I have loads of jewelry stuff in my craft room. I went up, got a jingly bell, a jump ring, my jewelry pliers and hooked a bell on the dog’s collar in a matter of minutes. Problem solved. But it was only temporary.
A few days later the dog went silent again. The bell was gone but the jump ring was still there. Jingle bell failure, clearly. I got a second bell and did the same thing. This time, when the bell failed a few days later, we found it on the floor. The loop at the top of the bell had been weak and had pulled open, slipping off the jump ring.
I could fix that though, I didn’t need the point of failure of the weak loop at the top, I could hook a large jump ring through two openings of the ball-shaped bell. That worked for two more days and then the bell broke completely in half from the strain of a bouncy dog jingling it all day long.
It was time for jingle bell mark two, a second, smaller bell with a formed eye hole in the top of the bell. No reasonable dog-based strain was going to either break off the loop or crack the bell in half. I got two bells and two large jump rings and hooked them onto the leash ring on the collar. And two days later I found out I’d created another problem.
The large half-inch jump rings I’d been using were similar in size to the main hook on the dog’s collar where we attached the leash. My daughter had figured out how to open the leash clasped attach it to the dog’s collar so she could take her outside. But she’d been missing the collar ring and getting the bell’s jump rings instead. I used a strong jump ring, but it wasn’t designed to hold back a dog running at full pelt across the yard. This time when the bell came off the leash disconnected too. That was a fun fifteen minutes of catching a partially trained dog who doesn’t want to come inside when you’re late to an appointment.
So tonight I fixed the problem for good. I ditched the large jump rings in favor for smaller ones that my daughter won’t be able to connect the leash to and switched to split rings instead. A split ring is what your keychain has. You have to split it open, wedge the key in and then spin it around and around until you get it to the end of the loop and then, pop, the key’s hooked on and the ring has snapped back closed.
At least I hope it’s fixed. It’s convenient to hear the dog’s “jingle bells” as she moves around the house. She rarely barks and isn’t always in a hurry to find you. But if she moves, we can figure out where she is. My daughter, with her hearing, can find her before the rest of us can.
What else has happened here, let’s see, oh, my husband is coordinating another neighborhood event at our clubhouse this Thursday. It’s a holiday party we typically have on a weeknight for a few hours that includes children as well as adults. He realized he didn’t have decorations for the clubhouse and our neighbor who helped with her own businesses decorations has changed jobs and wasn’t an option. So I suggested our decorations.
We’re going out of town for Christmas and I don’t want to come home to a holiday-festive house when the holidays are over. My secret plan was to put up bits of decorations here and there every day so that just before we left not much remained out. Having the neighborhood holiday party as an excuse to get several boxes of decorations up and out this week was a good excuse.
One of the decorations we’ll have there is the lollipop tree my father gave the children some years ago. Every year I look for plain lollipops, the kind that’s flat, circular and only one color. It looks more traditional and the clear wrappers show off the candy on the tree. The only place I can find them now (Amazon of course) is through a vendor that sells five pound bags of them. The price is low but there are far more lollipops than the little tree can hold.
So we’re toting the tree over to the clubhouse and putting the excess lollipops in a basket for the children. It’s an alternative to candy canes and is a bit less messy as you don’t have to hold the candy itself to eat it. It’s a lovely little wooden tree, I’m looking forward to having it out for the neighborhood to see.
And I cut my finger. Thumb, actually. Using a knife when I should have been using my safety cutter to slice through a zip tie. I held the tissues tightly together for over an hour and then put a tight bandaid on my thumb in hopes that primary wound closure would reduce healing time. It’s much less painful now than it initially was. Tomorrow I’ll actually get a good look at the wound. I didn’t get a good look at it tonight.
The Big Boy Update: My son has done a lot of digital today, which is what he wanted to do on his birthday. He now can’t get to sleep because he didn’t burn enough energy for the day. Last night he had a similar problem. I brought down a “spot the differences” book I’d gotten for him and told him he could sit by the tree if he wanted to work on the book until he felt tired. He and his sister were sleeping on the couches in the living room as school was cancelled again today. He sat down by the tree and I brought over the moon, a glowing ball of light I’d gotten as a night light. We turned it to bright and he worked by “moonlight” beside the tree until he was ready to sleep.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter thought until today that I was reading braille like she does, using my fingers. I told her I wouldn’t be able to read like she did, ever. That adults who didn’t learn to read with their fingers when they were young aren’t ever able to read like someone can who learns when they’re a child. I told my daughter she had the most sensitive fingers of anyone I knew. She said, “mom, you’re making it sound like it’s my super power.” I told her I thought it was.
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