The rain, the dogs and other things.

Today's title reminded me of The Crowsill's song The Rain,The Park and other things. If no one remembers them, it's OK because when I was growing up they were part of the family band era and I really hated the idea of family bands. It all started with the TV show 'The Partridge Family'. I really dismissed The Cowsills until I watched a documentary about their rise to semi fame and their abusive father slash manager. It was a lot like what The Beach Boys went through.

The dogs are almost getting along. Misha will remind Cassie every so often she just rents her space in this house, while Misha owns it. It will stay that way until they come to a better understanding. Misha is still the insecure bully she has always been and I don’t see that changing anytime. She’ll go up to Cassie and start sniffing her. Cassie will lay on her back and be completely submissive. There will be a tense few seconds until Misha decides she is through and she’ll walk away.

Then there are times she’ll just come up and attack her for no reason at all. She won’t hurt Cassie, just shake her up. If Misha is on the couch in the family room and Cassie is in the kitchen heading toward the hallway and the stairs to go upstairs. Misha will run through the parlor as Cassie runs through the dining room into the hallway and does a 180 to get up the stairs and safety. Most times Misha is too slow, plus I’m trying to keep the doors between the parlor and the hallway cutting off Misha’s line of attack. These attacks are Misha teasing Cassie, reminding her who the boss is and like all bully’s these attacks come from a place of insecurity. We adopted Misha at eight weeks and we’ve been told that was too young and she needed to spend more time with her mother. Either way, we are working to manage it. From Teri telling Misha, “Misha, that’s not being a good girl.” That’s only a slight exaggeration of her form of dog training. She’ll alway ask, “If my way is so wrong, why are they always so much more than dogs.” and she is right, but a bully needs different handling, like closing off her attack route. Last night, Saturday night, in a bit of a surprise I was asked if we could play cards again. I enjoyed last week playing Texas Hold Em and Black Jack, but at the end of the night I bought the chips back up into the attic. Partly because I didn’t want Teri to yell at the mess that was left and partly because I thought they’d do something more like people in their twenties would like to do, like spend more time without their parents.

Last night the predicted rain storms finally came in and I was glad the three of them were here. We played five card draw poker to start. You ante, then are delt five cards, you bet, then can ask to exchange some of your hand for other cards, you bet again and everyone who’s left shows there cards. It is the card game you see all the cowboys playing in all those westerns that no one watches any more. We don’t play for money, so when someone ran short of money a bank loan was quickly arranged. After a couple of hours we switched to Black Jack, Vegas rules and I ran the table as the dealer. I introduced them to splitting a hand (Two of the same card dealt to you, like two sixes) , how to split the pair and gamble on each card. Nastia did an all in bet near the end of the evening, it amounted to something like thirty dollars. I told her it wasn’t a good idea. She didn’t care because it was close to the end of the evening. I dealt her a black jack hand and she received a pay off of one and a half times her bet. She won like $63.00 make believe dollars. The night ended early, it is the end of eastern standard time (spring ahead, fall back) and everyone who is female is going to a bridal shower for Allysa tomorrow at noon.