Two Posts in One

1. Fay Came to Visit
Tropical Storm Fay made her way to our state and brought bunches of rain, wind, power outages and tornado warnings. Thankfully, we kept our power and didn't have any damage at our house, but I know a lot of people who did lose power for a while. I put my dogs in out of the storm overnight Saturday night. There is one little dog left at the house next door, some kind of poodle type dog. It rained all day long Saturday and the poor little thing had no dog house and no shelter during the storm. I couldn't bear to see it sitting in the middle of the yard out in that rain.
This morning Fay came back to dump a whole bunch more rain and caused tornado warnings right when everyone was driving to work. It's been interesting, but at least we don't have the drought any longer. And our temperatures have been so much better this summer than last summer when we had like 12 consecutive days over 100. I don't think the temps have even reached 100 this summer. Praise the Lord!

2. How I Spent My Time
This is just something I was thinking about when I was at the hairdresser's getting my hair highlighted tonight. I was thinking about all the time I spend on looking a certain way. This morning I spent about an hour and a half showering, fixing hair, putting on makeup, etc. Tonight I spent almost two hours at the salon getting my hair done, and later I will spend about 30 minutes on the treadmill. That's ridiculous!! When today is done I will have spent nearly 4 hours on trying to look good!
How much time did I spend today on my spiritual self -- reading the Bible and praying? Just something to think about.

Update on the Dogs

I'm sorry that I haven't put an update on the dog situation yet. In case anyone doesn't know what I'm talking about, it's about the post, "What Next" that I did almost two weeks ago. That morning I was telling about the next door neighbor's dog climbing the fence and getting into my yard with my dogs. Somehow, the dog got back into his own yard, but two more times that day, he came into our yard. That evening my husband went next door and told the people their dog was in our yard. The man wasn't home at the time, but the woman called him to come take care of the situation. He did come home and assured us that he would have someone come pick up this dog (in other words, he would get rid of it) and it wouldn't cause us any more problems. Sure enough, since that day I have not seen that dog again. They did still have one pit bull in their yard but it wasn't causing us any problems. However, in the last two or three days, I have not seen that one anymore, either. So, at this point, I am happy with the situation and I hope it stays this way!

Let's Play Tag!

I have been tagged three times lately by three different people, so I am going to try to catch up on these today. So, Kay, BP, and Liz here are my answers for the tag games.

Kay of Loop de Loops in La La Land tagged me for the first one -- I'm am supposed to list six quirky things about myself. One reason it has taken me so long to do this is because I've been trying to figure out what these six things will be. Here are the rules:
1) Link to the person who tagged me.
2) Mention the rules.
3) Tell six quirky yet boring, unspectacular details about myself.
4) Tag six other blogger´s by linking to them.
5) Go to each person’s blog and leave a comment that lets them know they’ve been tagged.

Six quirky things about me:
1. When my husband and I go for our walk, I have to have him on my left side. I can't stand for him to get on my right side.
2. On my bathroom counter I have a basket thingy for my makeup and another small plastic tray thing for my hot roller clips. While the counter can be a total mess and the makeup is just thrown into the makeup basket with no order whatsoever, I have to have every single roller clip in the other tray completely and perfectly lined up. I don't know why, but they have to be in perfect order.
3. I don't like tomatoes but I love salsa.

4. Every night when I go to bed I have to put an extra blanket on my side of the bed. But, it has to be turned the right direction -- the white side has to be down and the colored side up, and the end with the tag on it has to go toward my feet and not toward my face.

5. When I play the piano, I don't like for someone to turn pages for me -- I like to turn my own pages because no one else can turn them at exactly the right time for me.

6. Strongly scented candles or perfumes give me headaches.

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BP of Raindrops & Rainbows Tagged me for this one:
It’s a random tag, and here are the rules!
1.) Link to the person who ‘tagged’ you!
2.) Post the rules on your blog!
3.) List 6 random facts about yourself!
4.) Tag 6 people at the end of your post!
5.) Let each person know they have been tagged by commenting on their blog!
6.) Let the tagger know the entry is posted on your blog!

Six Random Facts About Me:

1. I love Mexican food -- could eat it every day.

2. I'm turning 50 on my next birthday.

3. I got to see Elvis Presley (the real one) in concert one time.

4. My middle name is Jo. My nickname given by hubby when we were dating is K-Jo and some family members still call me that.

5. I am the second of four daughters born to my parents.

6. Not proud of this but it did happen.....I had a little wild streak during my teenage years and was grounded most of tenth grade because of coming home late one night and I had been drinking beer. At that time I had not even turned 15 yet. Thank God for parents who wouldn't let something like that go unnoticed!

*One more I just thought of in honor of USA's Olympic swimming gold medalist -- when I was a teenager, I had a life-size poster of Mark Spitz wearing his red, white and blue swim suit and his 7 gold medals -- it was hanging on the back of my bedroom door.

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Now, for the last one, Liz of Kentucky Bound tagged me to do the 7 song tag. This is probably the easiest one for me since I love music.

The rules:
List 7 songs you are into right now. No matter what genre, whether they have words, or even if they are not any good, but they must be songs you are really into right now, shaping your summer. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs.Then tag 7 other people to see what they're listening to. (You don't have to do this, but if I can find the songs on You Tube I am going to add a link so you can listen to them if you'd like.)

1. You Are Everything - Matthew West

2. Only Hope - Switchfoot

3. Find You Waiting - Decemberadio

4. Open Arms - Journey

5. Hanging by a Moment - Lifehouse

6. Here Without You - Three Doors Down

7. Remembering - by KJo

I know I'm supposed to tag people, but it's taken me so long just to get this done I don't have time left to do the tagging. So, if you haven't done one of these games, please consider yourself tagged!

What Next?

I've heard of "blogging in real time", at least I think that is what it's called when you are writing about something as it is happening. And that's what I'm doing right now at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday morning when I should be sleeping late because it is my only day of the week that I don't have to be somewhere early in the morning. But, as I was in my bed I was hearing some kind of squeaking bark sound that made me get up and follow the sound. Hmmmm.....guess where the sound led me? It led me out my back door and to the yard of my next door neighbors. I can hear where the bark is coming from but I can't see it until I walk a little further out and look toward the back of their yard along the fence that runs between our yard and theirs. The little pit bull that seems to be the nicer one is barking at something in my yard, yet I can see my two dogs in their usual spots just having a leisurely morning. Nothing is bothering them and now I see it. The other pit bull that had come unchained in my last post is IN MY YARD. It is back there in the same yard with my dogs! So the other pit bull is barking because her pal has crossed the fence. Now what do I do? I'm going to let hubby handle it when he wakes up. Thankfully, the dog wasn't attacking my dogs or anything like that. But I just don't like this. Now that it knows how to get over here, it will be doing this all the time just like that other dog months back. Oh, I just got an idea! I think it is finally time for a nice, high privacy fence!

As I've been typing this I don't hear the barking anymore so I just got up and went out to look. I didn't see the dog so I don't know where it is now. But I just had a thought. I hope my husband can realize this also if he has to go and deal with the next door neighbors. We can handle this with anger toward them, or we can handle it with the love of Christ and then have the chance to witness to them. I think they would be more open to hearing about the love of Christ if we show love toward them in our attitudes. Sometimes, it is a challenge to do things the way they should be done as a Christian. But that is when we have to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit that lives inside us -- to help us do the things we aren't able to do in our own strength.

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being... Ephesians 3:16

The Dogs Next Door (continued)

I really don't mean to get so caught up in the people who live next door to me and their dog situation, but here I go again. So, I mentioned before that they had two pit bulls in the backyard with one of the dogs being kept chained up under a tree with nowhere to go during storms. So, one day recently we noticed a third pit bull back there in a cage. But now, the first one that was chained up is gone and the third one was chained up. Thursday afternoon, we saw a humane officer's truck at their house and he put something in their mailbox. The next day, he was there again taking pictures and as we found out from him, investigating someone's claim of cruelty to animals. I found out that day that they also had a poodle tied up in the front yard behind the bushes and apparently someone saw it and called the humane officer to investigate. No one was answering the door so he waited for hours in their driveway until someone came home. But in the meantime we talked to him and I told him there was a dog chained up in the backyard also, but when he went back there to look at it, the dog had gotten loose and was running free in their backyard. Of course those dogs and my dogs all started barking at this man when he was near the backyard and at that time, the mean pit bull tried to climb the fence into the yard with my dogs! Thankfully, the man was able to stop the dog from climbing the fence, but he did ask me to put my dogs inside for a while. When someone finally came home next door, he talked to them and they told him they would chain the mean dog back up, but so far, it's still free in that backyard. It hasn't tried to come over the fence again that I know of. I'm just ready for this story to end. I hope the next time I write about it, I'll have some good news to share!