World's Least Effective Guard Dog

It's official. My dog serves no useful purpose whatsoever other than looking cute and playing well with small children. He has spent the entire morning barking incessantly at ??? (a bird? the trees? grass? absolutely nothing?). He is convinced that he's a watch dog but the only complication is that we live in one of the world's safest neighborhoods so there's nothing to watch. It's mostly retired people, and they'll shake their fist at you if you go so much as a mile over the 15 mph speed limit. So Sunny is doomed to spend his days barking at the air and getting upset when he can't find his binky toy (usually because he's dragged his upstairs binky downstairs or vice versa).

There was some excitement for a few weeks when he would go to the back window and growl his head off (he doesn't usually growl), but just until I finally spotted the family of deer he was seeing (and that was eating patches of our grass). So now, it's a big joke whenever he sees them: "Hurry Sunny! The deer are attacking! They're going to get into the house! They're going to kill us all!" And then he'll lose interest after about 3 minutes.

I swear, he is such a three year-old.

desk explosion

There's something about cleaning up your own mess that's just extremely difficult. I can remember growing up, I would enjoy going into my sisters' rooms and helping them clean up their stuff, rummage through their junk and be painfully, brutally honest about it being crap. But somehow, that micro-chip is missing in my brain for my own stuff. If I were at someone else's house today, and they said, "Hey, let's go through this pile of stuff and you can help me organize", I would think, "Ohhhh, fun, fun!" But looking at the several piles on my desk and hearing the voice in my head say, "Hey, you should go through this pile of stuff and get it organized", all I can think back is "shut up! shut up!"

And the ironic thing is that I feel sooooo much better after getting organized and throwing stuff away. I feel like my life is just a little more under control and I can breathe easier. But does that mean that I'm tackling one little pile rather than blogging about how much I hate doing it? Nope.

back to the 7th grade

Where are all these pimples coming from???? I thought I'd finally outgrown it. I'd get a few little pimples on my chin right before my period (which I had grown to accept), and that was it. And I was at a good point of acceptance...okay, i'll have a few little pimples once a month for the rest of my days. I can handle that.

Then this month, out of nowhere, blemishes blemishes everywhere! I feel like I'm stuck in a Judy Blume book.

Sweet Angel of Heaven and Light

Such is my new volunteer at work. I literally had reached the end of my rope trying to serve birthparents and prospective adoptive parents, provide outreach, plan a tennis tournament, and coordinate a booth and sports team for an upcoming event that we have.

Oh, yeah, and somewhere in there, I was supposed to be a wife, sister, daughter, friend, and Sunday School teacher. In short, on Monday, after a poor showing at an event for my organization (feeling like a complete loser), I was in hysterical tears and getting ready to just call it quits the next day.

Then, out of the blessed blue, a woman from a local corporation called and said that she had been researching area organizations to volunteer with, and she wanted to volunteer for ours. Her skills are organization and planning, how can she help? I almost broke out into (happy) tears. She has taken all the players' prizes and goody bags for the tennis tournament off my plate. Hooray, hoorah for my new volunteer, purveyor of many things good and pure!

bad dog part infinity

And he did it again today. 20 minutes by himself. There he was, perfectly non-plussed on the pillows. Sigh...if he weren't so cute...

Random thing that happened the other day. Have you ever wondered why more people don't get hit with dead birds falling out of the sky? Well, I have. And I needn't wonder any longer. I was driving along the highway at 70 mph, and THUNK, a bird falls out of the air (not flew into my car, mind you, it came straight down) and onto my (newly washed) car.

Needless to say, it was not a pretty picture. There were fluids. Oh, yes, there were fluids. Sweet, sweet husband was following me in his car, and when I called him in a slight panic over said bird, he offered to switch cars with me and get it washed. I took him up on it, and I am so glad I did because...well...I actually don't want to talk further about the fluids. Let's just say that this must have been a massive bird from (a) the THUNK and (b) I'm not even going to say it.

Bad Dog part...what is this part 5?

So I was working away in my ol' home office this morning, and I realized that things were a little too quiet upstairs, so I headed up to see what Santino Bambino was up to. I was expecting him to be curled up on his doggy bed or sprawled out on a sunspot on the tile, but no. No, my 85 pound lab "mix" (light on the lab, heavy on the mix) was just happy as a clam sitting on the sofa. He is SO not allowed on the furniture.

So I stared at him with a look of shock thinking, "surely he'll jump down now that he sees me." No. He CLOSES HIS EYES to continue his nap. So I walk over to the sofa and say, "Sunny, down." No response. He finally got down with a "Down!" and a finger pointing.

At that point, he knew he was in trouble, and his tail was tucked down so far it looked like a soup ladle, so I gave him a little pat on the head and explained in the sweetest terms possible that he is an extremely untrustworthy dog and this is why he isn't allowed free reign of the house while no one's here.

I'm not sure but I think he was whispering doggy expletives under his breath at me.