clean floors, dirty paws

I have recently started using my iPhone to listen to music in my car. For some reason it never occured to me until recently to plug it in and listen to my iPod or Pandora radio. DUH! Anyway, I was on my way home from work today, listening to Pandora radio, when I reach over to my purse to grab my phone. I realize that it is not in the pouch that I always keep it in so I begin to dig. Now, my purse has a bad habit of eating things so I dig for a good long time while waiting at a red light. When I still can't find my phone I concede that I have probably forgot it at work. Just as I am about to turn around the light bulb in my tiny little brain went off goes off. "YOUR PHONE IS IN OUR LAP DUMB ASS, YOU KNOW, THE THING THAT IS MAKING THE MUSIC!" This is almost as bad as the time I put water in the microwave to boil and then, when I opened the microwave to take it out, the cup was empty. I honestly thought there must have been a slow leak in the cup, or maybe all the wa

Today is the 3 year anniversary of Ryan and my first date; the date I insist was never a date. Let me explain… Around February of 2007, tickets for Morrissey were going on sale. I was living in Salinas, having just moved back from Los Angeles and some friends of mine in Fresno all wanted to go. One of my friends was supposed to purchase tickets for her and her boyfriend and one for me. Having not heard from her in a few weeks I assumed that everything was a go and my ticket would be waiting for me. Flash forward a few more weeks and I get a phone call from SBI. I assume it is Heather, but to my surprise it is Ryan. I immediately get nervous because I have no idea why he is calling me and I do NOT do well when I am caught off guard. I always knew he would be attending the show with us, but I had no idea it was going to be just us and one other couple. He explained to me that Heather NEVER bought a ticket for me or herself, but that he had an “extra” ticket he would be willing to

I just want to chop them up, spread them on a Ritz cracker and eat them!

Our dogs, like "real" children, have a bit of sibling rivalry. If one is getting attention, the other one immediately needs attention. If you give one dog a treat you had better have two, etc. Their latest, and most entertaining game is something I like to call bone swapping. There will be a bone just laying on the floor for hours and one of them will decide to go chew it. Of course the second one chews it the other one wants it. You can offer a different bone or perhaps a nice squeaky toy to the other but they only want THAT bone. I could even offer to let Abner rip the stuffing out of a toy and he would still want THAT bone because suddenly that is the most amazing bone that ever was and no other bone will do. It is really funny to watch because Abner will lay directly in front of Lilly and watch her chew until finally she gives in and lets the bone fall between her feet. Then Abner will S L O W L Y, as not to disturb the lion, sneak the bone from between her legs

Every year around this time, a shepherd runs his flock of sheep directly behind my parent’s house. You can look outside on any given day and see thousands of sheep just walking around. It is kind of neat to see the dogs working them and the flock roaming; in fact, I might even enjoy it, if I didn’t hate sheep. They have got to be the most idiotic, worthless animal on earth. Can anyone tell me their purpose? Anyone? I didn’t think so. Anyway, these grass maggots roam around and occasionally one gets the brilliant idea to jump over my parent’s fence and then panic because it can’t get back to its flock. A few years ago one of these geniuses’ jumped the fence and while we were enjoying our morning coffee we got a phone call. It was our neighbor asking if we knew that there was an injured sheep on our front porch. Oh, yeah, of course we knew. We were just letting him hang out and bleed all over our porch while we finished breakfast. Sure enough, we looked out the sidelight and th

I do not sit still well, never have, never will. I can’t sit through a movie without shifting positions 30 times or shaking my leg so much that Ryan wants to shoot me just to save himself. I can’t fall asleep without moving around for an hour because maybe if I just move my middle toe one centimeter to the left I will be more comfortable. Can’t stay in bed and relax because I notice dust on the nightstand and that dust could kill us all if I don’t get up and clean it RIGHT NOW. My inability to do nothing also makes me a really annoying sick person to everyone but myself. I see nothing wrong with doing everything I would do healthy, sick. I take breaks and sit down when I feel like I’m going to pass out and then complain that I don’t feel good but won’t rest. You know fun stuff like that. I basically do the opposite of what I request of others when they are sick. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard, “just sit down and relax. Rest!” How am I supposed to relax when there

For no real reason, Ryan and I typically eat dinner at the coffee table rather than the dining room table. It just so happens that the table is chin height for Abner, who likes to rest his head with hopeful eyes, and wait...

You all know how much I love repetitive noises such as pen clicking, toe tapping and gum popping, right? In case you don't; I love them almost as much as I love to have a paper cut in between my fingers or perhaps a cavity filled without the use of Novocain. It is the kind of torture I would tell all my secrets to avoid. I would eat mushrooms to avoid these noises! Anyway, Last night we were watching the PATHETIC Giants vs. Dodgers game and Ryan starts tapping his foot to the "baseball chant" on the coffee table as I am trying to check my email. I let it go for a while thinking he might stop on his own accord; he didn't. I then let it go for a while longer thinking that I am bitchy and should just get over it. Then, when smoke started coming out of my ears and I began plotting his death, I decided to speak up. Me: Could you please stop Him: I am enjoying the game Me: Can you enjoy the game without the foot tap? A few moments later the tapping begins again. There

Why are my animals so ornery? Why would she EVER, even for one second think it is OK to sleep on the dining room table? Oh well, she is a cat and she does what she wants and I guess we'll keep her.

Good thing Abner has a giant life saver.

In our house Lilly has a chair, a section of the sofa and two dog beds to sleep on but it is one club chair in particular that she favors. I have no idea how she decided this chair was hers, but we don’t often argue. I don’t even bother sitting in that chair anymore because it never fails that when I sit down, she wants to lie down. She will sit right next to the chair and whine and STARE and whine some more. I, of course, give in and get up reinforcing the fact that that is HER chair. Well, her majesty has become quite comfortable with her territory and does not take well to common townspeople invading it. Last night Abner had the audacity to fall asleep in Lilly’s chair and the scenario played out something like this. Abner sleeping peacefully in chair. Lilly comes in and notices her seat is taken. She proceeds to stare at Ryan and I like, what is going on? Why is he in my chair? Aren’t you going to remove him? He is getting his dog germs ALL OVER IT! She then moves in clos

It's not easy being married to me. I can be bossy, bitchy, crazy and a bit of a neat freak, I also occasionally drink too much wine, but the worst part...my hair. It is everywhere. EVERYWHERE. My hair is in the bed, all over the floors, stuck within t-shirt fabric, tickling all day. My hair gets ingested by our dogs leaving dangling pieces of poo from their bums; my hair ends up in food, falls in Ryan's face when we make out, and goes down the shower drain. As hard as I try to collect all my hair from the shower, inevitably some goes down the drain each day. I just had no idea HOW MUCH. Thursday morning I noticed the shower was draining slowly and on Friday Ryan attempted to clear the drain. He started inside with a coat hanger down the pipe but wasn’t able to get to it. He then moved to the basement where I heard him moan with disgust that, "this is going to be disgusting!" He came up for rubber gloves, a bucket and a flashlight. This I had to see. About

it would hurt less! This afternoon I performed one of my least favorite tasks; trimming the dogs toenails. We don't have to do it all that often because they are so active, but Abner still has his duclaws and Lilly has a few random toenails that tend to go a little wild. Lilly, amazingly enough is the easy one so I finished her nails quickly and moved on to Abner. He is not so easy. This is another case when I call bull shit on all the dog books I read in preparation for my puppy. Everything I read said if you start them early they will get used to it and hold still and not be stressed out...LIES. ALL OF IT I trimmed his flippin' nails every week when he was a baby and he STILL hates it. Here is a shot of the pathetic guy and his purple bandage. I hope he NEVER has a "real" injury that requires bandaging because he would not stop licking this tiny one. So annoying! I do have one of those cone head things just sitting in the closet...hummm

I hope everyone had a great Easter; we sure did. We carried on our tradition of dying eggs, and this year we also hid them and did an early morning egg hunt. The Easter bunny even brought us baskets filled with special beers for Ryan and candy and Champagne for me. In case you are wondering, the answer is yes. I do realize how incredibly dorky we are and no, we will not stop acting like 5 year old kids or stop treating our dogs like they are our children or doing said activities as though we do in fact have children to participate. Don't you know things like egg hunts are much more fun when you don't have children involved? Then you don't have to pretend to not see eggs and let little kids find them. You can dominate because you are an adult and have logical thinking and problem solving skills to find that Easter egg that is hidden JUST OUT OF SIGHT. OH MY GOD WHY CAN'T YOU SEE IT. IT IS RIGHT THERE. IF IT WERE A SNAKE IT WOULD HAVE BITTEN YOU. ARE YOU BLIND? HOLY

Our dogs LOVE the beach! What's not to love about the beach if you're a dog? I mean where else is there at least a 75% chance you will get to roll in something dead before your mother catches up SCREAMING bloody murder!

Ryan: Are you going to put yogurt on that fruit and eat it? Me: Why, will that gross you out? Ryan (with a DISGUSTED look on his face): Yes Me: Then YES

Anyone else notice how dirty my floors look in this picture? I can never win, EVER! Photo credit: Ryan

You know how when you first start dating someone you tend to keep your love for certain things a secret; at least for a little while. Things like drinking milk right out of the carton, walking around naked or in my case, the ability to polish off an entire pint of ice cream; alone, in front of the TV, with only a spoon. Ryan knew going into this that I was a lover if ice cream. In fact, one of our first dates was going to Baskin n Robbins where I ordered a double scoop. Might as well break him in early right? To be honest, I did consider for a moment ordering only one scoop, but the reality is I NEVER order only one scoop. Who was I kidding? From that day on we frequently walked to get ice cream, drove to get ice cream and made special stops at the grocery store to, you guessed, get ice cream. To me this ice cream eating was perfectly normal, but to Ryan, not so much. I remember one day him telling me that in the past 3 months he had eaten more ice cream than he had in YEARS. Y

"Yoga Dog," one of Lilly's best tricks. I tried for 10 minutes to get her to do it on the yoga mat but there was no way in hell she was stepping on that dog eating blue torture device that I am sure was burning hot and covered in tacks!