Zoey being cute

Amanda pointed out a good fact to me yesterday. Despite my love for the puppy, all you ever hear about is her eating my sill and flip-flops, etc. So the theme for today is my adorable puppy, with lots of photos as evidence.

So here we have photos of my puppy being cute. Since these are when she's sleeping one might still be tempted to think that my puppy is only good when unconscious. Not true! It's just the only time I can take a picture where she's not moving. She moves constantly and even more so when I'm trying to take pictures.(I swear) Moving and ripping open toys to pull out the stuffing are here favorite activities.(Besides sleeping, eating, and barking, she has a very full schedule) Right now Sheep and Cookie Monster from the pictures are due for some major surgery. For once it's not her favorite squeaky toy hedgehog. I've sewed up his side, including reinserting an arm, and his back. Tonight it'll be Sheep's back and CM's lip. She's also decided that pulling the squirrels out of their tree is boring, and she would rather eat the tree trunk part. (picture to follow)

Everyone has heard and seen the window sill incidence, so you might be surprised that I have once more placed Zoey alone in both the kitchen and dining room. I'm a bit surprised myself, but considering she can't really do much damage that will matter on her tasty windowsill anymore, and that she's now 7 months old, we thought we'd try again. I sprayed the windowsill with bitters again. Amanda left me this wonderful note about how someone else had tried Vick's Vapor rub and it worked great. The smell and taste kept the dog from eating the area. So I got some, and I let her sniff it and she licked it. Ewwww! So, I thought, well the smell doesn't bother here, but the taste probably does, I bet she will go away this time. But NO! She licked it again! My weird dog likes Vick's. That just can't be good.

Spiders

I'm all creepy crawly the last few days. I found a beautiful spider in my garden. These are called Writing or Garden Spiders. Garden because that's where they live, Writing because of the pattern on their webs. They have a normal web shape, but with an additional thick scribbley type pattern down the middle of it. You can't really tell in the photo, but if you look below her you can kind see it. I got too close after this and she jumped off. Yes she, in spiders girls are usually large and pretty and boys are little and drab.

We used to have one of these in my classroom. Actually we had a couple. Once they lay eggs they die and we had to get a new one. (I could contain a large spider, but a bunch of small ones might escape, they had to be put back outside.) Certain class days we would head out and hunt bugs. Crickets were an especially easy target. The kids would catch the bugs and we would choose one to feed to the spider. Every time she built a web, we'd throw a bug in it. The kids loved to watch how she'd move to grab the bug and immobilize it, then roll it up in webbing. Well, of course, there were as many ewwws as cools, but they were all watching.

I have decided to name her Zola. I showed her to Brad, but he was not impressed, he was also very concerned that she was poisonous. I assured him she wasn't poisonous, to him anyway. The large dead moth she had at the time didn't help much. However, since she's outside and easily avoidable(he never goes near the landscaping, that's my area) he's decided not to put out a death decree. Lucky Zola. Now as long as the puppy doesn't find her we're in good shape.

Why they start out small and cute...

Zoey "Sluggett Sill Muncher" Blake

Ah, while daddy is away the puppy will play. No matter that I am there, this is apparently of no concern to Zoey. Brad is gone for the week and although she began her boundary testing last week, she seems to have accelerated it as of Monday morning when she realized he wasn't coming back for a while.

Monday morning started normally, up at 6:30 have breakfast, come up and get ready, go outside before I leave. Once outside she decided that running in circles around the back yard, back and forth to the fence(and dogs next door) and away from me was the best course of action. Needless to say my commands had no effect and it took me a while to catch her especially since I refused to run after her. Mass spankings were in order.

Being the kind mother I am I left her in the dining room and kitchen area, even though she had started to chew the window sill and molding. I figured she'd already done the damage. Well, she did more, finding a whole new piece of unchewed molding and completely destroying a corner of the window sill,(See exhibit A) and then she tried to eat the door mat. Also, a leaf fell off the rubber tree and little tiny pieces of it ended up everywhere. ( I am now quite relieved I thought to place the rubber tree up where she couldn't reach it)


Monday after the whole coming home to everything chewed on was going well. Zoey and I went out to play. Felicia came to visit and Zoey ran back and forth between our laps. And even when we went to dinner and left her in the kitchen by herself, nothing was destroyed. We watched some TV, she barked at some pedestrians, the normal nightly routine. Then we went up to bed. I went to take my shower. I came back, greeted the puppy at the bedroom door and noticed she had something like foam in her fur? and then I noticed my flip flop, oddly in the middle of the room. When turned over I noted it was full of teeth marks and covered in slobber.(See exhibit B) Not only that, but she had tried to pull laundry out of the laundry basket.(resulting in more slobber covered items, well the parts she managed to pull out through the holes.) The flip flop incident(as it will be known) was especially upsetting because everyone I know has dogs who have chewed on their shoes(excepting Angie because Schautze has never done anything wrong ever, ever ever))(Sadie even ate all of Laura's left shoes(yes, all of them)), but not my puppy, she was never interested in chewing on shoes. Now, my bragging rights are forfeited and they all get to shake their heads and say "I told you it was only a matter of time."

Tuesday she got to stay in the kitchen alone. The dining room sills and molding no longer able to handle her attentions (or my sanity, whatever.) Not one to be deterred my mere obstacles to her true aims, she decided to concentrate on the refrigerator. Like most, our refrigerator is covered with magnets, papers, postcards, doodads, etc. Now only the top 2/3rds of it is covered in anything. Most of the magnets escaped unscathed, but some large cheapy ones fell to the puppy teeth. I recognized parts of those, the rest of the slobber cover mass is still a mystery to me. Luckily for me, even though I attended bookclub, we had no more incidences that evening. This may be due to my stop by PetCo on the way home where, at my sister's suggestion, I bought Apple Bitters. Which I sprayed on everything, including the puppy.

In retaliation for the Apple Bitters, Zoey stayed up late and woke up at 6am on Wednesday, again. Bleah, I'm going to be dragging by the end of the week. This kind of effort and level of tiredness is suppose to be reserved for new infants and children, isn't it?

While the hubby is away...

Brad has deserted me for a geek conference in Portland this week. Sorry, open-source conference. (Free software for you non-tech people, though I don't think I have many friends who wouldn't know that) Anyway, he had to go to the airport in Augusta at 6am :-( I had every intention of going back to sleep after I dropped him off, but Target had MarioKart and they open at 8am on Sunday and I promised Lacy MarioKart for his birthday last weekend. So, I settled for laying down for 1/2 hour, listening to Zoey attempt to rip Cookie Monster apart, before heading off to Target. MarioKart retrieved, I set about doing what you do when your husband is out of town. Namely, watching girl movies. I have four lined up on Netflix: Saving Jane(watched that one last night, it was good), PS I love you, Definitely Maybe, and 27 Dresses.

Zoey is taking Brad's absence in stride. She ran around outside while I worked on the garden and then slept on my lap or in her bed for most of the rest of the day. We went for a walk around 6:30 and she spent some quality time on the couch barking as passersby for a few hours before dusk. When we went to bed though she was sad. There was no people water to lap up from the shower, no Brad to play tug of war before bed and throw the squeky toys to retrieve, in short it was all very upsetting. For me too, but I conpensate by reading until I can't keep my eyes open anymore and sleeping across the whole bed. Zoey just went to sleep at 10:30 when it became apparent there would be no more entertainment for the evening.

Gardening

My Garden



We've had some ups and downs this year. As you can see the tomatoes are up, as well as the green beans. However, some mysterious force is causing my squash plants to grow everywhere and then just die. Stupid squash plants. Right now the yellow squash is on it's way out and the watermelon is taking over the rest of the garden. In a few weeks it'll die and I'll have to hope all the ones I planted in pots on the front porch do well.

I'm also setting up a new outline with different bricks. (I warned you all dull life, this is what I do) I've taken the others and will use them to outline the bushes in the back and one the side, I'm hoping that will help keep the mulch in. So the outline you see here is gone.

Actually, this whole side picture of the garden is different. Bottom left are yellow onions. I took the old bricks and outlined the onion area and added more soil. I have no idea if we'll actually get onions, but it's the one thing we use a lot of, so I figured it was worth the try. On the right side are the green beans with the tomatoes behind them. The tomatoes love the heat, the beans, not so much.

Behind the onions are a strawberry plant, that was moved into a pot. Stupid slugs kept eating my strawberries. I moved it a week ago and so far me and the puppy have both gotten a strawberry, so it's going well. Behind that are the radishes, which also didn't grow any radishes, just leaves. The hamsters liked the leaves, but they like greenbeans too and I have more of those. I pulled all this up and put in some more yellow onions(whose top parts are also doing well, but I see no evidence of actual onions yet)


Garden now.

See the new wall. More room for dirt, which is good because it's just clay 6 inches down and nothing can grow through it. However, I do have earthworms. Zillions of them. Really. Which means all the birds in a ten mile radius visit my garden to feast. Which gives Zoey something to do. Stupid birds, landing in her garden! If she can't go in there then neither can they! (Notice the black specks on the bricks? Yep bird poo)

My garden is not doing tremendously well, but it is managing. The cherry tomatoes are doing well and favored with Zoey and I as an afternoon treat. We go out after we get home and split them. The green peppers are finally showing something and I've totally given up on the corn, the firat set died of heat, the second I dug up half of to get the new edging in. Oh well, the garden will be ready for my efforts next year.

Also, just a quick picture of my beans. I'm generally trying to pick them before this stage, but they escape notice every once in a while(or triple in size overnight) Not that I have a problem with large green beans, but we're already getting too many of them. This is the one thing that is producing money saving veggies that Brad will eat. WOOHOO!

Moving up?

Well, still not much happening here another wait and see game. It's annual review time at MDW and Brad is waiting to hear the results(as is everyone) As usual (not just when he works for Felicia) his boss loves him and is trying to promote him to Senior Engineer and give him a raise and maybe even some actual management duties over his project. Basically, he does what he does now, but he'll actually have a title which gives him some real control rather than throwing his opinion in the ring. Or at least that's how I understand it.

What Brad does, the back end for this site: http://spotted.lubbockonline.com/
They sell it to newspapers, etc. all over the world. I can say that now because he's going to Denmark to help train and setup the program on their servers and is spending a few extra days in Copenhagen(because I said no to London(well I want to go too!))

I have applied for a position as Head of Public Services in the FSU Medical Library. I'm not keen on Florida, as many of you know(the whole stupid state is sand), but it's a great opportunity. The library was established in 2002 and is almost entirely electronic. Because it's small, new, and current, I think I have a good chance of getting the job, but with only two years library experience, I could be trumped by someone with more time on the job. I have had a phone interview at the end of last month. Right now I'm waiting to hear about on site interviews. We're pretty well settled into Augusta, so if I don't get the job, it's not a problem staying here for a few more years of experience:-)

Moving Along

I'm so busy reading everyone's blogs that I'm never writing in mine. Actually the truth is that I read Jenny's blog and find out all about the McGee, etc. families, and how Marna and Dennis are doing with Casey, and what Amanda has going on this week, and I realize that my life is really dull. Seriously, routine and set. Getting the puppy shook things up a bit, but it's not the same as children or actual events.

However to update everyone on my hairy child, Zoey had her 6 month birthday July 3rd and went in July 9th to be spade. She came home drunk and refusing to climb up or down anything or sit or lay down. She only went to sleep when I held her. By Thursday morning she was running up the stairs and eating well. After the pain medication(which I think she thinks are treats) she was all over the place, like nothing had ever happened. Her tummy got pretty swollen over the weekend, but the vet said that would happen. She was pretty miserable by Sunday and Monday night though with her pills wearing off.

Other than that. Brad and I are doing well. Like I said routine. We get up, go to work, come home, go to gym, come home, make dinner, play with puppy/walk, watch some tv/work on a project/clean up, and head to bed. Not that I'm complaining, it's just hard to post to a blog when nothing is going on:-) Also hard to call my friends when I have nothing to say. Someday maybe we'll have a baby and news every minute too. Of course, then I'll be too busy to post. Ahh well. Maybe Felicia will have the baby then I'll have news and time to post and a baby to spoil rotten, the best of all worlds.