturday was one great, but very busy day for us. We had visitors out here all day long, but my favorite visitors to visit with were Andy Hickner and his beautiful daughter Hayley and son Hayden Hickner, author of the great children's book, A Bear & the Bees, which he so beautifully illustrated.

Two hours or so before we were to meet up with our dear friends, Gail, Pat, Lisa, Jill, Matt, Paul and Roger, for a celebration dinner I called Analea to ask her if she could tell me more about the artist Esteban, who had made and signed the "I Jus Do" plaque that Analea had given to me. "Nancy, I don't know any more about him, but I bet you that I can find out...."

When our conversation had ended I took my little plaque off of the wall and examined it closely and then I took some measurements of it and half-hollered down the hallway, "Tone, we are going to have to leave a little earlier, because I want to go to Home Depot before we meet up with everyone at 7:00."

Then I heard approaching footsteps coming from Tony's Photography Hallway. "Why do we have to go to Home Depot, Nance? My back is really killing me."

"To get some lumber, because Analea has talked me into making a plaque, similar to Esteban's, because she told me that I could make them and sell them and..." After we left Home Depot we met up with our dear friends and had a wonderful time, as we always do and it was filled with laughter.

T. and I had the best Sunday sort of. After we had done our morning chores outside Tone took off to document and photograph the many dried up creeks between here and Medina while I stayed home to take care of some paperwork, which I really didn't feel like doing.

Around 10:30 there was a knock on our front door and Mama came running out of our bedroom barking  followed by Abbie, Toto and Tony's dog Belle. It was our friends Jill and Roger! And the minute I said, "Hi, y'all! What a nice surprise. Come on inside," my personal-protection-posse quit barking at them and instantly greeted them with wagging tails as they entered the big room, as Belle, T.'s dog, tried to lick them to death. And, I am not sure how many times I apologized to them about B.-S.-S. and said, "No, Belle. Now quit it. I'm going to tell Tony."

After a fun visit with them, inside the trailer, Jill, Roger and I went outside to go visit with our rescued dogs and after Jill had kissed and Roger had petted everyone of our super dogs they had to leave because they had a long drive back to Waco, ahead of them.

And ten minutes after Jill and Roger left the phone rang—it was Lisa, so I picked up the phone. "Nancy, would it be okay for me to come out with my mother for a short visit and so I can show her the rescue ranch?"

"Lisa, I would love to see you and visit with your mom. Come on out."

"We're leaving Kerrville now. See you in a minute. Bye." Right after I turned off the phone it rang again. "Hello, Nancy. This is Leeza, who adopted Enzo, the German Shepherd, from y'all and it's not really working out and..."

When that conversation had ended—Tony walked inside the trailer, wearing a big smile on his face and after he told me about all of the great pictures he had taken I told him, "Lisa and Pat are coming out for a visit and Leeza is coming out to return Enzo and you missed seeing Jill and Roger and..." 

An hour later while Tony and I visited with Lisa and her lovely mother Pat, in Outer Space, the dogs started barking at a truck coming in—it was Leeza and Enzo. "Y'all keep visiting while I go put Enzo in  LaToya's pen," T. said, as he walked out of Outer Space. 

Twenty minutes later, Tony drove up in Kermit and joined us and while we laughed and talked about life the dogs started barking again, because Enzo had jumped out of LaToy's pen, so Tone took off again to catch the beautiful, well trained German Shepherd.

When Tone returned to Outer Space again, he asked us to help him switch Enzo & LaToya from their pen to Moe Bandy & Mandy's pen, so we got up and left Outer Space to go help him move the dogs around. 

After we had gotten the dogs moved to their new pens we gave Pat a tour of the rescue ranch while Lisa kissed each dog and handed out dog treats to them. When the fun tour was over they told us that they needed to go home, so after hugs and inviting them to come back sooner than later, we adios-ed each other and then we went back to the trailer, so I could take a nap with our dogs. 

Thirty minutes later, after laying in bed with the dogs snoring beside me, I decided that my sleepless nap just wasn't going to happen, so as I was carefully climbing over the dogs so not to wake them from their sound sleep the phone rang—it was Sandy, but I could not get to the phone fast enough as I heard her say, "Hi, Nancy. I was just calling about our San Antonio road trip tomorrow. Call me. Bye,"as my feet finally and quietly touched down on the wooden floor, without disturbing our dogs. 

Two minutes later I had Sandy back on the phone. "OMG! Sandy, I am so glad that you reminded me about our road trip tomorrow, because I had completely forgotten about it, even though I have been thinking about it off and on." We started laughing. "No, seriously, if you had not called to remind me, I would have gotten up early and done my chores outside with Tony, before ever looking at my calendar, because I always check my calendar after our morning chores are done and y'all would be so mad at me for not showing up and..."

Before watching a movie Tony and I practiced on the guitar and mandolin for over an hour. And that is about it for Sunday, except that Enzo coming back to us bummed me out.

Early Monday morning Tony and I were outside feeding the dogs and cleaning their pens before the sun came up and the dogs seemed to enjoy their surprise sunrise breakfast. When we were done outside I had only thirty minutes to get cleaned up, so I could get on the road by 8:30.

To Be Continued... (Sorry, Mari. I've been writing this for over three hours and it is slowly turning into a book and I need to go to bed.)

Y'all have a great evening and please keep praying for rain for us!

P.S. I can't wait to tell y'all about our Monday adventure and what a fantastic today was.

Congratulations To Hayden Hickner! or Road Trip!

Today has been so much fun. This afternoon we went to Wolfmueller's Books so we could meet our dear friend "Patty From Florida" there, so we could go to lunch. Before going into the bookstore we checked out their display window by the door and started to laugh, because they had filled the entire display bookshelf with one of Kinky's, Tony's and my favorite Elmer Kelton's best selling book, The Time It Never Rained and it made me appreciate Sandy's and Jon's great sense of humor concerning our terrible drought.

We were greeted by Sandy and Jon when we walked into their bookstore and they invited us to sit down for a visit, while we waited on Patty, because we were ten minutes early. "I love your display window showcasing Elmer's book," I said. "It says it all and it made me laugh and we sure need something to laugh about since we can't do anything about the drought and..."

Then I saw it! "OMG! Y'all have Hayden Hickner's new book, A Bear & the Bees," I said, excitedly. "I love his book and his illustrations and I can't believe he is only sixteen years old and has Aspergers Syndrome and he wrote it when he was only fourteen years old and..."

"It's a beautiful book," Sandy replied. "Did you know that he's having a book signing at the Medina Community Library next Thursday at 9:30?"

"Yes, and I plan to go."

"Good. Then let's ride together," Sandy said. Then we started talking about the drought and that's when I saw Joan, a friend of Kinky's and mine, who had given him her dog Sophie, so I excused myself and went to talk to her about Sophie. After a short, but fun visit with her, Patty walked up and hugged me and then I introduced her to Joan.

Before leaving the bookstore Patty, T. and I invited Sandy and Jon to join us for lunch. "I'll come down there in a few minutes to drink some tea with y'all, but Jon can't because he has to stay here to hold down the fort."

When the three of us walked into the crowded Water Street Cafe, Kevin, the owner greeted us and then I introduced him to Patty and then we went and found a table and the laughter commenced and when Sandy joined us—we're talkin' one non-stop laughing, hilarious party and believe it or not—we even found humor in discussing politics, religion and our awful drought.

While we were eating our delicious lunch and Sandy sipped her tea Patty and Sandy started talking about how much they loved shopping at Target. "I haven't been to a Target store in over sixteen years, since I left Austin, because I don't do big cities," I casually remarked, and you should have seen the look of shock and disbelief on Sandy and Patty's faces—like I was some kind of an alien from another planet, so I burst out laughing and they followed suit. Then for about five minutes they told Tony and me on how cool Target stores are to shop at and I was pretty impressed.

Then we started talking about Whole Foods and what a great store it is and once again I told them that I hadn't been to a Whole Foods store in over sixteen years, too and I got the same reaction from them—shock and total disbelief—followed by another outburst of laughter.

And when it was all said and done Patty suggested, "The next time that I'm back in town let's do a road trip and take Nancy to Austin so we can take her shopping at Target and Whole Foods!" And that set the wheels in motion, so to speak. "Let's do it. We can go in my car and ...," Sandy said.

After the four of us ate our tasty chocolate cupcakes we went back to the bookstore and while I told Sandy and Patty about our new band L—BeNT & Husky Bound and how good T. had gotten on the mandolin—Jon sat at his desk and "wolf-ed down" (Because he is a Wolfmueller.) the chocolate cupcake that Sandy had brought to him.

After I had told them about Ben picking the song, "My Rifle, My Pony and Me" for our band to learn Sandy pulled it up on YouTube and we watched Dino and Ricky Nelson sing it in the classic movie Rio Bravo. Then it became question and answer time.

We had Sandy sitting at her laptop Googling Ricky Nelson to help us remember his brother's name. "It's David Nelson," Sandy reported. "It says here that "Garden Party" was Ricky's second most popular song. I love that song."

"I do, too," I said. "Maybe our band can learn that song, too." When Patty started talking about Kelly McGinnis living in Florida, I asked, "Was Kelly McGinnis in Top Gun?" So, Sandy checked that out and verified that yes, she was in Top Gun. After fact checking several more questions we had for Sandy I looked over at Jon and said, "Jon, if you had Sandy charging us just a dollar to look up and answer all of our trivial pursuit questions—you'd be twenty or thirty dollars richer." Jon laughed and then he and T. took off to look at some book on photography.

Ten minutes later, after Patty had purchased several books from Sandy to take back with her to Florida—it was time for Patty and us to leave. So after we all hugged and adios-ed each other Trigger took Tone and me home.

Around 5:00 this evening Tony and I went over to the Lodge to visit with Kinky and we sat outside beneath a big, old oak tree and caught up with each others news and talked about Enzo's great adoption, seeing Joan at the bookstore and the drought.

And that is about it for tonight.

Y'all have a great evening and please keep praying for rain for us.