A more light hearted post...

So, enough of the floundering wonderings. I thought it might be time for a little smile.
Currently, living with the parentals since the money flow is a problem, I am also living with four dogs- three very large dogs and one little mop headed excuse for a dog. For some reason, we have a history in my family of picking the "unique" dogs- dogs with some rather crazy personalities. Take our current dog pack for example- there is Jake, the 110 pound golden retriever who is more red than gold and who is possibly dumber than a brick (although we sometimes wonder if he's faking it...) Jake is a character. We've had him since he was 10 weeks old and have no one to blame but ourselves. Jake likes to hug, to hide, to growl, to chew on logs, and to chase sticks. Sounds pretty normal, right? Except Jake likes to hug you're arm in his mouth- everytime I get home, I have to hold my arm out for him so he can take it in his mouth and "talk" to me while he chews on my arm. Jake also "attacks" the floor. After everything has settled down from your arrival home, he heads for the large space in the living room and literally head slams the floor. He growls upon impact, shaking the house in the process. And as if once wasn't enough, Jake will continue with his wrestling match for a good twenty minutes.
Sophie was supposed to be my mom's lap dog, her present after all the years of enormous dogs. Sophie, however, turned out to be of "big dog" mentality and is NOT a lap dog and in fact is the queen of the house. When Sophie first entered the equation, she was all excited about having new dogs to play with (didn't matter that they could EAT her in three bites). Jake was having none of this- he was terrified of her, so terrified that he went into "hiding". Jake is huge and there isn't a spot in the house where he could effectively hide but in Jake's world, if he can't see you, then you can't see him, naturally. So Jake has a habit of sticking his head in the corner behind the couch, or hiding his head under the curtains. He must have discovered he likes this peace and quiet because now he quite often hides himself.
And to top it all off, Jake loves his logs. He never remembers whether he's just gone out the door or just come in the door and if you open the door, he's got to go through it- so he spends a lot of time outside which is perfect for him as the mountain side hill we live on is loaded with logs. Jake doesn't do much with these logs, but he does trot over proudly to show you that he has one and will let you tug on it for a minute before he turns around and goes back to "guarding the driveway" (he loves to sit dead center on the top of the driveway where he can watch, or not watch, the world go by) where he sets his log on his front legs and looks at it for what seems a long time to him I'm sure, before beginning the attack. Jake is the best kindling maker around.
Now, the others are wacky as well but Jake possibly takes the cake for current odd ball dogs living at our house. And we adore him for it.