"Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get." - H. Jackson Brown Jr.

It has been raining all day and at just shy of 7 p.m. we've had 3/4".
The sad part: some of that rain has come through the ceiling. They apparently didn't do a very good job of sealing around the stove pipe when they installed our new stove and pipe last August.
I have to assume that the insulation is soaked as now the fiberboard ceiling panel is. Which means the rain we'll continue to get over the next three days will weaken those already saturated layers.

We're leaving about 3:30 tomorrow morning for two days in Seattle. Will the ceiling still be up when we get home? Midgley's opens at 9 a.m. Wednesday morning. When they get there the phone will be ringing!

As an added factor, these ceiling panels are only available from a manufacturer on the east coast, are 12' x 4', and cost an arm and a leg to ship.
We'd talked about replacing them with drywall at some point in the future. we may be at that point.

At church this morning Pam and I sang in a 12-person ensemble, joined by 10 instrumentalists (brass and woodwind), leading the congregation in singing Christmas carols. All the college students are gone on break and that drops us by about 150 people but the gym was still almost full. I'm guessing a bit over 1,000 people.

This afternoon we took Bear, Pam's "dog", to the boarder and Buddy (my dog) to the family that fostered him before we adopted him. I'm gonna miss him.
They said Buddy has clearly lost weight (he needed to) and is much more active than he was when they had him.
They have a house full of Brittanys, three of their own and one they're currently fostering. Add Buddy to the mix and it was a room filled with energy and butt sniffing.

Dolly is off with Chisolm and we hope they are, by now, both grinning.
Stella spent much of the afternoon bellowing so I looked when I went out to feed. Yep, she's in heat, too. At her next cycle, 21 days from now, we'll be headed to AZ so we'll wait 42 days. That's a better spread between kiddings so it works out.
Because she's a first time momma Dolly will probably give us just one. This will be Stella's second kidding so she should have two and maybe three.

Between delivering dogs to boarders, getting chicken coops and goat barns ready for my absence, and baking a batch of cardamom toast I didn't get a nap. Now I'm falling asleep as I sit here, not a good sign with a 6 hour drive tomorrow. I'm going to try to stay awake through 60 Minutes and then call it a day. That will give me about 6-7 hours of sleep. I may need 20 minutes in a rest stop on the drive up but it should be OK.