The case of the missing dog food

This week did not start out good.

On Sunday, I had a funny feeling. Like, that feeling you get before you get majorly sick.

On Monday morning, my suspicions were confirmed. Very, very confirmed. 

It was not a good day.

In the quest to get my dogs to my outside, my little Raven spilled her food dish on my back porch. How she managed to get her food there from my kitchen, well, only she knows that.

I was so sick on Monday that picking up the spilled dog food was not an option.

So I just left it there. 

It was there on Monday night, when I let the Pugs in. When I got up Tuesday morning, the food was gone.

My first thought: Um, did someone break into my house and clean it?

My Dad didn't do it. He thought maybe cats ate it. But my back porch is enclosed, so there better not be any cats in there.

If anyone has any idea on the mysterious case of missing dog food, let me know. 

Breakfast with Santa

Over the weekend, my Mom and I took my twin nieces to an event in town called Breakfast with Santa.

We had fun!

The morning started out with breakfast, of course. I was in charge of the messy eater twin. I knew a lot of people there, so I tried to encourage said twin to eat like a normal human with a spoon and not her hands.

It was mildly successful.

I was eating an orange, and their attention span was fading. Sigh. I never got to finish that orange.

After breakfast, we went to storytime, the twins got their faces painted, and we did some crafts.

Some young girls helped the twins make snowmen out of marshmallows and toothpicks.

It was neat!

By that point in the morning, I was responsible for the other twin. The nice girl helped us make a snowman, and gave her some extra bits of chocolate to eat.

We got two steps away from the table, and my little niece started eating her snowman.

The head was gone like that. The pretzel arms were next.

The other twin was proud of her snowman and carried it around without eating it.

They have totally different personalities.

My favorite part was the instant my sweet little niece, little K, saw Santa Claus.

Now, you have to remember that they're 2. They've read about Santa in books, and have probably seen him on television.

The instant little K saw Santa, her eyes lit up like the Fourth of July. You could tell instantly that she was in love.

That little girl looked at Santa the way her aunt looks at rum.

It was adorable.

There's the meaning of Christmas, right there.

(A little girl seeing Santa, not the rum)

Picked for you

This pin was picked for me on Pinterest.

In other news, fuck you, Pinterest.  

The Unfinished Posts

Below are the beginnings of what I intended to be great, life-changing blog posts.

Instead, they're just sitting in my poor unpublished folder, all lonely and sad.

Here you go, you blog readers! (Hi, Mom!)

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Anniversaries are supposed to be fun, but sometimes the not-so-happy anniversaries are hard to deal with.

I still remember the closing date for the house I originally tried to buy. It's next month.

I remember what I was doing at this time last year, how hopeless I was about the whole house process and how I thought it would never happen.

One day I'll get over it, but that day is not today.

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I'm living the dream.

I thought about that dream a lot recently, as I was on my hands and knees in my garage, scraping oil and grease off of my garage floor.

The thing I hate more than scraping oil off of a garage floor is scraping ice off of my windshield in the mornings. So, I continue to work on my nasty garage floor, in hopes that it will be usable one day, pretty soon from now.

Everything I do to my house costs twice as much as I thought it would and takes five times as longer.

I hope I'm not the only person who has this problem. Gah.

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The past couple of weeks have been pretty good.

New music, especially good new music, always makes me happy.

As I tweeted last week, I would consider Chris Stapleton's music life changing.

I'm a total bandwagon fan, but oh my God.

So good!

I don't know if it gets any better than "Whiskey and You."

I'm a believer.

I remember a while ago, I was in Nebraska with my boss. After a long day, we were exhausted and we went and got something to eat.

Okay, I'm lying. I don't remember what we were doing that day, and I don't even remember the point of the trip. But what I do remember is the waiter/restaurant worker commenting on the FitBit my boss was wearing.

A conversation ensued, either on that trip or on some other trip (I have a great memory) and my boss told me about the joys of wearing a FitBit.

It tracks your steps, he told me.

I didn't understand. It it really that important? Can't you just keep track of how much you work out, and keep healthy that way?

I Googled 'Workout graphics.' Ha, ha.

Fast forward to last weekend, and there's a FitBit sitting on my mom's kitchen table unopened.

I offered to buy it from her. A few dollars later, I charged it, slapped it on my wrist and I was good to go.

In Octoberish, I started walking every day. I downloaded the FitBit app on my phone. After two months of having bronchitis and hurting every time I moved, it felt good to walk.

When I lost the daylight hours to walk, I started working out in the gym again, after a year hiatus. Okay, I lied again. It's been more like 1.5 years since I regularly went to the gym.

Since Oct. 1, I've lost 12 pounds. I do a mediocre job of counting my calories, so I could lose more if I had the patience to log every single thing that goes into my mouth.

But I'm happy with the results. I have a pair of fancy pants work pants that I noticed were really, really loose the other day. They used to be tight on me, so much so that I didn't really like wearing them.

Huzzah!

I can burn more calories at the gym in the same amount of time, too. Last night, I was on the elliptical and burned 357 calories. Two months ago, the number of calories I burned in the same amount of time was 225.

So, that's happy news.

Last night, after I worked out I still had 2,000 steps to walk before I hit my 10,000 steps goal. I needed a few things from the store that rhymes with sharmart, so I parked at the other end of the parking lot.

I browsed past the baby section, because, you know, babies! Clothes! Hats! Socks!

After I was finished shopping, I walked around the store some more. You have to get your steps in, I told myself, so I took one for the team and went back to the baby section.

Did I mention...babies!!!!!

So there you have it. I actually really like that thing on my wrist. I thought it was stupid at first, but I've been converted.

I'm a believer.