Cleaning and Driving

That's what I've been up to the past two days. On Sunday, I got my living room 90% clean, which involved rearranging furniture. I hadn't actually planned to do anything beyond moving the recliner so that I'd have a place for the Christmas tree (which I will likely put up on Black Friday so as to avoid the Blackness). However, the more I looked at the couch, the more I thought that it was time to move it. As I didn't want to move the bookshelf/plant-stand from its spot at the south window, my options were limited. It finally wound up at an angle, facing the northwest corner, where I put the tv stand. The cats seem to like it in that locations, as there is now a cubbyhole behind it and they can climb through the VCR/DVD access area to get there.

As for today, I went to Idaho Falls with my mom. I'd originally planned to go back down to the Whole Foods and Barnes and Noble down in the Salt Lake area, but my mom wasn't acting very enthused and I didn't relish the idea of 6 hours of driving just to get there and back...so I scaled back. Downside: No GF/Soy-free chocolate chips to be found, but I can order those online. However, the Wealth of Health Nutrition Center on Woodruff has a surprisingly large selection of gluten-free items. Much more than the last time I stopped in there, which was 2 or 3 years ago. They didn't have the Enjoy Life chocolate chips that I was hoping to find, but, again, those are available online.

And now I'm seriously considering just going to bed. I seem to have worn myself out. I did wake up to an oddly random dream this morning. I was with the Mythbusters out in a desert canyon somewhere. Carrie was telling everyone to be careful not to draw the attention of "The Alpha," as in the leader of the wolfpack in the area. However, someone was speaking too loudly, using too many "ow" sounds, and we heard the howl start up. The wolves came in. They were... very small, and strangely doglike. One of them looked like a cross between Buster* and Socks*: the size and shape of a small terrier, but with tight black curly hair. The other one that I saw looked like Scamp*. This one I successfully distracted with a rotten piece of fruit (either a tomato or an apple), which he happily started eating. That was when my alarm went off.

*Socks: the first dog my family ever had. Small terrier with a spring in his step. Literally. He had some sort of neurological/genetic thing that made one back foot move like he was skipping.
Scamp: cockapoo; second dog my family had. Sort of. He was really Dad's dog. He tolerated me, but hated everyone else (including my mom). Well, not quite. A cat had adopted us around the same time we got Scamp, and they became buddies. The cat (Indiana) died a few years before Scamp did, and I remember how sad it was to see him looking around, checking all her favorite napping spots, trying to figure out what had happened to her.
Buster: Dad's current dog. Larger than the other two. Terrier-mix. He's a much sweeter dog than Scamp, though more mischievous.

As I'm pretty sure I'm rambling, I'll stop there.