Memorial Day

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Grateful for the Little Things

An attempt was made in the wee hours of Monday morning to steal my car. Olive woke and alerted us to the problem, and we did the best thing we could think at the time: yell at her to lie down and shut up.

When I finally got up after 6 and noticed that not only had my car been moved, but the spare key was still in the ignition, I apologized to my little watchdog and thanked God that kids/thieves in this neighborhood don't know how to drive a stick.

Then this morning when I took Olive out, we found a young moose about 15 feet from the front door. He had apparently spent the night in our yard guarding my car, for which I am grateful. I am also grateful that Olive didn't see/hear/smell this moose, and that she was on her lease.

Instead of stressing about the welcome to the neighborhood, this morning I'm focusing on ignoring the smell of sugary doughnuts sitting on the table next to my office. After weeks of giving the new guy Dan a hard time for eating all of the treats others bring in and yet not bringing anything in himself, he finally stepped up. With doughnuts.

I have now tried my first buttermilk bar.
They're damn good, if you were wondering.

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Accidental Haircut

So.

I know.
Pretty ridiculous, yes?

Steve was starting to chop chicken and veggies for dinner (some pretty yummy kebabs), and I took Olive for a walk. She has a habit of locating the only patch of sticker bushes on an entire block and walking straight into them, such that she ends up with more sticker sticks stuck to her legs than were originally on the bush. I pull them out of her hair, but she always manages to hide one well enough to pull out and chew on later. Preferably when she's sitting on my lap.

After we came back inside and I removed as many stickers as I could find via a rather unpleasant full-body cavity search. And I noticed she had some pretty badly matted hair on her legs. So I grabbed the scissors and chopped most of them off.

Resulting in a pretty naked leg. We had talked about bringing Olive to the groomer for a haircut, hopeful that it would help her during the upcoming warmer months. And I couldn't leave my poor dog embarrassed by one naked leg.

She was really good about lying still the whole time, except for when I was cutting the hair on her face. She really didn't like that at all. But by the time dinner was completely done, so was Olive.

Who knew my dog had eyeballs?

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Stretching

It started with a stretch. One of those awesome, full-body, arms-over-the-head, funny-face, knees-slight-bent, first-stretch-of-the-day kind of stretches.

Have you ever had a stretch interrupted by a jabbing finger or ten in your armpit? I hate that. Like, this could have been the Best Stretch Ever, but now I lost it because you thought it would be cute to tickle me. The same way you think it's cute to poke your finger in my mouth when I yawn. (It's not cute, BTW.)

Man, I hate that.
But that's not what happened with this stretch.
(He's never up this early, you see.)

I had just disentangled myself from Olive's gangly adolescent puppy legs, just gotten out of bed, just turned off my alarm, just stepped into the bathroom for my shower, just stretched. A perfect Monday-morning stretch, if you will.

When a teeny, tiny muscle in my right shoulder drew too taught and snapped, sproing!-ing like a comic book guitar string breaking and curling over the end of the neck. I stopped enjoying it, stopped stretching, and my right arm stopped moving.

And that's how Olive and I ended up lying on the couch watching 80s movies all day long.

It was pretty awesome.

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Learning How to Fly

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