Dogs on Thursday!

Penny and I will now be a regular contributors to Dogs on Thursday, a blog where, interestingly enough, people talk about their dog every Thursday. :) Our intro is up there today. Our regularly scheduled blog time will be the 4th Thursday of each month, so check there for what I hope will be amusing anecdotes on The Princess.

So since it's Thursday... and The Princess is allegedly a dog... I'll share a story here. This past weekend we went to Costco and they had bags of 12 inch bully sticks for $20. Now, if you have a dog, you know that bully sticks are wonderful chew toys. We refer to them as "dead animals", because that's what they are. They're some part of a cow, and frankly, I don't want to know what part they are. The 6" bullys I had bought for her on sale were about $2.50 a pop, so I figured we could buy the bag and cut them in half and be golden for a bit.

Except... The Princess had other plans. She took the 12 inch bully, which frankly is just about as long as she is, and ran through the house with it. Then she took it up on the sofa and settled in for a chew. In three days she had whittled it down to about half size. So much for the cutting it in half plans. The big dog needs a big bully stick, right??

At least it's keeping her from gnawing on our hands...

Edited to add the picture of The Princess... isn't she just the cutest when she's napping?

25 Years Ago Today

... I married the most wonderful man in the world.

Today is our silver wedding anniversary. Truly doesn't seem as if 25 years have passed. Seems like just yesterday we were just getting out of Georgia Tech and starting our life together.

We've been through a lot... We've built two houses. Been through stressful jobs... the loss of a couple of them... and job changes that go along with building a career. Been through the loss of my dad and his mom. Started my business. Decided along the way that our family would be the two of us and whatever pet we had at the time, because that was what was right for us.

We've been blessed... we haven't faced the challenges a lot of other couples have. I hope that it's because we've kept our marriage God-centered and focused on Him and each other.

I know that I love my husband more now than I did 25 years ago when we got married, and I didn't think that was possible.

Happy anniversary Richard. I love you, and I'm looking forward to spending the rest of my life with you.

The Drama Queen Update

It was bath day for the Drama Queen. Took her in 9 ish this morning. The cheerful folks at Dr. Weaver's, no doubt not having heard about the events of Wednesday, said it would only take a couple of hours and they'd call when she was ready.

At 11 I called to see how she was doing and how many people she'd bitten. Oh, she's fine, they said. Just a little squirmy, but she's giving us kisses. We'll call you when she's ready.

What? Giving us kisses? Excuse me? What happened to little miss "Oh you're touching me I think I'm going to die!" that appeared a mere two days ago?

At 1 I started getting a little antsy and called again to discover she was just finishing up her spa visit, so I jumped in the Hummer and drove up to get her. They brought her out complete with little pink gingham bandanna around her neck.

Little snot ignored me. Pretended she didn't even know who I was. Didn't want to leave the tech. I was crushed.

Got her in the car and headed for Chick-Fil-A, where the Magic Window produced a box of nuggets that we took home. She inhaled them and has been sleeping off her experience for the rest of the afternoon.

Silly dog.

I have a Drama Queen

So Penny has to go see Dr. Weaver for a nail trim (known here as a mani-pedi... we want The Princess to think she is only getting the Royal Treatment she deserves). We also needed to get her weighed to get the proper dose of Advantage Multi, which is what we're using for flea/heartworm prevention.

The good news: She continues to grow and is up to 8 pounds of dachshund fury. At five months, Dr. Weaver says she'll probably add about 10 to 20% more body weight when she's full grown... so we're probably looking at a petite flower of 9 to 10 pounds when she's full grown.

The bad news: She can put on a drama scene worthy of Camille. She began screaming when we got in the room at the vet's office. She continued screaming and brought it to a crescendo when the vet tech picked her up for Dr. Weaver to begin trimming her nails.

Then she bit the vet tech. I was mortified.

They switched places. Dr. Weaver held, while the tech trimmed nails.

Penny bit Dr. Weaver. I wanted to drop through the floor.

I don't think I've apologized so much in so short a period of time in my life. Of course, they laughed it off and said it was part of the job. Dr. Weaver spoke sternly to Penny and everything ended with Penny giving Dr. Weaver kisses.... but still.

Now, Penny still hasn't had the dreaded bath. We put her in an empty tub the other night, and you'd have thought we were killing her... so we've decided to wimp out and let the pros do it. I'm taking her back to the vet's office on Friday for a trip to the beauty salon.

Pray for them.

Twitterfied

I enjoy Twitter. It helps me keep track of a number of friends of mine, both in real life and my cyber friends. I get a lot of NASCAR news updates from a lot of writers I follow, as well as several drivers and crew members (I won't deny that a bunch of us were squeeing like 14 year old fangirls when Michael Waltrip actually tweeted back to our friend Jen, but that's another matter entirely).

Penny has her own Twitter account, and she routinely tweets and sends pictures commenting on life as a dachshund puppy. Turns out she's not alone. There's several other dachshunds on Twitter who are also very communicative and a number of other dogs who are following her. Penny actually has tweet conversations with a couple of dachshunds on a regular basis. They don't like thunder, vacuum cleaners, or baths either.

What irritates me about Twitter is the inevitable appearance of spammers. No, I don't smoke cigars. No, I don't want to buy steaks. Thank you, but I'm not really in debt over my head, and even if I were, I don't think I'd need your help to get out.

I've been trying to figure out if there's a pattern to what I post that might make me more appealing to these dweebs, but for the life of me I can't.

And no, frankly I don't want to see your sexxxxxxy pictures, either. Neither does Penny.

I'm wondering if any of these porn spammers know they're really following a 20 week old dachshund puppy??

Help a pooch?

Back to Normal, whatever that is...

Well, it's been about three weeks since my last post. I can now tell you that I'm no longer contracting at the audit client. In the process, I've discovered that there are people in the world that you can't trust who will stab you in the back. I've eliminated them from my life and I'm working through some anger right now. Even though I no longer have that contract that was a base of my business, I know that everything will be fine -- even before the contract ended my phone was ringing with other clients who needed additional work... God's way of taking care of me. I have no concerns, because I've turned them over to Him and I'll just let Him handle it from there.

At any rate, it was an ugly, exhausting process. I've just been bone tired and really not excited about doing much of anything to be honest. I'm looking to the future to get back to normal -- whatever passes for normal in anybody's life these days. :)

My comings and goings have been somewhat hampered by the fact that I'm now in an air cast to try to calm down the case of plantar fasciitis that I have. The night splint wasn't working, so I'm hobbling around in this to try to heal the ligament where it's tearing and get the bones realigned properly. We're hoping that the inconvenience of the cast will keep me from having go to through the inconvenience of surgery on my foot.

Penny continues to grow and thrive. She'll be 20 weeks old this week, and she's a charmer! We're starting to see some adult teeth coming in even though those ultra-sharp puppy canines are still there. She's been in Puppy Kindergarten for three weeks now. We're making progress with socialization, but she doesn't like big groups of dogs and prefers one on one interaction. I completely understand! A couple of the more rowdy dogs graduated from kindergarten this week, so I'm hoping that it'll be a bit quieter for her in the coming weeks. We learned the hard was to take "people food" like chicken or cheese or roast beef last week as treats when Penny completely ignored our perfectly acceptable dog treats and mooched off other puppy parents. How embarassing! This week she got her own cooked hamburger.

We had our annual ornament exchange weekend:
In the picture are most of the group with yours truly front and center in the Ravelry t-shirt. :) Linda and Laura elected to be photographers and weren't in the group shot. The red tote bags on the table were made by DF Vicky for each of us to put our ornament kits in. Judy and Ann graciously helped me finish my kits in time for the exchange; with having Penny in the house, my stitching time was limited, so my fiber totals for each ornament were admittedly estimated this year. I'm hoping that I overestimated so that nobody will run out of anything. At any rate, it was a great weekend and I got to visit extra with Judy, Ann, and Teresa who spent the night at my house during their visit. It's always a treat to be able to spend time with my out of town buds. :)

Not much else going on. I'm still working on the Garter Toes socks that I showed you in the last post. I'm almost finished with the first one. I started stitching a relatively simple piece, "The Branch" by Bent Creek, but I haven't made a lot of progress to show. And I took out an ornament kit that I've put exactly 12 stitches in so far. Maybe I'll have pictures next time.

Have a good week everyone! Take time to do something nice for yourself.