My Puppy's Picture

This is the first picture we have of our dog. She weighs about two pounds in this picture.

I challenge you to find a picture of a shiba inu puppy that is not cute!

And the best part is that she has grown up, all sixteen pounds of her, to be a fun and feisty member of our family.

Payback

My daughter decided to torment me since I assigned her some particularly tedious accounting tasks. She sent me these pictures of shiba inu puppies from Craig's List. And they're only thirty minutes from here.

Our shiba is a "red sesame." These black, tan and white puppies are also standard breed colored.

Look at that white-tipped tail. Don't you want one? (The puppy, that is, not just a tail.)

It's a good thing for my checkbook that work is a little too busy and the house is a little too full right now. Otherwise, I'd be on the road checking one of these puppies out!

And this is from a person who said she would never, ever get a dog, much less a second dog.

Does senility usually hit this soon?

A Charmed Life

My younger son is an average size boy in the world of competitive sports. You might have even said he was below average, before he grew over three inches in the last two months. He's now just under 5' 6" and slim.

I have tremendous fun watching him play soccer. He is an aggressive defender and marking back, often finding himself matched against boys much bigger and taller. That's one of the reasons the recent growth spurt is so welcome.

But no matter what size he is, he is always sturdy. He has an uncanny ability to stay on his feet, leaving his larger opponent on the ground after a contest for the ball.

Soccer rules allow players to have shoulder-to-shoulder contact if it is part of a genuine attempt to play the ball. As far as my son is concerned, he is always making a genuine attempt to play the ball (except maybe when he's dogging an opposing forward's heels.) Yesterday was no exception, and fighting for possession of the ball, the other kid ended up on the ground with a separated shoulder and broken collar bone.

I don't know how he does it, this one boy wrecking crew. He seems to be consistently lucky while those near him are not.

When Wiley was a toddler he cracked his daddy's rib in a moment of exuberance. When he was about four years old he came diving over the back of the couch I was laying (lying?) on. He broke my shoulder, which had to be repaired with surgery a few painful months later.

I and the rest of our family have learned to approach him with caution. He's the sweetest boy I know, but sometimes not safe to be around.

How he uses his "luck" over the next few years of high school should be interesting. Think it will change when he discovers girls?

Scandalous

I'm in a book club which meets once a month. This month's book, which I selected, is "Dawn's Light" by Terri Blackstock. It's the fourth and last book in a series. I read the first book earlier in the summer.

But I haven't read books number two and three, yet.

And you know what? That's okay.

KISS For Me

My daughter Lindsay, working for me while waiting for her real job to start, brought leftovers for her lunch. I tried a bite and asked for the recipe. It was a chicken casserole recipe one of her young married friends had passed along. My daughter is going to give me an abbreviated version. It seems her friend, who had never cooked before marriage, put COMPLETE instructions on the recipe. For example, instead of saying "add 1 cup diced green pepper," the friend's recipe included the directions for how to dice - "cut the pepper open, remove the stems and seeds, cut away the white edges, slice the remaining pepper into small pieces." Similar descriptions were written for other ingredients of the recipe.

That is exactly what I need for working with the computer. This chart shows what I do when the gremlins living in my computer(s) act up.

The mysterious box on the chart is the one in the bottom right corner that includes the words "FOLLOW ANY INSTRUCTIONS." Instructions, whether from Help menus or support sites or sympathetic message boards, always seem to assume that I know how to dice the pepper.

In my twenty-five year history of PC use, I've "cooked" a lot. Unfortunately, most of the "recipes" don't include COMPLETE instructions.

In the early 1980's, just after I was promoted to senior staff, my company decided to give individual personal computers and related training to new staff. A couple of years later, after my next promotion, the firm decided to provide personal computers and training to senior staff, too.

Left out again, I purchased my own IBM PC. It had a 20MB hard drive. Yes, I said megs. I probably still have the receipt somewhere, it cost around $2,000. I knew the only way I would ever learn how to use a computer was to just do it! I kept it at work so that I could do my own computer generated notes and schedules and feel less like an idiot when supervising staff.

A few years after that I left the big firm to have my own business, partnering with another woman. She was a few years behind me in age and experience, but she was ahead of the curve with technology, having been there at the right time for the best training. She was my computer crutch for several years.

To my chagrin, I'm now one person using three different computers. I have a fairly new PC with Windows Vista. I should have returned it and paid the 25% re-stocking fee. I have my six year old PC with Windows XP, which runs the software that won't work on Vista. And now, after the Vista disaster, I bought a Mac. I can use both the Apple and the Windows operating systems on the Mac.

My goal is to have the three computers consolidated on my Mac by the end of the year.

With my switch to a Mac, I'm having to start over with new terminology, different task bars and new keyboard shortcuts, just to name a few things. I'm making it up as I go, since I really have never known what I'm doing.

At least I'm generally fearless trying to figure things out. I will push buttons until I've either fixed my problem or created a bigger problem truly worthy of calling in support troops. My computer consultant (husband) and kids sigh and shake their heads.

What I need is for some publisher to come out with a whole series of books that provide basic instruction. Right now you can buy books "... FOR DUMMIES," but what is there for people like me who are dumber than the dummies those books are written for?

If only I knew what all the words meant and could have COMPLETE instructions!

That's what I'm hoping for, a publisher who will insist that its authors "Keep It Simple, Stupid" when writing basic technology cookbooks.

Heartland XXXpress

On Friday I went to pick up my mom and two of her friends at the train station on the west side of town. The three of them had taken the Heartland Flyer train from Oklahoma to Texas to visit their respective children in various parts of the metro area. I was picking them all up and taking the two extra ladies to a rendezvous point to meet their rides.

My daughter, eager to see her granny, came with me. She had wanted to bring her Cosmo magazine to look through on the way. I said "no, I don't think little old ladies will want to see you with that magazine and its various sketchy (sex) items listed on the cover." My daughter didn't really see the point, but agreed to leave the magazine behind.

The three friends, with an average age over seventy-five, arrived on time and we got them and their bags stowed away in my SUV. (I have to work in the usefulness of my car.) When asked if they had a good trip, they all said yes and giggled.

It seems the man and woman sitting in the row in front of them were having a good time on the train. In fact, the couple had an extremely good time for at least an hour. You'll need to fill in the blanks because I can't do it without blushing. I asked my mom and her friends why they didn't call on a conductor or employee to intervene. They said it was too much fun to watch and it made for an entertaining trip. It's a miracle I didn't have a wreck before I got out of downtown.

Looks like we could have brought the magazine after all.

I gotta know

This afternoon my son Brian gave a friend a ride to the restaurant at which they both work. A short time later he was back at home and changed into jeans and a discardable t-shirt. He came in our room excited, hunting a flashlight. Hmmmm. It's broad daylight and a hundred degrees outside.

I've learned not to ask, but he told. There was a stench coming from underneath the patio of the restaurant. Even the waiters were refusing to work the area. The restaurant manager was going to pay Brian fifty dollars to crawl under the patio and remove whatever was causing the odor. I suggested he also take gloves and maybe a rake. He assured me he was "on it, Mom."

At 9:30 this evening I couldn't stand it any longer and called him to find out what happened. He was at a friend's house watching a ball game. (Insert exasperated sighs here.) He did indeed crawl under the patio, find the dead opossum, and prudently insist his boss call animal control to get rid of it.

I guess I should be glad he showed some common sense.

But I still don't know if he got any of the fifty dollars.

I Am So Lucky

Music brings peace and comfort and joy. It inspires both wonderful and terrible things.

Best of all, music is timeless. Or at least the music of the sixties and seventies seems to be. That's the music I grew up with and love.

There has been a lot of news this week about the fortieth anniversary of the Woodstock Festival. There were clips of many of the singers, including Joe Cocker. Yesterday, on "America's Got Talent," a contestant sang "You Are So Beautiful." It was fabulous and the audience loved it, definite goose bump time. That song performed by Joe Cocker was on the radio all the time in 1975.

What keeps the "pop" music from that twenty year period so fresh and interesting? Perhaps it is because our society had such a transition during those decades and the music reflected it, in both the tunes and the lyrics. Even when the lyrics were ambiguous, the words were at least understandable and you could wrap them around your own experiences. And you still can.

Except for a few Christian pop and country songs, I haven't a clue about more current music. I hear it every now and then blaring out car windows, sometimes blaring out my own window if my son is driving. I wonder if, thirty years from now, any of those songs or raps will still be on the radio.

I bet my seventies music will still be there, though, playing through the speakers of my comfortable SUV as I drive off into the sunset.

A Hate Relationship

A dog and a harness.

Our nine month old puppy loves to run and can now outrun us all. We always have her on a leash outside the house or back yard. She is also (head)strong and often pulls on her leash in her need for speed. We have been using a flexible collar, but she would rather lose her breath than slow down sometimes. In my compassion for her condition, I bought her a classy new collar and a new harness so that she could run and frolic without strain on her throat. We used a harness with her when she was a small puppy and it worked well.

We put the harness on yesterday morning. You would have thought we crippled her. The tail drooped and with head hung low she slowly limped back to the kitchen. This from a dog that has only ever strutted.

She didn't bark about it, or even whine. She went to bed. And stayed there.


Her toys were worthless. She did seem to keep her favorite toy near, but feigned disinterest whenever she thought we were noticing. The cats were irrelevant and didn't deserve a chase. We tried to take her for a walk. Forget about it. All four legs and her bottom braced against any forward motion. She reluctantly did her "business" if we carried her out to the grass and insisted.

Occasionally, she strayed from her bed all the way to the kitchen floor a foot away.


We teased, we laughed, we hand fed her hot dogs. The longer she pouted, the more ridiculous it was. We left the harness on, waiting for her to adjust. After all, she adjusted to the "cone of shame" that she had to wear for a week after her surgery. It just took a day, and then she was fine.

I've had similar experiences with our kids, particularly with seat belts, and I never lost those fights, always able to outlast the most stubborn rebel.

This afternoon, after thirty-six hours, we surrendered. I guess the harness worked. As long as she was wearing it she certainly didn't strain her throat. But the means couldn't justify the end, so we took the harness off and put the old collar back on.

Immediately she was upright and ready to go.


See the tail, up and curly? It's rather humbling to be bossed around by a small dog, but it was sure fun to watch her strut, leap onto the bed, wrestle with the cats and enthusiastically request a walk.

This is our shiba inu - three pounds of dog and thirteen pounds of attitude.

Get to Work

That's what I must do. Absolutely. Totally.

I'm in a profession that lives and dies by deadlines and one is looming. As a self employed person I must be my own self motivator.

If I say I'm going to get things done, write it down, post it for the world, that's what I'll do.

Right? Right.

Wish me luck. I'll let you know in a few days if this motivational technique worked.

Life in the Fast Lane

Yesterday we headed up to central Oklahoma in our trusty Tahoe, five of us full size people and a dog. We celebrated my dad's birthday and then headed home today, timing our three and a half hour drive so that we would be back in time for my son's soccer scrimmage scheduled for late afternoon.

As we were virtually stopped on the highway in a construction zone single lane, we were hit by a car from behind. That's okay. We have one of those "national cars of Texas." The person who hit us left a string of car parts a block long. Our car lost a trailer hitch cover and will have to have the bumper replaced. But other than that we were fine. The dog, in her crate in the back, didn't even bark. After a ten minute delay to get the other driver's insurance information, we were on the road again and made it to the soccer game with time to spare.

We bought our first Suburban in 1997. Since then we've had a second Suburban and now have "traded down" to a Tahoe, which is a Suburban without the third row of seats. As far as I'm concerned, it's the safest, most comfortable car on the highway, and you'll have to pry my cold, dead hands from the steering wheel before I'll give it up.

But continuing our family string of bad luck, for the third time in three weeks my husband gets to call our insurance agent to get a claim number for a wrecked car.

Another Love Hate Relationship

A dog and a laser pointer.