Marge

Today was less exciting than yesterday. So I shall take this moment to introduce you to the smallest member of our household (excepting the mice, who we don't name. So they don't count)

This is Marge:

She is 100% Beagle. 7 months old (well, she will be 7 months on Friday). And the cutest, sweetest, most stubborn little creature you will ever meet.

We are not ashamed to admit that for the time being she is our baby. See:
When we found out that moving to our farm house meant we could get a dog, we immediately decided we had to have one. And that it had to have a sweet name. We had two requirements for the name

1. It could not be a "dog name" (i.e. Fido, Spot, Lassie)
2. It could definitely not be anything we would ever want to name a child (I knew someone who named their dog a name they really liked, thinking they were done having children. Then, oops, they had another child, so they named it after the dog. weird. just plain weird)

Marge was the first name that came to mind. And it stuck.
And it fits. She is such a Marge. I don't really know what that means. But if you knew our dog, you would know.

Marge has had many a grand adventure since becoming part of our family:

She has been overwhelmed by the vastness of the farm. (she was so tiny!!!)

She has fought with the cows.

She has stayed in a hotel (for our 1st anniversary trip)

And she has had surgery (that was an adventure and a half!)

Fun Marge Facts:
She scarfs her dinner down in less than 5 seconds.
Her ambition in life is to be a lap dog (i.e., LOVES to be held)
She loathes socks with a passion. On your feet or off, she will eat them.


She is sometimes more ridiculous than we bargained for.
But really, life would be lame with out her. So I guess she can stay.

The Day the Cows got Away

Mere moments after I started up this blog and posted my first post, I started having second thoughts. They went something like this, "What in the world am I going to blog about. I don't actually do anything interesting. I get up, clean the house, go to work, come home, make dinner, do more house cleaning, and go to bed. No one wants to read (or for that matter, write) about that! I don't even have neighbors with interesting quirks".

But then yesterday happened. My only neighbors, the cows, proved to be very quirky. And all my fears of an uneventful existence were dispelled.

It started off like a fairly typical day. I left pretty early in the cold and miserable wind and rain to go have breakfast with a friend. Upon returning, as I turned down our driveway, I noticed the cows seemed to be a little closer to the house than they usually are. In fact, they were in my drive way and all around my house. I have a tendency to over-react about farm-life stuff (i.e. being very much concerned for the well being of a new-born cow that looked a little sick ish. Apparently they all look that way right after they are born. Who knew). So this time I tried to come up with a reasonable non-crisis type explanation for why the cows would be out of the pasture. However, as I parked my car, and went to open my door, only to be greeted by a very large black cow, reasonable explanations became impossible. Cows are much bigger and scarier when they are mud covered and on the same side of the fence as you. I called my landlady.

"Hi Landlady, there are cows in my driveway"
"Big cows or little cows?" (note, the baby cows like to wander out of the pasture. Little cows in my driveway would be significantly less shocking)
"Quite a few big cows"
"Oh....I'll be right there" *click*


By this time the herd had wandered past my house and were headed towards the nursery that is past the fields. So my puppy and I felt it was safe to venture outside. We watched the cows get smaller and smaller in the distance, wondering if this had ever happened before, and what the ramifications of losing that many cows would be. And where did the cows think they were going? Would people in this part of the country take in stray cows they way many people take in stray cats and such?

Soon enough, my landlady and a fellow who works on the farm showed up. They quickly assessed the situation and the landlady turned around and drove back to the farm house to get her "buggy" (i.e. super-cool-all-terrain golf cart that they use to get about the farm quickly). A few minutes later the buggy goes flying down the drive way!

I watched the whole situation unfold, but I am still not entirely sure how she did it, but soon enough all the cows were rounded up and heading quickly back up the driveway, and back to their pasture.


I enjoyed the whole experience because I got to "save the day" in a way, and I got to do it from the warmth of my living room, while my landlady was getting soaked and muddy rounding up those big creatures. My puppy enjoyed the excitement mostly because she enjoys interesting smells, and there are now cow pies in our driveway which are much easier to get to than the ones in the pasture. All in all, a very exciting morning!

There is never a dull moment when living on a farm I suppose. This incident may even top the time where I encountered a bear while walking the dog. But that story will be for another post.

Hi my name is...

I suppose an introduction is the place to start. I live on a farm (but am not a farmer) with my husband, and beagle puppy (Marge). How we came to live on a farm, or to be married, or to own a dog, are all stories for another time. The important parts of the story for the time being are, why am I blogging, and why "InDeeds"

I have started blogging for one simple reason: I have recently acquired a lot of spare time. Despite my full time jobs personally (as a wife and puppy-care-taker) and professionally (as an Event Manager), starting at the beginning of September, with my husbands re-entry into the world of academia, I find myself with many quite evenings with a paper-writing-husband, and sleeping dog, and clean house, and nothing to do. Hence the blog.


Why InDeeds? Well, you don't have to know me for very long to know that I get stuck on certain words or phrases. Some are passing phases; they may come and go with in a few weeks. One word that has stuck for an indescribably long time is the word "Indeed". It is so universally useful, that in a typical conversation I will use the word many many times. I use it so much, in fact, that a friend of mine has learned to see it coming, and will say it for me from time to time during our conversation. So my title choice thought process went something like this: "Well, I say it a lot. That counts for something. And, I shall be telling stories, making observations, and the like, and 'indeed' an appropriate response to pretty much any story. And on top of that, I will from time to time be writing about actual 'deeds' or actions. So...it just works".


That's all for now. Nothing worth writing home about I suppose. But hopefully it will get more interesting from here. Eventually I will post pictures...and perhaps even share the story behind why I have almost no pictures that were taken prior to October 08. But not now. For now - goodnight!

P.S. - Oh, and the picture at the top was taken at sunrise from my driveway.