there's no place like gnome.

One of Dave’s pinball acquaintances met Emmett and called him a Muppet, a la Fozzi Bear.  When you think about it, that’s pretty accurate.

His current list of tricks includes sit, lay down, up, stand, shake, high five, leave it, stay, “Look at me!” and come.  Many of those depend upon whether or not he knows if you have treats in your pocket.  We’ll keep working on it. He also rings a string of bells on the back door if he needs to go outside. Or if he sees a bird he wants to chase. Or if he’s bored. We’re working on that too. He has also – BIG NEWS – stopped sleeping in his kennel at night. He sleeps on his bed next to my bed and he’s pretty awesome about it. Except those days he likes to get up (and wake me up) at 5:40am …

Here’s a fun (not) story: Dave clipped Emmett’s nails. Yes! Victory! To clip our own dog’s nails is high on the list for me (who had to take Mabel places to get her nails clipped). One nail was cut a bit too far = blood. Okay, okay. We knew this could happen. We addressed it and thought it had clotted. Dave went home; I sat on the couch. Emmett was doing his Emmett thing, and at one point ran over to the couch. Blood. Blood on the couch. Blood on the quilt. As I looked around, bloody footprints through the house. Blood in the bathtub (where Emmett sometimes likes to play). Guess what hadn’t clotted quite as well as we thought? An hour later, all was well, a load of laundry started, and blood cleaned up.  

A couple weeks ago, I spent the week in St.Paul taking a continuing education course at Luther Seminary. It was a wonderful, awesome, inspiring week. [For those interested, we explored church leadership through the lens of Brene Brown, author (most recently) of Rising Strong.  It just may have transformed my life in super good ways.]

But you know me. I can’t be far from a craft project for any too long. My fingers need to craft. So I took along with me a yellow Pyrex dish filled with buttons, floral wire, and a pliers. I’m making a button bouquet (a la this) for the wedding.

Here’s what I have so far, just stuffed in a jar for now. As you can see, color scheme is any and everything. Just the way I like it.

So as I had time, during breaks or lunch, I’d assemble a few more button “flowers.” The instructor of the class, ever curious, asked what I was up to. I explained the whole button bouquet idea.

The next day I found a little sandwich bag of buttons on my spot at the table.  Sarah brought me buttons to add to my bouquet!

I got an email from Sarah-the-instructor just yesterday.  She’d found more buttons. Cool ones, she wrote. What was my address? She’d like to send them to me.

How lovely is that?

It kind of made me think how awesome it will be to have a bouquet of buttons from people I know and love. Marilyn at work has already brought me some. I hope to find some earrings/brooches of Grandma Vera’s to add in.  Maybe I’ll track down some other buttons from family members as I go. Maybe I’ll ask some of the women at church.  The button bouquet will continue to grow!