ipod shuffle

ok so earlier i posted that i got flannel pajamas and that was the best gift ever. i had not opened my gifts from dak and eli yet! dak gave me a clip on tiny ipod shuffle! so i have it clipped on to my flannel pajamas and i dont know how i ever lived without it! i can not hear dogs barking at passing cars or anything but my music! no headbanging and drumming upstairs, nothing! just melissa etheridge singing damn i want to be your lover with sophie hawkins.

of course the trip to visit with damien went well and look at how big he has gotten! that is his other papa in the photo with him. he really got a bunch of christmas presents and he loves to play with cars and he is going to be 4 january 29. what a big tall boy he is! he looks a lot like his dad. his dad and him are pretty good partners.

in other grandbaby news promise and preslie had christmas with their dad, my son david, in kansas city. i did not get to be there for their christmas but their paw paw david's new girlfriend made an sd card of christmas photos of their christmas and sent with eli for me. that was pretty awesome. a nice gift from a nice future ex of my ex instead of that stinky old ex of my ex and her nasty hating the first ex crap. or something. wow that was confusing huh. in every photo promise is making this exact same face. i asked eli what was up with that and he said she is saying cheese so her face looks like this in every photo!

here are some photos of the fantastic eli original artwork that he gave me for christmas! eli did this awesome picture of a soldier statue at the korean war memorial and he created this soldier's entire face from words. it is amazing. he turned it into his art teacher for a grade and got 100 percent on it and there is no doubt it is 100% work and i am not just saying because he is my artist but because it really is that good! totally awesome!

and finally ralph and suzie are coming soon! cant wait til they get here! it is sort of cool when you have kids coming and going because then the holiday drags on longer and you have something still to look forward too. eli is really excited about ralph coming so he can hang out and go snowboarding with him. i just want to see the baby bump again. so exciting to get another sweet grambaby!

tonight it is quiet in the house. dak is gone to his mothers and eli has not come yet from his dads. so it is just bill and me and he came home sick and flu~ish. so i am using the time alone to get some cleaning done and some laundry of course. i dont know how two people can mess up so much laundry. man!

the dogs are all relaxing, full of treats and waiting for santa. i am wearing my new santa sock monkey pajamas that bill gave me. THERE IS NO GREATER GIFT THAN FLANNEL FOR CHRISTMAS! or any time as far as i am concerned! i was just thinking that if i did not have to work for a living, i would wear flannel pajama bottoms everywhere i go year round. in the winter i would wear them with flannel pj tops and in the summer with beaters. i just love flannel. flannel and fleece are a couple of the best inventions ever.

this upcoming year, i am going to get some more flannel sheets. i wonder if i have new flannel sheets and new flannel pajamas if i will stick to the bed?

tomorrow, early we travel to ny to see grandson damien. he is a cutey face.

merry christmas from hoffmans home for heathen hell hounds

this is going to be a progressive blog entry. today my friend was making santa pics at petsmart so we went and took just the weinerdogs to have a christmas photo taken. so here we are dak with blacky, santa holding slinky, me and geisterbahn and bill with the pack leader sparky. right now this is the only photo i have from the photo shoot but she has a camera full to send me tonight when she gets home from making photos. the photos are funny because my dogs are killers and everytime a new dog walked thru the door at petsmart, the photos become a blur as they try and wiggle down to go and challenge the new dogs in the store. they were barking ferociously, someone let a dog in the store! get someone out here to get the dogs out of the store! i will post the other photos in the order they were taken when she gets home tonight and mails them to me. they were pretty funny some of them.

coming soon...

the gratitude to get me out of the funk blog...i am beginning to see the wood on my desk! i need some shelves and a cork bulletin board and i think i could get this mess looking like a place.

christmas exhaustion has set in...

i dont know what it is with me...i cant even get to the part after santa comes before the letdown starts. i guess i blew some of my anticipatory adrenaline when i was a kid because i got so much stuff for christmas back then. it is like my excitement fluid is running low or something. or maybe it is because i have to clean the house and go out in the snow today. bleh! i would rather just stay home in bed with the dogs. i dont think if the dogs and myself ever entered the iditerod that they would be able to drag me out of the tent to finish the race. i would use up all my excitement like the first day and then lay out there and freeze to death or something. yikes.

but this place has to get cleaned up. i went in search for some white square paper to make some snowflakes for my friend in joisey because she has no snow and we got like 10 inches or something. i asked bill did he know where i might have put the white square paper and he said did you try the craft closet? well i was hoping actually it would not be in the craft closet because then i would get to looking thru crocheting, knitting, scrapbooking, cross stitching stuff that i need to finish from years past or i would stop and get reinterested in it all and get busy planning some more projects from my gazillions of how to craft books. and i realized while i was in there, i never finished the disney scrapbooks from when we took the kids to disney 3 years ago. they are in a rubbermade tub and one book got started but the other 5 have never even been touched. so i know what some kids are getting for christmas next year. empty scrapbooks with disney stuff and photos of their trip to disney to stick in their own dang books. sheesh, what was i thinking?

i found the paper and the snowflakes turned out well and i did not stop and do any other crafty things, just worked on the snowflakes and emailed with my mother. and i got them all done and i did not cut up the wrong side and have them all fall apart in my lap like i used to when i was a kid. i just sucked at that sort of thing back then. i will say it is still hard to be a lefty and use scissors, especially when the paper is folded up so small and tight as it is when you want to make snowflakes.

time for me to go and do some laundry or something. blech! wintertime and all the dang clothes that it requires.

rotten grandmaws and christmas

well today on the way to work, one of my carpoolers said that we only have to work 2 1/2 more days this entire year and then we dont return back to work until january 5th. and it dawned on me that i did not send out christmas cards and i am really sorry to anyone reading this that did not get a card from me. i hate ecards mostly because they are sort of impersonal and all that but that is what everyone will be getting this year. i am busy planning out how next year i am going to be good and get everything done that i want to do and have it ready to all go in the mail for the day after thanksgiving! so while everyone is out on black friday at the mall, i will be a step ahead of them and mailing my gifts out at the post office.

my granddaughters are not getting their presents til sometime around new years eve and that is just alright. i am sure their other grandparents got them enough stuff to fill a toyrus and my stuff can come in just in time for the after christmas excitement is over let down day. anyone else every have those? christmas letdown has nothing to do with how many presents you get, it is like the suspense and waiting is over and the adrenaline stops pumping and everything gets back to normal and there is not this huge exciting anticipation of the visit from santa and all that...

well this year there will be something to look forward too after normal people are back to their everyday lives, because my gifts will be arriving late.

ok i know i am not kidding any of you and the truth is i got so busy worrying about dogs, that i forgot about my humans. i know insane. but true. i swear i am going to create a list of achievable goals for the upcoming year and stick to them. in fact i will blog them here in a future blog, so i will know what i did with the list when i am done!

i am off to clean the house and get ready to wrap damiens presents and get them ready to go with his papa bill to go see him on christmas day. i was going to make pictures to add here of all the stuff laying around here that should have been mailed last week, but i cant find what someone did with the memory card for my camera...grrrrrrrrrrrrr this mess is a PLACE!

a fairytale friendship

when my stepdaughter was married, even though the marriage did not last as long as the preparation of the food for the reception took, something really really cool happened for me as a direct result of being there that day. i met my stepdaughters godmother. we became really good friends. my friend "mcfab" is the gorgeous blonde fairy godmother and i of course am the wicked stepmother with the mean silver streak. i dont think that silver was there til i became a stepmother though!

<---me and mcfab~there we are pictured to the left. funny thing is not only do we sort of look like these photos but our personalities are sort of similar to the way you might imagine these two would act if they were animated!

<---here is a photo of mcfab dressed in her wish granting getup on a fine fall day! notice her beautiful wings! there is a grim reaper standing behind her but she is too positive to let that get her down! mc is so creative and fun and she is an awesome writer and just such a loyal good pal. it was a real blessing in my life to be there and meet her that day and to get her email address and start a penpalling around relationship that is just intelligent, silly and cool. mcfab knew about inner child stuff and did not think i was a kook when i started telling her about being a child, being creative and all the stuff i was learning about myself, because she was a child inside too. of course! the friendship we share is honest and fulfilling and i love that. i love it that i can just say anything that crosses my mind and not have to worry about this person accepting who i am right now because we are on a journey and nothing we are experiencing right now is going to stay the same for a long time because the path goes on and we grow, learn, and change and thats cool too. i love it that this person knows that a bad day will pass and a nutty idea that may or may not work is still worth trying.

and what do you think that fairy godmothers and wicked stepmothers do when they get together?! Would you believe they play with tiny unicorns? yep i would say we share a fairy tale friendship~who'd've imagined?

echo the pedigree shelter dog

this boy echo from the pedigree dog food commercial changed my life. who remembers the commercial? it first aired during the westminster dog show. the boy's name is echo. he just broke my heart. if you will recall he is in the shelter and he does not know what it is he did to get there. and some people walk by and he jumps up to smile at them and they pass him by and keep going and he slumps back down confused again as to why he is in the pound. the narrator of the commercial says that for every dog that is adopted from a shelter, there is one who is not. oh damnit that broke my heart in pieces. i could not stop thinking about it and then there it was every single day saying how if you buy a bag of pedigree that the company would donate a dollar to a shelter or something. i did not know yet that 5 million healthy dogs and cats are killed in homeless shelters every year for nothing more than being homeless, but i knew i had to do something.

so i started out looking on petfinder and i wrote to some rescue groups in my area and asked how i could help. to be perfectly honest, i wanted to throw some money at the shelter and run like hell. i was not looking to get involved with dogs and cats, but maybe send some cases of papertowels, bags of cat litter and bleach or something. perhaps give a couple hundred dollars a year to the shelter from guyster, spark and slinky. the answers i got to my emails asking how i could help were not what i was expecting. they asked me to go and walk the dogs and make photos of them and email the photos to them so they could advertise the dogs. they asked me to maybe give a dog a bath or write up a list of the dogs personality traits and send with the photos, so they could get them the right homes. and the person who wrote was my friend christine from the rescue for the love of the underdog bully breed rescue and she wanted specific information about the pit bulls GULP!

so i signed up to go dog walking and i begged bill to come with me and he said no, the whole animal shelter thing was too traumatic and he did not think he could go and so i went alone and i was immediately addicted to the dogs and felt like i needed to be there all the time. the first time was really scary and the dogs were barking and jumping at the fence and i could not tell who was begging me to get them out or who was threatning to eat me alive because it was so loud. the place smelled bad and there was poop in the kennels and it was terrible but i felt like if i just could sit and talk with a dog or take one out for a walk it would make their day nicer. it did make their day nicer and it made my life full of purpose.

i walked all the dogs except for the pitbulls. i was just so scared. but there was this little white pit pup sitting nicely and just being quiet and looking at me walking by her kennel. she did not bark or jump up and try and get me to come over. she did not look scary or threatning to me at all so i gathered all my courage and i got her out on a leash and we walked and i FELL IN LOVE! her name was snow and she was deaf. and beautiful as a dog can be! spending time with snow changed my feelings about pit bulls. after a while she started playing and dancing around and getting comfortable and if i had not been afraid the sparky would be mean to her, i would have adopted her and brought her home. i am pretty sure that if a pit bull can be incited to violence...

it would be because sparky drove them to it! so i never ended up bringing one home furever but i did get sort of comfortable taking them potty, giving kisses and bellyrubs and treats, and getting kisses and love in return. it is a longer story than this blog will be, but we ended up building a rescue group and getting between 200-300 dogs to adoptive homes, foster homes or rescues.

i will get into it more later because i am exhausted and need sleep so badly and it is hard to sleep a whole night thru because now that i know what i know about animal shelters, i wake myself up brainstorming. i do just want to leave you with some pics of of sparky the menace, the one i am sure would drive a big dog to riot! i mean he trapped a bear in our back yard once when he was like 5 months old! he is way more extreme than what is required for badger hunting i am sure of it!
i know he does not look mean in this picture but i am pretty sure he is tired here from torturing the other dogs or something. and he is sleeping in my 40 dollar chiropractic pillow. i got the pillow for my migraines which the chiropractor thought was because my c1 and c2 were out all the time so i had to get this pillow. i never got to sleep on the pillow one single time because when i got home with it, sparky was a newborn 8 week old baby and he immediately claimed it for his baby bed.

here is a picture of sparky when the first brought him home. what a sweet sweet boy he was for a minute. and how in the world could i make him get out of my migraine pillow?

those wingnuts at peta! BLECH!

if peta is so angry with humans for taking animals out of their natural habitat and owning them or messing with the natural order of things, then why in the world would peta want for you to bring feral cats into the animal slaughter house to kill them? to begin with cats were wild animals and then they were domesticated by humans who tamed them and brought them in the house, talking thousand years ago +.
trap, neuter and return programs do NOT spread diseases like rabies, fiv and distemper, because we safe trap the cats, test them for deadly diseases, treat them for ear mites, vaccinate them for rabies, distemper and and all the deadly communicable diseases that there are immunizations for, then they are spayed or neutered, and have their ear notched and returned back to their habitat.
now you mention that cats mess up flower gardens which tell me to begin with that you DO NOT VALUE LIVING BEINGS more than your flower beds, but in the case of people who just do not want the cats in their neighborhoods for whatever reason, we provide a service for them as well.
We go to their place and trap, neuter, vaccinate and relocate their feral cats to safe places. we build cat shelters inside barns and we have people allow us to relocate the cats to their barns because they keep the mice out of their grain. farmers should all have cats. cats are an important part of the eco system and that is why they were placed on the earth to begin with. and yes there are dangers out there. it is the circle of life. oh yeah wait i forgot, peta hates disney too. but it is dangerous for humans as well. that's life.
my point is that feral cat trap, neuter, release DOES NOT spread rabies, because the cats are vaccinated against rabies while they are under anesthesia for their neuter surgery and feral cats are the only animals that no kill asks to allow to live in the wild as far as i can tell.
and maddies fund, alley cat allies, paws, best friends, and many many animal groups condone trap, neuter and release.
and doesnt peta want animals spayed and neutered and to allow them to live in the wild? or do they not? which is it?
and why are peta going to animal shelters and adopting dogs and cats and killing them and throwing their corpses in the dumpster and calling it trash? seems to me like the animal shelters need to have the fbi find out who you are, and put you on a do not adopt list and send it out to all the animal shelters in america. you are dangerous and gross.

first blog

ok so this is my first blog and i do not know exactly what i will be writing about. i do know i will not be using punctuation or caps unless i am cursing and angry and writing really big.

i love dogs. i am in a battle with the animal shelter in my county to try and get them to go no kill. nathan winograd is my hero and i will probably write a lot about how i feel about the animal sheltering industry. there will be cursing and tears. sorry any quakers reading this, you've been warned.

i dont just love dogs! i have some rescue cats here for adoption and i have a husband and some sons who are not up for adoption at this time. we have 6 kids between us and my oldest son and his girl are having our 5th grandchild! we do not know yet if new baby is a boy or a girl. we are very excited though. grandchildren rock! they are a ton of fun! we dont get to see our grands very often because they are spread across the country and one, joey, is in Heaven and we know we will see him again someday. our kids are ralph, cody, dave, eli, meg, and dak. the grands are damien, promise, preslie, joey, and they are calling the new baby madeleine but we dont know for sure she is a girl so for now we can call her madeleine. our dogs are geister b, sparky lee, slinky d, blacky z, hobo the shadow hoffman, hank senior, bocephus, shepherd pie and joe cocker. we have a foster dog, named riley and a slew of foster cats. our home is happy and cozy, not crowded. 4 of our guys are dachshunds, of course joe cocker is a cocker spaniel and 4 of our guys are old senior dogs. they are staying with us so that they can live out their lives with someone who will honor them with dignity, respect and love til they are ready to go to Heaven.

i hate peta, the pinko terrorist bastards. i will probably write some about my hatred for peta. buncha retards they are. well in my humble opinion...

i know that bloggers often change their names and give their family members pseudonyms, but i like our names and i dont think i could come up with cooler names for our dogs or grandchildren so we are just gonna be real here.

i have a lot of blessings, real good real friends that i can be me with. i have some great family and my husband is pretty good at everything he tries. bill can cook and he can clean and he is so intelligent and he can do laundry and he can work on cars and he can work on air conditioners and heaters and he is a good dad and he is a sweet boy. we share the pants in the family and sometimes they get a little crowded but not often. i think we are pretty good friends. he can kick my ass at scrabble. we do not always see eye to eye about money. he is from the school of get a lot of it then die and leave it to other people. i am more like lets live now and give it to the grands and the dogs because tomorrow me may die.

i have some charities that i am thinking about for the upcoming year. i want to make sure that all the dogs and cats at the shelter have a warm blanket to snuggle up in. so i will be crocheting my hands off to try and get some done for christmas next year.

i am not very organized, am sort of a rambler and i dont spell check so this post may end up edited and it may not. free writing is my style and this is really about healing and changing and growing and not how pretty i can punctuate or group words together but more about getting whatever it is in there lurking beneath the surface out in the open. maybe a theme will turn up and maybe this will just end up being a journaling experience. who knows.