The Return of the Not-So Magnificent One

Well hello there. Remember me? She of the red hair and smart of mouth? Yeah I didn't think so.

Oh, I joke to hide the pain.

Sorry for the lack of posts. I've been busy with things and I've also been too busy stewing in my own brain juice to deal with the things with which I'm supposed to have been busy. (That may have been more grammatically correct than ending the sentence with a preposition, but it was painful to write.) My briny mind goo is still in a state of flux, so I can't say I'll be posting regularly again any time soon. However, I'm having a decent enough afternoon that I thought it might be nice to stop by and scoot the dead people posts further down on the page.

I suppose I should have actually come up with something to say before I decided to do this...

Wait. I've got it. A game, let's play a game. Okay. Now. Here's two photos. One of these is the dear departed Pepper McQueen Ross. The other is her youngest daughter, Pickles. See who can be the first to tell me which is which:





I am not a professional scientist, so I'm afraid I cannot offer to clone any of your pets for you. I just got lucky, if not a little creeped out.

Well, that wasn't as substantial as I'd originally thought it would be. Hmm. Okay, how about this, I'll give you a couple of links to poke at and ponder and/or discuss at your leisure? Does that work? It's been so long, I've forgotten how to behave on my own blog. SAD.

Topic 1-Yes, there is such a thing as a stupid question.

Topic 2-Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

Pupdate

This coming Sunday night/Monday morning, the puppies will be six weeks old. They're mobile, they can see and hear, Maggie has hit the "DO NOT WANT" stage so they're almost completely weaned and they've developed their little personalities. Sam is pretty easy-going and he doesn't so much walk as bounce. Eve is a little tub of lard that whines and whines if she so much as suspects someone is getting some sleep anywhere in the house. Oddly, I'm more partial to Evie. Anyway, they're growing up and will soon be finding new homes leaving me a broken husk of a woman. Oh how time flies, memories like the corners of my mind, sunrise, sunset, the cat's in the cradle and so on.

I've been making attempts to take plenty of photos of them, but it's hard because 1-I have a cheap-ass camera. 2-the little turd machines won't sit still long enough for me to take a clear picture of them. And 3-as is the case with all my dogs, when they do something cute and I run to fetch the camera, they stop whatever cute thing they were doing and either go to sleep, or disgrace themselves on my floor. And that stopped being cute about 3 weeks ago, except for last week when Eve was concentrating REALLY HARD while she was pooping and she lost her footing and fell right over. It was HILARIOUS.

I didn't get a picture of that, sadly, so you'll have to settle for these.










Sam isn't cross-eyed, this was taken shortly after their eyes opened and they hadn't started focusing yet:



Now I had to re-touch this one because it was overexposed (again: cheap-ass camera), but it was such a good picture of Evie's face, I'm putting it in.

Here We Go Again...

In case you missed the updates on my MySpace and Facebook pages, I am in possession of two more dogs. Back in October, Maggie and Botwo got their hillbilly on and early this morning the adorable products of their forbidden love made their debut. Just 2, a girl and a boy-Eve (named after the iPod-ish robot from Wall-E) and Sam.

These will be the last puppies birthed in this house-one of my few New year's resolutions is to get all the dogs fixed, lack of money be damned. As I told Jenner, I have this bizarre vision of Bob Barker showing up at my house accompanied by an angry mob, as well he should. It's irresponsible to let your pets go around breeding like canine trailer trash and I'm too refined and dignified for that...I am too, goddammit.

Yeah, yeah, none of you want a PSA. You want to see the puppies, don't you? I've only got a couple pictures so far (I didn't want anyone up in my face with a camera after I gave birth, I figure I can show Maggie the same courtesy. I told you-I'm class all the way), so they'll have to do for now.

Eve is the black and white spotted one, Sam is the shy brown and white one hiding under his Mama's leg.

Super Relax

I'd stab each and every one of you if it meant I could sleep THIS peacefully.



Have a nice weekend everybody.

Bzzzzzzzz

We've got half as many puppies as before: today Molly, Gracie and Rory all went to new homes. Gracie and Molly are still together and Rory's new owners have a couple of other pets, so hopefully they will adjust quickly. Or that's what I keep telling myself to keep from crying.

No, actually, I'm super, thanks for asking. The other 3 have kept me pretty occupied. Plus I had no sleep last night, which has made me extra, EXTRA busy. I don't know what it is, but when I suffer from an hellish lack of sleep, I get a lot of energy. Much like Apu on the Simpsons when he worked for like 4 days straight and he got so wound up he thought he was a hummingbird. That's me today-Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I don't know where I'm going with this exactly-I'm starting to think I posted just so I could work in that Apu reference. Like I say, I've had NO sleep, so I can't be held accountable for any rambling nonsense I post.

No, wait, I know what it was. It's pitchuhs', I gots pitchuhs of the puppies. These were taken in the last couple weeks, while we still had all of them. They're between 5-6 weeks old in them and it goes without saying, cute. as. hell.

Pups-n-Stuff

As I reported back at the beginning of February, my dogs Pepper and Patches became involved in a torrid affair. Patches was all of 6 months old at the time, while Pepper was around 4 and a half, which makes her a Beagle/Daschund/Cougar mix, apparently. Since Patches was so young, we hadn't had him fixed yet, as we were under the horribly mistaken illusion that he was too young to breed. We hadn't had Pepper fixed because up until that point, she hadn't been around any other males dogs for any length of time. We thought at one time she might be pregnant, but it turned out to be a false pregnancy, and not the last time, either.

Long story short: as of this writing, Patches' nads are a distant memory, and my bedroom is now a flophouse for 9 dogs: Pepper, Patches, Lily and Pepper's 6 puppies. They were born last Tuesday, and until yesterday, they along with Pepper were staying in Harper's room, which is also where they were born.

Pepper is a wonderful mother-for the first week, she didn't leave them except for very brief bathroom breaks. If anyone picked up one of the puppies, she'd flip her shit until they were returned to her side. Of course, a gal can only take so much and over the weekend, she decided that she missed being around her people, so I carted the whole bunch of them in here. Now she spends most of her time nursing, getting frequent belly rubs, begging for scraps and standing vigil against Lily and Patches. Lily and Patches have no ill will to the pups; aside from some curiousity, they don't pay much attention to them. But if they so much as darken Pepper's side of the room, she barks her head off.


I'm rambling a little, so I'll wrap it up. The reason I'm posting is because my sister came by today and took some pictures of the new family and I wanted to share them because they're just so darn cute I could plotz.


The proud Papa. He's grown quite a bit since the last time I posted about him:



Miss Thang:



Clockwise from left, Molly, Zach, Rory, Maggie, Gracie (middle) and Botwo:



Gracie and Rory:




Note Maggie, the chubby brown and white one in the middle. She's like that about 98% of the time:



I love this picture. The look on Pepper's face just says it all:

Mighty Little Man

About a month ago, I acquired another dog (for those of you keeping score at home, the TDYL Pet Tally now stands at 5.) His name is Patches (aka Patch, aka, Patchouli, aka Padamamie, aka Pothead, aka Patrick Star, aka Petra Haden...In case you were wondering, I HATE the name Patches) and he's a Jack Russell mix. He's about 3 months old, and he's quite the feisty little beast.

The first week that we had him, he attempted to make friends with Lily and Pepper and they, being the brave souls that they are, would jump on the couch and cower, just out of his reach. As you'll see, he's quite a vicious looking character. However as time has passed, the girls have become accustomed to his frightful visage and they've all decided to try and live together in harmony, I guess for my sake.

As for just HOW well they get along, Pepper does her best to put up with him, and will even play with him if the mood strikes her, which is exceedingly rare these days. At the ripe old age of 4 1/2 years old, Pepper is getting to be a cranky old bitch (and yet she's still my favorite, I wonder why). She's also become camera-shy for some reason, so she does not make an appearance in these photos.

Lily on the other hand has taken to Patches quite swimmingly and has assumed a bit of a maternal role in addition to being his bestest buddy-it's all really very sweet if you're into that kind of thing.

As for Patches himself, he's pretty well-behaved for a puppy, especially a male puppy. He doesn't chew very much and he's picking up the house training thing rather quickly, I guess because he goes out with the other dogs. He's kinda hyper, and when he's hungry, he drags his food dish into the middle of the floor so that I'll trip over it and feed his little fat ass. He also likes to sleep next to my head, and when you talk to him in the right tone of voice, he'll back-sass you. Oh, and he likes to chase and kill crickets and if you scratch him on the back just right, he does this full-body shiver thing-I swear, it's fucking precious...

So, I kinda like him, I guess. Just a little. Yeah.

Dumb Blonde

I have two dogs. There's Pepper, the light of my life, my canine pride and joy, and then there's....Lily.

Oh, when we got Lily, she was exactly 6 weeks old. So cute. Harper had gone to the grocery store with my dad, and some people were giving away puppies in the parking lot. Harper comes home all excited-she REALLY wanted one of these dogs. Normally, when she sees some random animal and decides that she simply MUST HAVE IT, I say no, and believe me, I say no A LOT. But this time, she was absolutely overcome with emotion, and at that time, she was keeping her behavior in check.

So, we go BACK to the store, and I'm confronted with a pack of excruciatingly adorable yellow lab mixes. Up until that point, I was still unconvinced that I should take on another animal to raise (at that time-april of last year-we were in possession of one dog, Pepper; a turtle, John; and the world's largest chicken, cleverly named Chickadee. John and Chickadee are no longer with us.) Despite all my bluster and my savagely cool demeanor (what?), I am a gigantic softie deep down, and I relented. She makes her pick (the only thing I told her, was that it HAD to be a female), and we go home with a fat, fluffball that she dubs Lily.

And all was good. For awhile. Lily was was a well-behaved puppy for the most part. Sure, she crapped in the floor, peed on my bed, and chewed my belongings, but she was obscenely goodnatured, and it bears repeating, PAINFULLY cute.

Cut to almost a year later-she's STILL taking MUCH LARGER dumps upon my floor, she's stopped peeing on my bed, but instead manages to takes squirts in obscure parts of the house (and I still manage to step in them), and on occasion, chows down on my furniture, and now she's tall enough to root in the garbage. She's still rocking the winning personality, to a degree, only she's not as cute anymore.

Yesterday, I got about 4 rolls of film developed(No, there were none of me), and after going through all of the pictures, I found one solitary photo of the canine in question. It's not a good one, but since I posted Pepper's saucy centerfoldesque pic way back when I started this blog, I thought I'd give equal time to her sister. She's big, she's dumb, she's destructive, she enrages me at least twice a day, but I still love her...Most of the time.

Now presenting, Lily:

The Walkmen-"We've Been Had"

I probably won't post anything else until this afternoon, so I want to use this post to make a completely hypothetical observation, that is in no way like anything that may have happened to me this morning.

If you share your home with another person, or people, and if you have any pets, and if one of your pets happens to, say, disgrace themself on your carpet, do not leave it there, and then INFORM one of the other people, that around 6 HOURS AGO, you noticed some feces on the floor. If you see any animal waste on your rug, pick it up and dispose of it properly. Do you know why such a high percentage of deaths occur in the home? Because when you don't pick up shit, YOU GET MURDERED! Ahem. Think about it, won't you? Thank you.