Remembering Molly

I have so many great memories of Molly and one of my favorites happened after I had barbequed some meat. Molly was still pretty new to the house so we hadn't learned all the little tricks she was capable of.

We had decided to have a small cookout so I had grilled up some steaks in the backyard. Of course we had all the other good things to go along with it like potato salad and beans. Anyway everyone had eaten and we still had two steaks left over which I left on the kitchen table. The sun was starting to set and I decided to jump in the shower because I smelled like smoke from the grill. When I was done I come out to the kitchen and the house was pretty dark since no lights were on and the sun had set. As I walk into the kitchen I see Mollys little outline and she is chewing on something that I assumed was my shoe. I turn on the light and Molly is eating one of the steaks that was on the kitchen table. Well hell there went my lunch for the next day, actually I gave her the other one to because I assumed she had probably licked it while she had jumped up on the table.

Molly

I come from a family that never really kept any kind of pet. On occasion a dog would show up at our house and we would have him/her for a little while and eventually the dog would be gone in a few months. We did have cats but I think that is because they require a lot less attention. So anyway this little story is about a dog that came into our home and became the love of our family. Now we had four dogs who I loved very much but Molly was just that special one.

Back in the early 2000's my wife thought if would be a good idea to get a dog. She said that a dog makes a house complete. So we head off to the shelter to rescue a dog. I'm guessing most shelters look alike, cement kennels with chain link fencing. So we walk into this shelter and there are lots of dogs to choose from. You kind of wish you can take them all home but that would be impossible. Anyway we are walking up and down the aisles and our daughter spots a little grey puppy that she likes. We ask the attendant about the pup and are told it's been reserved already, disappointed we move on. we come around a corner and this black hairy dog throws her self against the fence at us, tail wagging and a big smile on her face. The little card said she was a chow mix and her name was Sadie. Well it was love at first sight, so we ask the attendant about Sadie and she is still available. Well we tell the attendant we want to adopt Sadie and we proceed fill out all the paperwork but they tell us before we take her home she has to get spayed first and we could pick her up at the vets in a couple days.

So a couple days pass and we get the call that Sadie is ready and we rush out to pick her up. We decide along the way we want to change her name. At this time my kids were really into wrestling and one of the famous female wrestlers was Molly Holly and so we decided to name our new friend after her. So we get to the vets and pick up Molly. We were kind of nervous about how she would do with a car ride. We open the door and Molly leaps onto the front seat of the truck and then immediately jumps to the back seat of the truck and sits down in the middle with the biggest smile on her face(she obviously had gone for car rides before). Well that was the beginning of a 10 year love affair with our little friend. Sadly she left us last year and while we still have 3 other dogs that I love very much Molly is the one that taught me how to love a dog.

In future posts I will write about different experiences we've had with Molly.

My favorite Thanksgiving memory

With Thanksgiving so close I thought I would take the time and share my favorite memory of Thanksgiving. It's not a long story and on that day it might not have been as funny as it is now several years afterwards.

I think it was the first Thanksgiving that my wife(this happened long before we were married) and I were cooking a turkey at our house. We had bought a pretty good sized turkey and my wife had it seasoned and ready to go on the night before Thanksgiving. We put it in the refrigerator and were deciding what time to put it in the oven the next morning. She decided it should go in at 4am so it would be done by early afternoon. I told oh that's no problem I'm usually up early anyway so I'll get up and put it in the oven. So the next morning I'm up at 4am and I go to the kitchen and fire up the oven. Next I go to the fridge and and get the turkey out. The turkey was already in a pan but it was wrapped in a plastic bag, now I'm looking at this turkey wondering why the heck it was in a plastic bag. I just knew I could not put plastic in the oven because it would melt and stink up the house so I took the turkey out of it's bag and stuck it in the oven to cook. Well for those of you who know what a cooking bag is for, well at that time I didn't. The look on my wife's face when I mentioned to her several hours later that she had forgotten to remove the turkey from its' bag let me know immediately that I had screwed up. Bless my wife's heart because she went into triage mode to try and salvage that poor poor dry turkey but the damage was done.

In the aftermath it was decided I would be in charge of pies only which I managed to goof up the next year but that is a story for another time

What happened to manners?

So when I started writing one thing I didn't want to do was to come off as whiny or morose or even crotchety. But damn it I can't help myself here. What has happened to common manners? I am the kind of guy who has always opened the door for my wife whether it's the car door, the front door or even if we are entering a building, that's just the way I was raised. In fact I noticed my son does this for his girlfriend to and I really like that.

So what brought this to mind is that for the past week while at work I have had some instances where I am  passing close by someone going in the opposite direction. I will turn my body sideways a bit because I'm a bit large and the hallway is narrow and I will say excuse me. Shouldn't that other person also say excuse me back? This happened about 8-10 times in this past week and I'm thinking why doesn't anyone say excuse me anymore? Another thing while I'm ranting. Why do people think it's ok to just turn their head and sneeze? No one wants to breathe your germs. Either use your hand to cover your mouth or grab a tissue. And the same goes with a cough. I've seen people, usually guys, who will be walking along and just cough and keep walking not caring who is around. Sometimes it's one of those coughs that even makes the person jerk a little but they still don't cover it up. Use your hand or your arm and cover it up. Lastly was this idiot at Carls Jr. who thought he could just burp out loud. I gave him a stare and he apologized but the dumb ass gave one last burp on his way out. Just totally unnecessary. Ok I got that off my chest. Thank you for listening

A funny Halloween story

The story I'm about to tell you I feel is pretty funny and I hope I can do it some justice. I had actually forgot about this until my wife reminded me about it last night. So sit back and enjoy what I hope will be a good recount of this particular Halloween night.

So this story happened about 4 years ago I think. Of course it was Halloween night and my wife and I were sitting on the front porch with a cauldron full of candy to pass out. Also with us was a friend who was dressed as a gorilla and was scaring passersby. It was all in good fun and I think the people passing by were having a good time with the scary gorilla. Anyway we didn't have any spooky music to play so I got the idea of using the laptop and finding some good Halloween sounds or music on youtube and playing it . So after some searching around I found what I felt was some decent spooky sounds and  we used the dinner tray that we had set up on the front porch to set the laptop on with the screen facing the street and played the spooky sounds I found. Well we had quite a few families coming and going and we were having a good time looking at the different costumes coming up to the house. At some point my wife walks down to the sidewalk to stretch her legs and she looks back to where I'm sitting on the porch and screams. I ask "what happened?" she says "look at the monitor". I look over at the monitor and now I notice the large writing on the screen from the video we had been playing. And there written on the screen in what seems to be some pretty large font "TESTICLES.CA". Oops! So I quickly change the screen and we all had a good laugh wondering just how many people with their kids might have seen the writing in the video. Please feel free to leave any humorous Halloween stories you might have.

Finally it's October

 Now that October is here not only is it my wife's birthday month but it's also time for the Halloween decorations to come out. Of course at our house we usually have some kind of Halloween decoration up year round. When our kids were younger we used to really go all out with the decorations but now that they are older we don't put out near as much. The first few pieces are already hanging in the front yard or placed on the porch. We plan to get some purple lights to place around the bushes we have in the front yard so hopefully in the next week or so I will get that done. I do miss the days of taking the kids trick or treating. It was fun going around seeing how the houses were decorated and hopefully run into a haunted house along the way. But again the kids are older so we pretty much set up on the front porch play some spooky music and maybe scare someone if we are lucky.

The Exorcist

Wow my first writers block and I've only been at this for a month. Well with October fast approaching and the help of my wife I finally started getting ideas again. I will spend the month of October writing about Halloween, spooky movies and maybe some songs/music that remind me of Halloween. So for my first Halloween blog I will reminisce a little about seeing the Exorcist for the first time and how the movie affected me both then and now.

The Exorcist was released in late December of 1973 which means I was 11 years old when I saw the movie. For those that have not seen it(but I'm sure quite a few of you have), the movie centers around a young girl named Regan(played by Linda Blair) who, while living in the Washington DC area, is possessed by a demon named Pazuzu. Now I'm not sure exactly when, after it was released that we saw it but it was still cold out because I remember I had my jacket(thank God) to cover my eyes from some of the most terrifying scenes in a movie I had ever seen but damn it I could still hear that voice. I can still recall the scene where Regans head spins around and tells her mom in the voice of the man she had killed "you know what she did? your c****ing daughter". Looking back now of course I know how the shot was done but as an 11 year old at a time when this type of stuff was still considered very real it was horrible. I'm not sure I had a good night sleep for well over a month and still to this day I will not watch the movie by myself. As far as I am concerned the Exorcist is the greatest horror film of all time, now it isn't just for Halloween but it does make Halloween that much more fun.