Dogs and Sweat

So here I was, planting my front yard in the million-degree heat, and this chocolate lab comes running up and slobbers all over me. No "guardian" (in Boulder, no one OWNS an animal) in sight, so I gave required love and then ignored the dog. Minutes later, my neigbor comes over and says, "Is this your dog? because she just came right in my house and freaked out Ellie" (her dog.) SOOOOO, I grabbed a leash and took the dog for a big long walk all around the park, and no one claimed her. I did hear a lot of "good find!"s, though.
I brought her home, gave her back to the neighbor (they're used to having dog shit all over the yard) and called the Humane Society. As luck would have it, I got my friend Kris on the phone and not only let her know about the dog, but also got the chance to invite her to our STELLAR 4th party. Turns out that someone had just minutes prior called in a lost dog named Marley (on our walk, I was calling her "Kelly", though she had no name tag) who ran away on Sanitas (I live at the bottom). Anyway, loving reunion ensued and it was all very cool. Oh, and my neighbor and I had assessed her age (the dog's, not the neigbor's) to a tee (1.5 years).
WHY DO LOST ANIMALS COME TO *MY* HOUSE???? It has been like this since I was little. SPIDERS (yeah, yeah, whatever) aside, animals know they're so very safe with me. I love that.

Unsafe Sex

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Police on Wednesday were investigating how a naked couple fell four stories from the roof of a downtown office building to their deaths.
The man and woman were found near the sidewalk by a passing cab driver around 5 a.m. Wednesday. One person was pronounced dead at scene and the other died a short time later at a local hospital.
Clothing was discovered on the roof, leading authorities to suspect the couple, in their early 20s, may have been having sex. Their identities were not released.

"It's too early to rule out anything," Columbia police Sgt. Florence McCants said, but McCants said a preliminary investigation didn't show any sign of foul play.
The roof of the building is pyramid-shaped.

Welp, it happened. Check it out (click)

When I got up this morning, the spider was gone. GONE. NOT THERE. Somehow it dragged its mangulated hideous corpse off of the CD sleeve -- leaving one leg behind -- and went to the basement, where it will morph into the creature of my worst nightmares and come upstairs in the middle of the night to stick its thingy (not THAT thingy, I just forget what it's called...mandible??) into my ear and turn me to mush from the inside out and then slurp up my guts and leave behind a withered shell. This is going to be worse than a bikini wax. On the bright side, at least I'll be skinny.

For Sarah (but you can look, too):

You'll want to click on all of these pictures to enlarge them for detail.

THIS is what was on my neck tonight. I felt something itchy there, and I scratched at it, and it felt like a little pill, so of course I screamed like a girl and threw it, and it ended up all rolled into a ball on my cd case. I have been watching it drop legs and try to die for an hour now -- but it refuses to die and sometimes twitches around and I'm freaked out that any minute now it's going to turn into a 12-foot tall giant with 6 legs (and a couple of creepy gappy spaces) and then hunt me down and kill me in my own house. I am going to shudder until Saturday just thinking about it.


Funnier note: here's Greg with our buddy Fazel. Notice that he is exuding his usual charm. Imagine how mad he'd be if he knew I posted his picture here. LOL (jesus h christ on a bicycle ridden by a fish, it's moving again. shit)


Here is my little side garden after I planted it:


And the clothesline garden, before and during. I don't have an "after" photo yet:

From the mouth of the babe...

1. "Uhoh, my barn door's open, better not let out the cow!" (upon noticing that his zipper was down)

2. "Yeah, so last night I had the squirts, and it smelled like eggs and rubber. Oh, and weirdly, a little motor oil thrown in the mix."

Quote of the Day

I was screaming when I read this...tears were involved and now I am The Crazy Lady at work:

"I will forward you some pics when I get home. The one in particular that bothers me just makes me want to hide in a hole for the rest of my life. I don’t dare get a face lift or suction as I will probably end up looking like one of those people that had their ears repositioned to the backof their heads. Good grief. This aging thing is for the birds."

Thank you, Sarah!!

Backyard transformation

I bought about 400 pounds of quality dirt/planting soil, and filled in a big hole in the side of the yard that was left when an old tree was dug up. I planted some lovely flowers there, but I think they might all wither from lack of morning sun. If that happens, I'll just replace them with shade plants. Then I took this little table that I dumpster-dived from the flower shop downstairs from my office (nice how the owner caught me in the act) and put a concrete planter on it and filled it with water for a birdbath...so far the birds haven't dug it, but I guess that even if I had the Trump Palace of bird feeders, it doesn't negate the fact that there are many many lurking skulky cats in the immediate vicinity! Oh well, it looks very cute and my resin frog is having a great time lounging on it. Here is a photo of the renovation in the act:

I'll post more pictures when I'm done with this and Project Number Two, which is to remove 8000 pounds of river rocks from around the base of the clothesline pole, and fill the whole thing in with perennials. Project Number Three is to beautify the fence along the side of the front of the house. After freezing one night last week (and burning my GD spaghetti squash that I lovingly raised from seed!!!), it is now nice and hot (90) and things are starting to grow. I spent 5 hours at my community garden plot today, digging up the north half and planting everything that was left. Good thing I didn't put it all in the ground last week; the freeze would have taken most of it out. Oh, and I got a healthy sunburn on my back where my tank top meets my shorts -- or, more accurately, where it does NOT meet my shorts when I'm sitting down or bending over!

Bought myself a nice little HP Photosmart all-in-one printer, so now I can scan stuff!! Woo hoo....kid in a candy store!!

Gratuitous Pudge Shot (because he COULD NOT BE CUTER. EVER):

Cats 'n Bugs

As we speak, there is a GINORMOUS moth in my kitchen. I took these pictures of it. All I had close at hand to compare it with was a tin of Altoids. Everyone knows how big a tin of Altoids is, right? Okay, so you get it that this is one BIG ASS moth (do moths have asses???)




Gratuitous Pudge photo:

Speaking of cats, last night when we were stumbling home from the mall, a cat found us and followed us home. Wow, was this ever a SWEET kitty! His name was Merlin and he had a phone number, so we called his people. When the lady answered the phone and I told her we had her cat, she said (I shit you not), "hey, do you maybe want to keep him for another week? We're going on vacation."

Dear God.

Anyway, I said certainly not, but I was more than willing to NOT give her my address so that she could NOT come pick up the cat of which she was obviously so very very fond. In the end, she did come pick up the cat, but I let her know that we would take him if she decided that he was just too big of a burden for her lazy ass. I expect that he'll be back. He was gone for three days when we found him, which is just too sad considering that they live about 6 blocks away, right in the guts of lion country...