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 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!

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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Book Review: The Long Way Home by David Laskin

I don’t normally read non-fic. I was asked by a friend to review David Laskin’s The Long Way Home. I told him up front, “I don’t do history.” and he said, “It’s okay, it’s not dry, boring history. I promise.”

I was pleasantly surprised when I got completely sucked into this book after it arrived here. The Long Way Home, has been a different sort of read for me. I would love to write a fully detailed review for you, but I’m not going to do that.
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Cheap Shoes

I have long known that Mac users and PC users speak a different language.

There’s a fundamental difference between how PC users use their machines and how Mac users do it. The biggest one being that backups and restores are absolutely no problem over here. I still have no idea how one accomplishes this under Windows without copying over massive groups of files, by hand. In fact… now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure that’s the only way to do it under Windows without spending any money on third party software and if that’s the case, that makes me really, really sad.

Apple, may I say again, that Time Machine… simply rocks.

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A Morning in the Life of 2 Gemini

So I got up on time this morning.

Daughter overslept.

Son got up on time.

Hubby took daughter to school and I took son to school and up to this point, everything was totally ok.

I get the son to school and I come home to discover that hubby has left me with the oatmeal that I do not eat for breakfast… and no other breakfast supplies. I checked the board where we write down the stuff we’re out of before I left because I pass 2 grocery stores and several breakfast establishments on the way back from taking the son to school. I also checked the pantry, just in case.

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Mugen is AMAZING!

Yesterday, I decided to try something different for dog school. I fed Mugen a larger than usual breakfast and skipped his lunch meal entirely. Dinner happens after dog school is over. I thought I’d see how this worked for us.

I got out my hot dogs (hebrew national, 97% fat free! Thanks to Annette! I never would have thought to share MY hot dogs with the puppy if she hadn’t mentioned it!!) and started slicing them up and prepping them to go in the nuker and Mugen started salivating all over the place. So I had him do a few sits and downs for me and I gave him a couple bits of hot dog and then we got into the car and left.

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Ladies and Gentlemen

Good evening!

Gah! I am so excited and I don’t even know where to start! I just won NaNoWrimo again this year! This book isn’t even done yet and I’m at 50,389 words! The word count will continue to climb. I had considered publishing this piece on my blog, but as the story has grown, I have realized I have a very publishable piece of young adult fiction that I am going to try to get an agent lined up to look at.

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TGIF! … Not.

Today is the day I usually get to sleep in until 7. Mugen is quite happy to sleep in when my alarm doesn’t go off. So I settled in last night for my sleep in morning and everything was great and then… I get awakened at 6:30 by a puppy licking me in the face.

Now… don’t get me wrong, this was cute and wonderful, but I wondered how on Earth he had gotten out of his crate and into the bed with me. I had an immediate suspect and he had just shut the bedroom door.

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