Back to reality

No beautiful sunrise to report seeing this morning...only grey, bleak skies and more rain. God, how I hate rain. Yesterday was such a glorious gift! A perfectly beautiful, sunshiney day that came (to me anyway) as a complete surprise! It sure helps my psyche to get some sunshine into my brain, if only for a brief respite from the doldroms of winter. In celebration of the sunshine, the dogs and I spent the lunch hour walking in the park. It was a little challenging trying to keep the dogs out of the huge selection of puddles, but we managed. The rivers are swollen to flood capacity and the small wetlands in the center of the park more closely resembles a decent-sized lake, complete with geese...but we stayed on the pavement and had a nice walk. The dogs had fun despite my constant calls to keep them on dry land...aaahh, the joys of lab ownership. :)

Ruby had just had a bath on Sunday afternoon after I let her go hogwild in our pasture. Oh, how I wish I'd had my camera with me!! She was having so much fun racing around the pasture at top speed, through every puddle she could find, up and over the poop pile, chasing circles around the llama...running for the sheer joy of running! But, dear oh dear, what a mess she was afterwards. She was literally dripping mud and water - but her dark eyes sparkled with glee! I laughed with pure delight at the sight of her having so much fun...however could I resist? It sure helped make my job of removing the last of our cross fencing from our pasture in the pouring down rain a little more enjoyable. Annie wasn't having any part of it...she knows exactly what was going to happen to Ruby after her little forray into wild behavior. Funny how Annie loves water and swimming and all of that, but a bath...now that's a whole different story. Annie does not like baths - not one little bit. Go figure.

So, like I said - it's back to the reality of winter in Oregon. The news has been reporting many of the rivers at or above flood capacity, there's landslides in several locations around the area, especially at the beach; many roads look more like rivers than roads and several homes in areas near rivers are either flooded, or have slipped into the raging, swollen rivers and have become junk wood, plus there's a whole neighborhood of families cut off from civilization because their access road's been washed out and the bridge is now history...what fun. I'm certainly thankful that we don't live that close to a river or a creek, but I feel so sorry for those people that are losing everything.

I realize that there is no perfect place, but we're definitely getting more than our share of water in this part of the state this winter. If I hear the word drought from anyone...I simply cannot be responsible for my actions.

Maybe getting a boat might not be such a crazy idea.

Sure hope winter eases up on everybody soon...for all our sakes.

Hang in there everybody...spring's only a couple of months away.