Is It Tuesday -- or Monday?

Mother Nature must’ve forgotten to flip her calendar –it isn’t even Monday. That is the strange part, I thought, as I carefully and very gingerly maneuvered into the yard, shying away from the sheen of ice that glazed my brick walkway this morning.

It took a few extra minutes to reach the sidewalk, remain standing on its icy surface, and then wait ‘til I could safely cross four iced-up lanes of roadway. It took so long that I had just reached my destination across the street as the bus turned the corner. Here’s hoping that that block between the bus stop and the office isn’t ice-covered.

The bus is unusually full this morning. There are at least 10-12 others aboard, about eight of whom got on before me. Highly unusual. Even after emptying at the central depot, we’ve picked up about as many as got off. My quiet little bus is becoming popular. UGH.

We don’t appear to be sliding much, which is good, but then the driver is going slowly and braking cautiously. (Update: we just did a crazy-ass slide but stayed on the road, as we passed a police scene where someone else wasn’t as lucky. Just looks like they crashed the curb and maybe a signpost though.)

Poor Ozzie. Sunday night, he made an awkward jump from the loveseat and appears to have injured one of his back legs or feet. Nothing seems swollen or tender to the touch. I think he just twisted something. (He did this a few years ago while charging down the basement stairs.) I saw a little improvement last night, (after a day of mostly staying off of it and of no jumping) so I’m not overly concerned, but we are still watching him.

The mother is babying him BIG time. He is eating this up, believe me. Sometimes, I know he’s smarter than we think he is. This would be one of those times. He’s going to milk it for all it’s worth. He is SO pitiful though. If he’s not any better by tomorrow, I guess he will have to go to the vet.

Cross your fingers that this isn’t the case.

Going to the Dogs

Coal the Labrador got to make his guest blogger debut following in the footsteps of our Yorkie pals Wylie and Marcel. So, it only seems fair that Ozzie gets to put his two cents in – or so he says. (Because he's older than all three of those guys combined. Hey, that's HIS reasoning, not mine.) So here goes Ozzie’s first meme!

What breed are you? I’m a Yorkie through and through but I have the constitution of a Doberman, especially when the mailman comes. My Co-dee (better known as NV to you) says I’m part moose.
How old are you? I’m a very young 11.5 years, thank you very much.
What is your full name? My Yorkie papers say I’m Sir Ozmund, but my girls named me Ozmund Anthony. Everyone calls me Ozzie though.
Do you have any nicknames? TONS! The Moose is the most common one, but that has become a whole bunch of other names including Mooberry Hill, Mooman, Mooby Doo, Mooie, Mootie Moo, and just plain Moo. There are some other ones when I’m bad, but since this is a PG-rated blog, I don’t think I should say ‘em.
Where do you sleep? Anywhere I want. I have my own bed and I start out there every night. Sometime before the alarm goes off or on the weekends, I bunk with the Co-dee. (That’s my favorite place.) After she goes to work, I go hang with the mother or else I lounge on the sofa. If the Co-dee is gone, the mother is my stand-in.
What is your favorite thing to do? Eat. There are only a handful of things I don’t like: shrimp, mushrooms, and tomatoes are chief among them. A close second is play. I live for squeaky toys or talking toys!
What is something interesting/unusual about you? I am one popular dude! There are a ton of Christmas cards on top of the entertainment center. They came from dozens of states and even from foreign countries. Guess who most of them were addressed to? Just guess! Oh – and I’m a calendar dog. I got a feature spot in the 2009 YorkieTalk calendar. But a lot of my Yorkie buds did, too. I think it’s cool.
Who is your best friend? The Co-dee. I would walk through fire to get to her. She feeds me, plays with me and fulfills my overwhelming need to snuggle.
Did you go to obedience school? I went to puppy kindergarten when I was about 6 months old. I graduated – with honors. It didn’t take though.
Can you do any tricks? I make food disappear. And I can destroy any squeaky toy ever made. It’s a hobby of mine.

Consider yourself tagged! Let your furry friends speak. And if you do, leave us a comment and let us know!

Merry, Merry Madness

Once, several years ago, the mother sent me to a local mall on Christmas Eve for a last-minute gift. It took me three times as long to get in the mall lot, find a parking space, and then get off the mall parking lot as it did to dash in and get the solo gift, I vowed never to do it again.

I’ve kept my word. In fact, in the week or so before the holiday, I still don’t go near a mall. I try to not go in any stores at all during those final, frazzled days. So it was with much dismay that I realized a shopping trip was inevitable. Not at the mall, thank God, but worse still, the grocery store and Wal-Mart. The mother has been eating and drinking cleaning supplies, so I had to get more as we start to approach the home stretch. The groceries? I needed to get ingredients for the mock soufflé for Christmas with the family – away, that my pure genius forgot about Thursday night. And, I got some more things for post-Christmas with family friends – home, the visit that has touched off this mad bout of cleaning.

I also had to pick up more Christmas cards at Walgreens which I’d ordered online. I thought I’d have enough, but apparently Ozzie is a more popular dude on YorkieTalk.com than I gave him credit for. (He continues to get all kinds of cards from all over the country – even the world – daily. Three more came yesterday.) I’ll apologize now for the tardiness of this last batch which includes some of my local, real-life pals. I figured those would only need a day or so at most to arrive so I saved some of those for last.

Wal-Mart was the insane asylum one would expect it to be with less than two days left for shopping. I was glad to escape it. The soundtrack of screaming children put my teeth on edge. I stopped off at Walgreens to get my cards but they weren’t ready yet. The machine had broken down so I was about sixth in the queue. Great.

I went grocery shopping. Almost as maddening as Wal-Mart, but not quite. The most frustrating thing? Some of the key things I went for couldn’t be found. So, off to the grocery at the other end of the street. Things were only a little better there, but at least it wasn’t as busy.

I grabbed some fast food (pot pies at KFC) and back to Walgreens. Success! The cards were done. It was buzzing in there, too, so I was glad to make a relatively quick exit. Once in the car, I opened the box. Thank God I did. This wasn’t the design I had used before. And wait. Who ARE these people? My card doesn’t even have people. It’s a pic of Ozzie and Toby. Sh*t!

I looked at the box. Wasn’t even MY name on the box. I dashed back inside where the girl in photo apologized profusely. She’d just grabbed the wrong box. (They only had about 30 of them on the counter. Clearly, I wasn’t the only last-minute card purchaser. And, of course, they now have 10-cent prints going on. You know I’ll be all over that this week.)

The moral of this little adventure is this: It’s NOT a pretty sight out there. Get what you have to get – and only what you have to get – NOW. I suspect it’s going to get a whole lot crazier really fast.

Of Nails and Noses

I got yet another new power tool Friday but I didn’t even have a chance to crack it open until Sunday night. How did I last that long?! This one, though, isn’t house-related, but pet-related.

It’s a Dremel 761-03 7,000/14,000 RPM Cordless Pet Nail Grooming Rotary Tool. I got it from Amazon.com for under $23. And since I ordered it at the same time I bought my new hammer, shipping was free.

I had ordered a Peticure months ago but kept getting told it was back-ordered so I finally canceled that order and got this instead about two weeks ago. I read several reviews on it, almost every one of them positive. The only complaint I saw more than once was about batteries, that they didn't seem to last very long. I stuck my spare set of rechargeables for the digital camera. (Which reminds me: I need another set now!) The trimmer requires 4-AAs.

I thought initially that Ozzie might be afraid of it while it was running. I turned it on and set it on the floor by him. Instead, he wanted to play with it! Silly boy. So once I got down to actually trimming his nails (which are super-long right now), the biggest fight was trying to keep him from sniffing it. (The last thing I need is to have to rush a noseless dog to the vet.)

It seems to work pretty well. I’m still kind of paranoid using it, and he is still hyper-interested in it, so between the two, I think it’s going to take several more times of using it to see just how well it does. I’ll keep you posted.

Something Is Missing

Something is definitely missing, and I finally figured out what: July! Where the hell did July go?! Wasn’t it just the summer solstice about five minutes ago?

Ever since I was a kid, summer was pretty much over after my birthday. And it has come and gone and now the whole month is ending! How did that happen?! Tell me I’m not the only one for whom the summer just sped by like a NASCAR racer around the track.

I’m starting to feel the pinch of the summer wrap-up, though I’m hoping that the weather will hold through much of October. (After all, if Mother Nature hadn’t been crying her eyes out every other minute since March, I’d have 75 percent of my outside stuff DONE already.) I feel good about what I have been able to accomplish so far this summer, but as we go hurtling towards fall, I’m getting a little nervous.

I wasn’t able to reach Lawrence today; I’ll try again tonight. I need to get on his schedule to get the last two panels of fence up and so that he can get the rails/posts cut for the porch. That way, the mother can paint them before he assembles them. And has she got big plans for painting! She’s got: the foundation of the house; the porch railing, more gingerbread than I want to talk about (because after it‘s painted, guess who gets to install it?), and whatever boards I get to repair the shed temporarily until we can replace it. And those are just the highlights of OUTSIDE.

Inside … nope, I’m not going there yet. My head has exploded already!

So, to console myself about all the work ahead, I went on the hunt for a third photo of Ozzie to submit. And, it is, of course this one! How could I have forgotten about it?! That was my other missing thing for the day.

I really love this shot. This is the view I get when I come home each night. So this one HAS to get submitted. OK, all done with cute now for a while anyway, I promise. Thanks for indulging me!

Calendar Dog

WARNING: If you aren't in the mood for cute, cuddly, and adorable, stop reading now. And don't look at the photos!

My friends at YorkieTalk are putting together their 2009 calendar. So, they've asked their donating members to submit some photos for consideration. I think they're choosing five photos per month to use. So, I have to send in some of Ozzie. I know I'm biased but I think he's one of the cutest things ever on four legs.

You can submit up to three. Well, here's TWO that I know I'm going to send. Haven't worked out a third one yet.

Sorry for the dripping in cuteness entry. Couldn't help myself. They'll get thousands of entries, no doubt, because Yorkies are, too adorable. But whether he gets chosen or not, I think he's calendar material.

The "Evening" Post

The evening post got a little delayed due to last night's extended light show. So much for my bright, sunny day. The latter half of the evening became the classic novel line, “It was a dark and stormy night.” I was violently awakened at about 2 by thunder that rolled on and on for at least a minute, rattling things all over my room.

But hey, I got two consecutive dry days in, so ask me if I cared!

I did not finish the porch. Yeah, I know. This is becoming a running theme with me, isn’t it? But I worked on it a very long time today. Yesterday’s snags had really slowed me down. So this is as much as I was able to get done. I only pray that everything was sufficiently dry and that my plastic will be enough to protect it from the downpour. You can see my "mudpit" in the pictures. (And, if you look carefully, you’ll see Toby in one picture and Ozzie in the other. They were both in the door at one point, but Toby disappeared before I could snap the two of them.)

I can tell you this: Laying bricks upright takes infinitely longer and is unbelievably more complex than just laying them flat. It also requires a great deal of patience, so you can imagine how frazzled I am, me, the queen of Impatience. I am doing three rows on the face of the porch. The first row is structural. It will be masked by the layers of gravel and sand that will precede the actual bricks of the walkway. Not all of the bricks are the same distance from the base, thanks to the jagged foundation, but they’re all level. I have nearly finished the second row. It will intersect at some point with the walkway bricks. The third row will connect the face of the porch with its floor.

I decided to do a running bond pattern on the face. It will be stronger structurally and it will be a good transition to the walkway which will have the same pattern. The mother came out to inspect my progress as I was wrapping up. Except for me, she’s my harshest critic and she said it looks great, so I guess it does.

I’m just hoping that when I am able to go back to it again and I pull away the plastic I don’t find a heap of bricks that used to be the porch face!

And the Power ...Stays On!

9 p.m. 9:15. 9:30. I occasionally glanced at the table, noting the location of the lanterns and flashlights.

I held my breath every 15 minutes, but the power didn't go out tonight. Instead, the only power that seems to be out tonight is that of the birthday boy. He finally crashed.

Ozzie is crashed after an evening of being a wildman with his new squeaky bone. He may be 11, but sometimes he plays more like an 11-month-old than an 11-year-old.

Thought I'd share some shots of the birthday boy with his present, prior to his crash landing.

A Special Day

Without my knowing it, my life changed dramatically 11 years ago today. I didn't know it at the time but that was the day my Ozzie was born.

June 22 was also my grandparents' wedding anniversary. (If they were alive today, they'd mark their 70th anniversary.) June 22 is also the date that Tigger appeared in the yard.

After putting our first Yorkie down, I was adamant against getting another dog. I had never had to make that kind of decision, much less be present for it, and I knew I never wanted to do it again. One way to make sure. Just don't get another dog.

But mom talked me into "looking" at puppies the week after Scruffy's death in September 1997. And that led to Ozzie. When I saw him, he was cute. When I spoke to him, he kissed my face -- and melted my heart. When I saw his birthdate, it was karmic intervention. He immediately became a member of the family.

As I type this, there's a furry little being at my hip. He's content right now, having had a little bit of a breakfast sandwich as a special treat. (He got to go on the trip to get it, and of course, the girls at Burger King fawned over him.) Later on, he'll get a super noisy vinyl toy, beat the crap out of it, and probably break the squeaker. It seems a pretty small price to pay for nearly 11 years of laughs, companionship, and a whole lot of love.

I know I can't keep him forever, but I plan to savor every minute of it that I can. Happy birthday, little guy. Thanks for everything you've given me.