Red dirt girl

With appropriate homage to Emmy Lou Harris and east Texas, I live in red dirt country. Specifically, dirt derived from the Permian Yeso and Sangre de Cristo formations (yes, it's a hint to where I live). It is pretty dark red, as seen in the photo below, and stains everything (if anyone has a suggestion to how to get it out of my five-year-old's clothes, I'm all ears). When dry, its clay content makes for great adobe trails and the dirt roads in the 'hood get well compacted and easy to drive. It would make a nice house from adobe bricks, but that's a large project for another lifetime.


The reason I bring this up is that geology is often the root of many incidents in my house, including this morning's. Because of the red dirt, and the current monsoon storms, I have a policy of no shoes in the house, in an exercise in futility to keep the red dirt off my new fake-wood flooring. [The kitchen floor tile and grout is actually the same color as the dirt, as I presciently knew the result of putting my mud puppy-child and significant other together in this environment, so close to the back door.]

The occasional result of this policy is shown below. The outside shoes end up in the once black and white dog's mouth (now black and white with reddish-brown legs), with the following results.
As I was reading other blogs this morning, I looked out the dining room window, to note the black, white and red dog wandering by with a distinctly hot pink small Timberland sandal in her mouth. She got yelled at. The shoe was saved. I got a blog post.


The offending dog, happily posing for a picture.