By this time next week, I will have broken the record for most dogs here. If I dare tell you, you will think I am crazy but, in reality, I don't feel so overwhelmed. I have time to write this! Yes dishes are in my sink and my bathroom is gross, but my dogs ae well fed, cared for, loving life and the stuffing is picked up, wee wee pads changed, water bowls filled, the laundry.......o shoot hang on......and I dont care if i dress like a homeless person and i never have clean clothes, as long as there are clean dog blankets (the never ending pile) and clean dog towels and I can sit in my thrift store clothes in the diner with you and know my dogs are at home waiting for me on clean blankets and full bellies and then I can have fun. I don't feel like I have a lot of dogs. I actually saw on the news this morning about a 17-year-old girl from Cameroon being prostituted (human trafficking) who said I just want someone to care about me and I felt so bad and I just wanted to pluck her off the TV and stick her on my couch and say I care. I will give you some time in my life. Maybe that is the difference, why I can not feel overwhelmed because I give you time from my life not the opposite. If I feel like you are taking time from my life, I will tell you. I have no problem telling people they are taking time from my life, but I will never tell my dog. He means too much to me. I like people, I love dogs.

When I turned 30 and we moved here, my life took a change for the better. This was my perfect little home and I was free to make my own rules...it was pure almost heaven. Why do I have to do the dishes when it's a beautiful day and I just want to enjoy it. They never last long enough for me. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against people who live in clean homes, I actually really like to visit them sometimes. My mom is very clean. It's nice to visit my mom. It is probably the only aspect of my being where I am not my mother's daughter. I sucked every ounce of compassion for animals out of her DNA, but not one drop of her cleanliness ways. We also had a religious grandmother and so sometimes I feel extra guilty with the "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" saying. I pray that God meant morally, otherwise I am in big trouble. But my mom, she was a big cleaner which is probably why I am so liberal now in that aspect of the housekeeping. Growing up, I hated Saturdays, Saturdays was cleaning day. It hung over my head like a dark cloud. I have come to realize I cannot live like that. I tried, I really did. I was good at it, too, but I felt more guilt in the end instead of satisfaction. I actually would feel like I just wasted a huge chunk of my day. There was more to life to me than dishes in my sink or dust on my pictures. If Saturday is "cleaning day," I am depressed by Thursday. I had a friend at work who spent hours Saturday morning cleaning top to bottom her whole house. I would listen to her tell me what she does in a few hours with my jaw on the floor. And then her and her husband would go to three different grocery stores for sales. I thought she was crazy! (I hate going grocery shopping never mind going to three). As far as I was concerned, she was wasting her life on Saturdays. (she worked full-time) But you know what, like me, that's what she liked to do. I am sure she looked at me the same when I told her we had a special brush to get the dirt out of the bed when the big blanket fell off top. Last night I thought of her (she has since passed) what she was saying looking down at my Cupcake last night with a plastic bottle of blood worms (beta fish food) chewed open spilling them everywhere (and eating them!)

Some people like to live by an agenda, a plan, a schedule, I can only do that with my animals because their lives depend on me. Everything else is just a chore to me set in small goals. If I get to unload and load that dishwasher AND wipe the counters, I am happy. If I can pick up every piece of big stuffing, shredded ice cream box, mutilated sandwich wrapper someone stole off the table and NOT get to the actual vacuuming part, that's okay with me. If I changed the sheets on the bed and got to sort the huge pile of laundry in the laundry room, it's been a good day. The fridge will wait, I have a litter box to clean. I make the rules and I love it. First rule, Saturday will be a "cleaning day" no more. :)

I love the saying something like, "There is nothing worse than an unkempt house than a life unlived." So I make a sacrifice, live life unkempt and love my dogs and do all the other essentials as necessary. Life is too short and that is why you have four hundred forks. (if there are no more clean forks, you better start loading that dishwasher because something is going to start smelling soon.) And yes there is the plastic bowls and metal bowls and the sorts that didn't fit in the dishwasher in the first load (because of the 400 forks) so you save them for the second load that never happens...that's just how it goes. Screw the dishes, that is what I say. Eff the laundry, if I dig deep enough, I will find something to wear. The only time I want to spend on my floors is with my dogs. That is my inner core of happiness in life. Not my fancy car or the big dinner parties I give, its the health and happiness of my dogs. I will make time for you in my life, that is what I say to my rescued dogs everyday with every action, every piece of stuffing - even when Joey knocked the garbage over this AM and peanut shells went everywhere. I gave him the time from my life to call him a jerk and pick up the pieces because that's life at the shack. It's definitely not for the faint of heart.

Now I am going to change the towels under the water bowls and walk my dogs around the trail one more time. Yes there a ton of dishes that fill my sink and Cupcake sits upon a huge pile of an admixture of dog blankets, dog towels and the remnants of my folded white clothes on top of the pit crates in the front window of the living room (where we get the best view of the front yard), but I will fold laundry, give a bath to a dog, set out the cushions for them, pick up horse poop and dog poop outside, pat a head, give a smooch, make Lila sit nice for food one last time before she goes to her new home and then I will see my mom and sister today and know that, in the brief time I have to leave them, my dogs are all
good.