My big white baby

Since Maggie started doggie daycare it has occurred to me on more than one occasion (for instance, last night when I was getting ready to climb into my nice comfy bed which I had just put fresh sheets and a comforter on when I heard gag,buuurp,gag, york!!! and then Maggie's mouth opened and every edible substance in the whole world came flying out of her mouth and immediately the whole room smelled like rotten crap; or the few days before when I dropped her off at daycare and she went charging in to attack the first dog that attempted to sniff her butt region and had to be sprayed w/ a water bottle and put in "time out") how much this animal raising parallels raising children. Except for the fact that raising children is magnified by about 10 million, I would imagine. But when she was sick I still sat there and petted her until she relaxed (she gets really scared when she regurgitates anything. There's a sentence I never thought I'd type) and spot cleaned and stripped the bedding and re-made it. And when she gets in trouble at daycare I still get that embarrassed feeling and start to blush because I TAUGHT MY DOG BETTER THAN THAT AND NOW THESE PEOPLE WILL THINK I'M SOME KIND OF NEANDERTHAL WHO LETS MY DOG ROAM AROUND ATTACKING WHOEVER SHE DARN WELL PLEASES.

All of this to say that a) i am ridiculous and have no life and b)wow I'm glad I didn't get pregnant that one time the condom broke when I was like 18 and in loooove or else I'd be knee deep in these experiences by now. And kids? They can talk and yell and cry and throw fits.

I'm baaaack

Okay so thank you for being patient with me while I sorted my shit out. I am feeling much, much, better and even have a hint of optimism. So, with that being said lets move on.

My computer has officially totally died and therefore the vacation pictures must wait a little bit longer.

Maggie is now attending doggie daycare three mornings a week (I never thought I would be one of "those people" but heck it sure beats coming home to see that your big loving beast got bored and decided to CHEW THE MOTHER F'ING WALL (true story))

My summer class starts next month already! :(

I met my best friend S's new b.f. while I was in Virginia and he is amazing and I just know he will be her husband some day, so excited for her! Finally, one that is worthy of her!

Oh and my cousin might be moving her wedding up, like waaay up and that means I have significantly less time to lose weight than I had originally planned. GAHHH!

And thats about all the updates I have for now because as they say: It's summer time and the livin's easy

Couldn't we have something less conspicuous than hot pink?

It started with a cute little "skin tag" on my dog Roxies ear, it was no problem a cute little identifying mark even, until... (dun dun dun) through an unfortunate series of events she spent a couple weeks as the most messed up dog ever.

The tail (ha! get it) of Roxies most messed up looking few weeks ever began with the aforementioned "skin-tag" growing and needing to be removed because it was actually a fatty tumor and if we didn't take it off RIGHT THIS SECOND she might lose her ear (or something to that effect). So, good, fine, we schedule the procedure and the vet says she may as well do a dental while Rox is under because though I hate to admit it and am in utter and total denial about this fact- she's no spring chicken. Again we say ok, good, fine (though last time the vet saw her teeth a couple months ago she said, and I quote "her teeth are fine...awwwww they're kinda cute, she looks like she's from West Virginia") Fast forward to the day of doom, it's 6:30, I'm at the office to pick her up and out trudges this pathetic looking, shaved leg, matted hair, bandaged ear dog which after picking my jaw up off the floor I realized was in fact my princess Rox. I swear she looked like she had just fought in a war or wrestled Maggie for the last bite of kibble. I get her to the car and we're riding home, she's still a bit doped up and I'm making small talk, fun times. At one point when we were almost home she turned to pull something out of her hair and growled at herself because she didn't realize that she was the one doing it. So we think the ordeal is over. Messed up hair and some stitches? Eh we can deal with that no problem. But then....

A week later a sore developed on Roxie's side which the vet said was a reaction to the anesthesia. They shaved my beautiful long haired dog's side to drain it. So now she has matted hair, stitched ear, shaved leg (from the iv), shaved side, gaping wound, and then to add insult to injury she cannot lick the wound so she must wear a hot pink foam neck brace (do you hear that noise? that is the sound of me weeping.) Oh yeah and did I mention that a couple days before that she had been sleeping in the driveway under our truck which we had just had rust-proofed and she got black grease all over her white hair and we had to cut it out in big chunks and there was still a little grease left. So just to recap: matted hair, stitched ear, shaved leg, shaved side, gaping wound, hot-pink neck brace, choppy haircut, stained with grease. Then we arrive home and I'm petting her and I feel a new "skin tag", shit! I feel so bad for her that I'm gonna go buy her a pony. What do you think?


Hot pink neck brace-do not want. A pony? yes pleeeeze

My sincere apologies to this poor groundhogs family

Did I ever tell you about the time my dog Maggie killed a groundhog WHILE SHE WAS TIED UP IN THE YARD? Well she did and she was. Why on Gods green earth a groundhog would walk that close to a dog I will never know but she thought it was some great new robotic toy and only too late did I look out the window and run outside to get her to drop it. And as any responsible pet owner does I took pictures of that poor innocent groundhogs blood on my dog (yes I know I'm going straight to hell), you know just for documentation. Guess who was digging a hole in the back yard and conducting a groundhog funeral that night? (hint: not me).
And now the evidence...

Two peas in a pod

Just dropping in to say I made it back from Virginia (a week ago already!) and I had a wonderful weekend, pictures and stories to follow but I've been too busy enjoying the awesome weather to blog. So here, look, aren't my dog and I two peas in a pod?






Also, people say my mother and I look alike, whaddya think?

As the news channels were calling it "The Weekend Wollop"

Those of you who watch the news may have seen that Ohio was hit with a huge ass snowstorm this weekend. As luck would have it I live in Ohio. The roads in my county and several others were shut down and we were only allowed to be out if it was an emergency (I have no idea how they would know that or not but my friend C suggested that "they just look deep in your eyes and know" lol) So I was home bound all weekend and I'll tell you the story in pictures:

The snow-there was a bunch of it


The snow in relation to Maggie (keep in mind that she is huge-about 75 pounds- and when sitting comes up to about my mid thigh.)


A lot of freakin snow:


But it's all okay because we have this:


And these:

The Big White Dog and The Little Helpless Mole

This is the story of The Big White Dog and The Little Helpless Mole.

Cast (It's all-star, let me tell you):
The Big White Dog: My dog Maggie (who is, convenient to the plot, both big and white)

The Little Helpless Mole: Hmm how about a random mole from my backyard?

The Concerned Owner of The Big White Dog and would-be savior of The Little Helpless Mole: Yours truly

Setting: A nice, albeit snow covered, backyard much like my own.

Scene 1: (The scene opens with a big white dog (perhaps a white german shepherd husky mix, even) tied out in the backyard for her afternoon frolic in the snow)

The Big White Dog: (Frolic, frolic) Hmm this snow is really great today, it's as high as my belly but my owner has so very thoughtfully shoveled a section so that when I get tired I can take a rest. (Frolic, frolic, roll in shit, frolic) You know what I think??? I think the proper thing to do when your owner is so thoughtful as mine is to sniff around for an animal to "play with*"
*where play with in this particular piece means to throw into the air repeatedly until The Concerned Owner of The Big White Dog and would-be savior of The Little Helpless Mole catches me and runs, in socks, through the snow, screaming fuuuuuck the whole way down the hill, to scoop The Little Helpless Mole out of my death grip with a shovel.

The Concerned Owner of The Big White Dog and would-be savior of The Little Helpless Mole: "Oh shit Maggie what did you do?" (Looks down and notices that LHM is propelling itself forward with its front arms but everything from mid-back down is just dragging behind) So like any thoughtful human being would do she got a towel and a cardboard box and put it inside but left it outside because she is semi-intelligent when it comes to animal rescues (having participated in many) and knows that if it goes into the warm house it will perish of shock.

The Big White Dog: Gives a quizzical look and wonders: Where did my toy go?? Why is she putting my toy in a box??? Do I get to unwrap it like a gift?? Oh Happy Day!!!!!

The Little Helpless Mole: Alas I have been saved from the clutches of the Big White Dog and The Concerned Owner of The Big White Dog has done a good job of trying to save me and my cute squinty eyes and little quivering nose but it was all for nought because now I will die in this box with my adorable little buck-teeth sticking out.

The End

Epilogue:
The Little Helpless Mole was lovingly placed at the base of a large tree so that Mr. Fox would have dinner for the cold night that lie ahead. The circle of life must persist.
The mother of The Concerned Owner of The Big White Dog arrives home to ask if her daughter has walked "The Murderer" yet.

Mai drawin skillz, let mi show u dem

What's that you ask? Well since its not such a good depiction of events I suppose I'll write the abbreviated story to go along with the above drawing. It goes a little something like this: Maggie got loose, rolled in something (presumably shit by the smell of her), and needed a bath. I called the place that rhymes with SmetSmart and made an appointment and in she went. 2 hours later I get the call that she's done and arrive to find a dog that smells like sunshine, rainbows, flowers, puppies, kittens, basically all things good in this world. I am happily ready to take my dog and leave until the groomer informs me that that black eye that she's sporting??? "THAT TERRIBLE DOG DID IT". I look around and unfortunately we are the only ones in there...oh crap. Next there was some babble babble about how Maggie is terrified of water and never in her 25 years of grooming has she seen a dog so terrified of water but then I'm forced to burst her bubble and tell her that this sparkly clean dog right here???? She goes to the lake and swims almost daily in the summer, she rides on our boat, she jumped off a boardwalk into water, and she has had several baths at this particular place before without incident thus diminishing any credibility that mean dog groomer had. Furthermore why the fuck was your face so close to my damn dog lady??? HUH? Were you trying to stare her in the eye?? So anyways I just kinda nodded my head and acted like I cared and then crept out. This combined with past questionable service has convinced me that I will not be returning to their establishment for bathing/grooming purposes but damn almighty will I miss the scent of that awesome shampoo!

Oh and in case you need a photo to remind you of what Maggie actually looks like in real life your wish is my command:

Very similar to the drawing no?

I'm on the beach (the south beach that is)

Oh man where did the holiday break go??? It's back to classes for me on Monday :( On a brighter note I have been doing phase one of the South Beach Diet (yes it now deserves proper capitalization) for 9 and a half days and upon last check (yesterday) have lost 11 lbs!!!! It was sooo hard at first but right as my fourteen days are drawing to a close I have started to get used to it. Hopefully this will lay a good foundation for a more balanced and healthy diet when phase one is over! Okay enough boring diet talk on to other stuff like ummmmmmmmmmm............. how my family was out to dinner on Sunday night and V said she didn't feel good and got up to go to the bathroom and halfway there vomited and passed out. I don't mean fell gracefully to the floor I mean face first straight down sprawled on the floor. She is absolutely never sick so this was an emergency. The people at the restaurant called 911 and they came; V was kinda in and out of consciousness but breathing and after an agonizing assessment the paramedics said that all her stats checked out and it was probably just sudden onset flu and that's "just how it hits these days." Well my mom has taken classes in the medical field and decided to take V to the brand new 24 hour emergency center/hospital that they had just built right behind the restaurant which coincidentally happens to also be the hospital that my mom works for(what luck huh?) Turns out they couldn't get blood because she was dehydrated so they're treating it like the flu but gave her some stuff for the stomach pain she said she'd been having and told her to make an appointment at the doctor. She made said appointment and guess what? It was not, in fact, sudden onset flu but more than likely her gall bladder (we'll find out for sure today or Monday) so now I can stop incessantly scrubbing everything that she has ever touched. I do not do well with anything medical (I am deathly afraid of hospitals, doctors offices, and anything to do with unwellness) but somehow I managed to not pass out right there with her and instead sit with my grandpa while my mom helped V and then drive her puke soaked pathetic looking self to the hospital. I am proud of me and uber (I once promised myself that I would never use that expression cause I hate it so much) glad that V is okay aside from some indigestion and a possible surgery looming in her future.

Oh yeah and that reminds me (though I'm not entirely sure why) I had the weirdest dreams last night, I dreamt that me and my cousins went to Sea World and got to feed snow peas to Shamu and friends and they went crazy and loved us and let us pet them and waved to us and did all their cute little whale-y tricks. Then my cousins ditched me and my mom and v came and I wanted to show them the wondrous snow pea tricks except there was a huge crowd and we couldn't break through. Then finally some employee thought that my mom was a zoologist and took me to the front of the line but not my mom so it was pointless. Weird huh?

Also I've had two dreams in the past month about someone trying to take my dog Maggie away from me. In the first one my mom is prying her from my death grip trying to take her to the pound and my face is buried in her hair and shes all tear and snot soaked because I'm crying and yelling hysterically and then in the next one some guy has Maggie lined up and he tells me that if he shoots her I can get a brand new dog and I feel a surge of excitement about the new dog but then I realize that he's going to fucking shoot Maggie so I run and push her out of the way and we leave; a girl and her dog. Then last night as I was talking to my mom she told me "Nicole, if something ever happens to V I will have to find a home for Maggie."

WHAT???? My family is not the type that ever part with pets (until they're dead of course) we're not the type to get a dog and decide hmmm she's just not working out lets find her a new home oh no no no we work through the problems and give all our adopted babies a forever home regardless of how disobedient they may be at times. So with that in mind my jaw hit the floor. I mean I know my mom doesn't have the time or the energy to exercise her the way she needs to be exercised (oh cheese and rice does she need to be exercised) but dude! no. never happening. So if my moms partner V kicks it I will be set to inherit one high-strung but amazing white german shepherd huskie mix. And thus, I believe, the reason for the dreams.

Sorry for the long mish-mash post and God bless you if you made it all the way through. And coming up in the next post: Why my dad uttered the words "Inter-racial dating will result in the utter destruction of society." (smacks forehead)

Why I am still recovering from "the day of rest" aka Sunday

That would be a pool table covered with paper with a sample of our homemade cookies on top




More cookies




Each year my family gets together and we bake and decorate homemade sugar cookies. This year we baked about 50 dozen. Picture all of the cookies above plus about three other tables in the other room. Its a lot of work but also a lot of fun and each family gets to take home about 4 dozen. So that is why I'm being lazy as hell (or it could just be an excuse, guess you'll never know).

Oh yeah and remember when I mentioned the calendar we were making of Roxie (I'm too lazy to link to that entry right now) for my grandpa? We sent the pictures off today so we should have it before Christmas yea! Glad that headache is over with, it took us almost 2 hours at CVS getting everything sorted out.

I promise to get back to writing more substantial and meaningful posts soon but for right now can I interest you in my favorite distraction: adorable dog photos (taken with the camera I stood in line for for 2 freezing hours which I heart very very much)!!!!

p.s. please excuse Maggies lady parts in the last photo, we're working on teaching her modesty lol

Calendar Girl

Damn a whole week slipped by! I realized I forgot to post Sunday and then, true to my only child perfectionist personality, I decided well since I'm not doing very well at this whole posting everyday in November thing why don't I just go ahead and skip A WHOLE MOTHERFUCKING WEEK!!!!! Blogging is funny like that, I just can't do it if I don't "feel" it ya know what I mean?
Anyways my life is extremely boring as usual except I've been working on an adorable project and the story behind it goes a little something like this: my dog Roxie is an American Eskimo and my grandpa loves her to bits and pieces, he always doggie-sits if we aren't in town (and cooks her actual beef stew every night for dinner might I add!) and in his younger days he would come to our house everyday at noon just to take her for a walk. All this to say LOVE. There is much of it between my grandpa and Roxie. So every year my grandpa gets an American Eskimo calendar for Christmas and then throughout the year he'll make comments like "This months picture looks just like Roxie" or "There are two puppies in this months picture, I wonder what Roxie looked like as a puppy" but lately the calendars have just been repeats and we CANNOT have that so I devised a genius plan to dress Roxie up and do a photo shoot for each month and make a real Roxie calendar so that every month the picture can look "just like Roxie". Without further ado here are a few of said pictures, we're still working on the others and these still need to be edited but I didn't want to kill you with too much adorable :)

We started with Christmas (December) and I found this adorable Mrs. Claus ensemble at the place that rhymes with Farget for the bargain price of $9.99 (For that price she's wearing it for every holiday from now on!)


Next we did Halloween (October)and as you can see she's pleased as punch to be outside in front of the whole world dressed like a jack-o-lantern, her glare could melt steel.


And today we did a beach shot (for some summer month)it is one of my favorites


We also tried to get her to lay in a roaster pan surrounded by veggies for Thanksgiving (November) but this is all we got so I think we'll be re-shooting.


And just for good measure and because it's been so long since I've posted any pictures here are some cute candids of the little lizard butt.





And never to be left out my other dog Maggie (aka The Maggers, Maggerific, Mag-sta, Mag-it, Mag-pie, Mag-ma, Mag-net (as in "Oh shit! Maggie is coming to visit we better "Magnatize" the house hahaha), Magsumus, Margaret (when she's in trouble), and Magatha Christy)

Could I interest you in a reading? Then again how about not

I'm cuttin it close again, I almost missed another day. What can I say my life is extremely boring. I made a video of my dog being shy in front of the camera perhaps I will post it tomorrow since I'll have some time. Other than that not much to report. I made some kick ass apple dumplings today. Oh yeah and in a previous post I talked about my intuition and how sometimes I just have feelings; while the one mentioned in that particular entry did not come true I has one the other day that unfortunately did. I called my mom, my boyfriend, and my friend and told them not to freak out but I felt like something was going to happen in one of their lives, either to them or their family or they were going to witness something and seriously I was a wreck over it, I just felt so nervous and weird. I got a call from my friend a couple hours later and she told me that her aunt had gone into cardiac arrest and was pretty much brain dead. YIKES! I don't believe that I'm psychic or anything like that but I think that it's possible to tap into energy of that sort. Of course it doesn't seem to be anything consistent but it's pretty cool that it happens occassionally, maybe next time it will be something good!

Now if she only had opposable thumbs the world would be her oyster

Not much to report here, just checking in as is my duty for the entire month of November. I promise to have more interesting posts in the future but right now I'm tired and don't have much to say so I'll leave you with this awe inspiring factoid from my life: my dog learned how to open our french doors that lead to our sun porch, not nudge open with her nose but stand up on hind legs and push the handle down until it opens....awesome!

Are your nickles beautiful?

Ok I'm gonna say how much school sucks for just a couple seconds and then I'll stop being all "woe is me" about my life. Dude, the fourth year of college, it is hard. There is much studying and learning of obscure facts that don't have much to do with my future career at all. And here I sit at work with nothing to do and instead of catching up on some of said studying here I am writing a blog entry hahaha That's me redefining procrastination on a daily basis! That should be the slogan for my life.
Anyways everything else is good, the doggies are adorable as usual and there's not much else to report. Oh wait I do have one funny tidbit to report I was talking to the bf the other day and he wasn't wearing a shirt and I looked down and said "Wow I never noticed it before but your nipples are really small" he thought about it for a minute and said "Do you think my nickles (nipples) are beautiful?" LOL

How good of a citizen is your canine?

My dog Maggie, you know one of the two adorable dogs featured regularly on this page, is in doggie school. She did obedience last year and sorta passed and now she is just doing a class called something like "good citizen canine". Basically she just learns how to not rip your arm out of its socket when you go for a walk and how to not pummel people when they visit.

My mom has been taking her for about 5 weeks now and last Thursday I went to watch and may I just say my dog was not the best dog there but she was the absolute cutest. She would be laying on the floor while the instructor was talking about the next exercise and she would look at me across the room and I would mouth the words "I Love You" (which she probably thought meant "I'll buy you filet mignon after this class is over because you are just that good") and she would wag her tail, subtly, so as not to disturb others because that is just how good of a citizen my canine is.