Decision 2009

Okay, folks, I've got a poll for you.

Here are the rules:

1.) Pick your fav dress (if you have one) for me to wear, based on the following criteria.
2.) Be honest. If I look fat in one, say it. If I look ugly in all of them, say it. If I look hot in all of them and should keep them all, tell JB that we need a bigger dress budget.

The following dresses are possibilities for me to wear to Austin and Lauren's wedding on June 27, in Nashville, at 5:00. An eveningish wedding on a hot day. JB is the best man so will be sporting a tux. I want to look nice next to him. Two of them I got at Macy's and the other is what I wore in my sister's wedding. I would remove the pink sash and do some other sashy thing instead.

Tropical Bird

Olivia turned 6 months old on Saturday, so here is an update.

1.) Olivia is JB's child, as she loves watching TV. Every day for 30 minutes she learns about "World Animals" on her Baby Einstein DVD. One of the animals she learns about is Tropical Bird. The way the little boy says "Tropical Bird" (three times during the video) gets stuck in my head. Instead of a song playing over and over again in my mind, I hear, "Tropical BIRD!" I've also started to call her Tropical Bird instead of just Bird. Then it gets shortened to Tropical a lot. "Hey Tropical!" I'll say. "Wanna play with your toys?" Or, "Tropical, you're really flying in that Johnny Jump Up!" Sometimes I wonder if she knows her REAL name, as I don't use it very often in the course of a day. Fortunately others in her life, like grandparents and JB, call her Olivia.

2.) She eats big girl food and drinks from a big girl cup (well, "medium girl" cup, as it is a sippy, though she can do a real cup with assistance).

3.) She sits up on her own for long periods of time.

4.) She often prefers dog toys to her own, and gets upset when I take them away. The other day I heard her breathing heavily while she was laying on her mat and knew she was trying to get at something out of reach. Then she started making very happy sounds and I looked over to see that she had scorned the sea of toys on her mat in favor of Lucy's squeaky ball. And it wasn't enough to simply hold and admire said toy. No, she had to TASTE IT. A LOT. (Similarly, Lucy prefers baby toys [especially Moby Dick] to her own. She is constantly testing me to see what I'll do if she gingerly puts her mouth around a baby toy. A few times she has tried to hide the toys to see if I notice. I'm guessing that if I do not, she will consider it license to eat.)

5.) She is waaay more fun than when she was a newborn. Pregnancy is really a yearlong endeavor, if you ask me, because the first three months a baby is here is more work than fun.

Tree Rats

Spring is HERE people! At least for a few days. Last weekend JB raked the yard of leftover oak leaves and now we can see bits of green peeking out all over our garden. The sad thing is that there are still oak leaves left on the ground (only about a few, but annoying all the same) and even more still in the trees. Never willingly grow an oak in your yard! I picked so many acorns out of our garden that I started to wish that they could be sold on the black market. A nickel an acorn would make JB and I set for life. A friend suggested we spray paint them gold or something and sell them to Michael's as a craft item. Sadly, I don't even think Michael's would want our acorns. And apparently the squirrel army that has amassed in our backyard can't even absorb them fast enough.

They are quite the fat and happy bunch, as they have acorns for life, plenty of tree branches to play in, and a dog that merely chases them away, but never catches them.

I've watched fierce old Lucy lately. She's wicked fast. Fast enough to catch just about any squirrel. So why hasn't she? She's a scaredy cat! She will shoot off after those tree rats like a rocket, and once she's close enough to bite them, she literally hits her doggie breaks (the mulch in our gardens spraying into the air) and lets them get away. Or she'll run past them and circle back, pretending that she was too fast for her own furry good, unfortunately causing her to squander her chance at a squirrel sandwich.

Whatever, Lucy. You don't fool me. And I don't think you fool the squirrels, either.

Those squirrels are even luckier that they don't live in the country around here. Rural squirrels are lean and sinewy, but these city dudes are plump and juicy looking. And after a recent Meijer trip (the Cascade Meijer, again, mind you!) I'm thinking these guys wouldn't make it very long beyond the safe confines of our nutty backyard.

JB, Olivia and I were making our way down the checkout lane a few weeks ago when Olivia started to get fussy. JB pushed the baby in the cart to the end of the lane to pick up our groceries as they got bagged and to try to pacify Olivia. I was chatting with the clerk, a woman with short blond hair who seemed to be in her 40's. She chuckled as she scanned the giant plush squirrel that we were getting for Lucy, which we needed to replace the smaller squirrel that Lucy had removed the legs of. Old squirrel couldn't really put up a fight without any legs so JB and I agreed that it was time to let him go to the big oak tree in the sky. But Lucy wouldn't let us get away with that until we offered a replacement.

JB sees the clerk with the toy and hears me say something to her. Then she says, "....we cut the tails off and our dogs LOVE it!"

"Huh?" JB wondered. "Why would you buy a plush squirrel and just chop the tail off for your dogs? Wouldn't they choke on it?" (This is paraphrased, but as JB is downstairs right now, I'm giving you the general idea.)

Then he hears, "Our cats and our dogs, it's like catnip to them!"

He finishes bagging our groceries, I pay, and we leave. Later that night I said to him,

"Did you hear that the checkout lady was saying to me today?"

"Sort of..."

I told him the story and he cracked up.

After the woman scanned the stuffed squirrel, she laughed, and I said, "I know, it's a weird toy, but our dog loves it."

"No, I'm just laughing because it makes me think of our dogs. See I'm from the country, and out there--now this may sound weird to you--but out there we kill squirrels and eat them. So what we do is when we get a squirrel we cut the tail off and give it to our animals. Our cats and our dogs, it's like catnip to them! It's got that real gamey smell. And when they shake it, you know, it shimmers. They go crazy for them." Her eyes lit up as she told me. Watching dogs and cats fight over a squirrel tail must be quite entertaining. Actually, I'll admit that I'd probably get a kick out of it. While being disturbed at the same time.

I laughed. Then I wondered what "country" she was from, and why she was working in the CASCADE Meijer and not the Lowell or Ionia one. She's quite lucky that she had that conversation with ME, a girl from another hickville. And while I do not identify myself with squirrel eaters, I respect a person hunting for his meal. Well, I think I draw the line at rodents, but whatever. I just hope she doesn't open up like that to everyone, because people could complain and she'd have to hunt twice as many squirrels to make ends meat. Too bad shooting guns in the city is illegal, because if she stepped into my backyard, she could have a squirrely hayday.

And a few hours later, apparently so would her cats and dogs.