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OH, MY GOSH THIS IS A TRUE HOMEWARD BOUND STORY.  NOT A FUNNY ONE EITHER!

Three of my four dogs are lost!   Babette, Schwartz and Piper, are lost.  Babette is an adorable brown chihuahua, Schwartz is a Golden Retriever and Piper is a Border Collie.

Schwartz is full

My five children and I left for our vacation yesterday morning (Saturday July 24th) only to get a call at 10:30 p.m. that one of my dogs, Annie ,was found at a nursing home on Fair Oaks Blvd and Garfield.  A friend had been babysitting them while we were on vacation and took them to their house on Parque Vista near Walnut Avenue and Cottage Way.  But it turns out there was a hole in their fence and all four of them escaped from their yard.  Annie was the only one found so far!

While Annie went to a nursing home, the other three have not been seen or heard from since then.  Various friends and family members have put up signs and posters in the area.  And we placed a Craigslist ad for them a few hours ago.  But still no luck in locating the trio.  They could be together or separated.

Here are their descriptions:

Schwartz:  He is a very friendly 2 year old light colored Golden Retriever.  Extrememly kind and friendly, will melt your heart.  Has a distinct odor to his ears but a heart of gold to match his coat.

Piper:  Black and White Border Collie with one half of her face being white, the other black.  Both eyes are dark brown.  She is very quick, smart and a bit protective.  VERY SMART!  This dog will lead you right to my house if you let her.

Babette:  Babette is a large sized chihuahua mixed with some kind of terrier.  She was wearing a lime green color, had dark tear stains on each eye, curled up tail.  This dog has had a very hard life and lived a long time in the pound before my daughter rescued her last year. She is timid but will try to act fierce.  Might bite you, but it won’t really hurt or do damage.  (She has never bitten me, but sometimes acts like she is afraid of strangers.)

The thing is these dogs mean the world to my family…as all family pets hold such special places in their family’s hearts.  I have five children and we just started our family reunion vacation where the rental did not allow us to bring our pets.  My oldest son came back from a year in China and Babette’s owner, my 21-year-old daughter, returned from six months in Brazil.  We are simply sick about this horrible news but our hands are tied here on vacation worrying about their where-abouts.   Please call (916) 224-1604 if you have any news about any of these dogs.

I wonder if I can wear my bee helmet and facial net to the grocery store?  I mean what if the bees are following me when I go to school to pick up the kids?  At what point will I be able to take off my bee suit and put on something fancy, like say, my bathrobe?

These are the obvious questions that are buzzing through my head as I ponder how my life will change when my three-pound clump of honeybees arrives and I station it in my suburban backyard. (Yes, this is legal.)

I don’t have a thing to wear for a life with bees. I will have to solve this problem soon, but first….

Just so you know, I am taking all necessary precautions to keep the bees safe from my neighbors.  I’m providing them their own water supply to keep them out of the nearby liquor stores. I’m setting up their hive at a high elevation. (Bees fly in a straight line to their hive so it’s best to keep their hive higher than say, nose level.) And I am filling my little bee-brain with facts about how to keep these bees merrily buzzing along.

One very fun fact is that I will be in the honey soon. But patience is the key to long-term success with bees. While their mission is to reproduce and survive winters, they need to establish their own honey stores that will last them through next winter. So, it’s best if I don’t dip into their honey this summer and let it “bee.”  I will have to stick with jam for another year.

In the meantime, the taste of the honey changes depending on where the bees collect their honey.  A hint of lavender, lemon, orange blossom…

With all this fun and excitement awaiting me, I imagine time will just fly by as I beekeep.

Schwartz is full

Funny how my sweet Schwartzie is not hungry for his dog food tonight.  I guess that lamp cord he gobbled up Saturday night really filled him up.  And here I thought it was a light meal.

If only those blasted chairs at the ski resort didn’t move so darn fast and didn’t go up so darn high… if only they made skis that were bendable… if only ski boots were made for walkin’… if only mountains weren’t so steep… if only ice didn’t stick to the underbelly of a Golden Retriever… if only the average mom could carry 14 skis, 36 poles and 17 peanut butter sandwiches all at the same time, if only snow fell in a tropical setting… If only all that stuff was possible, then our family may end up being good skiers.

It’s not that we’re bad at skiing. It’s just that we are bad at everything that leads up to the actual act of skiing.

My first mistake was to go skiing. Other than that, I made some good decisions while we were skiing over winter break.  Probably the best decision I made was not to jump off the chairlift to rescue my 9-year-old right after he fell off the chair.  It was a tough call:  I felt him sliding right off, looked down and saw the puffy white powder below and watched helplessly as my little dear heart tumbled down through the winter sky into a poofy pool of whiteness  Oooops.

A mother’s worst nightmare. But I could tell he landed in a soft area…I could feel the chair lift rising faster and faster, higher and higher. My instinct was to jump off after him, but in a flash I made the decision to stay seated since his landing was safe and mine would not have been. The chair lift was going so fast and climbing so high so suddenly that the time differential between his landing and what would have been my landing, would have resulted in a bad scene for me. Plus, the chair lift operator saw my son’s fall and was running to his rescue.  Talk about scary.  This is only part of the story… Stay tuned to my Country Life column in Inside Arden for the full story. … And yes, you might even find out the best way to remove icy snowballs stuck to your dog’s fur.

Leave it to me to figure out how to sprain my kidney and shatter my nebula all in the name of thrifty household repair.

It all started when I put a load of sheets in the dryer… Two minutes into their cycle, I heard a buzz. “They can’t be ready yet,” I said to the disposal.

“Buzz,” said the dryer again.  “Well, I guess they are ready,” I whistled to the sponge.

But, nope. I was wrong. The dryer just kept on buzzing…and the sheets were still wet as could be. I did a lot of “harumphing,” banging, clanging, climbing around. I unfastened the dryer vent that goes outside, peeked in there for good measure.  (Nothing visible because it’s very dark in that long, winding thing.)  Turns out it was a mistake to look inside that long thing. Never ever do that.

To peek inside there, I had to climb on the dryer and somehow my left slipper was stuck on the dryer door and my right slipper was stuck on the window sill… This is a bad thing, especially when the dryer door flings open. Thank God I had a hip bone to cushion my fall. Only now my whole left side is numb, black, blue and purple. There goes my centerfold modeling contract with National Geographic.

I decided that 5 days before Christmas is a terrible time to buy a new dryer so I kept at my fix-it plan despite having the wind knocked out of my epidermis.  I realized that the dryer knob felt funny so I took it off and got a wrench-like device and turned the little knob under the knob. Voila!  This fixed my dryer.

At least I will have dry sheets to line my coffin.

I suggest calling a dryer repair man if you hear a buzzing coming from your dryer.

If you want to have the best morning of your life, one where you roll back to a time before you were ever born…one where you feel yourself slipping inside an old movie or becoming part of a Norman Rockwell painting, head out to the lazy town of Wilton and mix it up with the locals at Bert’s Diner.

This throwback diner is everything you ever dreamed a diner should be. From the gleaming rounded stainless ceiling, the red leather booths, the black and white checked floors and glass block windows to the gigantic drippy cinnamon rolls, frisbee-sized pancakes and piping hot cocoa - Bert’s is a diamond in the rough and ready world of rural small town America. But guess what? It’s only a 20 minute drive from Sacramento at Grant Line and Wilton Roads.

Yes, the round soda fountain counter chairs spin. As do the tales from the locals who holler out jokes to each other as if they were on a sit-com set of Cheers.

One of the best parts about this place is Andy Burcher, a 40-something waiter who has worked at Bert’s for the better part of 3 decades. While Bert’s is his real love, Andy moonlights in a “real” career in the business world but can’t stay away from the good vibes at Bert’s. Hard to imagine what it would be like without him bouncing through the place, taking orders, sidling up beside old pals. Andy, it seems, knows everybody and everybody knows him.  His easy way makes us feel “way” at ease.  (Someone should make a sitcom out of this guy!)

“Hey kids,” he says to a couple of old folks. “Don’t tell me the number of the order, I can’t count.”

“What’ll it be? Bourbon, coffee or beer?”

“You’re easy to cook for, that’s what I like about you, Millie,” he says to someone else.

Laughter flows like the coffee….filling up your cup when you’re not even looking.

Bert’s is owned by Mark Seib who bought the diner 20-plus years ago when it had a loyal following of regulars. Mark didn’t have the heart to change the name from Bert’s. So Bert’s it is.

How can you walk away from Bert’s without a smile on your face? Especially if you skip jogging and have a pancake instead!