Monday, December 26, 2011

Laying on the couch in my new pajama pants under my new blanket with my new dog. Trying to read my new book, but I keep falling asleep. And that's okay. This is a great Monday.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

I love my new little dog.   She's funny & sweet.  She's not Fannie, but she'll make her own mark, in time.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Oh, also

I have more cookies than I've ever had in my life.  They somehow keep multiplying.  If Christmas cookies were currency I'd buy you all new cars.  I feel kind of gross.

Meet Toni!

We got one!   Look at our new little baby!


She's some sort of little basket case.  Very nervous and very very sweet.  We don't really know her story except that she came from a shelter in Southern Illinois.  And that she's a momma.  And she's squinty.  And super cute.  See?

I put some more pictures over here: --> picasa


Monday, December 19, 2011

Cookie party was a success. Look at what I came home with! Too bad I need to detox before eating any more cookies. Really. I could go for a blood transfusion tonight. Eating nothing but celery and leaves tomorrow I tell you.

                      




Sunday, December 18, 2011

C is for Cooookie

All ready for my first cookie swap tomorrow. But man I'm tired and feeling pretty sickly from eating too many.

Chocolate Mint Cookies
Yield 3 to 4 dozen

Ingredients

* 3/4 cup butter
* 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
* 2 tablespoons water
* 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
* 2 eggs
* 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 3 (4.5 ounce) packages Andes Mints

Directions

1. In a saucepan over medium heat, cook the sugar, butter and water, stirring occasionally until melted. Remove from heat, stir in the chocolate chips until melted and set aside to cool for 10 minutes.
2. Pour the chocolate mixture into a large bowl, and beat in the eggs, one at a time. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt, stir into the chocolate mixture. Cover and refrigerate dough for at least 1 hour.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets. Roll cookie dough into walnut sized balls and place 2 inches apart onto the prepared cookie sheets.
4. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, be careful not to overbake. When cookies come out of the oven, Press one mint wafer into the top of each cookie and let sit for 1 minute. When the mint is softened, swirl with the back of a spoon or toothpick to make a pattern with the green filling of the mint wafer. For smaller cookies, break mints in half.

Warning: Don't double the recipe. They're great cookies & they're easy peasy to make, but I got really tired of baking after the first 4 dozen. We have over 100 mint chocolate cookies. I only needed 36. Maybe we had 120 before I ate some.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

aww snowflake

I donated some money to help this poor little girl last week.

snowflake's story on petfinder <------

And today I got a thank you card with 2 photos of her in the mail! Seriously - two of the cutest pictures of this silly thing laying with her belly exposed. Little feet up in the air. They say she's getting better. She still sleeps a lot but that she got out and played in the snow last week!

The card makes me so happy I want to do a little dance when I walk by it.

Dog rescue community once again redeems itself. : )

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

But I don't sit idly by

Things like this make me wish I was still on facebook so I could share.



Total gigglefest over here.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

I know it's a pipe dream but America, PLEASE go metric. I'm willing to bet you could get more kids into math & science. You want to stay in the global game, don't you?

Also, my life would become markedly easier. See what I have to deal with here?


Please?

Sunday, December 11, 2011

This is more like it.

Update to the dog search. Never mind that awful lady with the cute dogs she knows nothing about. I've found a much better, local rescue that believes in the value of foster care as much as I do. I don't know if I could adequately express how fantastic I think this step is. Foster homes are the best things for some of these adult dogs that come from pounds. Foster families give them a chance to show their personalities & possibly the ticks that landed them on the streets in the first place. Getting it all out in the open gives a dog a better than ever chance of landing in the right kind of home that rolls the way they roll.

Like,
Do you lose your mind when you're left alone? Ok then, we can be sure we place you in a home with other animal friends so you never feel abandoned. Or do you freak out & get aggressive when other animals come near your food or your stuff? That's okay. You're probably best in a single dog home. There are lots of those. Do fast moving little kids freak you out? Ok, we'll keep that in mind too. Or in Fannie's case, do you crap on your mom's pillow when you're mad at her? Yeah, none of us are perfect. It's good to know that you're a weirdo before we get fully involved.

And now I feel good about the dog rescue process again. I'm excited to maybe someday help this group out with their fostering & event planning & fund raising. Like-mindedness is underrated.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

This is really funny to me.

Friday, December 9, 2011

ugh

I want to delete that last post. What a crappy day. Dog rescue ladies can be total jerks. They interrogate you before they'll decide if you're good enough to even talk to, and then they try to shove a dog down your throat. This lady totally turned me off because she couldn't tell me anything about her dogs' behavior yet she got pissed when I wasn't 100% comfortable with taking one home today. Then she scolded me and accused me of wasting her time.

People like this are all over in the animal rescue world. It's awful. It makes me not even want to work with them.

When I worked with the greyhound rescue we had the same kind of nut job as a president. She scared away potential adopters left & right because she was high pressure and intimidating & often times down right mean. It was embarrassing. Fortunately since then that group has got a new president and the number of adoptions have doubled.

Get a grip, people. Yes you're doing something important but keep it in perspective. It's not as if you're saving the world and you're God's gift because of that. You're dealing with humans. They can walk away and get a dog elsewhere if you insult them.

No wonder these poor pups have been on petfinder for so many months. I feel awful for them.

So sad. Crappy day.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

I'm no hero. I'm paralyzed!

It's about time to bring home a new dog, but knowing which one to bring home is the very very hard part. I've been obsessively bouncing from tab to tab on my computer for the past couple weeks, looking at the faces of little ladies all across the Chicago area. I love them all. I want them all to sit on the couch with me every night. I want them all to go on road trips to Michigan with us. But we can only bring one home. And now I'm starting to feel sad & freaked out. I hate to think of leaving them behind. I've looked up (why do we do that?) and asked Fannie multiple times to send me a sign & let me know which one needs us most, but if she's sent a sign I haven't seen it yet.

Here are the 4 I would like to adopt today:




Grasshopper came from a puppy mill but I guess they didn't think she was good enough to sell. She has the saddest face and the biggest cutest nose. I think she's probably worth a billion dollars. I think she's my number one, but I have never met her.














Black Label is tiny and scruffy. She's also from a mill. They say she is very smart. I've never really had a very smart dog. It could be fun. I think her real name is probably Whiskey.















Raki is so funny looking that she's adorable. And she's a mom. I love that about her and think I'd have some nice conversations with her at 3 in the morning as I'm sitting nursing a baby some day. I also love her little post baby body. I worry that because she's funny looking, others may not love her as much as we could love her.












Poor little Noel came from a hoarder. She's just ridiculously cute.













I want to take all four of them and put them in my bed and watch tv. I want to put them all in my car and drive them to the beach. I'm embarrassed at my inability to pick a dog. Like I'm waiting for some devine signal. The dogs are all just waiting for someone to come get them. : (

Monday, December 5, 2011

I quit facebook last week. I guess. Suspended my account. That's quitting, right? I didn't delete it, because deleting it feels too much like suicide, so I just shut it off.

Anyhow, I decided to do that because I've been depressed. Like my life is getting away from me. And although I didn't really expect it, I actually feel better. I think it might be because I'm no longer subjecting myself to an endless stream of selectively shared awesome parts of other peoples lives. That was a long sentence but I think you know what I mean. I'm not blasted daily with pictures of smiling babies and beach vacations. And suddenly I feel so much more present.

Don't get me wrong. I think facebook is good. Sharing the happy stuff in life is good. I just have some issues and have been in dire need of a reality check. I get confused & start to imagine that everyone elses lives consist only of smiling babies & beach vacations. And I start to think something's seriously wrong with me because I don't have these things. Maybe if people posted photos of their windowless cubicles and long commutes, I could realize that my own life probably isn't all that inadequate.

I mean, yeah, my life could be better, but it's still good.

Also, I realized pretty quickly that if I want know how someone is doing, I need to interact with them now. I can't just browse their page anonymously. And to interact with someone, I have to call them. Or write them an email, which requires that I have their personal email address. And this made me realize how falsely connected to some people I am. Real interaction with people is nice. It makes me happy.

And then the day after I quit facebook I went to a cat circus. Suddenly, for a moment, I really regretted quitting because I couldn't post any pictures to show everyone how great a real live cat circus is! It was hard. But I can post cat circus pictures here, right? Take a look:





See??!