Sleep In Heavenly Peace

The house has been in such a turmoil lately that I sometimes think that we will never get back to normal. I think that even the cats and dogs are beginning to feel the same way too. The cats slink around and every time there is a scrape of furniture they dive for the nearest safe spot. Duff, our big Wolf/Husky has taken to sleeping upstairs at the top of the steps as she wants to be near us but not when the house is so crazy.

Add into the mix, one large granddaughter dog, and you have complete chaos. A few years ago Duff found herself pregnant after a romantic interlude with a Black Lab. When the pups were born, we found that we had difficulty getting homes for all the them of which there were seven. Hubby began to plead with our friends to take a puppy. And so the Buddha odyssey began. Buddha belongs to very good friends of ours and when they agreed to take one of the puppies we agreed that we would dog sit when they travel..... they are now in New Zealand and we are stuck for the millionth time with another large dog in our very tiny house. It is -32 degrees and you can't leave her outside since she has short hair. Now over the years we have developed a way of dealing with this particular problem. Buddha sleeps under the steps. She completely disappears down there. But this time when she came to visit, the new kitten was not sure what to make of this new big dog.

Buddha is a wimp and so the cats and Tootsie have taken over her bed in this chaos.

On Sunday after the Daughters had a birthday party which they attended, we decided that the Christmas tree was necessary to add to the mix. The chaos in the house, was almost under control and we needed to add a tree to the craziness! Having found no tree in FSJ to buy that didn't look like it belonged in the house of the sevin dwarfs, we felt that we had better go looking for the perfect tree. Daughter #2 insisted that we cut a Pine and so it was while I was scarfing down breakfast that my eyes landed on the half eaten by a moose Pine tree that Hubby has been nursing along for the last three years. This tree (and several others in our yard) had been nibbled below the deer line (as I call it) three winters ago when the deer and moose were starving. When spring finally rolled around the tree and several others looked somewhat like a giant Q-Tip. A long spindly trunk with a tiny tuft of pine needles at the top. In three years the top has grown to quite a size. When I peered through the gloom on Sunday morning I spied that tree and made the decision to convince Hubby that with time so short before Christmas, it would be a good tree for our Christmas celebrations. He was quite willing to cut it down since it meant he didn't have to go trekking through the woods in -32 degrees.

We cut the tree down and took it into the kitchen to thaw. This was a big mistake as it was frozen with a lot of frost on it and that melting frost makes large pools of water, which on a laminate floor will curl the edges of each individual board. I am not happy.... but the flooring will be changed in the spring when we take on our renovations to the house..... When we got the tree in the stand after the church pageant on Sunday night we dicovered that this tree was larger than we had imagined...... argh! After 8 hours of sleeplessness I got up in the morning to once again freak out the animals with another furniture move. By last night it was done. The living room will not be changed again. It all looks good, even if I do say so myself, as you will see in my next post.