Winter, etc.

Winter appears to have begun in earnest here. We had snow flurries for two days in a row, I don't think the temperature has gotten above freezing, and walking the new dog makes me cry because the wind is blowing so hard.

Daisy came a little over a week ago, riding up from Virginia with Will and Nick, Ben's father and brother, respectively. She is sweet and a little shy, but appears to be settling in okay. Ada has relaxed enough to resume laying around.

Getting my hours cut back at work was a pretty big setback for me, but it's at least given me time to work on straightening out a few things in my life and getting the dog settled in. Right now she is having a dog dream.

I'm a sucker for a sweet face. Plus she loves to stretch SO MUCH. Also now this post has pictures of two different cute animals, so hopefully you aren't mad at me for not posting for forever-and-ever, right?

Daisy is kind of a lame name--nothing good ever happened to any Daisys that I could think of. Daisy Miller died of typhus or something (too lazy to look it up) and Daisy Bell's boyfriend tried to pass off buying one of those bikes that are double bikes as being a kind of romantic thing when he was too broke to buy a real car. Then the robot in 2001 killed them both, I dunno. But she lived with Ben's mom for a good 6 months before she came up here, so at this point it's her name and we'll just have to go with that.

And now it's like I've waited so darn long to post stuff that things that would have taken up tons of words in the past--losing the job, getting the dog, cat laying down--I can just breeze over like they're no big deal. Except for the cat thing: her tummy is very soft and when she invites you to pet her tum, it is not a terrible trap so that is something I could go on and on about.

Lately it seems that the only thing I cannot do is go to the gym. I don't know why doing this is so scary, as the Y is mostly filled with old ladies, but doing new things is hard. On the other hand, being sad about job has made me especially fat and not working has given me extra time on my hands so I REALLY SHOULD do this, especially because of the trouble I've been having with my ankle. That's another story I'll breeze over, I suppose, because at this rate I'm going to keep coming up with things that I feel obligated to mention and then where will we be? Bored.

I will tell you about Daisy's origin story, then. B and I have been wanting another dog for quite a while now, but things just hadn't come together. We tried to adopt one and it wanted to bite me, and then we tried to adopt another and it wanted to bite Ada. So we took a break from Trying to Find a Dog and I let Susanne, Ben's mom, know to keep an eye out for us since she has dog radar. Radog.

On a whim, Susanne answered a Craigslist ad for a golden retriever-looking mix. She figured she'd go and look and report back,  but when she got there to meet with the owner, the dog was just dripping with ticks. The owner claimed that Daisy had been inside previously but then got moved outside because they had too many dogs. Outside in Virginia summers means ticks, like a bazillion of them. So because she is a good person with a heart of gold (hi Susanne! See how I'm not calling you that "m" word?) she just took the damn neglected dog, whether or not we wanted it. Which was of course the right thing to do times a million, and if you thought I'd disapprove of that, do you even know me? Why are you reading this thing?

Susanne ended up at the Petsmart vet on a Sunday night, waiting for a crap Banfield vet to prescribe some kind of anti-tick meds; she looked down and the poor dog was swarming with literally hundreds of ticks. Poor Daisy was anaemic because the ticks sucked out all her blood, and had three tick-borne diseases including Lyme Disease and even after the ticks died she was all scabby and dry and gross. But Susanne fed her a million fish oil caplets and took her to obedience class so things got better for Daisy. Moral of the story: Ben's mother is the patron saint of all dogs. And now Daisy basically just lives here and chows down on bones and expensive food all day, so I have a good feeling about this setup.

So, this first blog entry after a long absence is maybe kind of a let-down, I dunno. But you were probably coming here for pictures of cute pets so I'll try to keep 'em coming and maybe have even more next time! FIN