I have a stupid dog. Perhaps I’ve mentioned that before. He’s a mini pin. Stands about 11 inches tall and weighs about 5 or 6 pounds, I’d guess.

He yips, which is irritating. And this morning he woke me up a full 40 minutes before my alarm was set to go off. And it wasn’t just a bit of barking. No, this dog decides to do laps around my bed, walking all over me with his dog tag all ajingling. He will not calm down and he will not relax. He just runs and runs, urging me to wake up and let him outside.

This is why Stupid Dog has spent the last three days sleeping in his cage in the garage. It was at hubby’s insistance and the kidlings were very upset.

And hubby wasn’t home last night, so I relented. Now I know why hubby has started to insist stupid dog stay in the garage.

And this is the unexpected downfall from having a sliding glass door in our bedroom. Dogs that want to go outside and back in and then out and then in, over and over in the middle of the night.

In other news, I read Nicholas Sparks sequel to The Notebook. The Wedding was a quick read and it was a heart-tugging story, but there were some things about the story that just didn’t jibe. The beginning of the book talks about something happening 14 months before and has the lead character wondering if someone can change. Then the book takes place over a 12 month period and ends, why yes, we can change. And then you realize the beginning is two months later and the guy is questioning again? Huh???? The timeline doesn’t work. The beginning of the book also talks about how the guy has no friends that aren’t the husbands of his wife’s friends. But during the book several times the guy calls friends and pulls in favors of people who aren’t his wife’s friends’ husbands. Very jarring.

But in the book, the main character realizes that there aren’t a lot of couple photos of him and his wife in the family photo albums. He asks friends and relatives to send them photos of the two of them together and he makes an album of just these couple photos. Which really is a very nice idea, IMO. And it made me think about the state of my own personal photo albums.

Steve and I have a ton of photos. And most are in albums or hanging on the wall in frames. Each of our four children have a photo album dedicated just to them. It might have a sibling in it, but the event of the photo is all them. There is one album that is all pictures of me. Steve compiled it when he was leaving for basic training when I was pregnant with Autumn. I love our photo albums, and so do the kids. We love looking through the photos.

But we don’t have a lot of family shots with all 6 of us in the same picture. A few years ago for Christmas we used the timer on my camera to take a picture of us all in front of our Christmas tree. Earlier this year someone took a picture of all 6 of us in front of the church where my niece, Jessica, got married. (Not the Jessica with the three kids, btw.) But that one doesn’t count because I think I look horrible in it.

The last professionally done photo we had taken of the entire family was when Maxine was 7 months old and Justin wasn’ t born yet. Justin is now 5 and Maxine is 7. We have had a photo of all four kids taken together.

Yesterday I was at my mom’s house and my sister Dee was there from Arizona. I missed my SIL Irene and her two kids who were there earlier in the day. But while I was there we didn’t take any pictures at all. All these kids doing cute things and no pictures.

In the past couple of years our main camera has been my digital. Steve doesn’t really like that, but now that I use Snapfish to print the digital images, it’s better than when they were just on my computer. He set my screen saver the other day to automatically go through pictures every few seconds. I don’t like screen savers because they always seem to pop on when I’m reading something. But I’ve kept this screen saver on. Because I love looking at the pictures of my family, both immediate and extended.

As Steve was watching the screen saver he saw a picture of his Aunt Diane holding a nice Walleye she caught earlier this year. He’d never seen the picture before and when he saw it he had to laugh. Both his aunt and the fish had a bottle of beer in their mouth. The kids have been sitting in my office chair just watching the pictures go by. A virtual album.

I love taking pictures. I just signed up for a photography class and I can’t wait to get the first lesson. I was talking to my editor about it the other day and he would love to have more artistic shots for the newspaper. So hopefully, that will happen.

When the girls went to camp, they each got a disposable camera to take with them. Justin got one recently too. They loved taking pictures and I urged them to get people shots. Autumn will also be taking a photography class. Hers starts next week.

I was drooling over new digital cameras recently. I would love a canon rebel, but at $1,000 it isn’t going to happen anytime soon. So I’m thinking maybe a cheaper digital that has an option for manual settings.

In the meantime, I have added a new photography section to my Web site. The photos are mostly scenic, but I do have some people pictures too. My favorite is “Wind and Snow.” I took it from the upstairs bedroom window. This picture has a lot of blowing snow in it. You can also see the road that goes by the front of my house. The road where my mailbox sits. And looking at it you really get a better understanding why I’ve had so much trouble with the road commission’s snow plows plowing over my mailbox. I did however take a step to end that. I switched our mail to a PO box. So if you are a relative, you’ll need to get my new address from me.

http://www.lindasherwood.com/photographer/index.html

What you were expecting a blog that was cohesive and kept the same thought all the way through until it wound down to some thoughtful introspective conclusion? Yeah, well. It ain’t gonna happen. Thanks for playing.

Linda