Changes

What a start this year has had. I am now an aunt with a niece - Portia, and now nephew - Adam. I am also a soon to be home owner. In the next 25 days it should be a done deal. It was a crazy quick start to the deal, only about 5 days between finding the house, bidding on it, and signing the papers. I'm really excited about getting my own home. I think Fritz will enjoy the big fenced back yard. Hopefully he won't have any urges to jump or tunnel under the fence. I'm sure he'll like it when he's not on a leash so much to keep him in the yard. I try to make sure he still gets enough exercise. I walk him up the lane to get the mail. He never barks to get Emily's attention but you can tell that's where he hopes to go. He's overall a pretty quiet fella. Hopefully he transitions well to being close to a road with more cars, since passing cars are what he barks at. He still enjoys playing fetch, which he's always preferred a tag influence in, since he would run past and not return the ball unless I tagged or tackled him as he tried to get past. Now we've been playing fetch and go seek. As he's chasing after the ball I run around the house or behind a tree so he has to come and find me. It gets us both a little more exercise. Especially if I hide behind the right tree, because he makes a few laps around the house before he finds me. He's hard to keep ahead of, since I have to wait to be sure he's really going after the ball and not looking at if I'm going to take off. Then after he finds me we do a little more seeking as we look for where he dropped the ball. Guess it's hard to run while keeping a ball in your mouth. He also has trouble focusing on more than one thing at once. So finding me takes priority over keeping track of the ball. It's funny watching him try to figure out where he had it last. We use a tennis ball, and it's time for me to find a different colored ball, because green is hard to find in all that grass. I have a few other toys I can throw, but the ball goes the farthest and gives me more time to run. I have a co-worker who is into agility training for dog competitions, and I think Fritz would find that great fun. Maybe we'll start in that.
Work is going well. When the next schedule comes out they'll be increasing my hours to 30/week. Instead of 5 pm to 1 am I'll be working until 3 am. There's one person ahead of me in the line for full-time, but there are always quite a few available shifts to pick up if I want more hours. The schedule is also a mess for lots of people so there is also often someone looking to have you pick up a shift for them.
Grandma has herself a little companion - Romeo the chihuahua. I agree with Pat that Remus would be a more appropriate name since he does have a resemblance to the werewolf he turns into in the third Harry Potter movie. Today he had a hard day - cars honking at him, boys in motorcycle gear coming into the house, probably looking quite frightening to him, and being in a strange place. He was hiding in grandma's room behind the sewing machine for quite awhile today. I finally bribed him out and got him to eat something. He and Fritz haven't hit it off well. Fritz is more than happy to be friends, but Romeo doesn't like him now that he's found out Fritz isn't as easily intimidated as he initially thought. I must say I'm relieved that Fritz has decided he doesn't need to be afraid of a chihuahua. He's a timid fellow, but I'd be embarrassed for him if he was afraid of a little rat dog.