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...
Another object lesson in love: Owning a dog with hair rather than fur means that she must be groomed on a regular basis, which is both expensive and---for my particular dog---traumatic. But a little black dog in the south needs to be clipped if she's going to avoid heat stroke. Generally speaking, Licorice is just relieved to get sprung at the end of her beautifying, and my lavish affection about what a pretty girl she is and how delightful-smelling she's become is its own reward. Or something. For some reason, however, after yesterday's grooming appointment, we came home, as usual, and I...
The children have been out of school for a day and a half, and already the dog has gone completely insane. To be fair, there's a crew here working on the new fence, and when you are a 12-pound vicious guard dog that requires a lot of running back and forth from one end of the house to the other, barking and whining, just in case the pounding and trucks in the yard hadn't yet alerted you to the fact that INTRUDERS are AFOOT. The fact that said intruders are hard at work erecting a dog run for your spoiled furry ass is apparently not a deterrent to this behavior, by the way. But even...
