here’s the thing

Curves works in a circuit. You go around in a circle, either clockwise or counter clock-wise, depending on how they’ve set it up for the day. You do a machine then cardio on the little square thing. Every 30 seconds you move to the next thing. Every 30 seconds you CHANGE places.

So you few people who -

  • go in the opposite direction of the rest of the group

and/or

  • spend 10 minutes on one cardio station

YOU ARE MESSING UP THE SYSTEM!

Seriously. You go the wrong way? We will eventually run into you and you’ll get all miffed if someone is on the machine you were going to use. However we’re about 10 to 1. We win. We’re following the animator’s directions and the blue foot prints on the floor. We’re doing it the way we are supposed to.

When it’s a small room, only 12 (14?) machines, AND it’s at almost full capacity (as in there is a person in every space, both machine and workstation) it is not cool to swim upstream here.

AND if you’re going to hog one of the cardio stations to flail around for 10 minutes or more – MOVE OFF THE CIRCUIT! There is space for stretching and so on off to the side so MOVE OVER THERE. Do not suddenly block the traffic flow of the rest of us.

This is NOT YOUR personal gym, ladies. This is a gym for many, many women and we like to play by the rules.

So get a clue. Because I hate you. So do many of the other members. But I hate you more. Self-centered morons.

do i look familiar to you?

Hi there! I’m Random Male Dog! Today I thought I might run around the city and see what people were doing. I found some people outside with another Male Dog, only he didn’t seem to be quite as Random as I am. These people were about to wash their car. Or, at least, they were using this loud sucking machine thing on the inside of it. I ran right by them with some little kids chasing me, and the Big Bald Guy who was using the loud machine came after me with cookies! He carried me back to the driveway where the Cute Little One was sitting and they tied me up to the railing like the other Male Dog was. Only he wasn’t there this time. I think they put him inside because he was mean. Because I’m not mean. I mean, look at this face? Do I look mean to you?

I am very cute and friendly. But I’m scared and nervous too. But these nice people have sat with me outside all afternoon and gave me water and a Kong to play with. And they let me nibble twigs and they phoned the police to let them know I was here.

Only no one has phoned back yet. Or come to get me. I’d really like to go home. These are very nice people, but it’s just not the same, you know? I have a collar but no tags. I can’t even tell them what my name is. Or if I am English or French. I hope I can go home soon!

HappyCat UPDATE :: I phoned the police back shortly after posting this and got a much more helpful person on the phone. When I explained that I had phoned two hours earlier and I had found this dog, the woman on the other end asked me where I was, what kind of dog and the colour. And then said, she had a report in front of her and after confirming this was the same dog, asked if she could give my phone number to the owners. Less than 5 minutes later a man phoned me relieved to hear we had his dog. He told me he’d be by in about 10-15 minutes. I thought he was walking from around the corner. Apparently not. This dog travelled.

He crossed two very high-traffic streets and this is about a 30 minute walk (or more for me) from our home! Turns out our little Random Dog found a hole in the fence and the guy (very young, maybe our age or younger more likely) had phoned to report him missing around 1:00 pm. He ended up our way about 2:30 and he’s completely unharmed. I phoned the cops around 3:00-ish after Shawn walked around the area (not THAT far away though) with him. The owner even said “The first guy wasn’t helpful at all, but did you just speak with the woman? Because she asked me questions and did some research…” So now I don’t feel so off about the first guy anymore, because he didn’t ask me anything except for my address and phone number and said someone might contact me! I am so glad I phoned back and we were both so happy to reunite Spock (the year-old Springer) with his Daddy! The car never really got washed, though it’s all vaccumed, windexed and wiped down (SHAMWOW!). We’ll save the hose-spraying, soapy wash for the next gloriously wonderful day. We still spent the afternoon outside in the sun in our t-shirts and my pants all rolled up. It was gorgeous out today! Poor Shawn didn’t eat until 6PM though. We drove to the store (since he just didn’t want to do that walk for a 10th time!) and got hotdogs (chicken) to barbque for dinner.

I think this was a great day over all. And we rescued a puppy. All is right with the world for now.

things in march

A photo a day, while an interesting idea, not so easy to accomplish. Especially this month. But here’s my month in photos for you.

My dad had a birthday.

A squirrel tried to hide from me – but I found it.

And found out I have pretty awesome zoom on my camera.

My grandmother went into the hospital for emergency surgery for a perforated colon and my father was examining my camera as we waited for her to come out of surgery. I rather like this shot of me and my Mum. (My Nana is back in her home now and out of the hospital, she’s a strong woman. Follow-up appointment in a few weeks to see what’s what.)

My husband had a birthday. He got a TomTom GPS for the car. Yay!

A friend of mine at work got flowers from someone and they were pretty and I like how this shot came out.

Almost every day this week I have chopped off my hair. It got shorter and shorter as the week went by. I was almost down to the grey. ;)

Chopped off my hair (reeeeaaallly short in the back).

Dyed my hair (today).

The result…

A pretty awesome streak-effect. I think I’m happy. It’s strange to not be purple or fuschia anymore, though.

The end.

tired

I am sort of hoping the rest of this week will be boring as hell. In fact the rest of this month would be nice too.

So in one day, my grandmother was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery due to a perforated colon, and a friend at work was having a major life or death crisis (literally) and all of this happened at the same time. I think I spent most of yesterday shaking and high on adrenaline.

Things were a little bit brighter today, my grandmother made it through surgery and my friend had better news.

But really, the amount of stress and panic and terror and emotions there were all before noon on Tuesday was just unbelievable.

I am wiped out I really am. I want to try to update here but I don’t know when I’ll really be feeling up to it. So if you don’t hear from me for a while you’ll know why. Who knows, maybe I’ll get a writing bug this weekend (it is Shawn’s birthday, after all). But I think I’ll be spending a lot of time with family and thinking about family and just sending out positive energy to the universe.

If you pray, I ask that you please include my family and my friend’s family in your prayers. If you don’t pray, I ask that you please just think happy thoughts our way.

annie turns 11 and other things

We went back to Petcetera today for Annie’s birthday. It wasn’t actually planned, only Shawn let me know that we were out of dog food so we had to go anyhow. Off we went with the dogs in the back of the car for another Saturday of fun in the pet supply store!

So we were all, “Hey, Annie! Wanna go pick out your own birthday treat?”

And Annie was all,


YUM! GRAVY!

So, we took that as a yes and piled into the car (which was a good thing since she was already on leash and that meant we weren’t just teasing her).

So, like, can I drive? Why aren’t we moving yet?

Last week’s trip, which I never wrote about, was huge excitement for Annie! She was more excited and interested in things than Jinx was – almost. She was jumping up and trying to get a squeaking tennis ball that another shopper was showing her. She tried to climb up and into the display of cat scratch-posts (she was VERY interested in those!) she loved the bunny in the cage (so did Jinx – and the chinchillas (chinchilli?) only they didn’t like Annie and Jinx very much and were trying to bite them through the bars. heh) We were going to let the dogs check out the bunnies again but there were people in the way and so we wandered through the other aisles. We also needed dog shampoo since it’s so mild this weekend the dogs were getting bathed. Yay!

A boy and his dog.

I have very good dogs. Seriously. Or, maybe not that bright. But I’m chalking it up to them being VERY polite. We went down the aisle with all the dog treats and many of these are just out in the open on low shelves, ripe for the pickin’! First – and this I will give point to “not bright” – both dogs get all excited about the PACKAGED boxes of treats on the opposite side of the aisle to the Free Range treats. But then when they notice the other side, they sniffle, waggle and look at us and go from one end to the other. No licking, no picking anything up. Jinx and Annie had like, 2 feet of pigs ears to pick at and they just sniffed them and bounded down the row. I was impressed.

Jinx got scared when he accidentally backed into some metal pooper scoopers and actually “wuff”‘d at them. HA HA HA! It was a low, irritable woof too. Like it was telling it off in a whisper. Oh, my dogs. So we got the food, the bones, the gourmet wet food and the shampoo and we headed back to the car.

It’s like being pulled by a very slow dog-sled team – going about 5 inches an hour.

When we got home, oh the joy! The dogs thought they were getting their bones. But, no! We had something MUCH more exciting planned. First we strategized… who goes first? Annie won that round, and after being carried up the stairs, Annie got her Birthday Bath (lucky dog!), followed by Jinx. He was very helpful, because when we opened the bathroom door to let Annie out he was standing RIGHT THERE and eagerly came into the bathroom to see what was going on. Oops.

Does this look like a dog who turned 4 last week? He’s still a puppy!

I’m blurry on purpose to tick you off because you BATHED me on my BIRTHDAY. And there was NO GRAVY!

But after the bath trauma (they just sit or stand there and don’t even try to get away. They are exceptionally good dogs to bathe, we are very lucky) they each got their treat. We didn’t realize how big those treats were mind you.

It didn’t go much above 7C today, but that was still mild enough that we could finally wash these dogs and keep them from stinking up the house anymore. Of course now the house smells like wet dog, but that will go away soon and the dogs will smell much better. Next time they should need a bath we will likely be able to do it outside.

Meanwhile, I have a bathroom to clean now. I am glad I didn’t actually clean it all the other night like I was wanting to do because I would have had to do it all over again.

We didn’t feed the dogs until late tonight since they’d each had such a hefty afternoon snack. They did get the special stew-like dinner. But we ate at a normal time and had our first BBQ of the year. We cheated and bought the pre-made burger patties since we were rather wiped from the afternoon fun, and they shrank down to tiny little oreo-sized burgers, but they were still good because they were done on the barbecue!! Yum!

I think Annie had a good birthday. She’s 11 now and with each year she gets more and more playful and puppy-ish. Which is strange. I think Jinx has rubbed off on her. Eleven is old for a dog, but Lappies seem to have a good track record of living to 14-17 years old. I’m hoping that Annie falls into that category because I can’t imagine not having her in my life.

IT’S MAH BIRTHDAY! GIMME BEEF!

Happy birthday, Bellygirl.