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Happy end of Summer. Well, to me it seems that Summer is winding down as school has started this week & then soccer practice is in the evenings. How am I aware of all of this when I don't have any children? Our back yard faces the Worthington Park Elementary school. There is a walk way between my house and the neighbor's next door as entry to the school playground. When we bought this property 22 years ago, we got $1000 knocked off the price of the lot because of the "annoyance" of the school or so the realtor said. Hey, I was all for bargains back then so I said no problem, and after all these years it actually is no problem. I love watching the neighborhood children grown up each year walking down the sidewalk pulling on the ivy that has taken over the chain link fence. I hear them all excited about new school year and hear all the buzz about who likes who and who hates who and what teacher is mean or what teacher is nice or questions about what is going to be for lunch. Then during the Fall and Spring it is soccer time. Worthington spent tons of money to have the field behind the school cleaned and made into soccer field for practice and play offs in the elementary age group. It is sometimes fun to hear all the roar in the evenings, but I sometimes can live without the early early Saturday morning screaming & crying.



Now what else about all this is so worth telling you about? All of this is the greatest entertainment to all my Scotties. They adore running up and down the fence barking their fool little heads off at anything or anybody using the sidewalk. Long time ago, when we had our first Scottie FalaPink and the ivy hadn't covered the fence, FalaPink would hide behind the house. Just as someone would come right next to where he was hiding he would jump out and bark the big gigantic Scottie bark he was known for. Or he'd run the fence barking merrily along. I caught two little kids throwing rocks at him and had to stop them before this got all out of hand. One kids said Fala was a "mean bad" dog. I asked him why he thought that. He said because Fala barked at him all the time. I told the two kids that is how dogs laugh. When he is playing chase with you, he's so happy that he is laughing all the way up and down the fence. You know what? That was back in 1990 and to this day when new children walk down the fence with new school age children I hear "don't worry about them barking, they are just having fun laughing at us". It worked. So to modern day...Frodo and Arwen love to run that fence barking. It is also a very good training ground for new dogs to learn "avoidance". Duo purpose here!



I haven't been beading or making many dolls lately. I've been having a problem with my elbow for the past three months that was progressively getting worse. My Family Practice said it was "tennis elbow" and gave me oral steroids that did work for a few days, but then I realized I had to go to a specialist. So Wednesday morning bright and early, I went in and got two shots in my elbow. OUCH! The first one finally started to work yesterday & the other will slowly take affect. Interesting to find out that the real problem isn't my elbow that is aching, but that I have a weak left wrist and hand. So now I have a set of exercises to do with weights so my left hand can become just as strong as my right. Most of the damage is due to repetitive work which I work in a hospital & I guess the years are taking their toll. But all is getting better. I actually gave all three a bath yesterday when I got up! Yeah for clean Scotties! AND I can rotate my arm without much pain. So I'm wanting to get back downstairs & get some projects completed. Can't wait.

Hope you enjoy these two pictures of me and Fiona. You can't tell from the picture, but Fiona's eyes are all white from the blindness due to her Diabetes. I need to hunt for my pictures of Fala. He was such a big boy and the king of the fortress for many years. I can't believe he died 11 years ago. I miss my big goofy boy.