The GOOD news is that I found a deal on a huge sack of Sour Patch Kids (mmmmm... Sour Patch Kids) and it took less convincing than I thought it might to talk the kids into us all staying in last night. I know that probably makes me some sort of Halloween Scrooge, but whatever. I gave them each their own bowl of candy and everyone seemed happy and it just seemed easier. The BAD news is that the dog really and truly hates us, now. Or at least she did until I gave her some peanut butter this morning. Which I guess cancels out the hate. But I'm putting some pics below the fold so that you can...
As I noted last month, Licorice enjoys her time out on safari now that the fence is complete and she can roam around in relative freedom, inside a contained area. It had gotten to where she spent only a napping hour or so indoors with me, during the day, and spent the remainder of her daylight hours either 1) outside doing lord knows what, 2) hurling herself at my office door as a subtle hint that she wished to head out, or 3) standing next to my chair whining until I opened the damn door. I'll admit, I was a little saddened that just laying on the floor of my office was no longer sufficient...
If I had some magical blog-glue I could probably cobble all of this together into a cohesive post, but I don't. Oh well! I came home from my travels and waited for the inevitable I-spent-hours-on-an-airborne-metal-tube-filled-with-other-people's-germs illness to settle in, but then spent a couple of days patting myself on the back for remembering to take my Vitamin C, because I had FINALLY escaped that particular fate. Only, now there's some weird bug going through Monkey's school that Monkey clearly has and I spent a day going, "Do I have it? Am I just making myself sick psychosomatically?...
I think the various tributes and remembrances and "never forget"s and such that are all over the 'net today are good and important and needed, but I just can't. Call me a delicate flower, call me cold or shallow or whatever, some things are too hard for me. And this is one of them. I'm calling it knowing my limitations. Over the last few days, my good and loyal hosting provider---truly the very best hosting service I've ever had---has been working literally around the clock to deal with various DNS attacks that keep bringing my servers down. Which means every time I think to go post...
I had high hopes for today being a super-productive day, on account of I scheduled a grooming appointment for Licorice this morning, which meant I had to be up and showered and dressed much earlier than usual. I know the joke about freelancers working from home in their pajamas is tired and overdone, but if I don't have somewhere to be, chances are excellent that I won't shower until lunchtime. And even then, I'm likely to lose an hour or more to "I should totally go shower. But I'm hungry. Maybe I'll just fix myself a salad and catch up on email while I eat. Okay, I'm done eating, but oh my...
Things have been so (relatively) calm and lovely this week that I finally remembered to tell you about Licorice's latest adventure. BUT FIRST, here's a brand-new game we've developed that you may enjoy playing at home: Every morning before school, ask the newly-loving-school-more-than-life-itself kid if maybe he'd rather just stay home with you, instead? Reactions will vary but will never cease to be entertaining. This morning, for example, Monkey patted my arm and said, "No thanks, but I'll stay home with you TOMORROW!" I cheered but then remembered that tomorrow is Saturday. That is...
(Subtitle: Licorice's account of The Trauma.) It was bad enough that they had so many PEOPLES here, milling around, and the puppy-ones were all splashing in the Wet Pit Of Despair and shrieking, probably because being all wet is so horrible. I was dealing with that. I was just trying to stay out of everyone's way, just eating a little grass, wandering out to my run and sniffing along the fence and everything, but then IT happened. The Interloper appeared. I don't know who he thinks he is, but he's big and drooly and my people are acting like he's wrapped in bacon or something, just because...
As I so often do, after a more difficult topic, today I'm going to go "LALALA!" very loudly with my fingers in my ears, and turn to lighter matters. Lighter matters like trying to drown my dog. The thing is, she can swim. We KNOW she can swim. And once we converted the pool to salt water we thought AWESOME, NOW THE DOG WILL SWIM because we were sure her previous aversion to the pool was because of the chlorine. I mean, after all, she loves the beach, so maybe with the chemicals out of the way, we could teach her to love the pool. Especially now that we have a decent fence and she can just...
It seems ridiculous to claim we're out communing with nature when, in reality, our camper has a microwave and the campground has free wifi. I know. But we're parked in a forest where emerging takes you right to the ocean's shore, and more to the point, this is The Land Of A Million Squirrels. When you sign in at the campground, they give you all sorts of information materials (maps and such), and everything carries prominent warnings that you should not feed the squirrels. This baffles me. First of all, these squirrels swagger around like the damn rodent mafia, which to me is SO CREEPY that...
