Drunken Puppies

Posted on July 7, 2011 | 4 comments

Good morning Everyone!

 

 

Every once in a while, you run across a headline that makes you go “hmmmmmm…..”  Today I ran across the following gem:  “Pet Store Bans Drunken Puppy Buying.”  After I looked twice to be sure I read it correctly, the thought crossed my mind that the headline makes a lot of sense.  After all, how can a puppy make a good owner choice if it is drunk?  And if drinking and driving is bad (and it is), how can you condone drinking and selecting an owner? 

Coordination is an issue too.  Puppies have a hard enough time walking and navigating around a room to begin; imagine the effects if alcohol is added to the mix!  I knew a puppy (Shadow) who used to love to run through tunnels she had made under the bed between storage boxes at night at full speed – until the night she made a wrong turn and slammed head first into the bedroom wall.  (We didn’t see it, but we heard it.)  How much worse would it have been if she had been drunk!

Shadow and Woof - Never Drunk but Always Crazy!

We all know that alcohol impairs judgment and a puppy’s judgment is questionable at best to begin with; I suspect it would be nonexistent with alcohol added.  The first week we had him, Darwin decided to tear out all of our porch screens in three days. If he had had one or two daiquiris beforehand, not only screen replacement, but also a vet visit would have been in order, since his lack of balance would have precipitated him over the 15 foot drop between the porch and the ground.  (Vets are much more expensive than screens, for those of you keeping score.)

The Terminator! (Of Screens)

And let’s think a minute people – is it really a good idea to give a mind-altering substance to an animal that loses its mind when it experiences its first car ride with the windows down or its first potato chip?   For that matter, how exactly do you give a puppy a breathalyzer test and what is the legal limit for puppies?  The enforcement issues are mind-blowing!

So, kudos to the pet store for the courage to take a stand and here’s hope for the rehabilitation of all those drunken puppies! 

Have a great day!

Nancy

4 Comments

Posted in dogs, Just stuff..., Pets, working mom

Tagged , , , , ,

Writer’s Block, Socks and Sunsets

Posted on July 6, 2011 | 1 comment

Good morning Everyone!

I don’t know how it happened, but I am having a bit of writer’s block today, so help me out and if there are any topics you are interested in hearing about some other time, could you please leave me a comment? 

Kayla in the car (Not sleeping, but you get the idea)

I had the chance to envy my daughter this morning.  While we were driving to work today, she decided to curl up and take herself a little snooze.  I started to wake her up and tell her that she could drive and I would nap, but the last time I tried that, she looked over at me, raised her eyebrows and said firmly, “Not happening Mom!”  Besides, she can’t reach the pedals yet, which would be problematic.  

Mandy and Darwin confer on their sock capers

Socks are appearing in random places throughout the house again, usually one member of a pair dropped in the center of the floor, and the other member chewed and tucked in a corner, so I will have to figure out where Bad Dog and No-no are collecting them from.  Bad Dog managed to snatch a quarter of a bagel off my plate yesterday morning too, when I had to leave the breakfast table to discover what the wails in my daughter’s bedroom were all about.  (The child had the audacity, with her clothes cupboard open and chock full of clothes, to tell me that she was crying because she didn’t have anything to wear.)  Bad Dog wasn’t too upset when I got on to her about the bagel, either. 

Tyra

Tyra managed to muster enough spryness last night to jump on the bed for the first time in a while, which was nice to see.  She also won the gold star for exemplary conduct when Mark’s mother came over to have supper with us.  Darwin and Mandy were over-exuberant in their greeting so got exiled to the patio for a little while, but Tyra waited until a good time and then walked over to be petted without any leaping, or barking or other shenanigans.

Finally, I thought I would share Kayla’s pastel sunset with you.  Kayla is taking art with the same teacher I have for the summer, and this is the third thing she has done, but her first pastel.  I was pretty blown away!

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

1 Comment

Posted in dogs, Just stuff..., On the Home Front, Pets, working mom

Tagged , , , ,

Magnetic Attraction

Posted on July 5, 2011 | Leave a comment

Good morning!

I hope everyone had a nice Fourth of July.  We had a nice one, a quiet weekend, with a lot of laughter, but not the kind of things you can easily share, except for Kayla’s chiding comment to Mandy that Mandy needed to improve her “altitude.”  While all of us will admit that Mandy is vertically challenged, more altitude is not something she needs.  I saw her leap this weekend greeting someone and when she did, her face was level with this person’s face.  Kayla meant “attitude”, but I am afraid that when dealing with “No-no”, attitude is a lot cause. 

Today, however, I am sitting here eating breakfast, hoping against hope that the (new) shirt I am wearing is not magnetic.  Although magnetic shirts are not a part of most people’s life, I am extraordinarily gifted at picking out shirts that attract food stains.  Other people go blithely throughout life with shirts that never see a stain, but not me.   

Spaghetti sauce is especially attracted to everything that I wear, with the power of the attraction increasing geometrically to the whiteness of the shirt involved.  I have seen the sauce leap a four foot gap just to reach my shirt – without hitting anyone or anything else in the room! 

Most people (except perhaps my husband) encounter trouble with spaghetti sauce somewhere along the line, but my shirts attract much more than just spaghetti sauce.  Any kind of sauce or dressing is a lock to reach my shirt, and I have even gotten stains from food items that should tamely stay either on the plate or in my mouth where they belong, including simple things like apples and carrots. 

I was afraid I was going to find a new source of shirt attraction last year when I started art lessons.  Strangely, although you would think that my shirts’ magnetism would be even stronger when it comes to paints and pastels and charcoal, they are not.  Paints, pastels and charcoal are much more interested in reaching paper than they are in reaching my shirt, although there was the one incident when some oil paint overcame its attraction to the canvas to leap instead onto one of my shirts.  Of course, it took a pure white shirt to accomplish that. 

Is there a solution to this problem?  I am not sure, but I have at least learned one thing:  Shout is definitely my friend!

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

Leave a comment

Posted in Just stuff..., On the Home Front, Out of the mouths of babes...., Pets, working mom

Tagged , , , , , , ,

We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident

Posted on July 4, 2011 | 5 comments

Happy Fourth of July! 

For those of you who read this blog and aren’t from the United States or familiar with our history, the Fourth of July is the day we celebrate the creation of our nation.  July 4, 1776 is the day that the delegates to the Continental Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence, setting forth the grounds for our choice to become our own country. 

The Declaration of Independence is one of the two most important founding documents in our country.  (The other is the Constitution, adopted in its original form in 1787.)  It was written by Thomas Jefferson, and approved by a committee appointed by the Continental Congress, which included John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. FN. 

The Declaration of Independence is a masterpiece of prose and a cornerstone of political theory.  It contains the grandest sentence ever written in American literature. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident:  that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

The men who adopted this document were not angels, not perfect, not supermen.  No women or minorities were at the convention, and there were men among them who were slave-owners, among them Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.  But these men understood that people had the right to be governed with their consent, and understood that, at the end of the day, all humankind is entitled to certain fundamental rights that should not be stripped from them.  They were men who stood to lose everything if they lost the war for independence, and they came very close to doing so.  The fact that our nation survived the next six months is a miracle.  (Read David McCullough’s 1776, and you will understand why.) 

How many of us lately have had to put everything on the line for our beliefs, our lives, our property, our families’ welfare?  We honor the members of the military who have chosen to do so and marvel at the fact that they are volunteers.  The fact that we don’t have to is owed in part to these first few men who had the vision and the courage to adopt the document to start the nation whose birth we celebrate today. 

Our nation is not, and has never been, perfect.  It can’t be, because no person is perfect and our government is governed by people.  But we never give up the quest for perfection, sometimes improving in leaps and bounds, sometimes starting to lag a little bit behind, but always, ultimately, based upon the hopes and dreams of the entire populace, moving forward just a little bit more.

Please have a good time today; enjoy your barbecue time, your family celebrations and your fireworks.  But also please take a small moment of time to think about what it is to be an American, what our nation stands for and how we who are Americans can help it to move forward and thank God for the great gifts he has given to us.  Then this holiday will not only be a good Fourth of July for you and your family, but for our whole country also.

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

FN.  John Adams was a key player in getting the Continental Congress to declare independence, and the second president of the United States. David McCullough has written an excellent biography of him that is worth reading, and HBO did a mini-series on his life that also was excellent. I am going to make the rash assumption that Benjamin Franklin needs no introduction, but Walter Isaacson wrote a very good biography of him also.

5 Comments

Posted in Reflection

Tagged , ,

In Honor of the Fourth: Kayla’s Turn

Posted on July 1, 2011 | 2 comments

Good morning/afternoon everyone!

One of the things I have thought a lot about lately, as the Fourth approaches and as the news continues to stress differences between us, is how much we Americans have in common that no-one every acknowledges.  Chief among those commonalities is the hope that our children will experience a future far better than the present that we experience.  We may disagree on the method that it will take for us to get there, but I don’t know anyone who wakes up one day and says, “You know, I really hope that the world will be a much more terrible place for my child than it is for me right now.” 

So, in honor of that sentiment, today is Kayla’s turn to supply material (that she herself chose, as opposed to that which I reported) for this post.

Monday morning, as I was trying to get ready for work, she got hold of the camera and followed the dogs around for about 45 minutes taking pictures.  I promised her that I would use her pictures in my blog, so today is the day.  I did take the liberty of making up the captions for the pictures, though.

She got some good basic pictures of the dogs, including one with Mark and Mandy sharing a moment together:

Tyra Waiting on the Sofa

Look closely at Mandy’s tail in this one:

Mandy in the bathroom

 And here Mandy and Mark are sharing a moment together before either realizes Kayla and the camera are in the room:

Mandy and Mark in the Morning

Darwin was waiting his turn in the kitchen:

Darwin waits in the kitchen

She also got some fantastic pictures of Mandy in her favorite lookout spot, the sofa in the study area of the great room.  We call it her lair.  

Mandy in her favorite lookout spot

Sometimes Darwin wanders by:

Mandy and Darwin confer

When Mandy is in her lair, it can be easier to get close-ups of her:

Mandy's close-up

Tyra, as head dog, is allowed to claim the leather sofa as hers whenever she wants it.

Tyra holds court on the couch

Kayla also managed to catch Mandy, as Bad Dog, and Darwin, as No-no, in action.  I think I would have preferred her to save the items they were working on, but at least you now have proof that the two dogs, even though they can look so sweet in their pictures, do have alter-egos!

Bad Dog’s Criminal Caper:

In the legal field, we might consider this to be a smoking gun:

The Smoking Gun....

Denials are useless at this point:

But ultimately she remains unrepentant as she plans her next criminal caper with the victims – Kayla’s flip-flops – in plain view.

Sleeping I dreamed, Love, I dreamed, Love, of thee.

No-no’s plan of attack centered around an assumption that he would remain unmolested in the bedroom if every one was out in the other room getting breakfast.   He didn’t count on the People Puppy of the house roaming around with a camera.

No-no caught in the act!

However, he appeared to be oblivious to the meaning behind the words “plausible deniability.”

Who me?

And at first refused to go quietly:

Still, all’s well that ends well, so No-no is ready to go again as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

Have a great weekend and a great Fourth of July everyone!

Nancy

2 Comments

Posted in dogs, Just stuff..., On the Home Front, Pets, working mom

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Smarter Than a Smart Key? Apparently Not!

Posted on June 30, 2011 | 4 comments

Good morning everyone!

My car has a push button start with a smart key.  As long as the key is within a certain distance of the car, I can unlock the car and start it without having to physically put a key in the ignition. 

When we bought the car, I thought that feature was superfluous, until I realized that having a push button start with a smart key meant I would never have to search through my purse for my keys again.  The smart key/push button start will work as long as the purse is close enough to the car with the key in it.  (Not having to search through your purse is not a big deal for most people, but it is for me, since my purse is Fibber McGee’s Closet in miniature and has a talent for ensuring that whatever you are looking for at that particular moment is buried in the deepest darkest part of it.) 

I managed somehow to confuse my car enough on Tuesday, though, so that it refused to start for about five minutes at lunch time.  That night, just to be sure that it was a fluke and not a problem with the car, Mark and I decided to swap cars for a few days.

Yesterday I drove his Escape to Birmingham, where I had a meeting.  When I finished my meeting, I got back into the Escape to leave and was very frustrated when the Escape failed to start as well – until I realized that I was pushing the air conditioning button repeatedly instead of inserting the Escape’s key in its ignition and turning it on. 

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

4 Comments

Posted in Just stuff..., working mom

Tagged , , , , ,

Captain Anderson’s, Panama City, Florida

Posted on June 29, 2011 | 1 comment

Hi Everyone!

Now that I have your attention….

45 minutes to the east of the Sandestin Resort is one of our all-time favorite restaurants:  Captain Anderson’s.  It, like Lambert’s, is one of those restaurants that it is worth taking a drive to visit. 

Captain Anderson’s is a seafood restaurant and has been owned by the Patronis family for over 40 years.  They have a large dining room, divided into several smaller rooms.  The restaurant is right beside a marina, and there are fishing boats moored to the pier behind the big picture windows at the end of the restaurant.  At Captain Anderson’s, you will receive fresh, well-made sea food and excellent service.  We have never had a bad meal or a bad experience there.

Other people know about Captain Anderson’s also.  This means that if you go at peak hours on Friday and Saturday, you can expect a wait, and of course, the bigger the party, the longer the wait you will have.  However, we have found that the restaurant has a system that ferries parties in and out expeditiously, all without your ever feeling rushed during your meal.  In addition, we try to arrive somewhere between 4 and 5 in the afternoon, preferably on Monday through  Thursday.  Each time we do that, we are able to get a seat right away.  

For those who do have a wait, however, the waiting room has interesting artifacts scattered throughout to keep you entertained.  By a family vote of 2 to 1, and the camera’s vote of 1 -1, (I had a new camera I was trying to use and was having some difficulties) my picture-taking of the waiting room was limited, but here the pictures I was able to take. 

This gizmo is in the corner of a hallway.  I have no earthly idea what it does (Mark did, but I can’t remember what he said), but it certainly looks interesting!

Air tank?

These cannons are also worth a look:

In addition to lots of things to look at while you wait, Captain Anderson’s now has a newspaper-like menu, with a description of its history and Panama City’s history in it.  We picked one up, and Kayla kept reading it even when we reached our table.

It made the rounds between all three of us during the short wait for our food, which not only included the appetizer of fried cheese we ordered, and our entrees, but salad (or in Mark’s case, soup) and a basket full of fresh bread and various crackers. 

Diving Helmet

On the bar across from our table, there was a brass diving helmet, something you don’t see everyday!

We don’t get dessert every time we go out, but at Captain Anderson’s it is just too hard to say no.  (Although I would have made Kayla get something else had I known what she was going to use the hurricane glass for later!)  FN.

I got the wonderful brownie concoction you saw at the beginning of this post, Kayla went with a hurricane glass full of pudding, and Mark ate his favorite, Key Lime pie. 

As we were rolling ourselves out of the restaurant, Mark offered to take Kayla and my picture besides one of the two or three large, old-fashioned diving suits that decorate the restaurant. 

A close-upA better view of the diving suit

(Panama City is home to the Navy’s diving school, which is why many of the decorations at Captain Anderson’s have a diving motif). 

If you get the chance, Captain Anderson’s is a wonderful restaurant, family friendly and worth trying.  (Remember though that it is closed on Sundays.)

Oh, and they also have a gift shop along the side that is fun to wander through; we didn’t get there this trip, but we have on others.  At least one item in the gift shop is a cookbook with some of the Patronis’ family’s favorite recipes in it.  I bought it years ago.  I haven’t used it, but I bought it!

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

FN.  Just when I thought I could retire the list….

1 Comment

Posted in Travel, working mom

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

The Rest of the Story….

Posted on June 28, 2011 | 6 comments

Hi Everyone!

Last week, when I picked Kayla up from art, her art teacher told me that she wished she could have written down half of the things Kayla said while she was teaching her because they were so funny.  I laughed and told her that now she knew why I had started a blog; the material I have available is just too good to waste. 

Two days later, as I was trying to coordinate day camp’s free swim time with my need to pick Kayla up early for the orthodontist, Kayla told me that at day camp, “The weather doesn’t stop them from doing anything.”  (There was a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon.)  I thought that was kind of funny, so I shared it with the day camp counselors who laughed and then said, “She’s so funny all the time anyhow.”  I told Mark about both of those comments and wondered whether I have a budding comedienne, a chatterbox, a genius, or a combination of all three on my hands. 

Then came our little escapade with the hurricane glass and her elbow.  (Just when I thought I could retire the list….).  While the story itself was too good to add anything else to it, there was an aftermath.  After I got the glass off, Kayla kind of sniffled and cried through the rest of her bath.  I went in to check on her and she said, woefully and through her sniffs, “I should try out for the part of Moaning Myrtle.”  (FN)  I asked why, and she said, “Because all I do is moan, moan, moan.”  I did the only thing a rational parent could do in that situation, which is answer, “Oh!” and start to walk out of the room before I cracked a smile. 

As I was leaving, she looked up at me and said forcefully, “Yes!”  I turned around and said, “What?”  She said, “Yes, you can tell Daddy I said that.”  I told her that I was planning on it and then she said (still sniffling), “That works out then.”  At that moment any effort on my part to keep a straight face was completely lost.  I high-tailed it out of her bathroom into our bedroom laughing.  Mark asked me why, I told him about it, and then he looked at me, grinned and asked, “And you wonder why people tell you she’s funny?” 

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

FN.  For those who don’t follow the Harry Potter books or movies, Moaning Myrtle is a girl ghost who floats around sighing and moaning most of the time.

6 Comments

Posted in Just stuff..., Out of the mouths of babes...., working mom

Tagged , , , , , ,

Just when I thought I could retire the list….

Posted on June 27, 2011 | 10 comments

Good morning everyone!

A few months ago, I wrote a post called “Rules I Never Thought I’d Need” listing some rules that I never expected to have to use as a parent.  I was hoping that soon I could retire the list permanently, but after Friday, we now have a new one to add.

Do not ram your elbow into the top of a plastic hurricane glass. 

Now let me explain.

As you know, last week we went to Destin.  While we were there, we drove over to Captain Anderson’s, a wonderful restaurant I will write about another day, for dinner.  For dessert, Kayla chose a pudding concoction that Captain Anderson’s serves in the plastic glass pictured above.  She got to keep the glass. 

Fast forward to Friday evening.  When she and I were driving home, she mentioned that she had a small (I looked at it, and I would categorize it as vanishingly small) scratch on her right elbow.  I didn’t think any more of it, but shipped her off to take a bath as usual.  About 10 minutes later, she started screaming in terror in the bathroom.  I came tearing into the bathroom to see what was wrong, only to find that my daughter had stuck her entire elbow into the hurricane glass to the point that the glass was stuck.  I started to laugh,  (for some reason, that didn’t seem to calm her down!) but managed to get her into the kitchen where I used the spray nozzle to change the temperature of the glass where I could break the suction and pull it off.  She has a perfectly round bruise about three inches across on her elbow but otherwise is recovering nicely.

When we got to the point we were capable of coherent conversation (ie., she had stopped screaming and I had stopped laughing) I asked her how it happened that her elbow and the glass came together, and she told me that she had slipped it over her elbow tightly so that her elbow wouldn’t sting due to the vanishingly small scratch she had pointed out early while she took her bath.   She only got scared when she couldn’t pull it off again.

For the record, her father thought it was funny, too.

Have a great day everyone!

Nancy

10 Comments

Posted in Just stuff..., working mom

Tagged , , , , ,

Poem Published for the Fourth of July

Posted on June 25, 2011 | 6 comments

Hi Everyone!

I have published a poem for the Fourth of July on the Yahoo Contributor Network.  Here is the link:  Rededication for the Fourth of July.  Please check it out, and if you like it, forward it to others.  Also, remember you can comment on it also if you want.  Thanks! 

Have a great day!

Nancy

6 Comments

Posted in Just stuff...