Ew

Please do not talk to me on your cell while you're in the loo. Ick.

Fat Dog

We have three dogs - Sandy, an 8 year old lab/shepherd mix (at least that's what we think she is), Shelby, a 4 year old chocolate lab, and Izzy, a year old black lab. Sandy weighs about 74 lbs, and Shelby is about 76 pounds. Izzy, the PUPPY, weighs 82 lbs. You might think that Izzy weighs more because she's a strapping, big lab. Not so. Izzy's the shortest of the three by far, and she's roly poly. Just like her mother.


We took Izzy to the vet the other day, and the vet recommended a prescription diet food for Izzy. That shit is $55 a bag! Holy cow.


We're cheap, and obviously incompetent dog owners, so instead of shelling out that much for her food, we're feeding her less of her regular food and supplementing her regular food with cauliflower, which she seems to like. The vet had suggested the cauliflower, we didn't make that up.


I was a little worried about, um, cauliflower's gaseous qualities, but there doesn't seem to be an impact, thank heaven.


BTW, for anyone who's thinking about having three dogs, stop that. Three dogs is a world of difference from two. A multitude more work. Don't do it! Two are perfect, three is insanity.

Speak and Spell and Sigh

My little brother had a Speak and Spell, and I always thought it was a super cool toy, even if I was too old for it when it came out. I'm absolutely positive that Zippy would love the Speak and Spell, but Texas Instruments no longer makes this rockin' toy. You can find old Speak and Spells on eBay (and elsewhere on the web), but they tend to be sold for ridiculous amounts of money (well, at least a ridiculous amount of money for a present for a six-year old).



I'd love to know why Texas Instruments is making me sad like this. I guess I'll just have to send Zippy over to play with the Speak and Spell simulator instead of getting the real thing for her.


Sigh.

Cheap Tricks

For those of you under rocks, who come here for all of the latest news, Senator McCain named Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate this morning. What a cheap trick. Yes, she has a vagina - my question: Is that vagina supposed to show that she's a good substitute for Hillary? Hillary's fervent supporters wanted a woman in office - heck, I want a woman in office. But I'm NOT willing to vote for a woman who a) is anti-choice and b) has absolutely no record on foreign policy. I don't know much about Sarah Palin, but neither does Kay Bailey Hutchison, who actually has a record and a vagina.



Let me be clear here: Posession of a vagina does not give a person the right experience to be the Vice President, nor does it provide an automatic bye on the "sound judgment" question.



I think this is a cheap trick by the McCain team to try to get votes from those women who wanted Hillary in office simply because Hillary has a vagina and not because they believed in her policies. McCain and Palin have political viewpoints far from those of Hillary (and Obama, and Biden, for that matter), and a vote for the McCain ticket given only because there's a woman on the ticket is a vote from someone who only cares about that vagina, but not about the rest of the issues. McCain's record on women's rights, and children's rights, and veteran's rights is abysmal, and there's no reason to think that that record will change with Palin on the ticket.



I think it's admirable that Sarah Palin chose to go through with her pregnancy after learning her youngest child would be born with Down Syndrome. I probably would have made the same choice, but gosh, it's awfully nice to have that choice, and I do not want to lose it.



Cheap trick, McCain. I hope you're as embarassed as you should be. And I hope folks aren't so excited about the vagina that they forget about the issues.

Shallow Television

Burger isn't feeling well tonight, so she's been hanging out watching television like a lump on the couch. Which means that I'm being subject to a show called "The Millionaire Matchmaker". Can I just say OMG. There are all these women who are so insanely shallow on this show, and I can't even believe this crap is on television. Even more so, I can't believe that I'm being subjected to it. And that I haven't left the room.


I'm going to need a long shower after this, because it's just skanky.

The phrases that stick

As I've mentioned before, Zippy has a speech delay. One of the side effects of this is that she does something called scripting, which means that she uses specific phrases to get a response. For a long time, she'd start a conversation with, "we rode on a boat," and that would prompt one of us to discuss the boat ride we'd taken with her. So it was her way of practicing conversation.

The problem with scripting is that it can be annoying to those of us with less than saintly levels of patience (read: Mr. LT and myself). We get tired of the same conversations, but we play along. Mostly. Right now, Zippy has for some reason latched onto the phrase (Wendy, cover your eyes), "Oh my shit!". Yes. Oh.My.Shit. This is my 5 year old's FAVORITE THING IN THE WORLD TO SAY right now. I have no idea what conversation she's trying to start. None. And no idea where she came up with this, because I swear I've never before uttered the words Oh.My.Shit. I've used (Wendy, cover your eyes) "Oh my God" on a fairly regular basis, and admit to thinking it adorable when Zippy started saying, "Oh my Godge" (which I belive is a cross between "oh my God" and "oh my gosh"), but never Oh.My.Shit. And OMS is making me insane. Really. And I can't figure out how to make her Just Stop Saying Those Words. I've tried numerous tactics, and none of them work. I'm thinking I'm pretty much a failure of a parent because I cannot defeat my 5 year old's love for this phrase. Sigh.

So if you hear a cute little blonde girl saying, "Oh My Shit" around town, please be assured that her harried parents in no way endorse the phrase. We're mortified. Really.

I'm so proud

Complex thoughts escape me. Apparently.

Lovely Anonymous Commenter

I just had an anonymous comment posted in response to my "really good things" post. In case you missed it, here the comment is, in all its glory:

"Oh great, another California Libber coming up to screw over/Californicate Oregon."

This is exactly what I'd dreamed about when I uprooted my family and moved to a smaller town - that people would be open and welcoming, and would judge me on my own merits, instead of having preconceived notions about who I am and what my goals are based upon superficial information. I mean, really, what better kind of welcome can a girl hope for? (I'll tell you what kind - the kind of welcome I have received from 99.99% of the people I've talked to here. The kind where people are nice for the sake of being nice. The kind where folks you've never met before meet you for a beer to welcome you to the new town you've set your hopes on. I'm glad that most people have been wonderful, but then again, we wouldn't have picked Bend for our future if people here hadn't been so darn nice.)

I don't know what it would mean to "Claifornicate" Oregon, but I'll tell you what -- we lived in California for the past two years and were done there after about the first ten months. We wanted to live in a quieter place, but not so quiet that you have to drive an hour on a regular basis to find things. We wanted a family-friendly town, where there was a good sense of community, and where there were parades and other fun family-centric events. We wanted a place with a sense of humor, a sense of history, and interesting people. And we found all this in Bend.

I know there are people here who wish for the quiet town of 15,000 people that Bend used to be. I can understand that longing -- I can imagine the town with more open land and fewer cars, and wish I had been here to see that. I'm not thrilled with what I see as over-development here -- the houses so close together, crammed into the avaialble space. I don't know why it's so hard to find a 12,000 SF lot here, but it's close to impossible to find one. It's funny - we moved from Southern California to Bend and have 4,000 fewer square feet of land under our house. I don't get that at all. I imagine that it was amazing here before everyone encroached on the natives. So I get it. At least I think I do, at least kind of.

But I personally don't get the animosity toward me, the person. OMG, I'm a "libber" (I can't figure out if that means Women's Libber or Left-Wing Liberal. Whichever, both fit pretty well, although I do think I'm somewhat moderate. In any case, I don't see it as an insult. Call me closed-minded if you want to offend me.) But let's be clear, I'm not a California Libber, I'm a Maryland Libber (and Maryland is a much more liberal state than California. Heck, we lived in Orange County, California. I think I was one of three registered Democrats in the county.), and I'm proud to be me. I'm happy to be here in Bend - in fact, I'm thrilled. I felt the weight lift off my shoulders within days of being here, and am in love with this area and what it holds for my family.

I don't really have much else to say, except that you, anonymous poster, are a grumpy-pants, and maybe you should try to not be the grinch this year and should instead make an attempt to understand why people would want to move here. It's certainly not to screw up "your" town. Because it's our town now too.

Deadbeats

There are lots of things I've done since moving to Bend - including getting a new cell phone. Unfortunately, Tabitha, who apparently had my new cell phone number before, is a deadbeat, and I'm getting between one and three calls every day from folks trying to collect money from her. Tabitha, if you're out there, do the right thing, and send the nice people their money. Because I really am not thrilled with the conversations I'm having to have.