Should we or shouldn't we

We're going to have to make our girl gatherings a monthly thing. Saturday night was a hoot. Fourteen girls (mostly couples) gathered at Amy and Sara's house in Grapevine for chicken parmesan, lasagna, salads, and wine. (A wine gathering in Grapevine...how fitting. Maybe a barbecue in Mesquite next?) Between passionate conversations about babies and The L Word, we did manage to find the time to play UNO Attack and Truth or Dare Jenga. Let me just say, sometimes the friends who seem the quietest and the meekest are really the most liberated when it comes to "mature subject matter." I love it.

After a couple of glasses of wine Angela and I got into a conversation with our friend Kristin, who mentioned that she was looking for a home for her minature schnauzer, Morgan. We already have three schnauzers and Angela has said on more than one occasion that we would be nuts for adding another, but I couldn't stop myself from getting excited about the idea. Angela is the sensible one when it comes to dog ownership, while I'm a total pushover and I don't stop to think about how difficult it might be to sleep with four dogs in the bed, etc. As Kristin described Morgan we started to picture how small and sweet he must be, and I could tell that Angela was beginning to cave. He was smaller than our dogs so he wouldn't take up much space, and we would be helping a friend. It was easy to justify. So we told Kristin to bring Morgan to our house Sunday afternoon to see if he would get along with our three sweeties.

We were still excited about it when the wine wore off, so we figured we had made the right decision. But wouldn't ya know, Sunday morning Kristin called and said the people who have been taking care of Morgan for the past two weeks wanted to keep him. Dang it! We were so deflated. Angela might have even been more bummed than me. But here's what happened in our heads during the whole process -- the three-dog limit has been tested and we survived, so the ceiling may be forever lifted. I didn't know how to handle the pain of the disappointment yesterday, so I got online and started looking up miniature schnauzer rescues. I found one little guy who is in foster care recovering from a broken leg, and I inquired about him. The person who emailed me back said he was going to meet with another family this week, but if that falls through she would let me know. Since I had gotten that far I figured there was no harm in continuing on and looking up other schnauzer websites. I found some other cuties.

Saturday when we left for the party the idea of a fourth dog had not even entered our minds, but now we're entertaining the thought. We need to even things out and have two dogs per lap. Our dogs are 9, 8, and 6 and we need to have a younger one. We want to provide a good home for a pup that needs one. The list of pros is so much longer than the list of cons.

So we had fun at the party Saturday night and now our family might be expanding. Perhaps we should have paid more attention to the baby conversation than the dog conversation. Heck, why stop now. Let's add a baby and a schnauzer.