In Memory of Lisa Michelle Manley

I don’t know where to put this. I can’t even think…

I just know that I need to tell it. I need to let it out. I’m sorry if this is inappropriate in any way.

My BFF called me this afternoon as I was on my way to get my nails done. I’ve had a wonderful day. Good news about Lucy’s cancer. I went down to the office and saw my hubby’s new space. They have good reason to be proud of it.

We went to Pig out in the Park. A huge event where all the local food vendors get together and put up a food truck in the park. Lots of food, odd music and prime people watching material.

We got chased by a bee because it wanted some of the daughter’s barbecued pork.

And with my daughter sitting next to me in the car on a beautiful, late summer day… and with my BFF on speaker phone… she told me that her little sister, whom I have known since she was 12 years old, killed herself today.

I had to get off the road.

She babysat my children. She house sat for me and took care of my bird when we went out of town. When she was a teenager, she called me when she had fights with her parents and we talked about stuff. Then her life got better, she got her AA at the same time that I got mine at the same college. She got married last year, they were thinking about kids.

She wasn’t biologically related, but when you live a thousand miles or more from your genetic family… you put down roots. You meet other people and they become a part of your life. They become… your family.

I feel like I’ve just lost my baby sister, even though she wasn’t mine. All I can do.. is sit here and write and cry… and wonder why. Why didn’t she call? Why didn’t she TALK to me? Why didn’t she talk to any of us? How on God’s green earth could it have been so bad that she couldn’t think of any other way out?

She was 22 years old.

22.

So much life left to live… how could it be so horrible that she didn’t want to live it?

I don’t think I will ever know.

I want to shout at the sky and kick and scream and demand that God give her back to us right now… but it won’t do any good. I can’t make her take it back. I can’t do anything. Right now, I am sitting by the phone in my kitchen, waiting to hear back from my BFF. She said she would need me tonight, so I’ll be right here waiting.

If you all could, please say a prayer tonight for Lisa and her family.

May she find the happiness in the next life, that everyone deserves to find in this one. May her family find the strength to move forward.

Dear Wal-Mart, You and I Are Through.

Every time I have headed up to my local wal-mart shopping center this summer, the savings have NOT been worth the trip.

There are solicitors standing outside trying to sell me girl scout cookies or popcorn tins or otis spunkmeyer cookies or wrapping paper or are trying to get me to sign a petition for some political cause. The ones that REALLY tick me off are the jerks that are standing on the grass with a laundry basket full of puppies stuffed in the bottom of a shopping cart with a sign that says, “AKC Puppies! 250$”

The AKC could go a long, long way toward stopping this practice by sending out paperwork to every dipwad that has a puppy that informs them about local low cost spay and neuter programs in the area, but I’ll take the AKC to task some other time.

I’m here to talk to you about wal-mart.

I am FED up with being bombarded with some form of social ineptitude every time I walk through the doors of that place. It is NOT worth the 2$ I save on a 24 pack of soda there to put up with some dork shouting at me through my open car window “Come see the puppies!” or stopping me from getting inside the store and then stopping me from leaving.

Every summer it’s like this. I do NOT have these problems at Target. I do not have these problems at Shopko. Heck, I do not have these problems anywhere except wal-mart! The reason I don’t run into these problems elsewhere is because other stores are pro-active about telling these people that they cannot use their property as a place to sell their stuff. Heck, Target is VERY careful about not allowing any political cruft to color its company image. It just flat out refuses to tolerate anyone showing up on their front doors and as a result, the place is always a nicer shopping experience.

It’s not worth it.

I do NOT save enough money at Walmart over shopping at my local grocery to have to put up with someone shouting “Hey baby, hey baby yo!” at me when I walk through the freaking door.

I wish I could say that I will miss our business relationship but I’m just going to be honest.

I won’t.

Argh! That was my FACE!

So.. Lucy is feeling good.

She’s feeling so good that my fears and concerns and negativity about her cancer have just melted away.

She is barking at tweedle dee and tweedle dum across the street. She’s chasing squirrels. She’s plotting the inevitable end of the neighbor’s schnauzer and is STILL attempting to exit our back yard so she can go into the OTHER back yard and play with our other neighbor’s dog, a brittany, whom Mugen intensely dislikes and yet… Lucy wants to make a great friend of. It’s almost as if she’s trying to play with this dog to spite Mugen.

She is also doing this, while rolling my butt out of bed at 6 am, because Daddy’s awake and this means that Mom must be awake shortly thereafter. In spite of the fact that it is summer and we are NOT going to hop in the car and go to Starbucks because I have the robo-espresso that saves me 5$ a day on lattes and feeds my caffeine addiction with a continuous stream of body, heart and crema.

But… there’s more.

A while ago, Mugen’s interior butt tucking circuit began to include my window bench. This bench is a part of the house and is a six foot long 2 foot wide piece of wood. Reilly jumped up on it and barked at tweedle dee and tweedle dum and scratched the surface a bit, but no REAL damage to the wood. Once Mugen’s butt tucking circuit began to include jumping up on the window seat, I had to do something because he was making Reilly’s old surface scratches become gouges. So… I grabbed a hallway runner and put it on the window seat to protect the wood.

The dogs… LOVE that I did this.

Mugen and Lucy get up there ALL the time for naps. If I sit down on the window seat, Mugen plops his butt up there next to me for cuddles. Lucy likes to stretch out with her head on the window sill and watches the world go by while I’m vacuuming the floor.

This is probably the best idea I have ever had in the history of owning this house.

So I walked into the parlor today and there was Miss Lucy on the window seat. She looked up and her tail slammed that rug and made a deep “thud, thud, thud” noise as I walked over to her. Mugen followed me into the room and Mugen did what he always does when Lucy is perched on something.

He play bowed and barked twice. We have determined this is Mugen speak for “Play with me! Play with me NOW or I will bite your kneecaps!” which… is the next thing he will do if Lucy does not gesture back at him. He’s a very persistent little stinker.

I… being the IDIOT that I am… sat down next to Lucy on the window seat and planned to watch all of this pan out. I did not expect to see Lucy shove me to one side so that she could do the following in this order:

1. Dive bomb Mugen from a height of about a foot.
2. Grab his cheek.
3. Drag him to the floor by his cheek.
4. Stick her butt in the air and thump her tail…. into my face.

This turn of events set Mugen off… and he started butt tucking across the parlor/dining room portion of my house.

I was too stunned by Lucy’s tail smacking me across the cheek to realize what was about to happen next.

As Mugen took off, my hand went to my face, Lucy sat on my left foot and proceeded to watch Mugen run. Mugen made the figure 8 circuit around the dining room table and then turned to head back in our direction and he paused for a tenth of a second to spring onto the window seat and that is when a synapse fired in my brain and I suddenly thought to myself…

“Crap. This is gonna hurt.”

Mugen launched himself at my face. His chest connected with my left glasses lens and smashed it into my eyebrow.

I have a cold, which means my sinuses are agony today.

The pain of having my glasses rammed up into my forehead made my sinus pain seem completely irrelevant.

The rapid fire cursing that happened afterwards caused Mugen to stop in his tracks. He parked his butt next to mine on the window seat and looked at me with his worried, “I’m not sure if I should get much closer, but I don’t want to go much further away either.” look.. and Lucy just watched me and looked completely… and totally… amused.

I walked out on the gruesome twosome saying only… and in my best impression of my grandmother’s voice…

“Y’all are on your own.”

Now they are sitting in the kitchen doorway, watching me type. Their adorable heads tilted at exactly the same angle.

And I love them.. but I’m pretty sure they are plotting my demise.

Good Girl Lucy?

So… since the cone of shame has been on Lucy’s head… she has decided that I must take over her duties as Mama Dog to Mugen.

So… when Mugen whines and gets bored, Lucy gets up from her nap, comes over to me and barks at me until I ask her what’s wrong. Then she sits and looks at the pup, who whines… as if on cue… and then finds a ball. Since Lucy is unable to play bitey face due to the cone and the stitches, I must take her place as Mugen’s playmate.

Fine… okay, I get it.

For the last several weeks, it’s been raining. In fact, most of the time, it’s raining. Mugen is bored out of his mind. Lucy has been barking at me quite a bit and my nerves are just about shot. I cannot wait for this cone to come off of her head so they can play together again.

I even had to break out the Mugen’s Bane this morning because Mugen was back to chewing on my dining room chairs and Mugen is so very bored with indoor fetch. The daughter and I have done our best, sacrificing our shoes and umbrellas to take him on as many walks as we can… but there is just no satisfying this pup. He wants to run free and snuffle in the holly bush and chase bees.

So… as you can imagine, it’s been a HUGE pain in the rear to get Mugen to come inside. Even though his recall is great indoors, outside has been a bit of a challenge. Not even chicken jerky is tempting enough to lure him away from the underbrush and the bees and the birds. He just LOVES to be outside. But I can’t leave him out there.

It’s pouring down rain!

So… someone has to go get him. It’s usually me.

Today, I let them out. Lucy ran around the back yard for a while with the cone on her head and I just let her run. I stood on the deck and watched the dogs do their usual thing and then it started to sprinkle. Not much, just a light feathering of rain.

Lucy decided she was done with outside once her nose got a drop or two on it. So she came up the deck stairs to me. Mugen did not follow her.

Lucy looked for him for a second and then she sat next to me and waited a second or two more… and then she BARKED.

Oh man did she bark.

As soon as she started barking, Mugen came out of the bushes and headed up the stairs and into the house, then Lucy settled down and followed him in. I’m not sure how I feel about this, that she can boss him around like that, but for now, I’m gonna go with it.

Mugen’s First Birthday Party

These are the pictures we’ve taken from the day of Mugen’s First Birthday Party. We needed to celebrate and cut loose, it’s been a very long week with some very bad news, so Mugen’s birthday was as good an excuse as anything.

Mugen’s 1st Birthday

Wow… it’s been a whole year.

As I write this and look down at my feet, I see a 70 pound hunka chocolate love that was minutes ago running around my house at top speed after a green squeaky ball that makes a noise that sounds so distinctive that it has become known as “The Farty Ball”. There are two such balls in my house, both will send my chocolate chunk into a dive bombing frenzy the second they appear in the hands of a human.

His happiness over these kinds of things… makes my days worth waking up to.

The last year has been hard for us as a family, but I want to celebrate today as the first birthday of my best friend and confidant. Mugen always has a hug for me when I need it, he even knows that when I go to sit down in a couple of spots, I sit there because I’m feeling sad or bored and he will come join me, plant his butt next to my hip and lay his head on my shoulder and wait for my arms to wrap around him.

He also seems to have a knack for acting like a complete idiot when I really need to laugh and when that doesn’t work, he grabs one of my bras and runs around the house with it in his mouth. I swear to God that when I finally get it from him, he’s laughing his butt off in a way that only a puppy can.

He has been the best puppy a girl could ever ask for.

I cannot tell you how much he is loved. He came to us at a time when I was raw and bleeding and he stitched me back up with the wonder of watching him sleep on the floor. He ranks pretty high up there on the list of best things that have ever happened to me. There are not enough words to describe what he means to me and to my family.

His wild puppy antics have made the difference some days, between us living and just existing. He really does THAT much for us. He is there to greet my children as they come in the door from school every day and he happily does a bounce and a wiggle, in typical Lab fashion, while trying to eat their clothes so that he can drag them down to his level and lick their faces. He greets my husband with the same exuberance. Me, well, he won’t pull that crap on me. He waits for me to get to the kitchen counter and set my stuff down first.

We’re still cooking him. But… man are we cooking with gas. Mugen is in the process of earning his CGC and while he failed the first test, the trainers have told me that I have every single right to be proud of the progress we’ve made. It is rare that they have a Lab in their classes that is as young as Mugen is that can actually pass Advanced Home Companion. He is ready to move into Rally and Obedience competition classes. He has been an exceptional puppy.

And today, he graduates from puppyhood to become, my exceptional dog.

Happy Birthday Mugen, my gemini compadre!

Oh no! Not… DIRT!!!

So… the fence is in. Hubby and I are very pleased with it. We have to decide what color to stain it so that it doesn’t clash with our neighbor’s lovely chocolate brown fence.

I have been so excited. I should have taken Lucy and Mugen out on lead… but I didn’t. I was too excited. I opened the back door and they took off like shots. Lucy, of course, headed straight to the areas of the yard that she knew would take her out of the yard and none of them worked. She was confused by this… but then she started running around all over the place and had such a huge doggie smile. I wish that I could have found my camera. It was wonderful to see her being a dog.

Mugen did much the same, but he found STUFF in the yard. Stuff that had been lost when my children were very, very small. He found a gun holster that once belonged to my son. It went to some tacky guns that I banished from the house because Reilly growled whenever he saw them. I banned them from our house when my son was 8 years old… that was 9 years ago… how they managed to stay in our yard, I do not know. Where Mugen found it, I do not know. All I know is, he found it… and he hunted it down and took off with it so the people could chase him and grab him and take it before he could swallow it whole.

The yard will be thoroughly cleaned, starting tomorrow. Many dump runs will be made.

The important thing though… is that I have discovered that my dogs have discovered something horrible.

Dirt.

I have lived in this house for 10 years. We adopted Reilly before we moved in. I had forgotten what it is like to have a dog that has free and easy access to stuff like… dirt.

You see Reilly… hated dirt. Reilly did not enjoy going outside in the rain and would hold is bladder if we opened a door on a rain shower. He was such a tidy, neat dog.

And then I looked around my yard and I saw Lucy digging in the dirt.. and Mugen EATING the dirt and I saw them getting dirty and I realized… that my house… is never going to be clean again.

And somehow… I am completely okay with that.

Pictures of the fence and the hooligans being hooligans in their new fenced yard will come tomorrow. I ran out of daylight today. I was too busy convincing Mugen that eating dirt was a bad thing.

Confirmed! Squirrels Plot to Destroy Humanity 1 Person At a Time.

I really feel that I owe an explanation to every human being that sees me out in public over the course of the next week or two. I have a horrible bruise on my left arm. It goes around the entire inside of my arm and across the top of it. Right now, it is a yellowing gray… it’s awful. It looks like someone tried to break my arm in half.

That’s because someone did and it was, of course, my dog.

Mugen and I went to a park earlier this week. I sat down at a picnic table to eat some lunch and was using the remains of a hamburger to bait Mugen into ignoring the squirrels and paying attention to me. This worked for a while. We were having a good time, and this was good practice for Mugen since his CGC test is coming up in 3 short weeks.

Things were going pretty good.

Little did I know that the squirrels in that park were plotting my demise.

As I reached for a piece of bacon off of the cheeseburger, a squirrel snuck up behind us and poked his head out from behind a tree. He looked straight at Mugen who’s hackles went up in a fully body mohawk that spread from the back of his neck to the base of his tail. I felt the leash tense and I turned to look at Mugen and adjusted it so that I had a better hold on it. I told Mugen “Leave it.” and he came back to his spot at my left side and sat in a heel at my knee. I praised him with the piece of bacon and then I went to reach into the bag to grab a couple of french fries while simultaneously grabbing my soda with the other hand (and yes, I am a bit ambidextrous).

What happened next, I can only theorize. I didn’t actually witness it, but was merely a victim of it. What I do know is that the squirrel must have taken off from behind the tree where Mugen had seen it originally and headed for the tree that was directly in front of us. He took off very, very fast and must have counted on my leash grip on Mugen to save his annoying little life.

Mugen stood up and bolted for the squirrel with the full force of his 70 pounds of almost entirely muscle… and this caused the leash to slip out of my fingers and down my wrist to the middle of my arm where I swung my arm up and pulled it toward my chest so that Mugen wouldn’t shred a squirrel in a spray of blood and gore in front of the toddlers that were playing in the park in plain sight of us.

It hurt like hell and the pain must have knocked the wind out of me because I had no voice to correct Mugen with.

Mugen continued to strain at the end of the leash and I finally managed to catch my breath and said, “Leave it.” Mugen turned back to look at me and cried. I said “No. Leave it.” and he came back to me again and sat down.

He’s really a good boy. Reilly would have continued to strain at the end of that leash until I bodily drug him out of that park and put him in the car. Mugen walked away from that picnic bench and did not look back after I said the words “Let’s go.”

The Morning Freak Out

I’m not sure why, but my entire family has been missing Reilly very hard this week. Yesterday, I dusted his commemorative dog bowl. His collar had dust on it and when I grabbed the leather lotion and a cloth… I just started crying. When my son came home, he said to me, without me having mentioned a word to him about my feelings, “Mom, I really miss Reilly today for some reason. I’ve been missing him all week.” My husband voiced similar feelings while cooking dinner and fending Mugen off of his pant leg. At one point, he bent down and put an arm around Mugen and said, “I’m used to there being a dog under foot, but you’re supposed to stay on the ground and sniff at the edge of the counter and then sit and wag your tail at me… and then I’m supposed to give you a piece of chicken when Mom’s not looking.”
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Mugen and the Street Sweeper.

So… I had some yard work to do out front today. The weather is just gorgeous and I felt bad about leaving Mugen inside because it was super hot in the house and we haven’t done the first start of our A/C unit yet. Lucy was already firmly entrenched in her post-lunch, pre afternoon nap, nap.

So… I grabbed the long line and went out front.

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