My god, you guys, having a puppy is HARD. And tiring. I do the late-night shift, and Mr. T does the early morning shift (which has been as early as 5.30am, not that I am awake for this). However, Brown Pup remains very cute and – surprisingly – super-good. He knows to walk outside to go to the toilet, and you may remember we have carpet. This alone makes him Awesome. He hasn’t had all his vaccinations yet which means we can’t take him for a walk (and anyway, he’s like a tiny bear with stumpy legs and can’t walk all that well anyway). So we’ve been taking him down to the beach at very low tide, where no other dogs have been. Mr T carries him, we walk miles out to the sandbars and let him loose. Behold the 10-second wonder below:
The grace! The co-ordination! The way my husband runs to check on his welfare! The way I just keep filming! We’re all at our best here, clearly.
Thanks for everyone’s nice comments – much appreciated. I would have preferred not to mention it on here, but I think you’d notice. Less photos, for one thing. But I feel like all that’s happening around here is Animal Death, All The Time. I’m a bit sick of my pets dying, to be frank. STOP IT. STEP AWAY FROM THE LIGHT. Anyway, the two remaining cats are both hale and healthy (although Ginger Cat keeps being sick on the carpet, very loudly might I add, please STOP THAT TOO) and so I’ve got a New Year’s resolution: No Death Posts in 2010! Catchy, I think. Feel free to follow it yourself.
As well as all your condolences, we received many more – I think I alluded to the fact my dog has something of a Presence in his breed. He was a stud dog, the duties of which he performed admirably, indeed one might say eagerly. And so over time he had puppies and lo, they were good and bred from in their turn. (I feel all biblical over here. Verily.) (And it wasn’t us doing the breeding and such-like, by the way; we were his pet home, meaning he lived a life of sloth with us and occasionally we would get a phonecall requesting him for Stud Duty.) So his face and personality is well known in the small community of Brown Dog Owners, and upon his death we received multiple phonecalls and texts and literally dozens of emails of condolence. One of those emails, a few days ago, was from a woman we once knew well, and who knew Brown Dog well. She now breeds Brown Dogs, currently has a litter of puppies (unusual in itself, as there would only be about 3 litters a year in Australia) and wanted to offer one of the pups to us. We have been talking it over. We have checked out their backgrounds. We go to see the pups on Saturday.
A new pup will not replace our Brown Dog, and I didn’t want one of his offspring (the comparisons would be very unfair on any new dog). Our discussions have not been whether to get another dog – that is a given. Mostly they’ve been about whether to get a Brown Dog, or a Black Dog. I miss my Black Dog hugely, but for various reasons we think another Brown Dog is the right thing at this time. So… Saturday. We’ll see.
I know. It sucks to be me. This is the Queen Charlotte Sounds, at the top of the South Island in New Zealand. Mr. T’s grandmother has a bach here (a holiday house, a crib, a shack, whatever your parlance may be) since about the 40s or 50s:
And we decamped with his family for a few weeks, including his ratbag twin nephews, as per below:
If you ever get the chance to go to the Sounds, do so. This particular bay is only accessible by boat, so you’re pretty much stuck doing nothing. I know, it’s terrible. There was wildlife everywhere, particularly wekas and other similarly unafraid ground birds:
I know that’s not a very good photo of the weka, and that’s because if I zoom out a bit you can see The Twinado approaching it at a very high speed:
We had fun. It was a good break. Well, maybe not for that weka.
I have just written a post about our holiday but really couldn’t find a good way to add this into it. I’m hoping that the quicker the better, right? Then I won’t have to speak about it again.
We went back to New Zealand over Christmas and while we were there, our Brown Dog died suddenly. They think it was a heart attack as the staff in the kennels found him lying on his mat, seemingly asleep. He would be 8 years old this week.
This is particularly hard as that bloody dog was fine when we left. There were no warning signs, so it was completely unexpected. And he died on his own, when we weren’t there. I don’t think there’s any way that it could be easy but that is the part I just can’t let go.
Yes, I know there was a thing when people blogged every day for the whole month of November. But a few of us chose the path less travelled… to NOT post for the entire month of November! Ah, the rackings of my brains as I chose what not to post… it was epic, really. No, thank YOU.
Also: I have been sick. Quite sick. I blame Geelong, as I went down there for the day and on the way back I thought, self, throat feels sore. As in the muscles of my actual throat felt sore; not like I had a tickly throat. I got home, ate some dinner, and thought I might just drop my head onto the couch arm for a minute. Hours later, Mr. T was waking me; and I went to bed, and there I stayed for the next 18 hours. Then I got up for a few hours, then back to bed for another 18. This is pretty much the opposite of how I usually live, and it is REALLY BORING. Anyway, to top this off I lost my voice on Friday night for the entire weekend. I had sort of recovered it by Monday, so I went to work and everyone found me most amusing; then my boss turned up and ordered me home. I went, because thinking had given me a headache. Bit depressing really. I am sort of all right now, but still not 100%. Who gets a sore throat and goes down like a sack of shit for a week? Me, apparently. And I guess a special sort of languishing Victorian heroine. Although I’m guessing they’d be less likely to describe themselves as sacks of shit. That reminds me; I tried to watch some movies in the past 2 days I was sick but couldn’t connect up our ludicrously complicated home theatre so it would show movies in colour (they all came out black and white); however I did find the new BBC Emma on youtube and watched my way through a few episodes of that instead. Romola has the buggiest eyes. I say this as someone who also has buggy eyes; constantly when I watch her I am horrified that my bugginess may rival hers. Say it isn’t so.
New Cat update: He LOVES the other cat and disdains us for his company. He also still does that annoying new cat thing when he flinches away from being patted and freaks OUT for no reason whatsoever, fleeing the room madly in a panic that he might be touched. However this is less frequent now and he actively comes to be patted now, especially when you are in bed asleep and not actively wanting, perhaps, to pat a cat. He will never be as affectionate as Orange Cat, who is aggressively loving and in fact annoyingly so; this is a Good Thing, as I don’t think we could cope with another such cat.
Well, you know. Clearly I am now consumed by wifely duties and cannot be on the computer all that much; duties like, uh, cleaning maybe? Playing the piano charmingly for our guests? Procreating? Well, since none of these things are happening (DUST BALL FIGHT in the hallway, get your tickets now!) clearly it must be the Laziness. Yes. Also add now the Heat, which always takes me by surprise. I sort of still expect NZ-style seasons, where there is an actual spring, and it’s rainy and then gradually gets warmer and sunnier; Melbourne goes straight from Winter Brrrr to full on It’s 29 Degrees and Blazingly Hot, sometimes in the same week. So today it’s 29 degrees and blazingly hot, and I am left bemusedly pushing aside the pile of trackpants and fleece to get to the shorts. It’s like a clothing exploration.
We have been adding to the family, of course, since we are now married. For this I completely blame livebird, who has the tantalising link to the Save A Dog website on her sidebar. So yes, see the new recruit below:
He is about 9 months old and settling in nicely. We got him because a) AWWWW! and also b) we thought the Orange Cat would like some animal company back in his life. Well, company that does not involve being chased into a corner by a large loving dog and then licked repeatedly. So we bought this new cat home, and after several days introduced the cats to each other in person (they had previously looked at each other through the glass sliding door and been calm and interested). The Orange Cat, my sociable cat, promptly hissed, threw his ears back and chased the new cat the length of the house. NOT an auspicious start. However, now they are out in the courtyard together in the Blazing Heat, and I caught the Orange Cat licking the New Cat’s head last night. So all is well. And the dog, who is now a master of meeting new cats, is getting there; the new cat is not scared of him, and the dog is controlling his impulse to pick up the new cat by the scruff and bring him back to his dogbed and mother him intently. (My dog is a wuss.) He is not the Grey Cat, who was quirky and funny and headstrong; but he is his own cat and we are glad to have him.
NO HITTING!
I don’t know what you’re talking about. Butter would not melt in my mouth.
Oh hai! I’m back. And now I’m married, and EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED. No. Not really. Nothing has changed. I have more dresses, is all. It was a great day, we had fun, the rain held off (all you can ask of New Zealand, really) and I didn’t cry. I was really worried about crying. Turns out my sister cried and I didn’t. I call that a win!
Up until yesterday I had nary a photo; I remember being there, but had no evidence. I have a few now from the photographer and from friends.
This should give you some idea of our weather, although this is way enhanced; also that we often take walks atop volcanoes whilst formally dressed. What? You don’t? I recommend it. I may do it again this Sunday (although the dearth of volcanoes in Melbourne may be an issue).
This photo, or variations of it, was taken all day. This shot particularly amuses me because without our heads I feel like I’m wearing a nightie. This is stolen directly from a friend’s Facebook page… ah, social media.
And although I’m glad the day is over (I was never one to moon over a wedding, this is probably obvious by now) I’m really glad we did it – we had fun, our families enjoyed it, we got to see a lot of our old friends again, and we got some great jewellery. And look! That’s real grass we’re standing on in that photo up there! And when I walked across my parent’s lawn to take a shortcut into the house, IT SQUELCHED. Naturally waterlogged grass. What’s next? Unicorns?
OK, so I go back to New Zealand tomorrow for a week of (I presume) frenetic activity and rushing around. Yay! I am totally organised, in that everything that needs to be done is written on index cards. I mean, I still have to DO these things, or get others to do these things, but apart from that it’s smooth sailing. Right? What could go wrong? *crickets*
Car Update: Picked up the new car on Saturday morning. I am a bit eh on cars normally (actual conversation: “What sort of car are you getting?” “A grey one.”) but turns out I really like this one. Which is good, because now I’m stuck with it. It’s going to live at work while we’re away, so that it is nicely locked away and undercover. And I’ve only stalled it three times so far! (I never stall cars usually, but the clutch on this one is much, um, zippier than the Land Rover. Yes, “zippier” is a technical car term.)
Breakfast Update: I made (heavily modified) dutch babies for Sunday morning brunch. This may be the third week in a row I have done this; I neither confirm nor deny. They are like gigantic fluffy pancakes, but really they’re half-pancake, half-omelette. Anyway, I opened the oven door to take a photo of them, like so:
Aaaaaand all the condensation whooshed out of the oven and steamed up my camera lens, like so:
Oh, there’s the roof of the New Car out in the driveway. And no, my kitchen doesn’t usually look like it’s clearing from a morning mist; I am clearly a photographic genius. However, I am a genius with A DELICIOUS BREAKFAST, which counts for something.
I… need to get those photos to move further down the page, seriously. Also I just updated WordPress and crossed my fingers and my eyes and tried to save off everything I might need to rebuild; it looks OK to me from here but if something looks screwy, please be sure to tell me and I will… well, I’ll be sad about it. I don’t think there’s all that much I can DO about it, but rest assured I will wish that I could.
My main problem with the dress you see below is not, in fact, the starfish (or the brittlefish if I’m being correct, I guess); it’s the way the ruching has been tacked down. On your four-figure wedding dresses, this stitching is done underneath the folds so it can’t be seen, and it looks as if a large amount of material has just naturally draped itself around you in the manner of a Greek oracle. I can, technically, remove this and restitch it, but a) I shouldn’t have to, and b) I don’t know if the satin material will hold the sewing marks & puckering, as I suspect it would (although I haven’t tried it and I haven’t asked a dressmaker). Nobody else has picked up on this stitching but me, but I find it GLARINGLY AWFUL and so it’s better I don’t have to defensively cross my arms all day, or request a horizontal bouquet I can hug against myself. Anyway, it’s v. nice apart from that so I don’t see a problem in selling it. Any takers? Beach Barbie, perhaps?
Car update: MY CAR IS BACK YAYYYYY. That’s eleven weeks. I am a SAINT. I drove it home on Friday afternoon, Mr. T washed it and on Saturday morning we drove it to trade it in. New car will be mine next Wednesday; with the slight problem that the registration on my car expires on Saturday, leaving me three days in which I must… catch the train. How I’ve missed my fellow train commuters. How happy I shall be to see them all again. How flat and lifeless I sound. Anyway, I have really liked my car (paid off! No trouble! Fill with diesel once a month!) but clearly I have moved into the expensive Old Age Upkeep part of its life and I am harshly fobbing its problems onto someone else. Good luck, little car! May your transfer case never (again) fail!
Cat update: He went to the vet for his vaccinations (well, we took him, he didn’t go on his OWN) and came away with a diagnosis of ear mites. The vet looked dubious when we told him large flakes of grossness were flying out of his ears when he shook his head (the cat’s head, not the vet’s), yet obediently looked down his ears only to find MITE CITY, or perhaps METROPOLIS. So we have a tiny bottle of yellow oily stuff which must be squirted into the cat’s ears and then you rub firmly under the ear to squidge it all in; it sounds revolting, and it can’t be any better hearing it from the inside, as the cat is doing. Anyway, it’s called canaural compositum, leading to us waving the little bottle over our head like a wand and intoning “CANAURAL COMPOSITUM!” towards the cat, in manner of Harry Potter. For the record, the yellow oil does not fire out of the bottle and directly into the cat’s ears; we still have to hold him down and drip it in there. This would explain our lack of back-to-school letters from Hogwart’s, I guess.
Watching:
How does that large white cat fit into that tiny cubby in the cat tree? MAGIC, that's how.
Eating:
Peanut butter M&Ms. It's probably for the best I can't buy them here.
Liking:
House plans. Not so good: putting them into action.
Pondering:
My complete lack of singing ability. I used to be in choir! Admittedly I was twelve, and a lot of things have gone south since then; but still.
