***WARNING*** YOU MUST HAVE A STRONG STOMACH TO READ THIS POST. IF YOU GET QUEASY EASY, JUST SKIP IT!

this house uses a septic tank and is not connected to the sewer system. that means that we have to be careful about what we flush. that includes tampons. during that time of the month, i am careful to dispose of that sort of waste very discreetly in a small trash can in our master bathroom. i empty that trash can about every other day and have never had a problem with that system. until today.

as i was putting some freshly ironed clothes away this morning (sorry, had to throw that in there), i noticed that there was some torn toilet paper on bozeman's doggy bed. upon further investigation, i realized that this was toilet paper from our trash can and that there was a tampon wrapper lying next to it. great. a thorough search revealed no surprises lying around the house, but i kept my eyes open, just in case. having made it through most of the day without any such surprises, i convinced myself that he hadn't dug far enough into the trash can to get anything worse than the tampon wrapper. wrong.

just a few minutes ago, i got back from walking bozeman and had to give him a bath when we got home because he had poo all over his behind. want to know why? because when he squatted to go, it didn't all end up in the pile and some of the poo was still attached (i thought) to the hair around his tail. being the doggy mommy that i am, i took the poo bag that i was using to bag the poo and lifted up his tail, prepared to pull the rest of the poo off of his hair and into the bag. well, i pulled a little and then had to keep on pulling because it wasn't attached to the hair, but still coming out of his behind. my gag reflex started to kick in about the time that i noticed that what i was pulling out was really something white and covered in poo. you've probably already guessed what it was: a tampon covered in poo. eeeeewwwwwwww!!!!! the girlie side of me was gagging all the way home. the dog-mommy side of me was mad at myself for leaving something out where bozeman could get into it and eat something as disgusting as this. and then, the wifey side of me was thinking, "wait until i tell LH about this one!"

moving isn't so bad after all

as you can see, bozeman travels well. in fact, he does some of his best sleeping in the car. so do i... good thing LH is such a wonderful husband and doesn't mind doing most of the driving. it's also a good thing that he is such a good driver so i don't get car sick when he drives. i could tell you some stories about me getting car sick... but you might be eating lunch while reading this and i don't want to spoil your appetite.

we just got back from spending a few days with wonderful friends in our new city. i call them wonderful because this is the second time that they have welcomed us into their house, dog and all, so we could go house hunting. this time, they even had a brand new german short-haired pointer puppy who became bozeman's best friend. hopefully, they will have some play-dates once we get settled so they can wear each other out! i know LH is hoping that they will have some play-dates just so he can play lego star wars on our friends' xbox 360. have you ever played that game? so. much. fun. i can't understand why LH would get upset when my character shot and killed him, though. whoever decided to create a video game with lego characters was a genius! no blood and guts and it's actually funny when c3po's arms get ripped off. and no, i'm not promoting violence.

so here is the good news: we signed a lease for the house and will be moving in as soon as the movers can get our things out of storage and into the house. i am thrilled. we looked at several other houses just to make sure we were getting the "right one," and i even told LH that i could live without stainless steel appliances (our realtor told me to think about what i was saying) but in the end, we ended up with my favorite house. of course, now that we have signed a lease, i'm expecting our condo to sell right away. well, expecting might be too strong of a word, maybe i should say hoping? praying? begging and pleading? at any rate, we have a place to live and i'm very excited about it. now, we just have to convince my brother to come visit after he finishes his finals so he can help us paint, paint, paint!

oh, christmas tree

bozeman... as in bozeman, montana

our dog doesn't have a very common name. in fact, i don't think i have ever heard of any animals that share his name. the hubby and i have a great love for all things montana, and that's why we named our dog after a city in the big sky state.

bozeman is sort of my baby. okay, he is really my baby. the hubby got him for me so i would have a companion while he was deployed, and boy was he a good investment. i've been told that i have "girlified" our dog, but i'm pretty sure bozeman is secure enough in his doggy-masculinity to handle the teasing. how has he been girlified? one example is what he does after we come back inside from walking in the rain or after he has had a bath: he follows me around the house until i get out the blow dryer and blow him dry. cute, huh?

on the way to meet our puppy, i talked to the breeder on the phone about the personalities of the puppies that she had available. as soon as she mentioned the one who was a little bit ornery, i was sold. it didn't hurt that when i met him, he came straight over to me and rested his head on my leg. everyone together now: "awwwww!"

here he is in all of his ornery glory:


here he is showing his athletic side:


and here he is trying to catch a lizard for me. once he catches one, he usually carries into a grassy spot where he can roll around on top of him. my favorite is when he army crawls across the lizard. i'll have to get a video of that and share it.


i think bozeman is much smarter than all other dogs. he even has a sense of humor, as you can see here:


one day, the hubby and i will have kids. until then, this little puppy is getting spoiled rotten...

steaks, spikes and birthday cake

this weekend, the hubby, bozeman and i traveled to my parents’ house to see my brother compete in the state cross country meet. let me just say that i am SO proud of my brother. he ran a 5k on an extremely hilly course in 16:57. that boy can run. he isn’t even built for cross country, since he towers over everyone else and is very muscular, but he has overcome his physical disadvantages and runs with the best of them.
on the way back from the cross country meet, the hubby and i stopped by sara’s house to help celebrate anna’s third birthday. it’s amazing how fast kids grow up! anna shared some of her yummy little mermaid cupcake-birthday cake with us and it was pretty darn yummy. i have to say that sara was looking very bride-y this weekend!
saturday night, while the parentals and my brother were at various parties, the hubby and i decided to get a sushi appetizer and grill some steak. if i never make steak again, i will the happiest woman alive. we didn’t get to the grocery store until about 7:30 and as we hungrily browsed the meat selection, we decided to go all out and get a pound of filet. we also picked up some old-fashioned bottled coke and a pack of miso sushi rolls. once we were back at my parents’ house, i put our blockbuster movie in the dvd player and sunk down into the comfy couch with a down blanket on top of me. oh man, was it cozy and boy, did i get drowsy fast. observing my sleepy circumstances, my wonderful hubby took over and started the grill. about 15-20 minutes later, the hubby walked past me with the plate of steak and told me to come sit down at the table to eat. i was pretty sleepy, but i was more than curious about the steak, so i abandoned the warm couch and down blanket for my hubby at the table. fork and steak knife in hand, the hubby explained that this piece over here was medium-rare and that one over there was medium. i asked for the medium-rare piece, which he put on my plate, and quickly cut into it. i took a bite and suddenly forgot that i was sleepy and no longer nice and warm. this had to be the best steak i had eaten in my entire life. seriously. at first, the hubby thought that i was just saying that to make him feel good, but the speed at which i was eating the hunk of meat confirmed that i was telling the truth. honestly, i hope that i never have to cook a steak again, because my husband is by far the best steak griller in the world, and it would just be silly to waste his talents. maybe he’ll grill some steak again this week. i’m hoping that he does, because my mouth is watering right now just thinking about it.

stowaway

i have a stowaway with me in the office today... bozeman! the contractor is still working on our condo and i think bozeman was bitten by a spider, so i couldn't send him to doggy day care to play today. he's a good dog, laying on the other side of my desk with his head near my feet. too bad i can't bring him every day!

the talking donkey

bozeman and i take long walks together every morning. it is still dark outside when we walk, but i feel pretty safe in our neighborhood (having a big dog by my side doesn't hurt). sometimes, i just let bozeman sniff every spot on the grass or the trunk of someone's car. other times, he is in a hunting mood and we have to chase every cat or bug that crosses our path. still other times, i just want to go for a nice run with my dog. there have been two early mornings in the past month that i've tried to go for a run with bozeman and he has simply resisted me at the very beginning of our run. he actually stops running, turns in the opposite direction, and either sits down or tries to run back home. rather than yank the leash and force him to keep running with me, i usually turn around with him and we just run around the condo or chase cats together (am i losing my mind admitting that i chase cats with my dog?) and the reason is because i keep thinking of the talking donkey from the bible. anyone know the talking donkey story? all i can think of when my dog decides that he doesn't want to run with me is what he can see ahead of us on the path that i can't see. it may sound silly, but when it is dark and there aren't many people around, i'm going to trust my dog's instincts over my own... and i will continue to chase those cats.

our alarm system

in college, i once had a roommate who would get SO mad at me every morning. we had a 2-story dorm room and i had the entire second floor loft all to myself. for as long as i can remember, i've always woken up with the radio or some sort of music playing. in college, i continued this system and had a radio/buzzer alarm system where the radio would start playing about 15 minutes before the harsh buzzer jolted me out of dreamland. this particular roommate, however, could hear the radio from her bed on the first floor and would yell at me to turn it off. i tried setting it on the most quiet volume level, but it was to no avail. if i only set the buzzer alarm and not the radio, i would hit the snooze button for about an hour before finally getting out of bed. fortunately, we got along in all other aspects of daily life, but we could never come to an agreement over my method of waking up each morning.
in the back of my mind, i always wondered how this would one day affect my marriage. God totally had it all taken care of, because my husband hits the snooze button even longer than i do! he doesn't like the radio alarm, though, and if i ever let it play longer than a minute or two, he either nudges me or says my name until i turn it off. it amazes me how something that is so soothing to me can wake other people from a dead sleep more effectively than a buzzer alarm. anyhow, any given morning in our bedroom, you can hear each of our alarm clocks buzzing and then being snoozed...over and over again. next, the dog pitches in with his effort to wake us up. as soon as he hears the alarm, he gets up from his sprawled out position on the bathroom floor, picks up a toy (preferably a squeaky one) and immediately heads to my side of the bed to wag his tail as hard as he possibly can and try to convince me to take him for his morning run. i usually reach over and pat his head and rub his chest until he decides to lay down next to the bed and wait for the alarm to go off again. this goes on for about 30-45 minutes every morning. it's a system that works for our family and i love it. and can i just add that i have never, ever seen my husband wake up grumpy? no matter how little sleep he might have had, he always wakes up with a smile on his face. i love this about him and wish that i were the same way. if i happen to fall asleep on the couch at night and have to wake up to go to bed, i am so cranky. i'm trying to be more like him, but it certainly doesn't come naturally!

doggy days

it's been a rough couple of days for our house. you see, bozeman somehow swallowed a little piece of wood and on it's way back out of his stomach, it scratched his throat. this caused him to cough like an ex-smoker, because he thought something was still in his throat and he was diligently trying to get it out. after a couple of days of this, i took him to the vet and yep, his throat was scratched and had a little bit of an infection. after a shot of anti-inflammatory and some antibiotic pills, he was good to go. on our way home from the vet, i decided that bozeman needed a bath. only, i didn't want to dirty up our guest bathroom, nor did i want to have tons of towels to launder after washing and drying him. luckily, there is a place near us that lets you use their facilities to wash and dry your dog for a small fee. bozeman loved his bath and especially the hair dryer at this place, because it blows out freezing cold air instead of hot air like my hair dryer does. i now had a fresh, medicated dog on my hands who was badly in need of a nap. while he napped, i was very productive around the house and even planned a cool dinner with our leftover chicken: fried rice (the hubby helped cook it and it was SO good. i am definitely going to make this dish again!).
okay, fast forward to after the dog finished napping and needed to go outside again. we went for what was supposed to be a short walk, but ran into one of our friends and her labrador and we ended up walking with them for awhile. on the way back home from our walk, bozeman was hot and tired and decided to lay down in some tall grass beside this gravel road. i encouraged him to get up, and when he did, he kept sitting back down to bite at his tail. i finally went back to investigate why he was biting so much and, i kid you not, his entire rear end and back legs were COVERED with fire ants. i started swatting at them with my hands and trying to get them out of his fur, but they were stuck and biting my hands. thankfully, there was a pond up ahead and so bozeman and i ran for it as fast as we could and i had him jump in and swim around for a little while. that killed most of the fire ants, but once we got home, my hubby and i had to bathe him and then pick out all of the dead ants from bozeman's fur since they stick so well to his long, golden locks.
now... i need to stop procrastinating and go for a run, then clean our bathrooms and start working on the chocolate cake that i'm making with the pioneer woman's recipe. we are having one of my hubby's college buddies over for dinner tonight and i'm going to make one of our favorite dishes: sockeye salmon.

hardware and a quick dog story

several months ago, while my husband was deployed and i was working, our dog got bored and ate a hole in the wall. i tried to patch it once, but the dog ate right back through the plaster and ripped some more paper off of the wallboard. he is over that stage in his life now and knows that if he wants to continue to live, he will not eat any more wall, but the evidence is still right there in our entry way. yesterday, i told my hubby that i was going to the hardware store to get the supplies to fix the hole. he informed me that he would really like to be the one to fix the hole, but that i could get the supplies. that sounded good to me.
yesterday also happened to be the day that i had promised to bring lunch for my hubby's department at work. i decided to wear a dress to look cute for my handsome man, but while dressing myself, i failed to think about the fact that i was planning on going to the hardware store after lunch. oh well! anyhow, so i got to the hardware store and as i was perusing the many types of spackle and patching supplies, i decided that i needed advice on which product was best. an older male employee rounded the corner and i asked if he could tell me which was best. he advised me and then as he was walking off, he turned back around and said something about how he doesn't usually compliment female customers. huh? i thought he was about to compliment me on my bravery and confidence in coming into the store to get the supplies and repair some giant hole in my home all by myself (i never told him that my hubby was actually the one who was doing the fixing), so i probed and asked what he meant. seriously, i was getting puffed up, waiting to hear how cool it is that a woman wasn't afraid to do some hard work around the house, but i was disappointed when he went into this spiel about how he lived in new york before and has seen some beautiful women and that i was beautiful, blah blah blah. my bubble was burst. he was just another dirty old man. oh well.
oh, and a semi-funny story that i forgot to tell the other day. our dog, bozeman, has several doggy friends around the neighborhood. one of his friends just got a new puppy-sister this week and she is so adorable! bozeman was laying in the grass, letting her climb all over him, when her brother (and bozeman's buddy) came over to bozeman, lifted his leg and peed all over bozeman's chest! i couldn't believe what i was seeing, and almost wanted to laugh, because bozeman had the biggest smile all over his face like his friend had just given him the coolest gift. well, guess what? i gave bozeman the gift of the bath as quickly as i possibly could. ick.
guess what else? today, i turn 27 years old! yikes!

great way to meet your neighbors

the fire alarm in our condo building just went off and it was so loud that i couldn't even think about what to grab and take outside with me in case it really was a fire. i just grabbed the dog and my purse and ran outside. i tell you what, the neighbor who i play "post-it note tag" with was out there, so we got to talk about the leak that came from our condo and dripped down to her condo and then the neighbor across the hall stuck her head out the door and i got to see what the inside of their condo looked like. and then there were neighbors that i knew were home but didn't bother even looking outside to see if it was a real fire or not. are those the doors that i should have been pounding on as the dog and i made our way downstairs? probably, but as we reached the ground floor, the alarm stopped and our property manager was right there to tell us that it was just a test. nice. i felt like i was back in my college dorm. oh well, it got me up from the computer =) now i get to go take the dog for a walk in this miserable heat. might be a good excuse to walk him at the beach... hmmm...
oh, and when i get back, i'll tell you how a few of the other officer's wives and i had a meatball sub lunch sale at my hubby's work today for a fundraiser. it was so much fun and i got to wear my cute apron so i could protect my white shirt.

snookums

yesterday, as i was walking the dog, i realized that i probably sound pretty silly sometimes calling him by the nickname that i've conjured up for him. his name is bozeman, but somehow, i came up with the name "snugglebunny" for him as well. i think i was just talking to him one day as i was doing things around the house and you know how words don't always come out right? well, that happened and then the name kind of stuck. when i was growing up, i had a cat named snowball. my aunt called her "do-do" and i called her doobins. my husband and i also have nicknames for each other, but they aren't cheesy like the ones i've used for my animals. does anyone else out there have any cheesy nicknames for their pets, kids or husbands?

no black eye!

hurray for my cool ice pack!

what not to wear to my husband's homecoming...

a black eye. i was playing with the dog and got knocked in the face with his "knee" (do dogs really have knees?) when he was jumping on the couch (yes, we let him get on the couch). hopefully the ice will do its trick and i won't have any bruises. don't you love my ice pack cover? =)

snakes. why'd it have to be snakes? i hate snakes.

bozeman (our golden retriever) and i were taking a walk yesterday and walked behind a condo building that backs up to a lake. he was busy chasing lizards around the bushes and i saw an older couple that I know sitting out on their patio so i went to say hello (bozeman was still attached to me via the leash). while i was talking to them, bozeman started looking through their plants to see if he could find any lizards. i moved over (for whatever reason, i usually don't pay much attention to what he is hunting) and saw a giant snake coiled up in the corner of the building, next to this couple's patio! i yanked bozeman back with the leash (i don't think he had even noticed the snake yet) at the same time that the snake struck out at him. it was very scary. the old guy got up, looked out and said, "oh yeah, that's a water moccasin. you don't want to mess with them!" you think? we didn't stick around to see if he killed it or not (i'm hoping he did, because it was huge).