Confessions of a One-Track Mind

I think I have finally gotten myself resynched as far as sleep goes. *crosses fingers* It helps that there is actual full daylight at 8AM instead of murk.

Yesterday I went to a dog event---wasn't working the booth, just hanging out. Due to the coolish weather---50s with a strong breeze over the weekend---there was a good showing of the heavier-coated breeds. Not just huskies and malamutes and shepards, but a stunning Landseer Newfoundland, gorgeous he was, a real gentle giant. Giant? Also a big black giant Schnauzer. A St. Bernard. And three lovely black Standard poodles, all very perky.

There was a lure coursing course set up (I know that sounds redundant, but chasing the lure is called coursing, and it's set up with boundaries like a racecourse, so it's not, really.), and watching that was fun. There were some dogs who didn't Get It, as in, "I'm supposed to follow the plastic bag (lure) all the way around the course." They'd romp after it as far as the first turn, then wheel around and run back to their people. There were a couple of Rotties, though, whose prey drive sent them galloping through the course, chasing that bag for all they were worth. They're so athletic, it was beautiful to see.

Am a little put out with J. Part of it is her math---I picked up a couple things for last week's event with my own money, and I disagree with her total as far as reembursement goes. Part of it is her assumption that I'm always available (She'd shoot me if I said she takes after her mother, but...in this, yes, she does.) and have no plans of my own that might conflict with her events---for which I'm not getting compensated, I might add---she hasn't even fed me lately.

There's also the fact that she's been enlisting her bestest buddy from school, the wench who didn't show up for set-up last week, and who made a snarky comment when I showed up yesterday. I flat-out don't like her...it's ironic, because usually it's the other way around: My friends don't like each other, but I get along with everyone.

Slid by Fashion Bug afterward to try on jeans. When I asked what the inseam length was on their average jeans (as opposed to petite or tall), the salesgirl looked at me as if I had two heads. What--?! I'll bet their online reps would know. Only found one pair in a dark wash that I liked, and found out that their size 28 fit the same as JMS 26, namely, too tight but I could zip and button them. It was late in the day; I need to go back some time when I can do nothing but try on fifteen pairs of jeans for two hours or so.

Did get some last-hurrah-of-summer tops---three silky tanks that were marked down to $3.98 apiece, meaning that all three of them together were less than half the original price of any ONE of them. They're dressy, and it never hurts to have a little something classy in reserve at this time of year.

This morning, I came out of the house to head over to the food bank, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a U-Haul truck parked next door. Oh god, Please God, let that mean that the Noisy Neighbors are Going Away!!! *crosses more fingers, can't type*

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Dear Boyd,

I need your help. My quiet, elderly neighbors have departed for the final destination of the elderly, and recently, their house has been occupied by less desirable folks. Not elderly and not quiet: They have several screaming kids---I haven't taken a headcount, but at least two, plus a baby. They have two dogs that bark for an hour if a squirrel farts on the next block. Their cars are rolling boomboxes and they come and go at all hours. I suspect the worst about that.

Please don't say, "Love they neighbor." --- although if you did, I probably couldn't hear it over the thumping bass from their damn rap songs. I'd love these individuals a whole lot more if they were someone else's naighbors, preferably someone in another state. Like Alaska.

I want my nice, quiet neighborhood back. To that end, won't you please come to Florida and bring your rocket launcher? Blow the damn house to Kingdom Come and I'd be eternally grateful. (The dogs are always out in the yard, I can call Animal Control for them.)

I look forward to hearing back from you, and even more to hearing "Fire in the Hole!".

Praise the Lord --- and pass the ammunition,

Vanillafluffy



PS --- On second thought. I'll let you know when I'll be gone for movie night at church, so you can blow up MY house. I'll collect the insurance and go live on a farm somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. That works.
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Seriously---I ordered "Catch and Release" a week ago last Friday---tomorrow will be two weeks---and the tracking still shows it as being prepared for shipment. Not shipped, in progress. WTF, people?! That's ridiculous! And I thought *I* was a world-class procrastinator!


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The houses on either side of me have been empty for quite a while. The house to the east of me just got occupied---rather like Germany occupying France. They have kids: Noisy little fuckers. (There haven't been any kids on the block in ages, and I haven't bloody missed them.) They also have a yappy dog. What a treat this is going to be! Why, oh why, couldn't the Asshat's house have been the one to be rented? That's on the far side of my living quarters. This tribe is right next to my bedroom window.

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(No, I *won't* apologize for the metaphor, I'm tired of being politically correct, of being civilized when what I really want to do is slaughter all the barbarians that are lowering the tone. And numerous people who should know better.)


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HWSNBN had a cyber-sex habit. He renewed acquaintences with some dame he used to know who'd lived in Melbourne and now lived in Ocala. He wanted to visit her and asked me to go with him. Nothing to hide, right? We met her at a local restaurant---so far, so good. After lunch, she wanted to show us where she lived, so we followed her out to the middle of nowhere. Looked around, okay, ready to go?

No. One of her pitbulls had bitten a hole in one of the tires. Good luck trying to find a tire in Ocala after 5 on a Sunday afternoon. We had to stay the night. That's when he started fooling around with her. Oh, but it was my own fault---*I* hadn't negotiated monogamy when we started our relationship! He couldn't understand WHY I was upset.

We got another tire in the morning, went back to the place and put it on, only to discover that another tire was flat. And HWSNBN was out of money, according to him, so the slut's daughter's boyfriend produced a tire from somewhere. This time, we got out of there.

There was a lot of fallout from that visit. For one thing, he kept making solo trips up there for carnal purposes. It upset me, and he knew it upset me, but he did it anyway.

There was also a Near Death Experience, namely, when the mystery tire blew on I-95 while I was doing 70 on the way to Vero Beach to visit his dad for Father's Day. (His dad is/was a very nice guy---much nicer than HWSNBN)---and I liked going down there. Anyway, it was like going over a grenade---my overriding thought was, Don't cross the center line!. Pull over onto the shoulder.

The only trouble was, I was turbo-charged with adrenelin---my hands were shaking for the next two hours---and I didn't slow down enough before I hit the grass.

The car spun out. I had a moment of "We're going to flip, I'm going to die!" as the car kept spinning around.

We wound up on the shoulder, all right, having done a complete 180 and now facing oncoming traffic.

There was the blown tire, another tire had popped off the rim, and it turned out several weeks later that the belts in it had snapped, but it wasn't immediately apparent. The next couple of hours were stressful, and of course, it was Kat I called from a convenience store to come and rescue us.

We did eventually make it to Vero, but the damage was done. Not only had HWSNBN violated my trust by fucking around, that liason had damn near gotten me killed. I developed a dandy little case of post-traumatic stress---to this day, I'm not comfortable driving on I-95---to the point where I wouldn't drive after dark, drive in the rain, and I had a comfort zone that had shrunk to a few square miles.

That summer, GK en famile moved to Massechusetts, because her hub wasn't feeling fulfilled at his local job. That killed me a little. 20+ years and separated because Mr Sensative New Age Guy wasn't happy. Grrr.

When, a few months later, HWSNBN broke one promise too many, I asked him to leave. I was a wreck; I was 393 pounds, everything made me cry, not a day went by that I didn't think of suicide. I would miss being half of a couple, of having access to backrubs and cuddles, of being part of a two-paycheck household. But I realized the truth of the saying, it's better to be alone and wish you had someone than to be with someone and wish to be alone.


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If Mrs Bitch made 4th grade difficult, it was nothing compared to 6th grade with Mr Schiesekomph. Mr S (whose nickname among the students was 'Adolf') had no business whatever in the teaching profession, and some years later, I found out---well, we'll get to that.

Meanwhile, that single school year stretches for glacial epochs in my memory. Adolf didn't haul us out into the hall to paddle us like Mrs B did, although behind classroom doors he was known to slap us around. His usual punishment was to have us copy a page in longhand out of our English reader. (I never managed more than one a day---my handwriting was a painfully slow process, thanks to being intimidated by Mrs Bitch.)

Here's the thing: If you didn't finish however many pages it was by the next day, he'd assign an additional page. So, if you didn't finish your homework because you were frantically trying to complete all your pages, bang! You had another page to do. It was a very vicious cycle, and I spent most of the year trying to get out of it. I even tried carbon copies (Caught---double pages.)

He'd keep you in the classroom during recess, gym and art classes to work on them. I didn't mind missing gym so much, but I loved art and missed that very much. My father pitched a fit when he found out about that---"How the hell do you get a ZERO in art?!"---went in and had a talk with the principal about how much tuition cost and how he wasn't paying for me to copy schoolbooks like a medieval monk. I didn't tell him until many years later that we were also slapped when Mr S was frustrated---my dad said if he'd known that, he would've gone up to the school and beaten the hell out of him.

Had I but known! To me, grown-ups all stuck together, and if I'd told my parents I was in trouble at school, I would've been in more hot water at home. I heard from a classmate after I'd moved away, who said that Adolf had been forced to resign, because another student's parents were threatening to sue the school otherwise. He'd be in his mid/late 60s by now, and I hope wherever he is, there are no children nearby. Between the physical and psychological abuse, the stinking asshole deserves to be locked in a small room and kept away from anyone with a soul.

He once confiscated all the non-textbooks I had in or around my desk---this included two library books that I ended up getting fines on. (The rest of the class, watching me burrow through texts and notebooks and papers to retrive book after book, laughed.) He took points off a paper of mine because it was only two sentences long, although he admitted in front of the whole class that I'd gotten the point of the assignment.

To make it worse, because my near-sightedness was really bad, I ended up in the front row. This was the year I got glasses, because even in the front row, I couldn't make out the writing on the chalkboard. THAT was an experience! Mom took me to the optical department at Korvettes (which was a big department store, back in the day), got my eyes examined, and went back for my glasses a week or so later. I'll never forget the first time I put on glasses and was told to turn around and look over there---I could clearly see the sign hanging over the mens' department, fifty feet away. It was a revelation---you mean other people can see this way all the time?! Wow, lucky them!

This was also the year where we got The Talk. The guys got sent out to play basketball, while us girls stayed in the classroom and watched a filmstrip. Adolf was out with the boys, the projector was operated by...it seems to be they imported several women: a teacher and/or librarian, someone's mother...but anyway, the filmstrip was sponsored by Kotex, and was all about the joys of becoming a woman.

I'll never forget how one of our adult mentors asked at the beginning of the session if any of us had gotten our periods yet, and when we all said 'no', she breathed, "Thank goodness we got to them in time!" The filmstrip itself primly explained about the mess that ensued if an egg wasn't fertilized, but carefully steered clear of HOW it could get fertilized. I considered this a major gap and asked, and was brushed off, although they were carefully answering what I considered to be dumb questions about things the filmstrip had covered at length. Later, someone on the playground filled me in, and I was nonplused. Oh, fucking. Well, why didn't you just say so?

Toward the end of the school year, my mom's cancer was first diagnosed. She spent five weeks in the hospital after surgery, and it was touch-and-go for a while. I didn't know until years later that the doctors told my dad they didn't know if they'd gotten all of it. That news was what triggered them to start house-hunting in Florida. They wanted somewhere that wasn't too far from Mom's aunts, but was far enough that said aunts wouldn't be inclined to just drop in or expect us to run down there to do their bidding.

That was the shape of things to come.

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Yahoo has a story up about the auctioning of items from the Roy Rogers Museum, including---drumroll, please!---Trigger, who was preserved when he passed. According to the article, they expect Trigger's taxidermied remains to fetch about $200K.

I commented. I HAD to comment:

Gee, I wish I had a spare 200 grand to throw away on a giant stuffed palomino! Nothing against Trigger, but in this economy, that's just crazy. Anyone who spends that kind of cash on something so absurd clearly has more money than good sense.

To my bemusement, reaction is running 5 to 4 against, and a subsequent poster accuses me of being jealous. Someone else has commented that it's funny to think that a dead horse is worth more than a Prius. And a lot of people are saying Trigger belongs in the Smithsonian.

It's funny what people will find to wank about!



ETA 7/16/10: From Yahoo news: Rural cable network RFD-TV bought (Roy Roger's dog) Bullet for $35,000 on Thursday and Trigger for $266,000 a day earlier at an auction in New York City.

RFD-TV owner Patrick Gottsch said the Omaha, Neb.-based network will begin airing old Roy Rogers movies on Saturdays starting November 6. The movie cowboy's son, Roy Jr., will introduce each film, as Trigger and Bullet stand in the background.

"The goal is to introduce Roy Rogers to a whole new generation of kids," Gottsch said.

That's kinda cool!

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According to IMDb, Eric Kripke was born in 1974, which means that in a purely biological sense, I'm old enough to be his mother. Which may explain my desire to scream at him:

THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS!!!

I'm sitting here in countdown mood with a sick feeling of dread in my stomach. Why is that? SPN is my favorite show, this is supposed to be my happy place. So what's wrong?

Kripke.

Thanks to him, I can't even escape to my escapist fantasy any more. I have enough shit landing on me in real life without an on-going angst fest in prime time...particularly since I'm pretty sure it's about to go from bad to horrible in the next ninety minutes. Swell.

And God as my witness, I *WILL BAN the first person who says, "It's only a TV show.".

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Blurb under a Yahoo "news" story: Jesse James reportedly is seeking professional help to deal with "personal issues" after a cheating scandal that has put his nearly five-year marriage to Sandra Bullock on the line.

Nearly five years? What have we become as a society that five years is considered a LONG time for a marriage to last?! My parents were of the "til death to us part" generation---but then, my dad also worked for the same company for 30+ years, and I will admit, I've never made it past five with any of my jobs, though not for lack of trying.

There's a clue there; he's "seeking professional help". While there can be good reasons for that, too often I believe it's used as an excuse. (Personal issues, my ass.) Oh poor me, I have ISSUES, I don't have to take personal responsibility because it's all outside my control. Dude, save your money. I don't care if your jewels turn blue and explode, if you really respect the woman you're married to, you'll rein in those horn-dog impulses of yours. Suck it up and keep it in your pants, it's that goddamn simple.
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I got an email from GK this afternoon saying NosyNeighbor was moving into Kat's trailer TOMORROW, instead of the 1st of the month as originally planned. Apparently, he's been having some problems with CrazyLandlady so she changed the date to his benefit...which meant getting my stuff out of there PDQ, since his UnspeakableSpawn has NO boundaries and can't be trusted not to be light-fingered.

Fortunately, he wasn't ready, so I've got some time, but BC and I made two trips so that the smaller stuff is safe here. BC got my gnarly old couch down to the curb, and I have to make enough room for the one that's coming. Holy hell, my living room is bursting at the seams and I'm freaking out.

Things were going so well. Before said email arrived, I sorted the rack of purses in my bedroom, then I unloaded all the clothes from the back of the bedroom door, sorted them into separates and dresses, and made two trips out to the garage to hang them out there. I was feeling a sense of modest accomplishment until all hell broke loose.

After running back and forth---twice---and unloading two station wagon loads of stuff and more stuff, it was after six. I barely had time to change clothes before book club/writing group and dash, and at that I just made it at 6:30. I'm all kinds of wrung out. I hope like hell tomorrow doesn't go off the rails like today did.
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If I have any pyrokinetic skill at all, NosyNeighbor's head should catch on fire. Srsly.

Tuesday I finally got to see Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. Liked it. Different from the book in places, but still entertaining. Sean Bean is as hot as ever. Pierce Brosnan looks good in a beard---I didn't have a single "OMG it's Ronald Reagan!" moment. Uma Thurman made one sexy Medusa. And the chick who played Annabeth should be cast as a young Elizabeth if White Collar ever does flashbacks---she looks like she could grow up to be Tiffani-Amber Theissen.

House-sitting has its moments. One thing about the location, it's convenient to everything. Three minutes from the mall, groceries, bookstores, gas, J. Maybe if I ever hit the lottery, I'll get a place in the neighborhood. But NOT on this street, because it's really freaking noisy. Maybe because there are canals behind the houses on either side of the street and things echo? Plus, my street curves, and this one is a straight line, which may also affect the acoustics. But jeez, every yappy dog, every rumbling pick-up truck, every $#%&ing weed-whacker---!

Today, the lawn service arrived at EIGHT A.M. This should be outlawed. Not to mention the yard was downright tidy by my standards, which are admittedly elastic. Ditto housekeeping---their weekly cleaner showed up just before 10, as I was dragging my sleep-deprived butt out of bed to watch SPN. (What Is and What Should Never Be---I love that one for Carmen; then again, MY Carmen was quite the domme.)

Cleaner was upstairs for almost three hours (cleaning bathroom grout with a toothbrush? IDEK---as long as it wasn't my toothbrush, IDC), during which I managed to scribble a few pages. (Strange computers are hard for me to write on; steno pad to the rescue. I *really* need a laptop!) By that time, I was OVER it. I hadn't had breakfast, because I didn't want to make a mess, I was hungry and tired of listening to her caterwauling along with her MP3 player---I couldn't make out any of the words, but she's not going to be on American Idol any time soon.

I went home to check my mail---picked up a box of chicken on the way---found a note from BC asking me to call (and wanting to know why I don't have an answering machine. Answer: Because I'm a Luddite, and also because it helps me avoid drama---sbjb, YOU know what I mean. I've got my real friends trained to e-mail me, as I seldom go more than a few hours without checking in.).

BC has become quite obliging of late. He brought over his loppers, the better to lop back the schiffilara that was trying to block the garage door. He cut that back, snipped the overgrowth on the confederate jasmine, and said that he'd be happy to help move any of my stuff from Kat's, just say the word. We've traded food pantry items: He likes powdered milk, I'm always on the lookout for free caffeine.

Last week, he brought me those plants that Kat had ordered last fall---today I dug up the bed in front of my front porch and planted the hydrangeas---hopefully we won't have any more frost! I also loosened the soil in the pots that held the begonias last year, readying them for whatever I do this spring. Kat's pink pampas grass is more problematic, as it wants full sun. {Possibly the NE corner? Hmm. Must mull over.)

Another activity I performed was napping in my own comfy bed. There really is no place like home! At its best, it's a pit compared to the C's at their worst, but by golly, it's MY pit. Only four more nights....
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The individual who called at least four times yesterday about the dog we were supposed to be training today has called to cancel. I'm not surprised, but I'm annoyed. Here's why:

The appointment was set up the week before last, and I know damn well that I TOLD him the 26th. He called last Friday and said he'd waited for us and we hadn't showed. (I didn't tell him that that was because I was at Kat's viewing, but I wish now that I had.) I reconfirmed it it was today, the 26th.

Yesterday, he started calling us again: To confirm the day and time, to get references---which no one has ever asked me for before, and at one point, he called the OTHER number and got J, who had workmen replacing her hot water heater and who managed to hang up on him. And he had questionions. Who was that, she sounded groggy? Was that the person who was going to come out to train his dog? How many trainers do we have? The person who'd referred him to us found us on Craigslist, was that right?

During the course of the phone calls, I explained that J is the trainer, that I assist, that we got started on Craigslist because J was alarmed by the number of ads for "Free dog, owner can't handle" on Craigslist, and because she's trained service dogs, she was moved to try to help and that's how she got started.

What I did not say, because J has told me not to, is that No, she probably wasn't groggy, she always sounds like that because J has a speech impediment. She has CP, and gets around with crutches and a wheelchair, which is the other reason she keeps me around (in addition to my mad phone skillz). Usually, we show up and let the clients figure it out for themselves---the dogs don't care, and once she started working her magic on them, the owners stop caring.

The references were hand-picked, of course, but I suspect they weren't coached not to mention J's disabilities. I think that individual learned about that, freaked out, and that's why he canceled. That's just my suspicion, I could be wrong, maybe his transmission went out or he has stuff going on for work, or they have out-of-town guests, IDK. I told him we're going to be doing an event this weekend, gave him the info with an invitation to come by and meet us. It's the least they can do.

And if not, well, he's still stuck with a problem dog. She's the one I feel sorry for.
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I'm in a thoroughly evil mood. I'm sad and overly sensitive, and if I need hand-holding, it's to keep me from slapping people who make light of my feelings or contradict me in any way. Right now, I'm not logical, I'm not entirely sure I'm sane---I went to WalMart Friday evening and was hallucinating Kat everywhere---and it takes very little to set me off.

I'm also recuperating from my annual case of tonsilitis. Usually that's accompanied by a full-on head cold and respiratory congestion, but this time it was 95% tonsils. I've slept about 16 of the last 48 hours, which I guess I needed, and I still feel like crap.

GK arrives tomorrow (en famile), will be in a hotel, as hubby's job pays for it, at least the first few days when he'll be working. There's supposedly a hot tub on the premises, which would be divine if the weather would warm up. (She was saying on the phone that she checked the local Florida temps on line, and that we're as cold as she is in Massachusetts!)

And IMO FWIW, Valentine's Day SUCKS.

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* And if you don't know what I'm talking about, the answer is in "An Answer to Prayer", which I posted a couple days ago. And it's being ignored. I'm getting more response from the Pit of Voles, which doesn't lighten my mood any.

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Today's poodle looked much like my icon. Cute little booger. And the really hysterical part---her owner and owner's friend were telling us about how naughty he is about this, that and the other---but he was an angel while we were there. Like, "He follows people to the door and gets underfoot and barks when they come in."...except that when I went out to the car for J's wallet, he sat next to his mama and didn't make a sound when I came back in. I was also the one who got the leash on him---I seem to have a knack---and it was really amusing to see the ladies jaws dropping. (Believe me, after Poncho, Puppy---yes, that's his name---was easy.)

We've also got a possible Boston terrier on the agenda---the couple who owns her is talking it over. He told me they were thinking of getting a second Boston to keep her company, and I tried to discourage them with the truth---if one dog has behavior problems, two are liable to set each other off; it's really better to work on the original dog's problems and when they're balanced, then get another dog if they want to get her companionship. I told J this and she applauded my learning curve. That was the right answer.

I'm not boasting so much as trying to bolster my self-esteem. I'm eating everything in sight, I'm not writing, I'm massively distracted and not getting anything much done around the house either. Part of it is the Kat situation, part of it is me feeling crappy, and YES, I KNOW I need to find a doctor or clinic or something, but it's true, when you have time, you have no money, when you have money you have no time.

Car du jour: I saw one of those new Chargers headed north on US1, and it was a total pimpmobile. Candy apple lilac, for crying out loud. With matching spinner wheels. Yikes.
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We were supposed to have two sessions today, but it ended up being one very, very long one. This dog was referred to us as "the chihuahua from hell"...snapped at his owner, wouldn't let her get a collar on him, let alone a leash, and led us a merry chase when we tried to do so. Last week, we cornered him and got a leash on him---by feeding the leash back through the wrist loop and getting that around his neck.

His owner is more of a problem than the dog himself is. She's in her mid-70s, has never had a puppy before just adult dogs---this little guys is a year old and spoiled rotten. The owner follows the line of least resistance---he doesn't want to wear a collar? No collar. He refuses to eat dog food? She lets him eat cat food---which btw is a BAD thing, in case you didn't know---it's too high in protein and can really mess up a dog's kidneys. He doesn't like riding in the car? She holds him in her arms and holds a peppermint stick for him to lick! She has little faith in his ability to change and doesn't seem able to carry out assignments from week to week, so today J and I took him for intensive one-on-one training.

Poncho hasn't given us nearly as much crap as we'd expected from his nickname. Today, *I* got a leash on him with a minimum of drama. We got him into a crate and he whined a little as we were driving, but not howling as his owner described. J has a friend with two small, happy dogs, and we took him over there for a brief visit. Her friend put a leash on one of her dogs, I had Poncho, and we walked them around the perimeter of her yard...by the time we got back to the front steps, Poncho's tail was up and wagging. We got him over to J's place, where she borrowed a small collar from another friend. She held Poncho, and I put the collar around his neck---and adjusted it a couple times to get the right fit---without snapping, snarling or fussing. (J is very happy with me.) She picked me up a little after noon, and I didn't get home til shortly after 8---it was a long day, but a satisfying one.

Oh, one other small annoyance: I got up this morning and found my water was turned off. Not just pink tagged, OFF. I had just enough in the bank to pay it up and get it turned back on, but I'm basically broke now. The only reason is because the extortionistic SOBs demanded a new $100 deposit from me...of all the utilities, I hate these guys the worst, because wtf am I supposed to do, flush with bottled water? Drill a well and pump my own? It's a fucking racket!
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I read this gem in a Yahoo news story about a woman suing because she was kept in a hospital against her will because she was undergoing a high-risk pregnancy: "She said her doctor, Jana Bures-Foresthoefel, was brusk and overbearing."

Brusk?! Arrgh! You mean "brusque", you idjit. Where the heck is SpellCheck when you need it?!
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The last few days have been intersting. The session with Thursday's dog, the chihuahua from Hell, went on for three hours while J and I tried to get a leash on him. We finally cornered him, literally---he was backed into a corner and surrounded on three sides. The dog we were supposed to meet with at noon on Friday was a no-show, but J took us out to lunch as an "oh well" bonus.

Of course, my microwave decided to die last night, so I have leftovers I've looking longingly at---but I'm down to my last five cups of soup, which is something.

Today---first dog of the afternoon was big, shaggy and goofy. Very Heinz 57. Owner had a lot of antique oak furniture and some decent repros...a bit more country than I would opt for if I could start from ground zero, but a little kitsch mixed in.

Second session: "Yappy Hour", a dog-friendly event at a local Mexican restaurant sponsored by a local rescue group. There were two absolutely gorgeous, immaculately groomed standard poodles, one black, one apricot---I was in love, as I grew up with a silver standard bitch. There were the greatest number of Shelties that I've ever seen in one place---I counted eleven at one point!---plus a variety of other breeds and crosses, including the Bull Mastiff pup (8 months) belonging to our client. He was very good---he didn't bark at all, didn't chase or jump on anyone---he's definitely a lot better behaved then when we started working with him a couple months ago!

From there, I got J to drop me off at Kat's, because GK is there...I finally collected my Christmas present---a rolling piece of leopard-print luggage---and hung out until she was starting to lag. At which point, she brought me home...I'm about DONE myself.
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