Puppy Talk - The Hungry Box

 

Puppy Girl:  What's going on?

Puppy Dog:  What now?

Puppy Girl:  Mama just opened the white box and all the hairless ape food bowls don't have food on them anymore!  I was licking them last night when Mama was putting food bowls in there, and it was yummy!

Puppy Dog:  You mustn't lick the food bowls that go in the white box!

Puppy Girl:  Why not?

Puppy Dog:  The white box is a monster!  It has to be fed every few days.  Mama and Dada feed it their left overs and then it makes a growly noise and all the hairless ape food bowls come out clean.

Puppy Girl:  It's a monster?

Puppy Dog:  Yes, like the Dysonmonster.

Puppy Girl:  But I want to lick the food bowls.

Puppy Dog:  You do that at your own risk.  One time, I was licking the food bowls and the monster closed it's flap all of a sudden and bonked me on the chin!  It hurt!  Mama said sorry, but it wasn't her fault.

Puppy Girl:  Wow...

Puppy Dog:  Yeah.  I was very brave, of course, because I'm a big boy.  So just stay away, puppy!

Puppy Girl:  I don't like all these monster in our house. 

Puppy Dog:  Yeah, I don't either.  But they come with the hairless apes, and they have the food.

Puppy Girl:  Yeah, and they scratch you behind the ears.

Puppy Dog:  Oh, yeeeeeah.

Puppy Talk - Missing out

 

Puppy Girl: [Hooooooowl]

Puppy Dog:  Why are you crying this time?

Puppy Girl:  [Sob]

Puppy Dog:  Come on.  You heard Mama.  It's Relaxy Time for puppies.  You have to stay in your crate and have a nap or chew your little toy.

Puppy Girl:  But... [Sniff!]  I can hear things...

Puppy Dog:  Of course you can hear things!  What are you talking about?

Puppy Girl:  I can hear things going on, and they're going on without meeeeeee  [Sob]

Puppy Dog:  Oh for Dog's sake!  There will always be things that go on without you.  Hairless apes do all sorts of strange things that don't include us.

Puppy Girl:  It's not fair.  [Sob]

Puppy Dog:  Would it make you feel better if I told you what Mama was doing?

Puppy Girl:  Oh.. [Sniff] OK.

Puppy Dog:  Mama carried these big teeth things out into the yard and took some moving steps with her.  

Puppy Girl:  Teeth things?  

Puppy Dog:  Yes, they were biting the plants, so they must be teeth.  Don't interrupt!

Puppy Girl: [Sniff]

Puppy Dog:  She climbed up on the moving steps and started to make the big teeth bite the ivy.

Puppy Girl: Weeeeeeeird.

Puppy Dog:  I know.  She wanted the ivy to die.

Puppy Girl:  Die?  Why?  I like to poop in the ivy!  She mustn't kill the ivy!

Puppy Dog:  Reeeeee-laaaax yourself to a panic, girl!  It was the ivy on the fence, not on the ground.  Anyway, she kept saying 'Die Bah Stud.'

Puppy Girl:  What's a Bah Stud?

Puppy Dog:  I don't know.  Maybe there were little animals called Bah Studs in the ivy.

Puppy Girl:  Come on.  We dogs are born with a knowledge of all plants.  I've never heard of Bah Studs.

Puppy Dog:  Well, Mama comes from a place far away.  Maybe they have a different name for bugs.

Puppy Girl:  Yeah, Mama's a ferner.

Puppy Dog:  Anyway, that's all you missed.  No big deal.

Puppy Girl:  NO BIG DEAL!  I missed out on seeing what a Bah Stud is!  [Hoooooooowl]

Puppy Dog:  Oh my Dog.  I'm going to my bed.  You're on your own.

Quote Unquote - Mr Obama

Except from "By the People - The Election of Barack Obama"

January 2, 2008.  Night before the Iowa Caucus.

Barack: "Michelle and I had a really interesting conversation and she said, uh, 'We're not doing this again.'

And at first I thought she just meant - well, you know what? - I'm never home, and it's hard on the family.

And she meant a little bit of that, but what she really meant was, you know, the reason that it is important for us to do it now, the reason that it's better for us to do it now than later, is 'we're still almost normal.'

Which I loved.  It was a great line. 

[Pointing to Michelle] I attribute it to you.  It was a good line.

And what she meant was - you know what? - five years ago, six years ago, we had just finished paying off our student loans---"

Michelle: "Three years ago, what do you mean?"

Barack: "Well, I was actually five or six. 

We were still living in a condo.  It was a little bit too small for the kids, for our growing family.  Uh... We still had credit card debt, we were trying to figure out how to save for college for the girls and save for our retirement. 

I mean, the point is, is that we've gone through what people are going through right now relatively recently.  We don't forget it. 

And so, when I go into the White House, I will be carrying your voices with me. 

What it comes down to is, who do you trust?

And - you know - I think that, uh, if you trust me, then I think I'll deliver for you.

All right, I'm gonna go to bed!"

Whether you agree with his politics or not, I really do find it refreshing to have someone in the White House who is close to my age, facing the same financial issues I am (he earns $400 000 as President - a lot less than CEOs of large companies), who remembers what it is like to struggle, to worry, to strive to get educated.

There is no way, if I had met Mr Bush socially and he weren't President, that we would have moved in the same social circles.

The Obamas feel like a couple that I might meet at a friend's BBQ.

And I like that.

I'm jus' sayin' - Interview

 

The interview question you don't want to hear when you've been unemployed for 6 months:

"Why haven't you been snapped up already?"

I'm jus' sayin'

Dear Diary - Good morning?

 

Dear Diary,

Yesterday I had lunch with a good friend.  Like us, she and her husband have two dogs.  She was telling me about how much her dogs like routine, and how theirs worked.

She gets up in the morning at 6am, walks the dogs for 15 minutes, feeds them, then gets ready for work and is out of the house to go to work by 7:15.  She said that the walk in the morning gets her blood going and wakes her up, which sounded like a really good idea to me.

Well, Puppy Girl wakes us at 6am anyway, so I decided to give it a try.  I got up at 6am, let the dogs out for potty, brushed my teeth, got dressed, caught Puppy Girl so I could get her harness on her (she hates it), tried to get Puppy Dog to calm down and stop bouncing when he saw his leash, and finally got out of the front door.

Puppy Dog is on an extendable leash, and Puppy Girl on a thin nylon normal one.  He doesn't like her first thing in the morning - who would like a baby jumping all over them nipping their ears before they'd had breakfast? - so I have to keep them apart.  She can't differentiate his play growls from his I-am-going-to-bite-you-if-you-don't-stop-it-NOW growls.

So she spent the entire walk pulling at the harness, whimpering, trying to get to her brother.

We walked for about five minutes before I realized I had made a mistake not putting my gloves on.  I wrestled one from my pocket, held both leashes in one hand, and wrangled a glove on.  Puppy Dog immediately decided to squat and have his morning ablutions, so there I was, two dogs straining at the leads, taking the glove off again, shining the little torch on my keyring on an neighbor's bush, trying to find the poop and scoop it.

On we went.  Puppy Girl strained against the leash all the way around the three blocks, and I became concerned that she was learning the wrong thing about going for a walk - pulling.  No better time to deconstruct bad behavior and replace it with good behavior than right now with a puppy, so I put Puppy Dog back in the house and took Puppy Girl out for another walk, with treats in my pocket, trying to get her to walk at my side.

Giving her treats with gloves on was a mistake.  She thought it was a new biting game.  We got halfway up the block with her jumping up at my side, trying to nip my gloves.  Then she saw another dog coming down the street and started barking her head off.  I turned back and went home.

I put Puppy Girl in her crate - after I managed to catch her - when we got home, and fed Puppy Dog, then put her breakfast in her crate.  She wasn't interested, and kept barking and whining.

I figured maybe she needed potty - she had only peed on our walk - so I took her outside.  But all she wanted to do was play. 

I got her back inside, herded her back into the crate, suffered the crying (you have to ignore it) till she ate.

Thank God.

Potty time again.  She ran straight to her potty place (yay!), and peed.  I knew she must need to poop by now, so tried to get her to do it.  Nope.  She barked and barked.  I was confused. 

And then I saw it.  She had obviously pooped first thing this morning - outside the enclosure - and I had stepped in it.

I scooped it, then got the hose to clean off the bottom of my shoes.  Of course the water got into my socks.  I squelched my way inside, seriously contemplating a cup of tea laced with whiskey.

It was 7am and yes, dear Diary, my blood was pumping.  But I didn't feel awake.

I felt exhausted.

Puppy Talk - The Pack Heirarchy

 

Puppy Girl:  Why does Mama say "Sh!" everytime I bark?  I'm a DOG.  I'm supposed to bark!

Puppy Dog:  Don't exaggerate.  She doesn't do it every time.

Puppy Girl:  Well she does it every time I bark at her from my potty enclosure!

Puppy Dog:  Exactly.  There are times when it's OK to bark, and times when it isn't.  That's one of the times it isn't.  I mean, come on, she's standing right in front of you!  You don't have to shout.

Puppy Girl:  Yeah... but how else am I supposed to tell her that I want to get out?  I tell her, I say: I want OUT! I want OUT!

Puppy Dog:  Yeah, you don't get to shout demands at Mama.  I don't think you're quite getting the pack hierarchy.

Puppy Girl:  Pack what?  That's a very big word...

Puppy Dog:  Hierarchy.  See, this is how it goes.  Dada is the Alpha Dog.  Mama is the Beta Bitch.  I am the Gamma Guy.  And you are the Delta Doggie.

Puppy Girl:  What?!

Puppy Dog:  Dada is first, the most important and the pack leader.  Mama is second.  I am third.  You are last.  You don't get to decide anything.

Puppy Girl:  AW, COME ON!

Puppy Dog:  That's how it works.

Puppy Girl:  That is just, wrong.  I'm the cutest one...

Puppy Dog:  OK, I'm just going to pin you down, now, till you get it.

I'm jus' sayin' - The nose knows

 

Picking your nose can feel really satisfying sometimes.

I'm jus' sayin'.

Health is Wealth - Gym + other people = less pain

 

 So the other day I am catching up on email and I have daytime TV on.  Some doctor show is explaining a new liposuction technique, and this gets me thinking about my 1441 goal.

Puppy Girl has just gone to sleep in her crate and I head for the shower.  Suddenly a crazy thought jumps into my head:  Why not go to the gym for a short workout?

Before I can find a way to justify laziness (i.e. before my brain can fully engage), I am in the car and on my way.

As per usual, there are gymstractions that make the whole thing bearable.  

I love watching other people at the gym.  You can't feel the pain if you are constantly distracted by the strange goings-on around you.

First, there was the big nipple lady in the changing room.  I know that it's not the done thing to look at other people naked in the changing room (unless, of course, you are gay, in which case who can blame you?), but I swear to God these nipples were yelling at me.  If the woman had spoken to me, I would have struggled to look up into her eyes.

The woman in question was tall and thin, and no bigger than a B cup.  But her nipples had dummies (pacifiers) hanging off the end of them.  Are you detecting a note of jealousy?  Yeah, you're spot on.  Mine are like those tiny headache capsules.

I have only seen such deliciously suckable things on one other person, and she had the pale, soft, pendulous melons to go with them.  It just seemed like a strange paradox, a skinny, flattish woman with this pink things sticking out and inch in front of her.  

Anyway, after staring while trying not to look like I was staring, I finally got my trainers on and headed down to the machines.

First thing I saw, as I scanned the room, was a lady sitting on one of the reclining bikes in one of those padded winter coats, with the fur lined hood up.  The gym felt like it had a perfect indoor temperature to me and, once I was moving on the eliptical for 2 minutes, I started to warm up.  So why was this woman bundled up?

I began to wonder if she had a cold.  If she did, she really shouldn't have been at the gym spreading her germs.  I resolved to confront her if she sniffed or or sneezed.  She did neither... and so robbed me of my Jerry Springer moment.

Bitch.  

It wasn't long before more entertainment came along... the Chatty Cathy twins.  I don't know why, but there is one personal trainer who just seems to have clients who won't shut up for more than thirty seconds at a time.  

The last guy we saw her with was channeling James Joyce and going on and on with a personal monologue.  These two women that she was training didn't even need her to nod and make mmm-hmm noises - they just talked to each other.  They paused, chatting, as they got off the eliptical trainers, with the poor personal trainer trying to lead them to another area of the gym for their next exercise.  Every transition to a new exercise took twice as long as it should, and the complaining!  You would've thought they were being waterboarded.

Yak yak yakety yak.

I was sorry I hadn't brought my iPod.

When I got to the ab/stretching mats, I got my final bit of entertainment for the day.  Another personal trainer had a brand new client, and he obviously had hip problems.  The trainer was having him roll back and forth on a hard foam roller to massage his muscles with his own body weight.  He was biting his lip in pain, poor man.

"Just one more roll, back and forth!" the trainer kept saying.

"Yeah, OK, that's - uh - powerful," he said, clearly relieved it was over.

"OK!  GREAT!" the trainer squeaked.  "Now the other side!"

I'm sure he was wondering why he was actually paying a small blonde woman to torture him.

But here's the point of all this...

I WENT TO THE GYM!

BY MYSELF!

WITH NO PERSONAL TRAINING APPOINTMENT!

OK, so I haven't been since, and that was last week, but it still counts, right?

Travel/Bucket List - The Grand Canyon

 

This post is in the Travel category, but also tagged for Bucket List.

The Bucket List is a list of things I want to do/feel I should do before I die.  I've done some of them already, and I'm telling one of those stories here.  To see the whole list, click here.

Ah, the Grand Canyon.  One of the most amazing sights in the world and something everyone should see, in person, at least once in their lives.

I'd really like to go back there as an adult, and here's why...

I was 11 and my parents took me along on their grand tour of the US.  40 cities in 30 days - or, at least, that's what it felt like.

We were in Vegas, and we went to some small airport to take a flight over the Grand Canyon.  I had never been to a small airport before and I thought it was a bit weird.  I felt unsettled, and it didn't get any better when we got onto the plane.

It was a small plane.  

I started getting nervous.

They arranged us in the cabin to distribute the weight so, being the only child on the trip, I was alone at the back of the plane.  

The next thing that I remember about is that we were on the plane, flying over the Canyon, and it was raining.  My mother was a few row in front of me, and my father in the front row, so there was no comfort or reassurance. 

Status raised from nervous to scared. 

The plane was going up and down as we flew through air pressure changes.  Then the woman in front of me started to throw up.  It smelled and sounded awful.

Status raised from scared to terrified. 

I remember at one point my father looked back and gestured to me that I should look out of the window at the view.  I tried, but I was really too busy embracing my Catholic upbringing by that point and praying vociferously.  

I did look out of the little porthole window eventually, and I saw clouds, a rock thing sticking up and mist.  Even at 11 years old I knew that I could go home and look up pictures of the Grand Canyon in a book somewhere (the internet wasn't an option in South Africa back then - we actually went to the library) so I chose to just close my eyes and reassure myself with a self-made countdown to the whole thing being over.

"It must only be twenty minutes till we land.  I can handle twenty minutes."

"I'm sure we'll be on the ground in fifteen minutes.  That's a tiny amount of time.  Fifteen minutes..."

And so, although I have officially seen the Grand Canyon, and I've ticked it off on my Bucket List, I need to go again.

Preferably on a nice, sunny day.

I'm jus' sayin' - Happy

 

I'm not sure I should be this ecstatic about getting Puppy Girl to poop in her potty place in the yard this evening.

How priorities change in life!

I'm jus' sayin'

He Said She Said - Unnecessary anxiety

 

"Oh my GOD!" she yelled.

"What?" he said.

"Puppy Girl's going gray!  She's gone gray overnight!" 

"Don't be silly," he said.  "She's 13 weeks old!"

"She has gray around her eyes!  Like gray eyebrows... Look!"

"She probably brushed against something," he said.

"It's around both eyes," she squealed.

"Honey, there must be a reas---"

"Oh my GOD!" she laughed!  "It's YOGHURT!"

"It's wha---"

"I gave her the empty yoghurt container to lick!  She must've shoved her whole head in there and got it on her face!"

"Well, I'm just glad you didn't panic," he said.

"Oh shut up!" she snapped.  "Hold her till I get back with some damp Bounty to wipe it off."

Quote Unquote - Because Daddy says so

 

Fluffy Bear to Puppy Girl:

"My den, MY rules!"

Yep, he really said that to our dog.  Not that we anthropomorphize our furkids or anything...

Dear Diary - To blog, or not to blog?

Dear Diary,

My online friend, Snooty Primadona, asked herself - and all of us - why we blog.

And, as they say, she got me to thinkin'.

Why do I blog?

I think it's because, deep down, I'm a creative person, and that creativity has always expressed itself through writing.

Languages, and the way people express themselves using them, has been an endless source of fascination for me.  When I was a kid at school, English was my favorite subject, closely followed by French and Afrikaans.  

The fact that people chose to assign gender to nouns interests me.  La table is feminine, whereas le chien (dog) is not.  

The fact that you have to say no twice in Afrikaans interests me too.  They use a double negative.  Ek het dit nie gese nie (I didn't say it).  

How people expressed themselves through words - the art of prose - was something I grew to love.  Dickens' humor, Shakespeare's prose-poetry and Judy Blume somehow getting into my head and helping me work through the difficult parts of being a teenager.

The more I read, the more I realized that writing can be as much about working through things for yourself as about telling stories.  I never had a diary as a kid - I'd start one and then not take the time to keep doing entries - but I wrote a book when I was about 12.  It's somewhere in my stored stuff.  I seem to remember it has something to do with a boy and my transformation when my braces came off.

After High School, when studying English at University became about analyzing the writing of others, I never wrote creatively for years.  I guess I didn't need to.  I was having fun growing up, getting out into the world, travelling.

But then I got into the corporate machine.

I was working in a large company, dealing head on with a matrixed hierarchy, 15 hour days, business travel, working on weekends, useless meetings, yearly goal-setting and reviews and a curve on which my team-mates and I were graded for bonuses so we were effectively in competition with each other to get our projects noticed by our managers.  Bureaucracy and office politics seemed to stifle any creative or artistic thought.  

Even emotions had to be regulated - one had to appear enthusiastic and be PC at all times, no matter what you were feeling or what was going on in your life.  This was particularly difficult for me after I had major surgery and went back to the office too early.  Consequently, I was labelled "a bad fit" and my work life became even more restricted.

It was all looking a bit bleak, dear Diary, until my therapist suggested I find a way to write again.

I'm not the kind of person who can set up a story outline, develop characters and have the self-discipline to produce a novel.  I admire the people who do.  My creativity comes to me in little bursts: observations, jokes and the need to vent.

And so, the blog.

And that, dear Diary, answers the question.

Update on Sunday, November 15, 2009 at 4:41PM by Ittybittycrazy

You might find this article interesting.  

The article is from the UK newspaper, the Sunday Times.  You can find it here:

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article6896061.ece

Extract:

Women's blogging: the new home front

November 1, 2009

By India Knight

From the trivial to the titillating, the hilarious to the heart-rending, women are spilling their most intimate secrets on the internet — and revolutionising their lives

We know about Facebook and Twitter, about downloading free music, and that the current crafts explosion started online. We know about forums and celebrity gossip; about sinister blokes “grooming” pre-teens in chat rooms; about funny clips on YouTube, online gaming and techy nerdery. But it’s a mysteriously under-reported fact that the internet has also dramatically changed the landscape for “ordinary” women. Many people still view technology as off-puttingly masculine and the joys of the online world as geekily blokeish — either that or a tiny bit sad. That’s certainly true at one level (there’s the overwhelming preponderance of porn, aside from anything else), but it ignores the seismic — and I don’t use the word lightly — difference the online world has made to women’s lives, by holding a mirror up to them and celebrating the minutiae of their existence as if it mattered.

That's life - Headache! Headache! Get thee behind me headache!

With apologies to all the vampire, werewolves and highlanders that were around back when Shakespearean English was spoken and for whom this will no doubt be painful to their ears.

 

 

Ode to my headache

Foul headache, thy villain, from whence comst thou?
 

Comst though from the pillow which my neck badly cock'd?
 

Comst thou from hayfever which my sinus block'd?
 

Comst thou from the workout which my muscles knott'd?

  

Or comst thou from the vino which ere night I quaffed?

 

I care not thy origin, vile pain, foul ache

 

Only that you immediately your leave take.

Post-its of wrath - The basement bossanova

 

These post-its are not real.  I love my husband.  Seriously.

Dear Fluffy Bear

Let me tell you about my day.

Because you are on a business trip, I decided to get all the washing done so the machines are free for your stuff when you get home.  I went down into the basement, carrying the basket of dirty clothes.

I tripped on the second to last step, luckily landing on a soft pile of smelly clothes which tipped out in front me.

But my toe was bleeding.

So I hobbled over to the first aid kit we keep down there for a band aid, and I hit my head on that low beam.

I found a band aid through my tears, and went over to pick up the spilled clothes and put them in the washing machine.  I poured the washing liquid into the measuring thingy and then put it in the machine and then, because I was crying, I wiped my eye.

I soon progressed from crying to howling.

This scared the dogs upstairs, who started barking.

The mailman who hates the dogs came then and yelled how much he hated us at our front door, throwing the mail on the front porch.

I tried to wash out my eye in the basin and hit the other side of my head on that big faucet we have in there.

I finally made it upstairs and made myself a liquid lunch of a glass of wine.  The nice wine you've been saving.  It was the only white wine in the house.  

Too bad.

OK, OK, none of this actually happened.

But it could have.

So change the basement light bulb!

To read more in Post-its of Wrath, click here.

Being a Doggy Mama - You turn your back for 30 seconds and...

  

Puppy Girl is asleep on the couch, Puppy Dog is napping in front of the TV.  These are the stolen moments when I can get stuff done.

I am in Fluffy Bear's office doing some filing.  The TV is on - Countdown, the political commentary show on MSNBC hosted by Keith Olbermann.  

I am peering at paperwork to figure out what the hell it is, and moving it, piece by piece, from a scrappy pile on a chair to the various hanging files we have.  

I start to notice something is off.  

I look.  No dogs nearby. 

I listen.  No dogs making noises.

I tune my hearing in to the TV, and realize that I haven't heard Mr Olbermann's dulcet tones in a while.  

And this has been going on too long for it to be just an ad break.

The sound cuts abruptly, mid-sentence, to a new person speaking, about something completely unrelated.

My brain kicks in, I run to the living room.

Sure enough, the remote is in Puppy Girl's mouth, and she is happily chewing her way through the cable channels!

And now I believe that couple that said their dog ordered Microsoft points online in the middle of the night.

Puppy Talk - Bathing etiquette

 

Puppy Dog:  You're wasting your time barking at the puppy gate.  She isn't coming out, and you aren't going in.

Puppy Girl:   How do you know?  Sometimes she come when I bark, so there.

Puppy Dog:  She's in the Water Room.  The hairless apes do stuff in there.  Can't you hear the hot rain?  And, trust me,  you don't want to go in there when the hot rain or the hot river flows.  Next thing you know, you're in the bath.

Puppy Girl:  The what?

Puppy Dog:  The BA-HA-HA-HARTH!

 Puppy Girl:  Why are you making a funny voice?

Puppy Dog:  Because the BATH is horrible.  They make you all wet and put smelly stuff on you and rub all over your body.  Oh wait - you have had a bath.  That time you pooped in your crate!

 Puppy Girl:  Hey! I couldn't help it.  I'm just a baby!

Puppy Dog:  Hmph!  Still disgusting.

Puppy Girl:  Well, you should know, from that time I pooped on your bed in your den!  HA HA!

Puppy Dog:  GRRRRRR!

Puppy Girl:  OK!  OK!  Let's just forget all that.  And anyway, I didn't mind it when Dada cleaned me.  It felt nice.

Puppy Dog:  What the hell are you?  Some kinda freak?  Dogs are not supposed to like baths!  The next time they try to put you in there, you wriggle, you whine, and you stand up without warning and SHAKE as hard as you can so you spray water in their face!

Puppy Girl:  Sounds like fun!

Puppy Dog: It is!

Puppy Girl:  OK!  I'll do it!

Puppy Dog:  Yeah, stick with me, Kid, I'll show you the ropes.  

He Said She Said - Toilet tissue

 

She came into the living room, holding some toilet tissue.  

She walked over to him and laid the tissue on his lap, softly, like she was a maid presenting afternoon tea to a Lord.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Toilet tissue," she said.

"I can see that," he said.  "What's it for?"

"It's for you," she said.

"Why?" he asked.

"Why?" she mimicked, her voice rising.  "Because I thought you might want it."

"OK, honey," he said, getting impatient.  "What's going on?"

"Well, I figured these TWO PIECES of toilet tissue must be very important to you.  Because there is NO WAY you would just leave two tiny pieces on just so that you wouldn't have to change the roll, NOW WOULD YOU?"

He tapped viciously on his laptop, ignoring her.

Puppy Talk - Crate

 

Puppy Dog:  What are you doing?  You're squirming like an eel!

Puppy Gir:  Mama wants me to go in the crate and I don't want to!

Puppy Dog:  But you heard Mama - it's Relaxytime.

Puppy Girl:  I don't want to relax!  I want to play!  More!  MORE!

Puppy Dog:  Come on, you were lying down all the time when we were playing just now.  You're tired.

Puppy Girl:  Am not!  I was just resting my eyes!

Puppy Dog:  Just go in your crate.  You can come out and play after your rest.

Puppy Girl:  Why are you on her side?

Puppy Dog:  I'm not on any side.  I just know you need to chill out for a bit.  Look, Mama even has a treat ready for when you go in.

Puppy Girl:  Oh I get it.  Whenever I get a treat, you get a treat first, because you're Mr I'm-so-special dominant dog.  You just want me to go in the crate so you can get a treat!

Puppy Dog:  Don't be silly.  Now go inside!

Puppy Girl:  What's it worth to ya?

Puppy Dog:  [Sigh] I'll let you lie on my cushion later.

Puppy Girl:  For real?

Puppy Dog:  Yes.  But don't pee or poop on it.  Now go in.

Puppy Girl:  It's a deal!  Check you later!

Puppy Dog:  [Sigh]  Kids!

Post-its of wrath - A wet shirt is like wet cement

 

These post-its are not real.They are just in my head. I love my husband. Seriously.

Dear Fluffy Bear

If something is wet, and you want it to be a certain way when it dries, doesn't it make sense to PUT it that way when it is still damp?

You're a qualified engineer, after all.

Think of it like cement.

If you want the cement all to be straight, you make sure you build it that way before it sets, right?

Well - revelation! - it's the same way with laundry.

If you WANT your shirt to dry in the RIGHT SHAPE, you should HANG it on the hanger on the drying rack IN the right shape.

Not half hanging off.

Not with the sleeves inside out.

Not skwonky on the hangar.

Especially if it is MY SHIRT.

To read more in the Post-its of Wrath series, click here.