I have this decal in my car window.   I still feel all giddy and gushy when I think about the greatest season my team has ever had.   Waiting 40 years wasn’t so bad, just to have the celebration that ensued.

Seriously, Saints fans have always “partied like rock stars when we were the losers of the league,” so you can imagine how much fun it is to party with them when they win.

Believe was the word of the season.  Believe.

Last night, my son and husband headed off to the second high school game of the season.  Our child’s school has a fledgling team, fielded for the very first time this year.  They won their very first game last week.  An exciting way to start the season, yes?

While I stayed home nursing my sore back from all the painting I was doing, I remembered my last year of high school football.   I, too, attended a small Catholic high school, no more than 400 students any given year.  Naturally, we were not able to put together very many winning seasons.  That fall, late in the season, our team was 5 – 5, with one more game to go.

Believe was the word of the season.  Everywhere you went in the school, there were posters up that said “6-5, Believe.”     The players would touch the signs as they headed into classrooms all that week.   And, yes, we did have a winning season that year.

I think it meant as much to that team as last year meant to us Saints’ fans.

Thursday night is the kickoff.  Naturally, the NFL has jumped on the bandwagon along with all the fair-weather fans, and they are sponsoring a pregame PARADE in the french quarter.     I really don’t think the NFL version will ever be able to match the real deal, but what-ever.

My Jewish friends in New Orleans thinks its really kind that NFL is throwing them a Rosh Hashanah parade, but they’ll have to miss because of  Temple.

The drapes have to be re-hung as well. Don’t you know, the spot where the previous brackets were is about 4 inches too high. Will have more pics of the finished room later.

That damn red paint took 6 coats (on top of the primer), so after I finished, I didn’t want to see another painting project for as long as I lived.

Two problems with that: 1) I had bought paint to do my bedroom at the same time I bought the red, and 2) red paint on white door frames shows up pretty glaringly, so eventually, I had to fix that.

The white door frames were the project I tackled last weekend. I spent an afternoon taping, painting, and discovering, too my horror, there were many spots where the tape failed, white paint seeped under, and if you thought red showed up on white doors, you should see shiny white semi-gloss on red walls. So, grumbling, I went off to find the red paint leftovers and touched it up. All worth it, because the bathroom looks all sparkly clean now. Only, I have the urge to paint every baseboard, door and window frame in the house now.

This weekend, I began the paint my own room project. We’ve been in this house for 10 years. It was all one color when we moved in. Slowly, I’ve been tackling the other rooms in the house. I finally decided my room needed to be done. I’m painting it a deep golden tan color. (I put the bedspread that goes with it in the room years ago. Now, it’s wearing out.) I had to do one side of the room yesterday, and the other side tomorrow because the bed is just too big and too cumbersome to take apart to move out of the room. I never realized how BIG my bedroom furniture was until we tried to move it all to one part of the room.

Pictures soon! I am going drapery shopping this afternoon because I want to complete my comfy cave this weekend.

Let me tell you a little bit more about our puppy Deuce. Deuce is a Cardigan Welsh Corgi, aka “The Corgis with the Tail.” We chose this breed for several reasons with the main ones being that my son and I do not react allergically to corgis, and corgis have temperaments well-suited to indoor living.

Corgis are herding dogs; the instinct is deeply ingrained in these pups. In the house, when everyone is in the same room, the doggie will happily nap nearby. However, if one person gets up and leaves the room, he becomes nervous and goes to follow that one. This habit is particularly obvious when it is a small person who leaves the room.

The behavior makes perfect sense when you think about herds and flocks of animals. When a small one becomes separated from the group, it can be dangerous for that animal. Deuce’s instinct to keep the little ones safe and the herd together is a marvelous gift of nature that has been capitalized on over the ages by breeders. Remember, through history, dogs have been working animals, not mere pampered companions.

Today, I allowed Deuce to ride along in carpool when I took two girls to school. It completely blew his mind when those two kids left the car and trotted off into school. He went BALLISTIC! He was really upset.

Sorry, Deuce. I did not mean to harm your psyche this morning. Have patience with me. You are my first doggie that I’ve ever raised. I’ll make mistakes, you know.

Oh! The wonderful doggie smells were everywhere. And so were the doggies. We were really having fun, until I realized the trail was not going to loop back around to the parking area. As soon as we realized that we had to backtrack about a mile to the car, it started to pour down raining. I only wish I had the camera when we returned. My puppy was pitiful. He walked along on the leash, trotting in the downpour, glancing sideways up at me wearing a completely disgusted look. “Why, pray tell, are we doing this? This is not fun.”

He’s pretty wiped out after his jog through the monsoon. It was like being in an episode of Lost. One moment, we are trekking along having a conversation, and the next moment, we are drenched.

At least, we ended up back home, dried and comfy.