Mia Meets Santa

On Saturday, All Dog Rescue, the group Dave and I foster for, held a fundraiser.  Volunteers offered pet photos with Santa.  We thought this would be a good opportunity to take Mia on a car ride (her favorite), pick up some new toys (since she keeps destroying them), and get a cute photo (success).

Mia was a little nervous in the store.  She entered the store and met another dog and while things started ok, he scared her and we had to separate her from the other dogs to be safe.  She remained a little stressed out and was mildly distracted by treats and toys, but eventually Dave just took her outside until it was time for her picture. 

Now, bear in mind we are a volunteer group, so we have to take the help we can get.  Unfortunately our Santa, who was great with the dogs, has a baby face and couldn't really pull off the whole jolly St. Nick thing.  But that's ok because we still got a great shot of Mia that is totally going on her adoption profile.

Who could say no to a face that says, "I told Santa all I want for Christmas is my forever home"?  Or a face that says, "What's up with this Santa character--I don't think he's old enough to be out late delivering presents!"  Either way, Mia did have a good day, met some people, got some toys she loves and hasn't destroyed (yet) and even got fitted for a new harness to help her learn how to walk sweetly on a leash.  What more could a pup ask for?

Poor Little Raccoon

Way back when Dave and I had Panda, we picked up one of those stuffing-less squeak toys that had like 6 squeakers in it (one in the head, one in the tail, and one in each leg) thinking she'd love it.  But the thing with stuffing-less toys is that the dog can't just poke at it and make the squeaker go, like Panda loved to do with her Lovebug.  So the toy went unused by Panda.

Then we got Taco and he was all "Dude, this thing's as big as me.  And I'm afraid of squeakers.  And I'm all about getting the stuffing out of these things.  This toy sucks."  So back in the dog supply bag it went.

And Lizzie attitude about the whole thing was "I don't do toys.  I'm just going to lay her and drool."  So still the raccoon sat waiting for someone to play with it.

But we knew Mia was into squeak toys, so last night I dug the raccoon out of the bag, hoping she might be interested.  Interested doesn't quite begin to describe it.  She jumped around once she saw it and tried her best to get it out of my hand.  When she calmed I let her have it and she was in heaven.  She squeaked away, chewing the raccoon's head and tail, tossing him up in the air, giving him a good shake (to make sure he was dead) and carried him all around.

While Dave and I ate dinner, she took the raccoon into her crate and began the process of trying to pull off his tail.  When she was bored with that, she worked on his head.  I couldn't resist, so I pulled out the camera.

Besides the eye becoming a snack, she also managed to pull the squeaker out of his head (along with the little bit of stuffing that was in there).  I successfully swiped the squeaker without her realizing--the last thing we needed was a trip to the animal ER for a squeaker removal.  At least the eyeball should "come out" some time today.  (On a side note, when Dave picked up Mia, he was told that earlier that day she had eaten some crayons.  Sure enough, that afternoon she pooped a rainbow.)

After cleaning up all the detached (and available) raccoon parts, Mia spent the rest of the night destroying him a little at a time.  Eventually she did get his tail off.  Oh the humanity.

So now she had a faceless, tailless raccoon with 33% less squeakers.  I think Dave and I need to invest in some stronger squeak toys.

Meet Mia

There are barely any words to describe her cuteness, so I'll just let you look at that photo for a bit.


Done?  No?  I'll wait.


Ready now?


Ok, let's get started.  This is Mia and she's the new little fur-friend wandering our house and yard.  Mia came into our foster group this past May and was fostered by another volunteer.  In September she found what she thought was her forever home. Unfortunately, the family wasn't the right fit--they had two small children and while the mother was home during the day, she had difficulty with training and couldn't figure out how to help Mia behave on her leash.  They lived in an apartment complex with a lot of other dogs and Mia couldn't quite figure out how to play with them since a lot of the smaller dogs were afraid of her.  So the family made the decision to put her back in foster care until her for real forever home is ready for her.

Dave picked up Mia from her temporary family on Wednesday and brought her to our home.  She was great in the car--in fact she loves car rides.  She came with Dave to train station to pick my up last night and I didn't even realize she was in the back seat until a cold wet nose met my arm and then she licked my hand.

A boxer/pit bull mix (just like our sweet Chiquita) and almost 2 years old, she is of course very smart and very loving.  She basically just wants to be near her people and is curious about everything going on around her.  When I got home, she just leaned up against me while I leaned over and pet her.  Much to my surprise I got my first kiss right on the mouth when she popped up and licked me. (Really--my first kiss!  We've always been pretty good about not letting the dogs lick our faces since we don't want to encourage those habits if their forever home doesn't want that.)  While she's highly food motivated which will make for great training, she was by my side while I prepared dinner.  Not in an annoying "please feed me what your making" way, but more like a "Whatchya doin'? Are you going to pet me and love me and pet me some more?" kind of way.

She's crate trained (although she was a little whiny when we shut out the lights and went to bed last night, she calmed down after a few minutes), house trained, and knows some basic commands.  She needs some impulse control training and to learn a little more for "stay" and "leave it" but she certainly knows what we mean when we tell her to get off the couch!  We'll also have to teach her not to pull on the leash, but all of this should be pretty easy because she listens really well and wants to please us.

Finding her forever home might be tough--we'll certainly be very particular about the family that want to adopt her.  We want her to go to her home and stay there this time around.  Until then, I think she'll just stay close to Dave when they're at home.  She has a bed in all the rooms she's allowed in, so she can be near him all day long.

Cleaning Out

I don't usually make fun of my parents here, but this one was just asking to be blogged about.  And it'll probably be another week until my mom notices this post, so by then it will be far too late.

This past weekend, my sister, Amy, and her family were visiting my parents.  As usually happens when my sister and I visit our parents, she found herself cleaning out their fridge as they tend to not pay attention not care forget about what's in there.  Since Dave and I will be visiting them this weekend, Amy felt compelled to tell me about her findings. The following is our text conversation:

Amy: I'm throwing out cream cheese with a June 6 2010 expiration date from mom's fridge.  You are welcome.

Me: You are a saint.

Amy: What about sweet hot mustard with a date of 9/10/06?  Seriously?  How could that have slipped by us in the past?

Me: That's exactly what I was going to say.  We just did this in January.

Amy: So it has been in the pantry for 5 years?

Me: I don't know which is worse.

Amy: This is all one piece of candy.  Even stuck to the sides of the tin.

Me: Bwahahahahaha.  Thank you.  For real.  Do you think she'd be mad if I blogged about this? ;)

Amy: She has no idea I have done this.  I think it's pretty funny.

Me: So would J.R.  And since she won't have wireless until we get there, it will be a while until she notices.

Amy: Heeheehee...the candies are Harry and David; she can't throw them away.

Me: Yup, that'd be it.  Ooh, what about the rock candy on the window ledge above the island?  Did we toss that yet?

Amy: Dad is in the kitchen right now. I'll check. There's also a tin of Christmas cookies still unopened.  Plastic seal still on it even.

Me: Those may have come from Grandma.  Which means Mom had a chance to toss them but didn't.

Several hours later, I got this update.

Amy: Rock candy is gone.

We tease because we love.  Besides, what else would we talk about if we couldn't poke fun at our mom?  Love you, Mom!

Three & a Half Days

That's important, but I'll get there in a moment.

It all started last Thursday, October 27th.  The weather reports called a for a bit of snow, nothing major.  Dave picked me up from the train station and as soon as I got in his Jeep, giant, fat flakes started hitting the windshield.

Did I mention this was October?

By the time we'd finished dinner and cleaned up, our yard looked like this.  Why, yes those are Halloween decorations.  And no, they aren't covered in snow because we left them out until December.  In fact, Halloween was still a few days away.

We'd made our plans to go out with friends to dress up in our costumes and celebrate Halloween for Saturday night.  A few people were going to come to our place first and then we'd meet others for dinner out before heading to various bars and parties.  We wanted to enter and win as many costume contests as possible.

Before people arrived, Dave and I decorated our pumpkins.  We picked these little guys up from the orchard that afternoon and since they were too small to carve, we got a little creative.  Aren't they adorable?

I made the one on the left and Dave made the little guy on the right

But then, well, I'll just let the video explain it.

So the snow kept coming.  Rachel and John arrived first, trying to get to our place (they came in from closer to Boston) before the snow got too heavy.  Then Stacy arrived, apparently just before her family lost power at their home.  Finally, as the roads got worse with the heavy, wet, slippery snow Nick made his way to our house.  Decked out in costume, we were finally ready to meet Cindy and Keith for dinner.

Nick and Stacy as a 1940's lounge couple

Why, yes, we are the Scooby Doo Mystery Gang.  Minus Scooby Doo.  Minor detail.

We left a little earlier than we'd anticipated because Cindy and Keith lost power before they were finished getting costumes on, so we moved up the timetable.  Might as well find a place with lights and heat, right?

We piled into Dave's Jeep (someone may or may not have been relegated to riding in the tailgate) and with the 4-wheel drive, we were able to get to TGIFriday's in one piece.  While the roads were rough from the snow, luckily there weren't a lot of people out so Dave, per usual, made his own lane and went around all the people that forgot how to drive in the snow.  Because it was, after all, October.

Supposedly TGIFriday's was doing a costume contest.  I say supposedly because at this point we were the only 8 people in the restaurant, other than staff, dressed in costume.  And there were probably only another half dozen tables even seated.  Like I said, not a lot of people were out.

Cindy turned herself into a cutie cupcake! She has sprinkles, too.

Keith had a professional do his make up for the Joker from the hospital scene in the Dark Knight.

We ate, drank, and were merry and for the first time, someone in our group won the costume contest!  (Bound to happen, but who knew we would need these circumstances?)  Keith won, which was awesome.  He even earned a Best Buy gift certificate to celebrate.

Two things: 1) Cindy looked delicious and 2) I'm not actually touching her boob.  Seriously.

At some point the power surged in the restaurant and as we looked out the windows, all the lights in the shopping plaza were out.  Slowly they came back on, but it was rather ominous.  Snow plows cleared the parking lots and surrounding roads, but the snow continued to come down hard and heavy.  Stacy attributed the power surge to the power lines reacting to the snow, "And the power lines were like, whoa!  It's October."

We decided to head back to the house and forgo our plans to hit up other bars--the roads were just too bad.  Cindy and Keith attempted to hit up one party (inspired by his win, Keith hoped to get there in time to enter the costume contest and double down).  Slowly made our way home.  I didn't really notice much other than the snow on the highway and the few cars on the road.  I honestly can't remember if I looked at the mall or other shopping plazas we passed.  But when we got into our community, it was that weird bright darkness of being black skies and the moon reflecting off thick white snow.  We pulled onto our street and that's when Dave and I both realized the bright darkness was eerie not because it was so near to Halloween, but because there were no artificial lights softening the darkness.  Power went out in our neighborhood too.

Our poor little maple tree doesn't normally touch the ground.

This storm was rough.  All night we heard the crack of tree limbs and in a few cases heard them fall to the ground, or worse, onto cars, sheds and homes. Luckily Stacy moved her car just before we left. Otherwise, a huge branch from our neighbors' tree would have landed right on her windshield.

The roads were rough, it was getting cold, and we knew everyone would be spending the night with us, unable to get home, so we needed a plan.  Dave called his parents.  They still had power so he decided to cautiously hit the road and make his way to their house and borrow a generator.  The guys headed out and Rachel, Stacy and I stayed back buried under blankets and listening to the trees crack and fall.

The whole scene reminded Stacy and I of a recent winter storm.  Three years ago there was a massive ice storm that hit Central Massachusetts.  People, including Stacy, were without power for up to 2 weeks.  That was the week before Christmas.

This was October.

Dave's parent's town also lost a lot of power by the time the guys arrived.  There were lots of downed trees and wires and it took Dave three attempts to fine a clear path to his parent's house.  When the guys arrived, Madaline and Ernie had just lost power, but they actually have two generators and hadn't yet winterized their camper, so they generously let their little generator go off into the night.  In the morning they would wake up to find a tree across their driveway.  So it was good that Dave didn't wait until morning.

When they came back, Dave got some heat and hot water running and we all prepared to bundle up and go to sleep.  I keep stacks of blankets in the house, so everyone was comfy and warm through the night despite the temperature drop to about 30 degrees.  The heavy, wet snow packed down on itself, but we suspect there was about 14 inches out there. (October.)  In the morning, Dave brought up the heat.  The day before I'd mentioned to everyone that I'd planned to make pumpkin pancakes for breakfast.  But since I don't have an electric griddle or a gas stove, that went out the window when the power ceased.  I do, however, have a waffle maker so I still came through with a hot breakfast for our weary crew.

The sun was shining and bright. Since Dave and I were the only ones who had the appropriate gear (why would anyone think to pack snow boots in an overnight bag in OCTOBER?) we cleaned off cars, snow blew (?) the driveway and shoveled the walks.  Stacy and Rachel did my dishes.  It was a win-win. 

After the storm.  Still October.

Since the roads we clear and drying quickly, everyone was able to make it home safely.  We still didn't have any power, but my husband is awesome.  For most people a power outage would mean they could not longer be connected to the world and things like watching football would seem trivial compared to heating your home.

I am not most people.

See, on Sunday afternoon, the Pittsburgh Steelers played the New England Patriots.  Being a Steelers fan in another market is difficult because I don't often get to see the games.  But upon seeing the schedule for this season, I knew I was guaranteed at least this one glorious game.  Something as minor as not having power was not going to stop me.

Dave and I decided that since we have beer, whiskey and blankets in our house, there was no need to run the generator for heat between the hours of 4 pm and 7 pm, when the game was on.  So we sat in our darken home, watching our television feature the Steelers' dominance over the Patriots.  It might have been my favorite game ever.  (Especially after being at Heinz Field for last year's match-up).  We definitely confused the people driving down our street who slowed down and looked in our window.  I presume they were scratching their heads wondering how in the world we got our cable to work with no power. (Answer: We didn't.  It's called an antenna and it's what the world used before Comcast took over. Get one.)

So we spent the next 3 days using the little generator that could to cycle between the heat, the fridge and the TV.  We took showers and had hot meals and generally made it work. It helps that Dave is Mountain Man and is always prepared, too.  Throughout those days, a chorus of generators sang in the whole neighborhood and the pungent odor of burning gasoline permeated the air, but those of us that road out those powerless three and a half days rejoiced when at 10 am on Wednesday the lights came on.  Dave, who was home (I'd gone to work), was tempted to run around and turn on everything he could.  But he restrained himself and instead called his parents and invited them to come take showers.  They ended up getting their power back on Wednesday evening.  Cindy and Keith got theirs on Wednesday night.  Stacy got her's on Monday afternoon, but she deserved it after being out over the holidays for 12 days just a few short years ago.

So now we're back on the grid.  Since we managed so well, I think I'm most appreciative of being able to do my hair in the morning (those few days at work, I was looking pretty rough) and being able to see my food when I eat.  We have black plates and bowls, so I was never sure if I finished my meal.

All the leaves are still on the trees, we've had over a foot of snow already, and this better not be a premonition for the winter to come.

After all, this was October.

Boogie Woogie Woogie

Success!  After losing power for over 3 1/2 days we're back on the grid.  I came to work today (and yesterday) and am happy to report that we now have power again following the outage during the freak Halloween weekend snowstorm that also interrupted our Halloween party plans (but we still had a great time.  More on that later--now there are other things to tend to.)