Glad That's Over

Thanksgiving and Christmas aren't my favorite times of the year (other than the awesome pictures of the pups with Santa Paws, of course), so I'm happy that Thanksgiving week is finally over. I had to work Thursday through Monday at the kennel. Yes, I know a great many people work 5 days in a row, and most work more hours than I did, but I'm just not used to that anymore. Not surprisingly, Reyna's not used to it, either. Some of her old annoying behaviors showed up after a couple of days. It was obvious that she was responding to me not being home, and I'm reasonably sure the resulting lack of exercise also played a role. Reyna's seems to be better tonight, thankfully. I took both pups for 4 mile walks yesterday and today, and she's settling back into her normal behavior.

Just before Thanksgiving, I had some trouble with the ESC - ended up going two weeks with no money. That was rather painful, but everything's been resolved. I think. I also had a go-round with the mortgage company. They denied my loan modification because they couldn't get in touch with me. They finally said that someone had deleted my phone number from my account information. Oddly enough, that wasn't mentioned when I called them on November 5th to talk about the foreclosure letters I'd received and get an update on the modification. Regardless, we settled on a temporary solution, which is a special forbearance that will let me keep the house through the end of May, as long as I jump through the hoops they've specified. In June, we'll revisit all of this. Always something fun to worry about during the holidays...

I was hoping to be able to relax yesterday, but I ended up running several errands. I was trying to find a way to postpone them, but Belle kept screaming about how the cats didn't have any food (and let me tell you, she's a shrieker)and Duncan was whining about how low the pups were on kibble. What choice did I have? After going by Gourmutt's, I went to the dreaded Wal-Mart. Guess how annoyed I was to discover that I had to go by Food Lion after that, too? I spent a good bit of time today on the tax prep class I'm taking (I've really got to get more done with that) - Reyna doesn't really care what I spend my time doing, as long as I'm doing it at home. Tomorrow, the pups have their tricks/rally class, and if I'm feeling really energetic, we might swing by the herding group lesson on the way home. Maybe. Not sure yet. I get my kennel paycheck Friday, and I'm planning to go by Lowe's to get the PVC I need to make a practice jump for Duncan. I'm sure he'll be thrilled when he has to start working on that, but he's got to be comfortable with jumps by the 12th, when I'm hoping he'll be moving up into Advanced at the Rally trial.