happy birthday happy sunday

We celebrated Elliot's birthday yesterday afternoon in Eagle Lake. His other grandma and grandpa (Brenda and Steve) hosted the party and it was a fun event. Check out the photos in the slideshow. There are a ton of them because Regis was camera happy and I am too lazy to sort them. His grandma and grandma from Rochester (Nancy and Larry) came, too. Lucky boy to have three grandmas and three grandpas at his birthday party!

One of the other grandmas commented that it's too bad he has to have so many. I don't think she meant to say that it's bad all of us are living (boo) but that it's too bad divorce and remarriage leads to lots of relatives. My thought on that is that life is what it is. Better to have a lot of grandmas that none.

I was listening to On Being on my iPod while Gus and I walked this morning. He talked about the Dalai Lama and how he's been living in exile for fifty years and has endured some true hardship, yet he is always laughing. Life is too short not to laugh.

Gus and I got down south of Econofoods and all of a sudden the wind whipped up and I thought that's enough of that and we turned north to head home. Gus doesn't like wind either and gets skittish when leaves blow across our path which they do often in this snowless winter.

I had my list of things to do this week written on a sticky note. I don't like to-do lists anymore but I will compromise and make a sticky note. Not a big sticky note, either. A very small one.

I just ran across this is my downloads file. I love my download file because it's like an archive of weird shit I've posted. I don't remember if I posted this before but I thought it was hilarious.

The point is that I only got about one of those things done. I revised our birthday party invitation and ordered them. We met with Brian at Patrick's last week about where to sit and how many and what kind of food and so forth. It was a bit of a struggle but we're ready now. They'll be going out in the mail as soon as they arrive and I can get them addressed.

Here's another old favorite out of the download file. It has nothing to do with anything but it's funny.

Gus is doing quite well on his IEP. We're up to ten minutes and he lies down on his own and looks relaxed. We don't even have to push him from the rear to get him to go in anymore. He was invited to the party yesterday and behaved quite well except for the time the kids let him in the back door and he landed on Grandpa Larry's lap and up-ended his plate of food all over the floor. Ah, well. The kids loved him, even the baby.

This is my favorite dog picture of the evening. Audie (named after Audie Murphy) is a cairn terrier and he's standing on a cooler on the deck. Gus, half a horse, is just looking in the window. They were banished to the outdoors for a while during the party but you can tell they both yearned to come in and join the fun.

Steve and Brenda told some hilarious stories about things Audie has eaten and destroyed. He chewed his way into a Rubbermaid container full of bird seed and consumed half of it resulting in some interesting poop for a few days. He ate the head off a trophy fish mounting. He ate the head. Imagine that. He was locked in a bedroom at a cabin where they were staying once and he jumped 18 inches off a bed and ate a set of mini-blinds. I laughed out loud. Funny as long as it isn't your dog, I guess.

I thought Audie Murphy wrote Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer but Steve said no, that was Gene Autrey. I never was good with details.

Going to take my Sunday afternoon nap. I'm not much a napper anymore but I keep trying.