& that's the way life goes

I have stories to tell and pictures to share, but I don’t have the voice.  Or motivation right now.  Can you settle for a picture of my not-so-smart dog.  I don’t know I can’t call him not smart but he’s so much of a blank slate (there is hardly anything up there) that he’s easy to teach and mold for the most part.  C found him on the couch last night.  Clearly, a weekend at the cottage is exhausting for a dog.

Thanks to Angela, I spent a couple hours this morning researching Minature and Toy Shar Peis.  Holy adorable!

Right now, I’m just wasting time before I stop being an office monkey and go enjoy the weather…

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.  Or maybe it started last night when my Sprite exploded all over me and then when I opened the bag of carrots they went all over the floor.  It continued this morning when my phone just quit working.  You know they make lovely paperweights when they don’t send/receive phone calls, send/receive texts or connect to the internet.  Yep, a nice blue paperweight.

I spent an hour on the phone with Verizon and it resulted in me having to completely reset my phone.  It wasn’t that bad but I lost some cute text messages from C and my ring tones and notifications sounds.   I hope, hope this doesn’t happen again!

So enough complaining…some good things to get me through my afternoon meeting:

• Red Wings victory and into the 2nd round – did you see my boyfriends Datsyuk’s 2 goals!?
• Finding my favorite brand of jeans on ebay for $5
• Getting home owners insurance on the cottage
• Craigslist
• Plans to buy some Nuvo Vodka
• Buying paint for the cottage tomorrow
• Sunshine – even if it is a bit chilly

And of course this face

The first shot

5 shots in

completely on his nerves

Over the weekend we were in Oscoda and it was beautiful for April. Since we had the place to ourselves and there wasn’t much else to do, we used the dogs as entertainment. Sometime before this little playground adventure, Nani hurt her paw and limped almost the entire weekend and Scooby hurt his tail, so it was Liko I got to push down the slide enduring all the fun. After the first couple times he really got into it. I think he’d really like agility classes.

Liko’s Playground Adventure from rialeilani on Vimeo.

I tried putting him in the baby swing but he drew the line and bit my hand and kicked me with his feet when I picked him up.

C and I adore our dogs…

We adore

• making fun of them
• putting things on them that make them look funnier
• irritating them
• poking each other and saying ‘look’ when they do something cute
• talking about them when we are at work

…you know that kind of smushy stuff.  When we were in California we were cooing over all the cute dogs and how Nani would enjoy the beach and Scooby would enjoy the other dogs and Liko would enjoy the sand.  In short, we miss them immensely when we go on vacation (though truthfully in the days leading up to vacation we tell them we can’t wait to have a break from them haha).

So here is some visual love of my canine kids.  I should warn you that Scooby is our model.  Nani isn’t all that photogenic and Liko is usually burrowed under the blankets.

Want more? Check out the Mah Furkids gallery

We carved our pumpkins last night!

I bought Liko a little squirrel costume at Target awhile ago.

And lastly, here is the final picture before the big halloween reveal.  hehe.  Honestly, it’s not a very creative costume on it’s own, but paired with C’s I hope you guys will laugh about it.

I tried to post this last night but of course my blog was down…

(counting to 10…)

he has no shame

And he was cute and adorable last night.  At 5am this morning he woke me up smacking his lips for like an hour.  Why?  Because at 5:45am I heard him puking in the living room.    He threw up a shoe lace.  A whole motherfucking shoelace.

Sick.

…still be upset I got overlooked for the 20sb blog swap for the SECOND time in a row
…think about the basement flooding because our power is out and the sump pump isn’t working
…let C’s crabbiness get to me
…feel self conscious because my hair is a little scary b/c I coudn’t use my straightener or my hair dryer
…think about MA leaving our office to go work at GOOGLE in California (psshhhh)

I will give you some more pictures from our up north vaca (which we will be going on again in a week!!)

Liko found a "suite" in the bow of the boat

Scooby looking out on lake huron in Oscoda

chillin with 'dad'

relaxin on the boat

Nani's driving with C (he's her favorite)

It was a little chilly

I’m back!  Thank you Amy and Ashley for guest posting for me!

I had the most tranquil weekend I think I’ve had in my life.

Amazing because there were some hiccups.  But nothing seemed to get to me.  I literally was at 100% peace.  Even though,

Tawas Bay

• I had some flashbacks, nostalgia, visions of an alternate life
• We lost power the first night we were there after spending $80 at the grocery store (luckily it came back on before anything went bad)
• Scooby jumped off the boat at the pier and wanted to play with 5 mini yorkies that turned agressive on themselves and their owner was freaking out (this could have been WAY worse than it was)
• The van broke down as we were getting on I75 and we had to call a tow truck and wait at the dealership for a couple hours for them to fix the problem, thus incurring $400 we weren’t expecting to spend

I still can’t believe how easy everything seemed, even when things went bad.  I wondered for a second if these things were bad karma for me, because you know I deserve some bad karma, but I don’t really think so.  I kind of just coasted this weekend, let things come as they might and dealt with them.

waiting at the Chevy dealer for the van

I didn’t even feel a bit of irritation when we got on the freeway and promptly had to pull over when C knew we should have gotten it fixed in Tawas.

Liko’s insistent whining couldn’t even break the calm.  I’m not sure who that person was up there but I hope she sticks around.

I have a secret too.  Every single time I’m up there I don’t want to leave.  I just want to be.  I want a simple life.  One that allows me to take Nani out to the water on a whim to watch her eyes become excited when she sees the water.   It feels like home up there.    I don’t feel rushed and I don’t feel pulled in 100 different directions.  I just am.

I didn’t have internet withdrawals like I thought I might and we didn’t have a tv but I was perfectly content with reading a book and just relaxing.

Of all the places I’ve been this might have been the most relaxing vacation I’ve ever had.

I’m still in my zen-like state today, but I also don’t feel like talking with anyone.

*more pictures to come  

Here a few more pictures from the long weekend.  It was one of those weekends that felt really long but  the moment you were back to work on Monday it’s was obviously WAY, WAY too short.  We did get a lot done so I guess we were at least accomplished!

always time to chill with dogs in the back of the van

When Sarah asked me about a favorite restaurant my response was that I  really wanted to try Slow’s BBQ in Corktown.   Her and Supergirl both said it was delicious and I needed to go ASAP.  So last Friday, we did.  It was perfect because they weren’t busy since it we went in the middle of the afternoon.  And yes, the food was delicious.  I was so hungry I didn’t take any pictures of the actual mouthwatering food, but I did take some to pass the time before it arrived.

Holy crap.

I really like my job most of the time.  I get to learn new things break websites and then teach myself how to fix what I just broke.  Maintaining and updating other people’s code makes for good learning.  There is this one designer who had her head up her ass and since she left and I’ve been maintaining, updating, FIXING her code I’ve definitely learned what not to do EVER.  (ex. hard coding the navigation on EVERY page in a 5,000 page website…ok not 5,000 pages but it seems like that many.  virtual includes people)  Anyhow…

So I have a project list, not quite as extensive as the developers, cuz you know that’s not my job.  But I have this list and it’s keeps growing.  Then I have all this crap sitting in folders that needs to be done.  I’m waiting for content or a file (ahem…Keith).  Then I have to answer phones for another department while they are on lunch and the calls are interrupting my train of thought.  And I think that my head might explode because all I wanted to do was knock out some work so it was more ankle deep, than you know, shoulder deep.  Are you following me?  No.  I don’t blame you cuz I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about either.  (Get to the point)

I was stupid busy yesterday & I didn’t have any time for my blog (boo!).  That is all.

OMG moving on…

So you know I’m leaving to go up north this weekend…SO EXCITED…especially because we are taking the doggies.  Gosh I can’t wait to see them in the water.  They know when they get to go on vacation.   Last week I knew I needed to get them pet tags (I know we are bad canine parents, they don’t have any).  According to The Dog Whisper’s newsletter, the statistics of a dog being returned to an owner is only about 10-12%.  Isn’t that sad?  I’ve been wanting to get them id tags for a long time now and our trip made me realize I had to get them NOW.

I found the perfect ones on etsy, of course.  Unique Tags to be exact.

their names are engraved on one side with our phone numbers on the other

In other catch up news.  Besides the lameness I talked about, the 4th was pretty fun.  Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the night.  My camera battery was about to die so I didn’t take as many pictures as I usually would have.