We rarely get rain in June, but this afternoon the heavy, gray clouds rolled over Fort Worth and haven’t left for the past few hours. Eric and I are sitting at a coffee shop that lines Bellaire near TCU. It’s a quaint coffee shop and we are nestled in the corner surrounded by windows. Eric is studying for a test he has tomorrow and I was attempting to work on my online class, but for some reason his laptop won’t let me download something I need to access my homework.

Life is getting busier, although it seems it hasn’t slowed down in the past few years. It scares me to hear the words, “while you have time…” because I feel I have no time. Tomorrow we are headed to Oklahoma for Eric’s great grandmother’s funeral and this Saturday we are driving to Little Rock, Arkansas to meet my parents for the weekend. Then I’m going to do a car swap and head to Alabama, where my parents live, to visit family for a few days while Eric heads back to Texas. Life rarely slows and there are times where I want to disconnect from all of it, but sometimes I feel like the only way to accomplish this is to leave the country.

But when the rain rolls in and the gray clouds settle over, I feel my chest rise and fall in relief because the world seems to slow for a few seconds.

Casey

Eric and I have lived in Fort Worth, Texas since we were married in 2008. There are so many wonderful things about Fort Worth. For starters, it’s not Dallas. I hate to hate on Dallas, but I grew up in a suburb of Dallas so I feel I can objectively express my opinion. Even though Dallas and Fort Worth are apart of the same metroplex, they seem worlds apart at times. Fort Worth has a small city charm with wonderful character. A great mix of blue collar and white collared people. And my favorite, the mature trees that line the streets. We are fortunate to live near Texas Christian University (TCU), where my husband attended undergrad. TCU is only a few exits from downtown Fort Worth/Stockyards. We live in a house built around the 1940′s with oak floors and a charming kitchen with white honeycomb tiles. There are so many things I love about living in Fort Worth, but Eric and I itch for change.

Eric and I are constantly trying to find our next move. We’ve both had the opportunity to travel several places outside of the U.S. when we were in high school. After we married, we made it a huge priority to travel several times a year. Recently we went to San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. All the cities were amazing offering things Fort Worth doesn’t. Yummy food, interesting people, beautiful terrain; and pretty much everything opposite of Texas. I could spend every afternoon running along the city of San Francisco by the bay to the Golden Gate Bridge. I can see myself walking Story at one of the thousand parks. However, I still long for some of that old world charm and wide open space Fort Worth provides. Where will we end up? I only wonder what city is best for us.

C

If you haven’t read already, my husband and I are Weimaraner parents. If you have never had the privilege of meeting this breed, I will give you a quick snap shot of my life with Story (our Weimaraner).

CRAZY Question: I take Story to her second check up of her life. Considering I am a rather small person, it looks even more ridiculous as Story pulls me into the veterinarian’s office and mauls the assistant. As we reach the examination room, the vet asks me, “Did you do research on this breed before you bought one?”

This story leads me to MY Story. My dog IS Marley.

Today, I decided to take Story on a run around TCU. On our way home in the car, I decided to grab a flyer from one of those tubes on a house for sale in our neighborhood. I stupidly left my car door open, thinking Story would calmly stay in the back seat of the car. Why do I think that the Petsmart training we put her through, which she was crowned “Valedictorian” of, had any effect on her temperament?

As I was walking around the car out flies Story. As I yell for her to get back in the car she runs wildly into the four surrounding yards with her butt in the air begging me to chase her. I even slumped to a low where I tried to act as if I was getting back into the car (That didn’t work this time though). As I was chasing her, a car came rolling down the street in our direction. I tried to look like a decent dog owning parent and demand that Story get in the car. This proved to be a failure. Finally, I tried to wave the car by as I tried to distract Story by keeping her in someone’s yard until the car passed, until I noticed the person in the car was calling out my name. Yes, it seems people always witness my bad parenting skills. The person in the car ended up being my dear friend, Kristen, who goes to TCU. I apologized for my badly mannered dog and we decided to catch up over coffee in the next few weeks.

So, did you research the breed before you bought your Marley?

So I think this new graphic is here to stay. At least for now, that is. My Dad has been so helpful getting me set up. I wouldn’t call myself computer illiterate; although, I am not experienced in the world of behind the scenes blogging.

I found out just today that Etsy has an area for people to sell blog headers… check it out.

http://www.etsy.com/search_results.php?search_query=blog+headers&search_type=handmade

Story, our Weimaraner, was not helpful in my process of getting my blog set up. Dad was on the phone, while Story was running into our bathroom grabbing toilet paper off the roll. Telling her no doesn’t help either because then I end up chasing her around the house and trying to trap her behind our kitchen table. Hopefully, I will have better parenting skills someday, but until then she is constantly challenging me on how inattentive I can be.

Pictures are soon to come of the Howell clan!

Casey

Editing your own blog is hard! Hopefully I can get everything up and running tomorrow.

Casey
P.S. I think my Dad is secretly going behind me to fix and make things look better! Love you, Dad!