construction mama

I've heard of something called Cooking Mama.

This is our Construction Mama:




Tim took this thing as far as he could, which was impressively far, actually. But then it all got away from him and others had to help.

These Knex are much tinier than the other ones we've had before, the tiny drawings and the tiny parts, and it becomes a tiny little miniature nightmare. It was a gift from my parents and it cost a few bucks besides.

But it's so close. Jay put on the finishing touches and then the batteries were dead, so now it'll have to wait until we get new ones tomorrow. I sure hope it performs after the expense and time involved.

We'll see.

I found this picture on my camera tonight. This is how Heidi's dog currently spends her days--loafing around on MY bed with Julia in pajamas until the afternoon. It's a tough life, but she's managing.


I didn't take this picture either. It's Sidney, curled up on a couch pillow. She's a nine pound dog, the smallest member of the whole family, Maria's own baby, a tiny fluff of cotton and bitty bird bones.


You know, with all the other dogs in this family, she has trained them well: Nobody. Touches. The. Sidney. The other dogs may sniff her. She may engage them in a tiny bit of tug of war, but that's all. No physical contact ever.

I'm not sure how she accomplished this. She's the oldest one so the others entered as puppies, but it's all about her personal safety because she is very delicate. (Sam's over 140 pounds.) Even Heidi's dog is at least 40. Anyway, the dynamics are beyond me, but it's good.

The vet comes to the house. He's a house call vet. Last time he was here, he was in the kitchen trying to get a blood sample from Sam, and as he felt and poked and squeezed and poked, Sam never said anything, never moved. Sidney, however, sat in the next room, under the dining room table growling. The vet snickered, "Sheee's got a good memory."

We finally had Sid spayed because of her obnoxious false pregnancies. It got to the point where Maria couldn't deal with tending the imaginary new mother and it was all too damned absurd. So we had her spayed.

And then she had yet ANOTHER false pregnancy, triggered we're told, by the spaying itself. We didn't know this of course, so I called our poor vet and told him, "Terry, Maria says Sidney made her dump out a basket of beanie babies, and she picked out certain ones to be her babies."

He said, "Umm-hmm."

I said, "Now you tell me how a nine pound dog makes anyone do anything, and how did Maria know this is what she wanted?"

He and I laughed our heads off on the phone. He said, "Dogs and their owners have amazing communication."

But the grand finale false pregnancy? Not unusual. It's the last one, hallelujah.

Sam had a couple of those too, nested next to our bed with stuff. One morning I straightened up the room and tossed one of my flip-flops into the shoe basket. Later she'd fetched it from there back to the nest. Whoops, sorry! I had no idea it was a baby.

Oh yeah, fun times. Time for bed is what it is. love, Val