JAX

So, this is our new puppy, Jaxon. (That's JAXON, not Jackson. He wasn't named after any freaks, reverends, or Civil War generals.) He's a purebred Boston Terrier and he's 16 weeks old. We adopted him into the fam three weeks ago today. He's cute, sweet, cuddly, bouncy, and all that. He also snores. And farts. And eats rocks.

I'm training hi. This has been hard. My other "trained" dogs were a Norweigan Elkhound, Dien, who died several years ago and was my favorite dog of all time. My current big guy is Sully. Sully is part Chocolate Lab and part Dobe. He's very large. And very smart. Jax is, well, he's a Boston. And a pup. Boston's (I've had one before, Flash) are smart---in their own way. They're also incredibly stubborn. They also have the attention spans of gnats. I'm going by my own experiences with the breed, here. Plenty of people have given me the smirky smile when I've told them I'm training Jax. As if this can't be done! They're like "Yeah. Sure. Whatever you say." Well, I'm doing it, by the gods, and Jax is going to be the best little dog in the tri-state area.

First things first, though. I'm crate training him. That's going pretty well now, but for the first week or so...let's just say I cleaned enough poop out of that crate to fertilize a good-sized garden. And I shampooed that dog so many times that he smells permanently like a green apple. But we're settling into a routine now, so the accidents have stopped.

Also, Jax has learned to sit. We're working on "stay" and "shake paws." And he's actually making good progress. He understands "no mouth" when we don't want him to gnawl on something, like our hands, and he knows the ever important "down." The next stage is taking him to the park and getting him to follow my commands while there. He's always excited and distracted when we're at the park, so it'll take a few trips to get him used to taking commands there. That'll be the real test.

I think He'll eventually succeed at everything I put to him. He seems to be smart and eager to please and those are the two most important attributes a dog in training can have. When he masters the sit/stay commands, and he's shaking paws on command sans treat, we're going to start agility: tunnels and see-saws, the whole nine yards. I can't wait!

Celebrating the Small Things

So, I've been feeling a little blue-ish lately. It seems a lot of what I try to do backfires, doesn't turn out, ends up all wrong. It seems that my girls fight, backtalk and don't mind more frequently than before (they're 5 and 3). I've ruined suppers, made mess upon disasterous mess and have become a disorganized wreck. I'd practically given up trying to do or accomplish anything. I figured things would come back around on their own. They usually do. After a while. Or sometimes a long while. Then I got to thinking. Why wait for things to come around on their own? Why not facilitate the change? Speed things along! But how to do this? The answer came surprisingly quick and was so simple it's silly. I realized that these futiley uncontrollable happenstances, like burning supper, spilling things, tracking mud on the new carpet, the kids not behaving the way that they should, these things were totally my own careless fault! I needed to change. I was a little depressed and since my mood was, well, suckish to say the least, everything I did turned out suckish as well!

After some deep looking-in, I began to see how I could dig myself out of this funk. First, I needed to change my attitude. How? Well, this may read silly, but, to bolster my flagging spirits, I began celebrating even the smallest successes, the tiniest accomplishments. And believe me, I started very small here! For instance, i was standing at the dryer yesterday, folding freshly laundered puppy bedding (it goes in the bottom of his crate) when I suddenly noticed how nicely folded the towels and blankets were, and how, even though none of them are the same size unfolded, I had automatically folded them up to the same size and shape so that they'd stack neatly in the botoom of the closet. And that made me think of the other laundry I'd done: all the clothes that had been ironed and hung up or put away, the sock drawers that were filled with balls of socks and folded scivvies. I am good at laundry! And while that may not be cause enough for fudderwhacking for most people, for me, who was teetering on the brink of despair, it is! Then this evening we were eating at a local restaurant having dinner when a perfect stranger came up and said she just had to compliment me on my beautiful, well-behaved daughters! I almost laid an egg! But, really, since my attitude is better, theirs has been, too.

My celebrating the little things has led to big attitudinal changes, not just in me, but in my family as well. I've found that when I keep a positive outlook and I notice even the little things that i do right, I try harder and take pride in what I do. It's easier to get along with other people, too. I know this may earn me a great big DUH! from a lot of people (or at least from the two other people who read this blog---ha ha!), but it was a real epiphany for me, and a cause for celebration in and of itself. I just wish I could get my head to do the Mad Hatter spin...

Starting Over

I've started over. I've deleted the old Heathen Housewife blog and begun afresh. I hope those of you that followed my feeble attempt at a blog before are able to find me again. Hopefully this blog will be better and I will be able to be more consistent with posts.
I'm also trying to start my life over, so to speak. No, I haven't moved, or gotten divorced, and there haven't been any deaths in the family. I simply feel the urge to cut away the old and throw it away. Call it a spiritual awakening of sorts. I have been at odds with my spirituality in the past few months: questioning too much (perhaps when I shouldn't), making assumptions based on nothing, closing my mind to the call of the gods. All of this I vow to change. One of the worst things I did, perhaps my biggest mistake of all, was to try and shut Loki out. Don't laugh. I was merely trying to protect myself (or so I thought). I listened to too many other heathens who said if you drink with Loki too often he will eventually bite you in the backside. What I didn't take into consideration is that Loki often walks beside the All-Father and was probably always in my life, a big part of my life, in the first place. And I used to be coll with that. Totally at ease. The minute I started to question that, all the little bad things started happening. Just little annoying things, but if you add them all up, and add in the fact that I didn't deal with these events in the healthiest, most rational manner, it all created quite a sinkhole in my life. I fought these events and changes tooth and nail, something I would not have done a few months back. And I suddenly realized I was fighting Loki. We'd always been okay before. I'm trying to make it all okay again. I'm changing. And I'm not going to fight it. I'm going to go with the flow, which is what I should've kept doing. That's what I get for listening to more experienced heathens. There are those of us who actually have a healthy, semi-stable relationship with Loki. I'm ready to embrace it once again!