Happy Birthday, My Little Fool (Pics added)

(Pics have now been added. Normally I would only post the "good" ones but I figured the entire series would give a better feel for the "mood" of the party. ;) I just wish that I would have had SH take pictures during the feeding frenzy... )

My little girl turned one yesterday. I'm using the term "little" loosely mind you as the last time we weighed her about a week ago, she rang in at around 105 lbs. or so. It was a bit difficult to tell since the scale kept bouncing around due to the near impossibility of SH standing still enough on the bathroom scale while holding bodonkadog.

So of course since I kind of forgot to do anything special for poor Shilo's birthday, which we had guestimated was around March 20, I decided we needed to do a little something for a combo b-day celebration. I had to stop at the store on the way home for some more packs of that Or.tega Chipotle taco mix (that's some good shit!) so I figured I should get something for the dogs. I found a couple sirloin steak variety Cea.sar dog food - the dog equivalent of Fa.ncy Feast - AND I happened to find a pack of Happy Birthday party hats!

Of course the whole deal was chaos.

Neither dog wanted to wear the hat for more than a couple seconds and they both listen to commands like "Sit" SO WELL (sarcasm) that I only got one good picture out of it (besides the evil eyes).

They LOVED the treat so much though that it was like a shark feeding frenzy. Had I really thought it out, I would have flopped the meat cakes onto some kind of little plates and immediately plaved in from them after putting the hats on so that I could maybe get a decent picture. Instead, I ended up chasing them around for a good 10 minutes with the camera while SH yelled and swore at them as they were ignoring the sit commands.

Then I threw the meat cake down for them - still in the plastic molds mind you - and watched as they mangled the whole thing trying to get to the food, and Shilo run off into the corner with his.

Then, when I tried to help him by wrestling the chomped container away (with the complete meat cake still intact) and plunking it out on the floor, out of nowhere comes fat girl who in a split second snatches up the cake and inhales it! I don't think I have ever seen her move so fast! Luckily she had only managed to get about a third of her portion dislodged from the mold so I quickly grabbed that one and gave it to Shilo.

Happy Birthday little girl! Momma wuvs you! - And of course Shilo too! :)

Interview with an Irish Girl

I meant to do this a few weeks ago (at least!) when I first received it but had to mull over a couple hard questions. These were really good! Also, things got nuts at work backing people up who have the nerve to take vacations when I am stuck here! BASTARDS!
Blah blah blah

Anyhoo...

On to the Q & A! Yay!

1) If you could relive one day of your life, which would you choose and why? (you can't change anything that happens, just relive it)

Probably the first full day in Paris with SH. We saw some sights, wandered around the Latin Quarter and sat in a café drinking coffee. It was wonderful and magical. We’ve been planning to go back there since – for a longer time of course – at least 1.5 to 2 weeks. Or maybe longer. ;)

2) When you are 57 years old, what would you like life to look like?

Be totally debt free, traveling the world with SH and friends, have lots of money socked away in investments, etc. to pay for travels and maybe living somewhere warmer with a friend or two (and SH, of course)?

3) Describe an experience that you've had that really made an impact on who you are today.

Probably my parent’s divorce and grandpa’s death – all within a year’s time. I learned that nothing is a sure thing, someone you love can be ripped out of your life and your whole foundation shaken, your world as you know it can totally change and things can end. But on the positive side, I learned I’m strong enough to survive whatever is thrown at me.

4) If you could give "the perfect gift" to someone, regardless of cost/availability/practicality, what would you give and to whom?

Wow, this is a hard one. ???? I think probably for SH and I to take my best girl, Lena, on a fun (and loooong) vacation to thank her for all that she’s done for us, and especially for me, over the years. She has been by my side through all my shit, listening, counseling, and cheering me up when needed. She is the definition of a best friend. And of course I’d throw in her very own Sheldon geek-type guy for her extra special companion! ;)

5) What color is your bedroom (or the color you would *like* it to be) and why did you choose it?

Oddly enough, the color is called French Castle (it was painted well before our trip to Paris) and is a sort of dusty lavender color. It was selected to coordinate with the bedding for the spare bedroom before SH and I moved our bedroom downstairs after realizing that the climate was too difficult to control in the upstairs living area. I like the color since it’s a mild, soothing color. The funnest color I had in a bedroom though was at my first home that I bought on my own. It was a tiny post-war house in the Como Park area in St. Paul, with a decent sized kitchen and living room, a tiny bathroom and one tiny and one small bedroom (the small one is the one I moved into). I painted the walls a bold blue, sort of like the depths of the ocean or the deepest blue of the sky and the ceiling was painted yellow, like the warm glow of the sun. I had my black wrought iron canopy bed set up with the canopy rails (in the open, flat, square pattern) with a couple violet colored scarves draped over the canopy. I loved going to bed and waking up in that room - especially because it was mine!

Thanks for the questions, IG. Sorry it took so long! I know, I've been lame with the posting these days. There just seems to be so much going on and time is flying by, know what I mean? Ugh. Hopefully I'll have something interesting to write about soon. Something's gotta happen, right?

Conehead vs. Dogula

I keep fluctuating between having a good idea for commentary on this blog and not really having anything to say - nothing of interest anyway. Basically I'm trying to get myself geared up to kick ass on another project at work to help propel me to the next promotion and get through the usual holiday shit so my life can be back to normal and Lena and I can get back on track with our training for the next 5K. Which reminds me, I meant to search for a 5K in the metro area sometime this spring. I've been meaning to do that for a few weeks now so let's see if I can actually remember to do it before I log off this evening.

There has been some recent "excitement" in our part of the world. First, I finally managed to get my ass in gear and take care of a little piece of personal business - at work of course - on Monday.

I called the vet to get Tas' annual exam scheduled and to get Greta's spay set up. Well, it so happened that they had an opening Tues. morning for surgery, so I went ahead and scheduled it. We decided to have her micro-chipped while she was out too since SH really wanted that done. AND it was FIVE dollars cheaper to do it while she was already under for surgery (they do that as incentive to have it done), which really put a dent in the FIVE HUNDRED dollar total bill! Well, we did opt for the pre-op blood work to check her clotting factor along with a couple other things to be on the safe side and she was due for a few other final vaccinations, so it wasn't just the spay that cost that much. Still, it was a bit of a shock. But I digress - so I drop her off Tues. morning for her girlie surgery. As expected, they need to weigh her, which I was hoping for anyway since the last time she was weighed was when she was about 6 months old and was about 67 lbs at the time. Big brother Shilo was 72 lbs. So now she's a little over 8 months and when she gets on the scale it does the bouncing back and forth 70 - 94 - 83 - 90 etc. It finally stops (roughly) at 89.4. Yup, our little Fat Girl really is FAT! OK, she's more "girthy" than anything. She outweighs her brother by almost 20 lbs and I don't think she's quite done growing yet at 8 1/2 months! WOW!

She came out of surgery just fine and we picked her up Wed. afternoon. As we expected - and somewhat sadistically hoped for - she donned the plastic cone (or the Elizabethan collar, as a fellow cat shelter lady called it). We tried our best not to laugh at her outright, settled up the bill, got our instructions for pain meds, suture monitoring, etc. and SH led her out the door. After listening to the vet tech explain to us how it will probably take her a couple days or so to get used to maneuvering with the collar on, what does she do? On the way out of the vet clinic - WHAM! She runs smack into the metal frame doorway, creating a large fracture down the side of the cone. So I go BACK into the clinic, wait a couple MORE minutes for a free tech to come out and ask if I could possibly have another cone because my gifted dog managed to nearly destroy the other one on the way out the door. Luckily the tech just laughed, said sure and to hang on a minute while she went and got ANOTHER one.

We tried to hold out as long as possible with that first cone but, of course, within approximately 1 hour of arriving home, that one was just about hanging off her collar. So we had to break out #2. Here are some fun pics of her trying to navigate the house with the cone head.

Leaving the bedroom (pay no attention to the floor in serious need of refinishing :o):


Trying to get out the back door to go potty:


I love this one. "How the F*CK am I supposed to eat?!


Trying to maintain a shred of dignity by acting casual, as if nothing is different:

Look at the poor pathetic baby with the crazy-milky eyes (they're actually brown):

So Thurs. night comes and I'm alone with Conehead because SH is working an overnight shift. Has anyone out there had to deal with a fairly rambunctious LARGE dog who needs to have a frickin' cone on her head? Let me tell you, it was a real treat! If she wasn't ignoring my commands the first 30 times or so, she was banging, scraping, slamming or bouncing that fucking cone off the wall, bed, nightstand, her kennel - really any object she could find - and LOUDLY. After a while of that and my resulting screaming at her to just lie down, I was finally able to get to sleep, only to be awoken a few times over the course of the night with more of the same. Which, incidently, contributed to the demise of cone #2. By morning the cone was literally hanging off of her collar with no way to secure it in a remotely functionable fashion. I would have called in a little late at work and ran to the vet or Pet.co/Pet.smart to pick up another cone but I couldn't remember for sure if I had a morning meeting and frankly I was so close to my breaking point that I needed to just get the hell out of there and away from her before I wound up smacking her silly. After that I can really see how shaken baby syndrome happens. Luckily SH was able to make the run after he got off work and was actually able to do a little research and found the "Co.mfy Cone" which is basically the same deal but it is made with nylon fabric over a foam structure that velcros shut so #1 It won't break apart when slammed into walls, doorways, etc. and #2 it's got to be a bit more comfortable and almost act like a pillow when she rests. So now this is what she's sporting:

Unfortunately, it's hard to see in these pics but it almost looks like a flower (like a tulip) and her head is a giant stamen. I asked SH if they came in other colors like red or purple but he said they only came in black. Now she looks like Dogula. She vants to suck your blooood. It's also trimmed in reflective material so when Dogula goes out searching for victims after dark she's still safely visible!

We also made holiday cookies as part of SH's birthday celebration. (He's been wanting to make cookies. Isn't that cute?) More on the birthday festivities later - this post is already really long and I need to do more searching on 5Ks. But I will leave you with a photo of the family room progress as mentioned previously (even this section is not done yet) and a sneak peak at what Christmas cookies look like in the Gumby-SH household. Later! :)




And yes, it was two adults that decorated these cookies...

Victory Is Mine!

This past week has been a pretty damned good one! I got the confirmation that my promotion was approved by HR. Not only that but my pay increase, on which my expectations were effectively lowered due to the shitty economy and resulting budget cuts, wound up being quite a bit bigger than expected. I was thinking that I would be lucky if I got 4 or 5%. I wound up with a 15% increase! Yeah, you read that right – 15 percent! Whoo hoo! What a great birthday present, huh? Honestly, I don't mean to sound like I'm bragging or anything, this has just been a looong time coming. And for anyone out there having less than stellar luck with the current job and economy atmosphere, I'm crossing my fingers and sending good thoughts your way. :)

Along with celebrating my promotion, I was able to get some more done in the basement/family room remodel that isn’t quite done yet. We now have one end of the room completely painted. It just needs the finishing work – wood door and window trim, baseboard molding and chair rail installed (as well as the floor but that comes last). We also have the new “black Friday deal” tv set up – 52 inches of LCD HD! This weekend I dug out our receiver and speakers and got the surround sound reconnected and vacuumed the layer of cat hair off the sectional sofa from when it was stored not-so-well under plastic in the basement during remodeling. We just threw the new area rug down temporarily to make it more cozy too! I’m working on getting SH to agree on having friends over for movie night before it’s all done. I don’t know for sure where exactly in the process he thinks it has to be before we can entertain. I say, we have comfortable places to sit, a huge tv and awesome sound and that’s all we really need! Really, like our friends are going to say “OMG, their family room isn’t totally done yet. I don’t want to go over there!” If someone did have that attitude, I’d say fuck ‘em! Like any of our friends really care. I’ll have to check in w/SH to confirm exactly what it is that he really insists be done before entertaining before I blow a vessel over it. Maybe he just thinks all the painting should be done. In which case, I could compromise on that.

I’ll try to remember to post a few pics of the progress – in case anyone is interested! ;)

Couple Quickies - ;)

I don't have enough time to really write about anything but wanted to share a couple funnies...

A while back I was e-mailing with a friend (I'm sure most IRL friends will figure out who this is) and she sent me this little "story" about her activities one day. I was laughing so hard in my cubicle that tears were forming and I had to show a coworker because she was wondering what was up. Part of the humor is picturing my friend running around in this scenario, but I think it's still amusing if you don't know her.

"oh, and a funny Fritz story. last night he was running around the house with a full-sized poop stuck to his butt. I pulled it off and found that it was full of these little twiggy dried grass thingy's (from outside on the balcony in a pot that he likes to munch on). after I got the turd off there was still a giant twig sticking out of his ass so I chased him around the house trying to pull it out. he thought it was some sort of game and kept teasing me by running away at the last second. then he bit me and looked all violated. puh-lease!"

Also, SH found this item on some website and of course he said he thought of me. I wonder if they make it in a bumper sticker or t-shirt or something. It's pretty amusing. I think I want it...