Thankvember: Days Eight through Ten

As part of the Thankvember Blog Hop, hosted by The Vagabond Studio and Chantilly Songs, I have pledged to post something for which I am thankful each day this month. 

Day Eight: I am thankful for my furry friends. My two kitties and my daughter's little yorkie (who is snuggled up beside me in my chair as I type this) bring me some much joy. Their unconditional love and eagerness to please far outweigh any work that is required to take care of them. 

Day Nine: I am thankful that God has seen fit to remove poisonous relationships from my life and give me the peaceful and happy life that is now mine. Change can be frightening, but a wise friend once told me, "If you want to make God laugh, tell him you have a plan." God's plan for my life is so much bigger than any I can make myself!

Day Ten: I'm thankful for my sisters. I have five of them and I know that if I need anything at all, whether it's someone to talk to or a big favor, that I can call a sister and any one of them will gladly be there for me. My sisters are more than just family...they are my best friends!

What can you name that you are thankful for today?

Feel free to share your thoughts and the things for which you are thankful in the comments at the bottom of this post. Or click on the Thankvember 2013 tab at the top of the page to see a list of days that are actually links and will take you to the post for that day. Come back daily to be reminded of the many things we often take for granted or view them one after another in a single day. This is a blog hop! Each of the blogs below is participating and I would love it if my readers would visit some or all of them to see their Thankvember posts and show them a little love! 

Shelter Pets: Desperately Seeking Someone

I have always had a soft spot for critters of all sizes. Maybe it's because my parents have always had (and still have) multiple cats and dogs. Maybe it's because my grandfather was a farmer who took me with him to feed the hogs and the horses and even the baby raccoon that he kept as a pet after accidentally catching it in a squirrel trap. Or maybe it isn't my upbringing at all, but rather an inner desire to treat all others (not just people) the way I want to be treated. 

Regardless of why I love those furry little guys, I do. When I was in college, I volunteered to spend some time socializing the animals at the local SPCA. It was a very large shelter and there was rarely an empty cage. If you have ever walked through an over-crowded shelter, you know it's a sorry sight. I have seen makeshift cages in the yard at our shelter because they didn't want to euthanize anyone and didn't want to turn away an animal either. 

My boyfriend and I would take the animals out and hold them and pet them, sometimes even going outside to exercise and play with them. We ended up adopting a dog that came in with cigarette burns. She had recently had puppies but the pups were not found. She was so afraid and pitiful and because she was older and scared of people her chances of adoption were small. Missy kept a nervous disorder all of the years we had her but we gave her the best life we could. 

Later, we also adopted a kitten from a litter that we had handled since they were born in the shelter. As soon as they were old enough to be adopted out, we decided we couldn't resist the really long-haired lazy one. She is 15 now and lying beside me as I type. Jewel is soft and beautiful and sweet and gloriously fat. 

And when my daughter wanted a pet of her own, guess where we headed to look for one? She found a crazy kitty that I advised her not to adopt. She reminded me that I told her she could have any one she wanted as long as it came from the shelter. So... the crazy thing is running around here somewhere right now. Sugar doesn't like us to hold her and rarely lets us pet her but she eats well and is quite active. When she does get friendly, we are happy to oblige her demands for affection. 

Wanting to get involved with the shelter again, and not feeling able to take on another family member (that's what they become), I talked with my daughter about the idea of fostering. Foster families for pets are much like foster families for children, offering a temporary home until a pet can be placed in a permanent home. Fostering is sometimes needed for less than a week, or sometimes it may be for months. 

Our first foster pet was a sweet little puppy named Clemson, which also happens to be the name of my daughter's fave football team. The two of them really bonded in the short time Clemson was with us, and Clemson left our home for a permanent family with much better social skills than when she came to us. 

This week I heard about an adult dog named Ruby, who had come to the shelter very frightened and after several days had still not settled in. A foster home would be a much better place for her and may help her to overcome some of her intense paralyzing fear. We brought her home yesterday. She has been hiding from us since she got here and has only come out to eat when we are not looking. It may take a while, but I hope that we can teach Ruby that not all people are scary.

And the moral of the story is: If you have room in your home or yard, talk to your local shelter about fostering. If you have the desire and means to add a pet to your family, please adopt from a shelter or rescue organization. If you have pets that are not spayed or neutered, get it done. 

Do you have a shelter pet? Have you adopted or fostered or both? Tell me about your babies by leaving a comment below!

Summer Blog Challenge: Day 3

Today's challenge: List fifteen interesting facts about yourself. 

I definitely had to enlist my family on this one. I couldn't even come up with one! Every thing you see below was written as a result of a big family brainstorming session. Sorry it's so long, but the challenge was 15 after all. And you know I can't say anything without an explanation!

1. I can spell nearly any word. And give you a definition to boot. I find words interesting and always have, at least for as long as I can remember. When I was 3 and 4 I asked a million questions until I finally taught myself to read and write. On my 5th birthday, my mom took me to the bookstore and told me to pick any book I wanted. I chose a very large and very expensive dictionary. She tried to talk me out of it, but to no avail. I still have it and still use it. 
2. There is very little I like about women's lib. Don't get me wrong. I believe in strong women! I am one! And women's lib has it's plusses. But strong women existed all over the world before the women's liberation movement, too. Now that we are "equal" to men (knowing of course that we may never really achieve true equality...this is a whole different topic) we didn't just gain the right to go to college, join the workforce, and support our families financially. We also gained an expectation of that behaviour. I want to be a homemaker. I want to cook and clean and garden and sew and homeschool my kids. And if I quit my job, we will be poor(er) and I will be irresponsible in the eyes of today's society ... for doing what was expected of women only 50 years ago. 
3. I want to live on a homestead in Alaska. I don't know nearly everything I would need to know in order to make this move. But I want it nonetheless. I have dreamed of Alaska for most of my adult life. Not some suburban neighborhood, either. I want to live off the land, pee in an outhouse...you get the point.
4. I love animals. I would love running a pet rescue and if I were financially able to do so, I would probably have one already. For now, we have 2 dogs and 2 cats. They seem to know how much I love them all because they follow me everywhere. My husband always gets a good laugh if I lie down on the couch because in a matter of minutes I am surrounded and/or buried by the four pets. My daughter really loves little kids and they seem to be drawn to her. I guess I am the same way with cats and dogs!
5. I am 9 years older than my husband. Hey, love knows no bounds, okay? He's funny and caring and Christian and gentle and we love each other very much. We've been through a lot together and we plan to go through a lot more. 
6. I graduated with honors from College of Charleston and planned on going to law school.  I don't know how interesting this is. But most people don't know this about me. I don't go to any alumni activities. I only keep in touch with one person from my college days. And I work in a grocery store. But I have the student loan debt to prove it! I gave up on law school because I wanted to be able to spend more time with my son, who was at that time my only child and 6 years old. I had missed too much time with him trying to work my way through college and didn't want to miss any more. 
7. I love all things history. I stink at memorizing anything, so I never did well in history classes, but I still found them extremely interesting. I even took some extra history classes as electives in college, knowing they wouldn't exactly help my GPA. Today I love all things antique or vintage, especially old books (see #1 haha), and I still like brushing up on my history. 
8. I was a cheerleader in high school. It's funny how that happened. I didn't have any desire to be a cheerleader. Never crossed my mind. But my best friend wanted to cheer and begged me to go through tryouts with her so we could practice together and maybe even get to cheer together. I made the squad and she didn't. I felt awful instead of happy. I soon realized that cheering was actually lots of fun and quite challenging athletically. Not to mention, I looked really cute in that uniform.
9. I am addicted to puzzles. I especially love word puzzles (imagine that). But I also really enjoy sudoku, logic puzzles, and brain teasers. It is a rare night that I go to sleep without first working on a  puzzle in bed. Car trip? I take the puzzle books. Vacation? I take the puzzle books. Laying out on the beach? You guessed it...puzzle books. 
10. I'm afraid of the dark and of spending the night in the house alone.  I did outgrow my fear of the monster under the bed (except after watching a scary movie), but I never completely outgrew my fear of the dark. I don't lie there worrying about imaginary monsters; instead I lie there worrying about real-life monsters like burglars. If they do come in, I want to be able to see!
11. I have a very loud and almost unique laugh. Almost unique because my mom and I share this one. And we both laugh often. My stepfather once said, and this was before cell phones, that he never worried about losing my mom and I in a store. All he had to do was stop and listen for a minute. Years later, I heard my husband tell someone the exact same thing. 
12. I have an unnatural love affair with hummus. I will mix almost anything in my hummus to keep things interesting. I will eat it on bread, crackers, chips, or veggies. I like it warm, cold, or room temperature. Sometimes I make a meal out of hummus and whatever I'm dipping into it. When I get to the bottom of a bowl of hummus, I swirl my finger around the sides and then lick my fingers...don't want to miss any. My husband thinks it smells bad and won't kiss me after I eat it, but I eat it anyway; I'll get kisses later!
13. I subscribe to so many magazines that I couldn't give you a count right off hand. I can never seem to get enough reading material and magazines are perfect when I'm too busy to invest time in a novel. I don't spend a lot of money on them because I only subscribe when I see a great deal. For example, my current subscription to Women's Day only cost $3 for a year. I feel guilty about all of the paper, but my Nook is first edition so no color makes reading mags on it awful. I do recycle all of them after I've finished with them. National Geographic is my favorite and it is the exception to all of the above. I pay regular price to renew every year and I don't recycle them. I pass them along to my eldest son instead because it's his favorite magazine, too. Then we stack them on the bookcase to look at again later (and we actually do look at them again later).
14. I wish I could inherit an old farm, complete with old farmhouse, somewhere nearby. At least until I move to Alaska.
15. I'm southern and I don't like sweet tea. I know. Crazy. What can I say? I really don't like sugar in my tea. It leaves a sticky feeling in my mouth. Makes me feel like I've been drinking syrup. But iced tea is still high on my list of favorite things to drink. Unsweetened iced tea.