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I have a feeling that we’re going to need a new car soon

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the other day, as Chris pulled out of the driveway to go to a store for me I noticed that our car was making spluttering sounds as he drove away. I gave him a call on the cellphone and asked him if he heard the car making funny noises but he didn’t think that it did … still … our car is getting kind of old. It’s a 1996 Ford Contour. So it’s 13 or 14 years old.

I’m actually amazed at how good it looks. It has a few tiny rust spots but other than that you’d never know the car was as old as it is.

I have a feeling, given it’s age and the spluttering sounds I heard the other day (no matter that my husband didn’t) that we’ll be looking for another car in a year or so. Hopefully not sooner! I mean it’s bound to start having some kind of serious problem – right?

Hmm maybe I’ll check online to find out which cars have the best safety ratings, best mileage etc. That’s what I did last time when we were getting our current car. I also spent some time looking for insurance online where I could compare or get quotes for car insurance prices for the cars we were interested in.

I’d love to get a Hybrid, maybe a Smart car … but I think they are too pricey for us right now unless we get a “mildly” used one. As it stands, unless Chris or I start making a ton of money our next car will probably be a used one, no matter what kind we get.

Are you driving an older car? Have you been thinking about getting a new or used car soon to replace your current one?





Time to do some yard work

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If you live in a northern climate you’re probably fairly excited that Spring has finally arrived. I know I am! We’ve actually had fairly nice weather most of the month, but I just got my first confirmation that Spring is truly here… I discovered my first crocus’ blooming in my backyard just a little while ago.

Yellow Crocus

Crocus’ are usually the first flower to bloom in my garden each year so it’s a sign that my personal gardening season has begun.

Now I can’t wait to get out in the yard and start clearing the dead leaves and dead foliage out of the garden beds! I need to rake the lawn as well. I guess we didn’t rake it much in the fall and it has a matt of dead grass that I’m sure once we rake it off we’ll see some signs of life in the lawn below.

I’ll probably have to wait a few weeks for the Hyacinths to start to make an appearance, but I can’t wait to see them and smell their heavily scented blooms. Don’t you just love the heady scent of Hyacinth?

Pink hyacinth

Do you garden? If you do, what’s waking up in your garden beds right now?

Why does my dog keep chewing on her dog bed?

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There’s only one problem with having a dog that loves to chew … when she’s bored she starts to chew on her pet beds! What a pain … I’m trying to give my dog a comfortable place to rest and she repays me by chewing holes in her dog bed!

It’s not as bad now as it was when she was a little puppy. She chewed on everything she could back then. I swear it was worse than watching a toddler. Luckily she only chewed a few things (other than her bed) that she shouldn’t have – including the bottom of our upstairs staircase, the coffee table leg and the hood of my coat!

she has one smallish pet bed in her crate – she’s a Lab and she just fits in it if she curls up. Recently she’s started to chew on the pillow again. We also have a HUGE pet bed that sits on the living room floor and it’s made with a very thick canvas material. She’s chewed the center pillow in that a few times – I have a feeling that some of the chewing on that one was accidental when she was chewing one of her bones or her rawhide … but still, the holes look horrible!

I’ve hand sewn and patched her small pet bed a few times and that’s helped but it doesn’t
t make the pet bed look much better.

Midnight is about 19 months old now. She’s calmed down a lot in the last few months, but other Lab owners keep telling us that they don’t really start to calm down until they are about three. Some have also said the destructive chewing slows down around that time too, although others have older dogs that still chew a lot.

I guess we just have to keep her as active as possible so that she’s not bored and too tired to chew her bed.

Do any other dog owners have this problem?

BTW if anyone knows what to do about a possible mouse or other wild animal that seems to be in one of our walls please comment on the post I made on Tricia’s Musings. I’m getting freaked out by the weird sounds in the wall!

When kittens attack …

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Wordless Wednesday

These kittens must be really really really hungry!

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Look .. there’s five of them crawling up that woman’s leg, she must be preparing to feed them. Yep … kittens will attack when hungry, be careful!  At least the adult cat, probably the mom, is waiting patiently.

My dog is hooked on Rawhide

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My Lab Midnight loves to get treats.

We sometimes give her a tiny portion of our dinner – healthy things like small plain piece of boneless skinless chicken breast, raw carrots, green beans or other veggies- cooked or raw.

Of course she also likes chewing on real bones (beef bones purchased at pet store) and fake bones (nylabone for power chewers) and rawhide.

We actually like it when she’s busy chewing on one of her bones or a piece of rawhide because that means we have a few minutes of peace. Midnight really loves being, playing and interacting with us .. so it’s nice when we find something that can take her attention off of us for a while!

We started giving her a rawhide in the shape of a bone almost every night a few months ago. We never let her eat the whole large rawhide bone in one sitting though … it would be way too expensive to keep her stalked up in rawhide if we had! Instead we’d let her chew one end off and then take it away, then the next night the other knob and so on.

The only problem was that for most of this year her appetite for her regular food seems to have gone down a lot. Now she’s a Lab and they love to eat … so that’s a big problem! We started to wonder if she was sick, but she seems fine otherwise and she still will eat our human food treats or her cookies with the same excitement that she’s always had.

What I really think was happening is that the rawhide takes longer to digest than her regular dry dog food so she might have had a full feeling when presented with a big bowl of her own food. Also … she definitely likes our food better than her food … so that might be why she started to turn her nose up at her own food.

Over the last few weeks we’ve slowed down on the rawhide treats. We purchased small rawhide bones (about the size of your palm) and she only gets one every three days or so now. Her appetite for her regular food has picked up too.

Of course she still begs every night for her chew treats. She’ll actually sit and stare at me for hours with a look like “you’ve hurt me” on the nights that we don’t give her a rawhide. Darn dog!

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