Seven Plus Eleven Minus Two

Last Friday, while we were out spending what little paycheck came in, our electricity was turned off. Being as it "could not" get turned back on until Tuesday, we stayed 4 nights at a Red Roof Inn in the town where I work. Even though DH and I could have survived w/o much hardship, we couldn't ask the kids (11, 10 and 5) to endure night-time temps that got as low as 10 degrees (Fahrenheit).

The kids loved it, of course, especially the little hot chocolate/coffee/mocha machine in the lobby. They also loved watching Cartoon Network, as all we have at home for the moment is Canadian satellite. (Nothing against, Canada, of course, but their channels are just not what we are used to.) I loved that my commute was whittled from 30 minutes down to 3 minutes. WOOHOO!

We made several trips back to the house during that time, of course, to check on our dog, Sheeva, who was VERY preggers at the time.

When we arrived home on Tuesday morning, the dog came bounding up to the car, like usual, and DH noticed that she was considerably thinner than the day before. So, The Great Puppy Hunt began!

We found six under our back porch. Sadly, one did not make it. *sigh* This is not a very accessible area for us, and as the lower temperatures at night continued, and the pups were lying in dirt, we proceeded to detach the nailed in crosshatched wood in order to get them out. DH took "Angel" (my name for the pup that didn't make it) to a wooded area behind the house while the kids looked at the remains of a big tree stump that had been smoldering in our driveway for the weekend.

About 15 minutes later, the son of our across-the-street neighbor came up and asked if our dog had recently had puppies. Sheeva, naturally, went protective at the "stranger". Anyway, he went on to say that there were some puppies on his dad's porch. DD and I went with him, while DH held onto Sheeva's collar.

There was one puppy that had wiggled/crawled off the porch and become tangled in a vine. (The last two times Mamaw's cats had kittens I've had to rescue one of them from a vine, too. What's up with that?) The neighbor pulled four more out from a tarp that was on the porch.

OMG...ELEVEN PUPPIES!

Unfortunately, one was a runt and did not survive the day. Hence the title of this post "Seven Plus Eleven Minus Two". The "seven" refers to me, my husband, our three children, our dog and our cat; "eleven" is for the puppies that our dog had, and "two" for the two angel pups.

I had yesterday off work, and I have today off as well. DS2 has been bothered by a toothache for a couple of days now. Were it not for the fact that our dental insurance sucks (no pun intended), and those pesky dentists want cash up front, the tooth would be gone already. I've heard that UK (in this case, the University of Kentucky) Dental School has a program where you can go to the school and have students (under direction from licensed dentists) do whatever needs doing to your teeth for $100. I have a feeling more than one of us will be looking into that.

Well, that gets y'all up to speed on our back porch. I'm drinking cold black coffee and reading blogs, doing the Thursday Thirteen thing on Bluegrassgal's Weblog and Entrecard. C U around. Thanks for stopping by.