Posts under ‘Ties that bind...and gag’

Annie will be six weeks old next week. My mom is bursting with excitement and ready to take her home to commence the spoiling. My dad, the more pragmatic parent, is willing to wait an extra week to avoid traumatizing Annie with the separation from both mom and nipple. The puppies are being weaned now and doing fine. Chewing on Kibble and each other seems to suffice.

Each time I talk to my mom on the phone, I harass her about taking more pictures of our dog-to-be. I don’t care about restraining orders from the owner of mama dog and her pups. I need high-resolution, innumerably-pixeled jpeg cuteness in my in-box now!

To date, I’ve received one set of photos. They’re adorable and all, but my mom is no William Wegman. (Which makes sense, because if she were, she’d be my dad). The photographed puppies were piled on top of each other, like unpopular Beanie Baby knock-offs at a dollar store. I didn’t even know which one of the fuzzy blobs was Annie. Was she the one with the Pepto-Bismol-colored paws? Uh. That’d be all of them.

Last February, I lost a family member. My English bulldog, Abby, died at the age of 13. I cried for days.

After grieving for months, my mom was ready for another dog. No animal - no matter how funny and wrinkled and flatulent - could ever replace Abby. But some people need a four-legged friend to make a house a home. My mom is like that, and my dad loves her enough to go along for the dog fur-covered, drool-smudged ride.

My sister Megan was in a car accident yesterday morning that could have been fatal. She was broadsided when another driver ignored a stop sign. Airbags went off; the windshield shattered. The car was hit so hard it was turned around.

A little over a year ago, I started keeping a weekly to-do list on a 4X6 inch index card. I was briefly unemployed and spending the hours of nine to five looking for another job. The card kept me accountable. It also gave me a sense of progress, even when many applications I completed and resumes I sent resulted in nothing.

I’m contemplating getting this framed and hung in the kitchen above some liquor bottles I’ve yet to procure.

I crawled out of bed early this morning to return to work - I hadn’t been in the office since December 12. Needless to say, I’ve spent the day trying to recover.