Just. Breathe.

I've gone almost the entire month of April without posting, because it's been a crazy few weeks. Let's take a look...in no particular order... Animals Coby has had no new run-ins with strange dogs, no visible injuries. He has  managed to train the dogs quite well to bend to his will. This cat is next to impossible to photograph. With a flash, he glows. Without it, he disappears.  The old man... This is his usual position. It gives him the best ability to snore and pass gas at the same time. The demonic one...holding onto his tennis ball so the others can't get it. Did you know that "red-eye reduction" doesn't work in a case like this? And finally, trouble... Spoiled rotten. But look at that smile.  House We got a new one of these! Aren't we lucky? Okay, we're lucky that we could afford it and that RDub is handy enough to put it in without paying someone else, but seriously! We just had the outside of the house painted...

[I started this post last weekend. Does that give you any indication of how my week has gone?] To recap a few things from the past 10 days or so... I did some party food demos for a group: Pinterest for the win -- homemade mac and cheese made into cupcakes. Pretty tasty. Tortilla rollups, and of course I forgot to take a picture when the platter was full. Fruit pizza made on individual sugar cookies ...which actually started the day before with a lot of prep, and was followed by a bit of this: Visiting with a sweet group of girls and women and discussing hospitality The rest of the day was spent doing stuff like this: Basil, cilantro, dill, parsley, and thyme -- planted in something that I hope the dog will leave alone. Rearranging and cleaning the porch for the season. We bought this set last year and still really love it. Jumping ahead to the current weekend, we continued the party with a little of this: I love our baskets - petunias and som...

Who am I kidding? The end is here . The end of this goofy blogging experiment, that is. What was I thinking? How do people blog every.single.day? I don't have that many thoughts worth writing about, and the condition of my house proves that it takes me way  too long to do this every day.  But it has been kinda fun, in a weird, pressure-filled kind of way. I'd like to think I've restarted my interest in blogging, and maybe I'll get back to at least a couple of times a week, rather than once a month.  To make up for somewhat bailing on this experiment, I'll go the more traditional route for the rest of Lent and give up something. Let's see...chocolate, sugar, coffee, wine...wow, the vice list just goes on and on... With 23 days left, I believe I will choose...refined sugars! [No, that's not a cheat like saying I'm giving up liver...I've had way too much sugar lately, so this will be good for me.] And for the record, I didn't plan far enough a...

Some things: Stacy Keibler and George Clooney broke up after a couple of years. Stacy is now married and pregnant. How do you handle being the guy  after  George Clooney?  Danica McKellar (Winnie) and Candice Cameron (DJ) are on this season of Dancing With the Stars. I loved   The Wonder Years  and Full House . I could never pick between those two - with or without dancing. And if they'd thrown Topanga into the mix, I'd have had to watch every single episode.  I want this to be my next job. [To be clear - I want to be holding the water hose.] The Malaysian airliner situation just breaks my heart. Whatever happened, I can't imagine how the families of those passengers are coping with not knowing.  There are several families I know who are really struggling right now--a 16-year-old in a car accident who is struggling with recovery, a mom recovering from back surgery, a grandmother with MS who has pneumonia...sometimes it seems so overwhelm...

Almost wordless. This is in a corner of my office. I heard a few weird sounds. Then, this for about 45 minutes. Yes, those are my yoga mats. They were just rolled up standing in the corner. You can't see that the table is tilted toward him. 

I shamelessly stole this from somewhere on the web. As I may have mentioned, I'm done with winter. Done. I've decided that Spring just doesn't know it's her time to shine, so I'm helping.  Sunday it was about 45 and windy, but by golly that grill was going and we had fajitas. See, Spring? We remember you and look forward to your return. Bug and I have been doing a workout series for the last week or so. Today we did the entire thing outside. Take that, Winter. It consisted of about 225 squats. We will not be moving tomorrow, so I won't care what the weather is. Right now, I'm wearing a sundress and NO fuzzy socks. I believe this is the first time my feet have been uncovered for more than 10 minutes since about November.  And I desperately need a pedicure.  I planted my herbs a couple of weeks ago and I've been babying them since. Eventually, they will be so happy and look like this. Let's all join in a chorus "Spring has sprung...

I'm not Irish. And I don't drink beer. And bright green isn't really my color. So why on earth am I doing a St Patrick's Day post? [Ignore the 40 days of blogging pressure, and scraping bottom for ideas...] Because it's a really cool story, that's why! My 10 minutes of research has proven that this Saint Patrick had a very interesting life! Let's look at some of it, shall we? This tradition dates back to around 400 a.d. That's a long freaking time ago, and yet the legend continues! At 16, Patrick was captured by pirates and sold as a slave in Ireland. His owner was a pagan priest of Druidism. He escaped after about six years of slavery. He entered the priesthood in France, and after about 20 years, was allowed to go to Ireland to convert the pagans there. In his years there, he converted thousands to Christianity. He is said to have used the three-leafed shamrock to explain the holy trinity.  The legend that St Patrick banished all the snake...