It occurs to me that I may have made a somewhat not insignificant (yep, I wrote it and I’m sticking to it…. take THAT Mr. Mcguire-grade-8-english-teacher!) error in naming my blog (and paying to register the domain name, and spending time trying to figure out how to do a page on Facebook, let alone working my non-technical behind off trying to figure out how to create the damned thing in the first place (seriously, right now there my brain hampsters are manically spinning their wheels, trying to figure out if I’ve put the photo in the right place and if the post will turn out the way I want it to. Or “we” want it to. The hampsters are autonomous beings. And I am sometimes afraid of them)). Anyway…

I share my house with four…ya… FOUR dogs. And not the Paris Hilton pocketbook yap-sized dogs either. Nope. Four dogs, size L (well, one is XL (come to think of it, another really wants to be XL and is working on it..daily)). And, in reality, one is size XS, working on S, and soon to be L. Yep. One is a puppy. See that picture up top (Oh my God, I so hope it is going to be where I just told you to look…). That’s Marshal. Marshal Dillon. Doesn’t he look so cute and cuddly and soulful and understanding? He isn’t. He’s full of poo. And pee. That’s all he has going for him right now and he shares both with reckless abandon. Which, I suppose, means he is generous. Which is a good trait. Let’s go with that.

In addition to Marshal Dillon, we have another German Shepherd by the name of Blaze. She’s got a thing for young men. More about that later. Then there’s Monty, a 120 lb. rescued Bernese Mountain Dog. A teddy bear with a ‘tude. And then there’s Fred, the most mis-marketed dog in the history of dogs. If he is a dog. He looks suspiciously like a harbor seal. If we find out someday that he isn’t a dog, and has just done a really good job of learning to walk on his flippers, we won’t be surprised. Fred and Monty are our old men.  Giant breeds like Bernese Mountain Dogs don’t usually live very long. I once saw an average age for Monty to be 7.2 years. He’s a big boy too, so we thought we might not be super lucky with longevity. But he’s hanging in there at nine and a half and he’s happy and healthy. We call him Grampa Monty, and sometimes he just shouts orders, to the other dogs, from his corner when someone comes to the door. It goes something like, “OH MY GOD THERE IS SOMEONE AT THE DOOR!!! (or not, as he may be getting a little weird in the hearing category) QUICK!!! FRED GET AS BIG AS YOU CAN AND ROAR DOWN THE HALL AS IF YOU CAN SEE THE INTRUDER!! (Fred is legally blind) BLAZE LOOK LIKE A FEARSOME GERMAN SHEPHERD AND DON’T GIVE AWAY THE FACT THAT, IF THEY ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 25 AND MALE, YOU WILL TURN INTO A GROVELING GROUPY ONCE YOU REALIZE THIS!  AND MARSHAL (looks around to locate him) Okay little man, you can just cower behind Dad’s legs…but get those ears up and look like you have potential. OKAY, TROOPS, GO! GO! GO!!!!” Are you doubtful as to whether or not this actually happens? Walk a mile in my shoes.

So my fear and doubt as to whether or not I’ve named this blog correctly emerged when Oldest Son but Middle Child came home from college for his Christmas break. In he walks to a house containing four dogs (there were three when he left). He is a thoughtful young man (Blaze adores him, but has no loyalty. She’d walk out the door with Channing Tatum if he showed up. My daughter might too, though. I would miss them both depending on her mood). So Sam walks in and spends a few weeks here. It’s holiday time and the house is magical and crazy-full of people most of the time, and sometimes there’s an extra dog in the form of Thor (Blaze’s best friend, also a young man. See the pattern?), and Sam is observant, and wickedly funny, and we are trading stories on what the dogs are doing and thinking and he says something like, “Mom, you could make people laugh if you just wrote about the dogs.” And the hampsters FROZE ON THEIR WHEELS and then started to race like crazy and suddenly I am worried that I registered the wrong domain name and figured out how to set up my blog (if I did…still worried about that right now, as I type), and set up my facebook page and ….

What the hell. I’m going with Just Ponderin’. That way if I end up writing about something else, like my Dad-In-Law’s weird obsession with my garage, I’ll be okay. The hamsters are in overdrive right now trying to figure out if I should just write about my Dad-In-Law (knowing that there is infinite material… but more about that later).

Thanks for readin’.