Goodbye Dear Friend

When I was in sixth grade, we were finally living in a house with a fenced yard. I wanted a dog. Mom said if I kept my room clean for two weeks, then we could get one. That was so hard for me... I hated cleaning my room. It never seemed important. It took me months, but I finally did it. On the two week mark, Mom took me to the pound and said "No big dogs, no black dogs."

We looked and looked through the dogs, and there was a medium sized scrawny dull brown dog, that was the only dog with any life in his eyes. He was the one I wanted. Mom was skeptical, so she said maybe, and came back the next day and watched him for a while. He was so full of life and energy, she agreed, and in a few days, we had ourselves a new dog.

In my sixth grade sense of humor, I decided that Guess would be the perfect name. If someone asked me what my dog's name would be, hilarity was sure to ensue. Initially Mom was going to call him "Gus" in defiance, but then she realized you had to guess what he was... Black Lab? Whippet? We didn't even know exactly how old he was. Around a year old, give or take a few months. So Guess it was.

We got him home, and realized he was malnourished, and started giving him multi-vitamins in peanut butter. Within a few months, he had gained 20 pounds, and lost all his hair... and it grew back a glossy black. We had what Mom and said we couldn't have, a big black dog.

But he was a blessing in disguise. You'll never meet a more patient dog. We would dress him up and humiliate him, and he loved the attention. A small child would be curious, so he would get down low to the ground so he wouldn't intimidate him. At first he loved getting out and running around the neighborhood. Someone once called the pound when we couldn't get him back right away. The lady who came said he was the first dog to chase her to where he belonged. He just wanted to play! Once we took him camping. After that, he never ran away. I don't know what happened, but suddenly he had an invisible leash, linking him to us.

That leash not only lashed him to us, but us to him. An invisible bond was formed. He didn't play favorites, he loved us all equally (except men in hats, those he did not care for, and made that known). But the night my dad left, obedient Guess, who never slept on beds (and couches only when he thought we were asleep and not watching), climbed up onto Mom's bed and kept her company. He stayed there until he could no longer get onto the bed. And then he slept on the floor next to her. And when he couldn't climb the stairs anymore, he slept at the foot of the stairs. As close to her as he could possibly be.

He had his fair share of medical problems, from seizures, to an invisible spot that kept him in an E-Collar for years, to progressive arthritis. And he never complained. He was always just so happy. As he got older and older, more medical problems arose. But it was never a question, he never seemed in pain, and he couldn't bear to leave us, and we couldn't bear to let him go.

Finally this week, it could no longer be helped. Even with medication, he was having a harder and harder time getting around. For a large dog, 12 or 13 years old is a pretty long time to live. Mom finally had him put to sleep last night.

The time had come, but he is already missed. We knew it was coming, but somehow it's hard to be completely prepared for these things.



Goodbye sweet Guess. You were my first dog, and I loved you dearly.

I <3 Trivia Night

Our team won at Trivia night last night! Wheeee! There were 23 teams, and we came out first. It's a dollar buy in, and second place gets their dollars back, and we kept the rest. It ended up being $11 each plus some change. It was so much fun!

I lied

So earlier today, I posted that I wouldn't be posting much as the road trip approaches. I lied. This morning I had a meeting with Jack, and on the way there, I almost hit a baby deer. I saw the mom walking across the road, and I slowed down. Just as I was about to pass her, the baby jumped out and ran in front of me. Luckily I was able to stop in time. But I confused the baby, and it wound around the road for a bit, so I couldn't pass it. It eventually got off the road and I was able to get to my meeting.

After the meeting, as I was leaving Jack's house, I was confronted with this:



That's right. A peacock. He was offended that I wanted to pass him, and ruffled his feathers at me before letting me go.



Interesting day, I'd say.

Neglect

I'm afraid this blog will be neglected for a bit as we gear up for our road trip. Even mundane things that I would usually post here have something to do with the road trip!

I'm still working with Jack on his book. This are going really well, and we're hoping to have it printed in the next week or so.

We're going out to lunch with Grandpa, Grandma, and my Mom on Sunday. I need to give mom her carpet cleaner back, and she's putting me on her costco card so that we can get snacks for the trip.

I'm keeping super busy between the stuff for Jack, working at Kohl's and getting ready for the road trip. Jason's really looking forward to having a vacation, he's so tired of work he's even ready to go back to school! Silly boy.

<3 M

GAH!

So Jason's car will now start... but it might not stop...

We'll be buying break pads today, and Jason's boss kindly offered to help him install them. The rear pads are down to below 5%, and if they go much further, the calipers will have to be replaced too. We knew they needed to be done, but they never squeeked. Then made this scary crunching noise, which we paid to find out what it was, but then they never squeeked after that either, so we just forgot about them. We're just not good car people I think.

My echo drives beautifully now though!

One more thing!

We got our financial aid info back for next year, and we both got about $9,000 in grants. Yay! But we'll still be taking some loans on top of that, since Jason will be student teaching and not working at all for 5-6 months. But still, more than last year!

Ohhh, new layout!

I was having fun looking at the layouts on Blogger. Every once and a while they add a few more, so I picked a new one. A little more colorful then the last one! I got the 60,000 mile tune up on my car done, and it wasn't as expensive as I was told, so that was a nice suprise! Still trying to figure out where we'll get Jason's done though. I better make a few phone calls when the shops are still open.

Ta ta!

Stupid Cars

Well, it's been an interesting week! My car is now at 60,000 miles, and we decided to do the whole tune-up with recommended maintenance so we will have a safe trip next month. So I scheduled that for friday, and then yesterday, Jason's car died. Well, not completely, just the alternator. So another car repair that we have to do, yay! At least his car is drivable, as long as he doesn't use his lights, radio, or air conditioning. Poor boy!

On top of that, he gets home early, and I ask why. "My pants broke, and I didn't feel like hobo belting it". He just needs his button resewn on, but not the greatest day for him.

Happy Fourth of July!

That's pretty much all I have to say. I cleaned my carpets, so I'm sore, but the floors are a lot cleaner! We're going to spend the afternoon/evening with Kit and Christine in Oak Harbor. Maybe I'll bring back cute pictures of their baby. And I made a dessert, so maybe that will be tasty. Anywho, have a safe holiday!

Mac Mama

My mom now has a mac. After some headaches with the printer, I got her all set up! She now can open her computer, and be connected to the internet, so she has no excuses for not checking her email! I had fun in Seattle, but I'm glad to be home. I missed Jason and my cats. For the first few days I was back, Aiko was sooooo cuddly! I guess he missed me, even though he had company here at home!

I spent this morning making cookies for a friend, and they turned out quite tasty. I had to sample them first! Sadly, I also burned my finger, so Jason has to wash the dishes.... the hot water hurts too much. And yes, the finger burn was an accident, I didn't purposefully inflict pain on myself just to get out of doing the dishes!

Anyway, the burn still stings, so I'll go put more ice on it.

<3 Merrilee

I love Seattle

Seattle is great. Even when it's a little rainy. Jason and I decided to head to Seattle last Saturday for my Mom's birthday, and to see his family for a bit. Jason went home Sunday night (he had to get back to work) but I'm still here. We spent Saturday night with Jason's parents, and then on Sunday my mom and I had a girls day out, while Jason hung out with Jessica for the day. Mom decided that she likes having a computer, but they're complicated.... so she's switching to a mac (yay!) and we ordered it online for her after finding out the printer she wanted wasn't available in stores. The original plan was for me to stay through Monday, and have lunch with Shawna and Jana (childhood friend and her mom) for June birthdays (all but mine) and then I went out to dinner with Michelle. But mom's computer isn't going to be here until Thursday, so I'm still here, working from her place until I can get her all set up on the new system.

I've been keeping busy here. I helped mom sort through her garage, and I have a huge pile to take to goodwill, and 22 craigslist posts. I also attempted to give Guess a bath, but he's so old he had a hard time standing through the whole thing, so it was a rush job. Poor old dog :(

I've also taken a ton of fun pictures with my new camera, which I now have posted on my flickr page. I set up my Flickr page so that friends and family can print my pictures, and download them as well. Right now it's not full quality, but I plan on upgrading so that you can. Well, that's all for now!

It’s over. The quarter is over. My last final was this afternoon. I’m so glad to be done for the summer! College is a lot of hard work! I think I did well, and should get good grades. Jason’s done too, and he’s happy to be done as well.

Jason turned in his application for student teaching. He’ll be starting that next January, but I guess the process starts early! He’s looking forward to only having one more quarter of classes. I still have a ton left! But only 1 GUR (general university requirement) and 1 class for my minor, and the rest are all related to my major.

I suppose I could say more about school, but I’m done, and I don’t want to think about it for a while! So you just get a gap of information, and know we’ve been busy.

We got a roommate for the summer. His name is Bob, and he’s a really nice guy. So far adjusting to having him here hasn’t been bad at all! But then again, he’s been sleeping in the living room. My project for tonight and tomorrow is to clean out our computer room and turn it into a bedroom for him. That will be fun. I’m getting rid of a ton of stuff so we don’t have to store as much. Lots of cleaning for me to do!

My goals for this summer are to work, get some of my organizing projects taken care of, and finish planning our road trip! I’m getting super excited about it, and we’re not even leaving for a month and a half! Oh well, I guess we’ll just be really ready when the time comes :D This is all I have for now, I’m a little burned out. I'll leave you with pictures of my kitten:



Lots of love
- Merrilee

Speed Posting

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve posted on here. Not that many of you read this frequently, but I should be updating it more. School has been super super busy. I’m debating putting up my own website instead of this blog, but I have yet to think more on it. I have two more weeks of school, and then I’ll be able to think again!

So yeah, we had exams, and we have more exams. We also now have a roommate for the summer. Fun stuff!

More later, love you all!

Good News!

Aiko is feeling better! After just a few days on the antibiotics, he's already back to his old self. I'll finish them up, but hopefully they take care of the problem long term.

I also got them a new water dispenser when I went to the vet. Tabetha enjoys spilling the water and playing with it. All over the dining room floor. I have no clue why that kitty loves water so much. It's odd.

Poor Kitty

About a month ago, Aiko wasn't feeling well. He had a hoarse voice, and was a little lazy. So we took him to the vet, and got him some antibiotics. They helped a lot. But now he's sick again! They want to do $155 bloodwork tests, which don't even cover the cost of treatment afterwards. Luckily they let me get a second round of the antibiotics to try, so hopefully they work. We can't afford a super sick kitty! So I was a good mom, and got him the only treat he enjoys. He won't eat treats or canned catfood, but he sure does love grass. But I can only let him have a little a day, or he eats a whole pot.

Poor cat. Feel better Aiko!

I love my Mom

I have a cold, so Mom called to see how I was feeling. She called on her cell phone and appologized for not having her "black-boober houndstooth thingy."

I'm pretty sure her hands-free bluetooth headset would be upset with it's new name. But it made me laugh. So love my technically un-saavy mother.

<3

April Update

I haven’t updated this in a while, so I figured it was about time! It’s been a busy quarter. The sheer amount of reading I’ve had to do so far is amazing. And considering most of it has just been “review,” I’m looking at a really though time.

I have two exams this week, one in Psychology and one in stats. I’m not sure how I feel about either. I suppose they will both be relatively easy, but that has yet to be seen. My psychology class has been interesting. It was the class I was looking forward to the most this quarter, and I’m not enjoying it as much as I had hoped. The subject is social psychology, but the professor is a bit repetitive, and is going through some medical stuff right now, so the class tends to be on the boring side. Hopefully it will get better as she does! My stats class is tough because it’s stats. That pretty much explains it. The first exam is over the last few chapters we went over in the previous stats class, which makes it a little easier. The next two exams are on the computer, which is something I can generally do!

I’m also in a Philosophy class that I’m having a hard time enjoying. I’m taking the class for the easy 3 credits, since it’s a 100 level course. But it’s never a good sign when that’s your motivation, and the first day of class is spend discussing all the types of motivation you have for studying philosophy…. We’ll see how that goes. For some reason when I have other harder classes, epistemology and metaphysics don’t have that much appeal.

Jason’s classes seem to be going well. He has a lot of classes, but not nearly the same level of homework as I do. He should find out this week where his practicum is, so he’s pretty excited about that.

I also made some advances in planning our trip, so check out www.crosscountrydilleys.blogspot.com to find how that’s coming along.

And before I go, a funny cat story! (I know, you thought you would get away without hearing one, too bad!) So since it’s getting nicer outside, I decided to go and read my text books outside on the deck the other morning. Aiko sometimes likes to come visit me while I’m out there, and he’s pretty good about it. Our balcony is about 15ft off the ground, and he knows not to jump. Well, we were out there, and Tabetha felt left out. She kept wedging herself between the open sliding door and the screen and meowing at me with her little face squished into the screen. Then she starting jumping at the door to try to get to me. Needless to say, my reading wasn’t getting done. So I decided to see how she would handle being out on the deck too.

Our balcony is next to our neighbors balcony, with about a 3 foot gap between them. Below is the 15 foot drop. So I’m cautiously watching the kitten, and try to get back to my reading. Almost immediately she jumped over to the neighbor’s balcony. And couldn’t figure out how to get back. And starts yeowling at the top of her lungs “Mom! I’m scared and stuck!!!” At this point I’m a little worried, what if she tries to jump down, or misses jumping back. So I get Jason out of bed and have him wait on the deck and watch her, while I call the landlord and knock on the neighbor’s door. Neither were home, so Jason does the daring thing and decides to climb over to the neighbor’s balcony.

As I stand by nervously watching, he finally gets over to the other balcony. Tabetha immediately freaked out and jumped back to our balcony, where I picked her up and burst out laughing. Jason then glared at her and climbed back over to our deck. The rest of the day she was in “feral” mode, tearing around the house, acting tough.

I guess it’s time to buy chicken wire to line my deck, so she doesn’t try that adventure again!

Winter Quarter is Over!

Well, Winter quarter is finally over. I finished my last final on Wednesday, and Jason finished on Tuesday. I'm not sure what his grades are yet, and I only kind of know mine. I know I got an A in my Abnormal psychology class, and I got an 89.7% in my Anthropology class. I hate it when grades are on the cusp of A- or B+. I'm not sure how lenient she is on her grading scale either. She’s very vague on her syllabus. I’m still waiting to find out my Cognitive psychology grade. I felt really good about my grades until the final exam. I had an average of 95%, but I have no clue how well I did on the final. So I should get a high B (if I did terrible) to a high A (if I did really well). We’ll see.

Next quarter will be interesting. Jason is taking a ton of credits. He has to take 18 credits spring quarter and next fall quarter to be able to do his student teaching next winter and spring. We didn’t know student teaching was for two quarters, and he had planned for next spring, so now he has to have a couple hard quarters to pull it off. I’m registered for 16 credits (more than I’ve ever done) and so I’m a little worried too. It’s going to be a lot of homework for us! Since I have relatively few credits compared to other people at the same stage in my major, it’s hard for me to get into the classes I need. I was able to get into two, but not the two I really need to get in to. I talked to my advisor, and it seems that I can sit it, but I’m not guaranteed a spot. So I’m ok with my current classes, but the first week of school will be taking a lot of classes and trying to get override codes to switch my schedule around. Fun stuff.

On top of final exams this week, I decided I was tired of being a brunette, so after many chemicals and orange hair, I am now a blonde. Once I get pictures I’ll post them. It’s not a super natural blonde color, but it’s one that makes me happy. I realized that I have about a year and a half before I have to be a professional in the professional world. I’ll have some internships next summer and beyond, but for now, I can be me. I can decide to be blonde, and I can wear funny shirts, and I can decide to wear pajamas to school if I want to. So I’m going to take advantage of it. Why be an adult when I don’t have to be? Once we grow up and graduate we’ll be good adults. We already know how, we had experience before college. So we’re enjoying ourselves and our lack of responsibilities before we have kids.

We’re also going to Seattle for a bit this weekend. Not for long, just Saturday afternoon to Sunday night, but it will still be nice to see family. We’ll be bringing along Tabetha, because we’re not sure how well she would do for the weekend by herself. We realized she’s like our child. We certainly treat her that way. I love that kitten.

And because of that, you get a cute kitten story! (You knew it was coming) So Tabetha loves to copy Aiko in everything he does. Sometimes this is annoying to him, so he tries to get away from her. The other day he decided to climb in the closet to a place she couldn’t get to so he could have a nap to himself. She sees him up there, and after about 10 minutes of climbing, she manages to reach him. It was so funny, she gets up to him, curls up next to him, and meows like “aren’t you proud of me for getting to you?!?” He takes one look at her, and gives her the most disgusted look, and immediately jumps down out of the closet. Jason and I both cracked up. She makes us smile so often! We’re luck to have found her.

That’s a long post! But that’s all I have for now. Love you!

Happy Birthday Jason!

Today's Jason's birthday. I'm not feeling well, and he's tired, so I'm not sure we'll do much, but whatever we do we'll have fun!

I also started a web album, to share my pictures. You can access my albums here: http://picasaweb.google.com/merrilee.dilley

I hope that link works! I'll write more when I'm feeling better and have less than 7 chapters to read.

Ta ta!

Meet the Dilleys!

Hello and welcome to my blog!

I have started this blog as an attempt to keep my friends and family better updated on how Jason and I are doing. I realized I'm not always quick about letting people know what's going on, so maybe if I do it this way, I can post, but then it's their responsibility to read and check up on me!

If I've given you the address to my blogger page, you most likely already know who I am at least. I'm a Junior at WWU, majoring in Business Administration with a Focus on Management. I'm a good student, and I'm really enjoyig it. I work at Kohl's department store, doing morning freight. Jason is a Senior also at WWU, majoring in Secondary Math Education (Middle/High School Math Teacher). He works at Bellingham Millworks Supply, and he loves it.

We have two cats - Aiko and Tabetha. We've had Aiko (eye-EE-co) since he was a kitten, and he's now almost 6. We had another cat, but he ran away about 2 months ago, so we now have Tabetha the tabby cat, a kitten of about 4 months. She's so sweet and cuddly, and a great amusment to us and companion to Aiko.

I shouldn't spend too much time on this blog today, I have a lot more to read this week. All of my professors decided to put a lot of reading on my final exams, which are next week. (Two on monday, one on wednesday) Jason doesn't have any finals. He's so lucky!

I'm sure I'll post more later, and possibly some pictures, but that's all I have for now!