Goodbye, Mitzi

Way back in the fall of 1998, I met my future husband.  The first time I went to his house to watch some movies with him and his cousins, I walked up to the door and a cute little dog greeted me.  Her name was Mitzi.  I was later told that it was so weird that Mitzi didn't bark at me, because she barked at all strangers.  (I guess she knew I was good people and would be around for a while before I even did. ha!)  Growing up I had always wanted a dog.  I think I was even convinced that the neighbor's dog was mine and always tried to pet it through the fence.  So when I moved in with my husband and Mitzi in 1999, I got the dog I always wanted.  She was such a well-behaved dog and so super-smart!  I know Labs and Golden Retrievers are supposed to be so very smart and little dogs not so much, but I'm telling you...our little Mitzi was smart!

A few years later we got married and moved to Texas, and ended up getting some cats and a miniature pinscher along the way.  Mitzi was still the loyal, sweet dog she had always been.  She was the best at what Michael called "regulating" the cats...meaning she would bark and growl at them and chase them off. Not really a game I approved of, but then I got her to "regulate" Michael, so that was kind of sweet revenge for my cats!

When we lived at the lake, there was a wild, mean cat who was raping my poor cat...and Mitzi treed that bad cat and rescued my kitty!  She always got along with new animals we brought home for the most part, and I even have several pictures of her napping with cats.  :)

She was the best traveling dog...she would lay down and just chill out in car rides.  My min pin does anything but! Mitzi even used to ride around on a motorcycle with Michael (before I met him...truly man's best friend).

The past few years of her life we watched her slowly weaken.  She started sleeping more.  One day she stopped going up the stairs.  She didn't run around as much anymore.  She'd only go outside to go to the bathroom, not spend hours basking in the sun like she used to.  Then she started to become incontinent and finally last weekend, her back legs quit working for her altogether.  That's when we decided it was time to say goodbye.  I don't know if it would have been a little easier if she would have just died in her sleep, because making the decision to end her life for her was rough.  But it really was the best thing for her.  She was suffering and her quality of life would not be good without the use of her legs.  So it has been a rough week in our household.  She was my first dog.  She was my husband's best friend for a very, very long time. 

1997-2012

Ham

Yes, this is really a post about ham.  I hate shaved deli style ham with a passion, but will eat the mess out of a big ol' ham.  Maybe once a month we will buy a ham and I will score it, shove cloves in it, and maybe top with some pineapple and let it heat up.  Then we will feast on what was a pretty "traditional" ham dinner at my house when I was growing up (ham, mashed potatoes, and corn).  After that, we have a ton of leftover ham because there are only the two of us.  So I have learned how to be creative with using up the rest of the ham.  I have youtubed how to make omelettes, so I love to dice up some ham and make a ham-and-cheese omelette.  We *love* cheesey potato casserole, and diced ham goes beautifully into that.  And for the first time ever, I made ham salad and it was surprisingly good.  I was thinking it would be kind of barfy, like tuna salad, but I found I recipe online that I not really somewhat followed because the husband and I like and don't like different things.  The recipe called for ham (of course) and hard-boiled eggs.  Also mayo, parsley, lemon juice, and minced onion.  I changed the sweet pickle relish to dill pickle relish because neither one of us is too fond of sweet pickles.  I omitted the red bell pepper because my husband refuses to eat anything a bell pepper has been in.  I left out the cayenne pepper altogether.  I plopped this concoction on an onion roll and gobbled it up.  The lemon juice and dill pickle relish gave it a nice tang that kind of counter-acted the sweetness of the ham (that I had put brown sugar on when I originally cooked it).  So now we still have a little bit of ham left over.  Do you have a favorite ham recipe? (Don't suggest ham and cheese sandwiches, because those make me wanna yak too.)

Fun Times

Last night we had a line of storms move through the area (you may have heard about the tornadoes in Dallas).  Our power here only flickered briefly, but I woke up to the news that only 1 of the campuses in my school district had power, so we would be starting school late today.  Of course I was thrilled to be able to go back to bed for a little bit!  When I arrived at the school at 10:30, I was told that the power company didn't expect to restore power until 8:00 tonight, so we would feed the kids lunch and dismiss at 12:30!  So for two hours in the dark we colored pictures and played games.  A few kids didn't even show up to school, and the kids were too wound up to really do anything more meaningful.  For some reason it seems to be really exciting to be at school in the dark with toilets that don't flush (because they are those self-flushing toilets that require electricity).  Of course I had a few kids ask me if we could just watch a movie or something...and I just had to shake my head and laugh.