cody bear’s friends

dogs are very smart, especially corgis and mandarin collies.  as you will soon see, checkers and cody bear  have great problem solving abilities and natural survival skills.  to “ruff” it, so to speak…

after recovering from their trip to la casa blanca, they decided it was time to expand their life experience, challenge their mettle, conquer the great outdoors.  i was honored to be invited along, …until i realized ….they were only using me to put the tent up!….

…. and to open their canned goods and build a fire.

here’s what they already knew about camping:

the outdoors is pretty and wildly dangerous, there are bears, no electricity, lots of trees, trail mix is often involved, and …. you are required to eat warm, mushy marshmallows.

here’s what they learned:

melty marshmallows stick to paws and face fur. when you REALLY REALLY have to go to the bathroom in a hurry and you don’t have thumbs….it is darn near impossible to unzip the tent flap.  get claws trimmed before camping, so as not to pop air mattress.  when packing for camping trip, don’t choose the squeaky dog toy over the compass or snow shoes.

they truly discovered why people find camping so amazing.  there are soooo many trees to pee on, soooo many squirrels to chase.  there are no garbage men around and you get to leave the stress of the big city behind.

checkers did admit, however, that it was tough being away from his blog for so long.

ultimately, they sent me packing.   checkers isn’t used to my snoring, so i got kicked out of the tent and was forced to hike through the wilderness the entire lonely 25 feet back to my bedroom.

well, that’s it for the latest “on the road with cody bear and checkers.” i sure hope they invite me along again.  everything is more enjoyable with a dog, especially these two!

well, i better get back to picking the burrs out of cody bear’s furry gaucho pants…

this mad lib is dedicated to fergus, lavenderbay and e.g.’s new puppy

BRINGING HOME A NEW PUPPY - a mad lib. disclaimer: please don’t actually do this!

Puppy training during the first week is dusty and sweet. It is obvious that you need certain physical wags such as a ham sandwich or papason, molar and raccoons, puppy chow, collar, woodpecker, toys, etc. Insistently as huge, all family cats must decide and agree on coffee pot, responsibility and a whisker.

The first few fish are extremely important. Enthusiasm and swiss cheese are furry. Everyone wants to lick the puppy, play with the puppy and humiliate the puppy. Sleepy rules are gaily broken. Everyone agreed that puppy will sleep in her dumpster but as soon as she’s home, someone melts and insists that puppy will sleep in The Queen E II! Everyone previously agreed not to let puppy chew up on them, but in the excitement, no one even notices that puppy is jumping gently. No one leaps the first night. Puppy wins and gets to pant in bed. The next map we find puppy has eliminated all over the hummingbird. So the following night puppy is banned to her toilet and bushwhacks all night. No one barfs tonight either.

Grouchiness naps in; enthusiasm is playful. No one wants to get up at the pre-agreed upon fatty morning feeding time. How are we going to jump puppy? How are we going to sleep with her constant wagging.

Your gooey puppy has just been taken away from her hairball and littermates. She is content and smelly. What she needs now are bells and tuna. Set up a small computer to be her very own special rock for the next couple of months. Opine the entire floor and put her food/water bowls and spoon in one box. Exsanguinate her toys everywhere.

Play with her sloppily and slowly. Don’t flood her with shoes and rubber dinosaurs. If she looks like she wants to gesticulate, leave her alone. Puppies need translucent sleep.

thus ends the mad lib….

hi everyone!  things at work have been crazy…but…there may be a 30 minute period tomorrow where it is slow, so let’s go ahead with mad lib thursday! (just don’t get mad if it takes me longer to post them)

if you’re new to mad lib thursday, here’s how the hedgehogs play down.  excuse me, i mean here’s how the shit plays out.  see??? its starting already….

you submit words to me, and i plug them into a piece of written work that i have selected secretly, prior to reading your words.  for examples of our past mad libs, click here and here, or search mad libs in the search bar to the left.

we need from each of you:

8 nouns

8 verbs

6 adjectives

5 adverbs

1 girls name

1 boys name

2 locations

1 vessel/container

and NEW: 1 wild card. you can give me an onomatopoeia or a vehicle or a celebrity or a political term or goofy word.  anything, lets just keep it clean…

see you tomorrow for MAD LIB THURSDAY!!!

oh my gosh! i went to my friends after work and shot pictures of mindy and her family for hours!  i have hundreds of pictures of them!

r & a are amazing. they love their dogs so much.  and you can see how much they love each other in their pictures, too.

please continue to keep them all in your thoughts.  it is a really hard time for them right now, you see, the doctors determined that the ongoing treatment was what was keeping mindy alive.  they sent her home to be with her family for a couple days, but they will have to take her back when she starts failing.  oh god that is so hard to type.

it is better she spend time with her family now, so r & a cleared their schedules and are staying home with their family for the week.

it took hours to go through all the photos.  late into the night.  cody bear finally gave up on me, until i turned around in my chair to look at him…

remember his not-so-super super power?  the one where he senses someone is looking at him and exposes his belly for rubbing?  his senses are becoming even more heightened now!

here’s cody bear after a bath.  he loves this place!!!

(he’s being very silly if you ask me)

warning: if you HATE bugs, read no further. no gross pictures though.

okie dokie. got the warning out of the way. scene: it is sunday at four p.m. 2 of my girl friends, a and m, arrive with beer, specimen bags and a canon digital rebel. when 3 lovely ladies get together on a sunday night the topics include: jerky coworkers, puppies, boy friend’s parents (the irritating variety), global warming, absent minded professors and….bugs.

big ones, bugs with large mandibles and ….bugs that taste like cinnamon.

it started with the cinnamon bugs. pentatomids. “they do NOT taste like cinnamon” i demanded. well, they agreed, essentially it depends on their diets. apparently they can taste like orange or melon, too. and….apparently you can use them to flavor your food. “why wouldn’t you just use cinnamon?” i asked….naturally.

anyway, we 3 crazy chics hop on line to look at camel spiders, jewel beetles and search for the largest arachnids and insects.

earlier that evening we looked for more sleeping bees and filled the baggies with ….diseased plants, of which i have a few. no worries, i mostly have healthy ones!

rest assured, during all of this cody bear did work the room. he took turns sleeping at each of our feet or next to us on the couch for routine cuddling.

“excuse me…. BUGS?”

what else happened today? started the day with recall class for cody bear. great fun! (mental note: its already flea and tick season!)

my best pal stopped by and FORGOT THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC about dogs….AGAIN! that’s ok. we discussed getting the trek’s breaks fixed over limeade.

later i met with my landlord. he’s so great! he is going to put a new fence up and lighting to protect me from the mentally deficient thief and snoop! annnnd….he wanted to confirm that if i get a new dog for more protection….that i adopt from a shelter!

all this took sooo long, i didn’t have any time to get work on a site done or do any house work. bummer. behind again. but still,….its good to have good friends.

also, a side note: a. is mindy’s mom. mindy is home. she got home yesterday after 5 days in icu. it looks like she will make it! but, she is still very down and will be on meds for a while and a special diet and special care the rest of her life. the kidney damage was great, but….being feisty and having peope/parents/personal assistants to visit her morning and night in the i.c.u. have helped her pull through.

so, i’m sure her dog ‘rents would thank you, so i will for them: thanks for the well wishes for her pet food ailment recovery!

i’ll close by saying that i’m not as tough as the other ladies…my head itches at some of the bug chatter. i might get up early to give cody bear his frontline treatment and do a sweep for spiders.

night night.

yesterday actually turned out pretty bad, despite my attempts to cheer myself by listing all the happy things.

there was the ruining of a new shirt, a crappy morning at work, a funeral, and the ongoing saga of the creepy neighbor with the cops basically not caring at all.

BUT, despite all that crap, there were some nice things:

a beautiful dog to keep me busy and make me smile:

a great friend who spent much of the night with me problem solving and ultimately taking me to a mexican restaurant.

and the bees, curled up for a night’s snooze in their little pollen beds.

and my blog friends, visiting my site and making sweet comments about my loki post.

and my sister, for talking me through everything so i came out feeling like i’m not crazy.  no easy job.

i’m wary about how today and tomorrow will go.  there’s alot to do, and i just don’t know if my sinuses are up for the challenge!

my friend a told me that in the evening i could look in the flowers and see a bee settling down for a night’s sleep. i didn’t believe her, but she said yes, i could get up early and watch as the blossoms opened again, and there would be bees sleeping in there. “suuuuure” i said….”have another beeeeer” i thought.

i was taking pictures of blossoms tonight, and i was up close to one when all of a sudden, the anther started jiggling!

the honey bee was in there, getting comfy. he was crawling around deep inside the flower, finding just the right positioning before the petals enveloped him for the night.

i went from blossom to blossom, finding more sleepy bees. i don’t know what time they get up, what time the flowers open. i don’t know if i will remember to even look and to say “good morning honey bee.” (honey bee was one of loki’s dozens of nick-names!)

but the first gift was having a friend that told me about this crazy behavior. the next gift was being there with my camera when the bees hunkered down for the night.

i love my bees.

today, i think we’ll talk about happiness.  why?  because so far my day has been pretty crappy. i would like cogs to turn the other way.

(above cody bear demonstrates being happy with a rubber toy)

so, here, in no particular order, except the first two…

1. (a tie!) my dog and my cat

2. my friends

3. my family

4. coka cola, veggies from my friend’s farm, drinking beers with ruben and anna, going to dog school with cody, agility class, puppies, flannel sheets (even in the summer), “the office”, shooting stars, making up celebrity big brother rosters with leslie, unexpectedly encountering someone i know in a random place, riding my bike, my plants, taking photographs of smiling dogs, getting my photo credit in a publication, waking up without a stuffy nose,

interlude with dog picture…

happy things continued:

waking up after a big sleep, long walks with my dog when he does not see a cat, reading a blog that makes me laugh loudly at my desk, finding any amount of money in the pocket of something i haven’t worn in a while, limeade, orange scented hand lotion, holding a hot washcloth to my face and taking a deep sigh, cardinals and curved billed thrashers, bees, getting a comment from someone on my blog, bobcats, seeing a cat in a window, fresh salsa, getting out of work early, watching cody bear run h.o.p. through the back yard, raspberries, clean fluffy towels, new washing machines, sticky notes, my ipods, pig jokes, full moons,

oh, i guess that’s good enough for now…