scooba diver

Dear Santa/Tooth Fairy/Potential Sugar Daddy,

Please bring me a Scooba. I will stay on the "Nice" list. I will start flossing. I will wear uncomfortable lace getups. I just really need a clean floor.

Everything in our house is covered with a layer of Vegas dirt. We're trapped in a wicked cycle of filth. I clean. She gets it dirty. I clean. She gets it dirty again. I get frustrated and stop cleaning. Take today for example. We went for a walk. She got full of mud from her belly down. Yuck. I tried to coax her into puddles to clean her off a little before going inside, but it did no good. She tracked wet mud (I sure hope it's mud) into the house before I could toss her in the shower. Now she's laying on our bed, giving it that nice wet dog smell.

If only I had a little floor-scrubbing robotic device to make my house shine. I urge you to consider my plea for help. Time Magazine said that it even scrubbed crusted food spots off the floor. Crusted food spots!! Can you believe it?

Please recall my promises if I receive a Scooba: nice list/floss/lace.

Maureen

what are you looking at?

This is Vegas giving me the evil eye even though she's on my side of the bed. Hmph. She is slowly usurping my role. Doesn't she know that I am the alpha female of the house? Obviously not. She lies next to Matt before I can get there. She hogs my half of the couch forcing me into a chair. Matt doesn't seem concerned, after all, she is "just a baby, Maureen." I think she has a darker motivation. Look at her eyes. She means business.

the warzone

Ahh...the dead of winter. I can't really complain since it's been relatively nice out, but I have a serious winter issue looming. We have no snow. Now I hate driving in snow. I hate snow sports. I hate when snow gets in my shoes. But I love its ability to cover up crap in the backyard.

With Vegas, I was determined to pick up the yard regularly. I wanted it to be clean so in the summer I could frolic barefoot in the green grass without worries. That just didn't happen. It was easy to ignore the growing disaster because it kept snowing and covering it up, but that just isn't happening anymore. Matt and I keep talking about it, keep throwing around the phrase "chisel them out," but we're still walking right past the yard every day trying to not too look.

Maybe I can find a good yard cleanup business in the Yellow Pages. I'm hoping to anyway because the idea of spending a cold afternoon with a garbage bag and shovel makes me want to move.

aim high

Vegas is deceptively small. She seems little but has an impressive reach. Anything we leave below three feet is fair game for her. While she likes plastic bottles, dirty dishes, and socks, her favorite thing is a roll of paper towels. Tonight, she was left alone for about two minutes and managed to snatch the roll of Bounty and chase it around the basement floor. Matt felt bad about wasting it, so as he ate his dinner, he just picked scraps off the floor. Let this be a little reminder for anyone who visits. Keep your socks high and your napkin higher.

vegas and her big stick

Vegas loves sticks. Last week, Matt took a giant branch from the boulevard and gave it to her. It was more like a small tree, really. It had to be five-feet long with many little branches on it. She has since stripped it bare and chewed it in half. You should see her put it in her mouth and plow through the yard. And to think I spent $10 on a multi-textured teething ring for her.

houseguest

After a crazy Saturday at the Mall of America, where we saw Santa (for real, it was him!), rode the Timberland Twister (it's surprisingly fun), and charged some Strawberry Julius's (I have a sad, empty wallet), Schyler put together her birthday present. It's a lego racer that has buzz cut saws and glows in the dark. They just don't make them simple like they used to.

peace pie

This ain't yo' momma's pasty pie. Yeah, so I got a little political today. Next I'll be burning my chewed up, holey underwear.

vegas may look innocent...

but she's a pistol. She pulled the curtain rod right out of the wall today.

vegas 7, matt 0

Ahh, another Super Bowl Sunday is upon us. Rather than have a party and, say, risk having some much-needed wildness ensue, we decided to stay in with Vegas. I made pizza, Matt pulled out the wine, and we settled in for the long, drawn-out game. We made it through the first 10 minutes without incident, and then Vegas struck. One of her favorite pastimes is jumping on the coffee table while we're eating and hunting for a quick bite. Tonight, she didn't get crumbs, but she did knock Matt's wine over. It created a nice, long arc of reddish dribble on the carpet. Now, I'm not a house cleaning wizard, but I seem to remember hearing that club soda is key to getting wine out. We have never had club soda in the house, so we settled for plain old water. After about 30 seconds of scrubbing, Matt decided that he couldn't tell if it had stained and went back to watching the commercials. His attention span was undoubtedly affected by the half-bottle he managed to drink before Vegas attacked.

grandma's in town

Vegas was on her best behavior when grandma came to visit.

oh, you're a pretty girl, aren't you veg?

I have realized that we are that kind of dog owner. You know the kind. They treat their dogs like people. They talk to them in public. They dress them in clothes (we haven't gone this far, but then again, Vegas is a bit big for yippie dog couture). I've come to this conclusion due to the following observations:

1. We call her things like "honey," "silly goose," and "cutey patootey."

2. We tell her things like, "You're so smart" and "Oh, I love you baby" and ask her how she's doing and what she thinks.

3. We're taking her to puppy kindergarten with a "Canine Coach."

4. We briefly considered taking her to doggy day care.

As long as she still sleeps in her kennel and poops outside, I think we're fine; however, I know there's a real danger that she'll take over the place. She's probably planning her coup on the back step as I write.

mind in the gutter

With clogged gutters, our downspouts are pretty useless. Don't despair, that $3 was not wasted; it has provided Vegas with hours of whipping-plastic-through-the-air fun. She first ripped the extension off a few weeks ago, and I ignored it. As long as she stayed outside and let me have a few minutes of peace (kids are a handful, aren't they?), I didn't care what she was chewing on. She has since fallen in love with that length of plastic and can often be found biting it while throwing her head violently back and forth. Now when I ask Matt if he took Vegas out for a walk in the morning, he often replies, "Well, no. But she did get some good romping in outside with the gutter."

things that smell bad

Burnt hair. Sewage. Old Broccoli. These are things that smell bad. Now, you can add another to the list--putting a George Foreman grill in the broiler. Tonight, I was preheating the oven and started to hear sparks. I kept listening, thinking I was losing it, but they kept coming, so I turned it off and ran outside. I was talking to Matt, so I asked him if he had put anything in the oven.

"No. Wait. I did put the George Foreman grill in the broiler."

He did what?

Thinking that the broiler drawer was a storage drawer, he stuck the grill in there. Me, not thinking to check the oven for small kitchen appliances before preheating, was now cooking a plastic grill. This should be interesting.

I stood outside for a few minutes, waiting to see if anything was going to explode or start on fire. When I went back inside, the smell was awful. I imagine it to be what it would smell like if you took a pile of those horrid latex-y Halloween masks, poured old woman perfume on them, and started them on fire. Yuck. Then I realized that the stupid grill could easily be on fire, couldn't it? Equipped with a potholder and a box of baking soda (or is it supposed to be baking powder? I always get those two messed up), I opened the broiler drawer to find the grill. It was a little bubbly on top but looked fine otherwise. I tossed it in the sink and later threw it out. I hated that thing anyway. Now I finally have an excuse to go out and buy the grill pan I want.

getting dirrrty

America's favorite trashy diva was right to add a few extra r's into "dirty" because Vegas is not dirty; she is dirrrty. The warm weather has been great, but everything has turned to mud. On our walk today, a woman stopped to pet her, and Vegas, being so mild-mannered, kept lunging at her. The poor woman got mud spattered all over her face and glasses. She laughed it off, but I kept trying to restrain Vegas. She fought me and ended up on her back rolling in a mud puddle. It was incredibly funny and all, but my god, that dog was dirty. I took her home and exiled her to the backyard before giving her her first shower. She kind of liked it.

FRAP!

I have learned many new things since buying a puppy.
1. Puppies like chewing on expensive underwear.
2. Puppies love chasing empty plastic bottles.
3. Puppies have FRAP.
FRAP is (according to my new dog owner book) a Frenetic Random Activity Period. When Vegas has a FRAP, Matt and I warn each other by yelling "FRAP!" as we rush to the corner of the room. Seriously, her FRAP's are kind of dangerous. She jumps on the couch, bites on the curtains once or twice, races off to the bed and then circles back again. She does this all while biting at everything and everyone she passes. Watch your inner thighs during FRAP's. They're her favorite.

crashing

Okay, okay. I have been slacking again. This time I have a good excuse. I am in mourning for my precious car. Yesterday, on the way to work, a schmuck "didn't see the light" and ran right into me. It was my first accident, and though I was fine, it really shook me up. After a day of answering questions like "do you know if he hit his brakes?" and drawing diagrams with Matt on post-it notes, I didn't feel like doing much of anything. So, I ate brownies...and tonight, I hit the gym.

Oh yeah. And my rental car is a Chevy Malibu, and every time I think of it, I get that Malibu Musk jingle in my head. "Oo oo Malibuu". It's driving me crazy.

wanted: a flat kitchen floor

Nails are coming up through our kitchen tile. It's that stick-on stuff, and it's just not sticking anymore. Matt hates it and is determined to replace it. So, yesterday, like a tempting scab, Matt kept peeling up tile after tile, unable to stop. He only peeled them up halfway but wanted to to just "get it done" and peel it all up as if we had something to put down in its place. He eventually agreed that it was a bad idea and started patting them down again, but they refused to cooperate. Needless to say, it looks great.

try to contain your excitement

My, my life is exciting these days. Tonight, I shooed Vegas out of the window a few times and made pasty pie. I think I'll end the night with a little hot chocolate and light reading. Or maybe an episode of M.A.S.H. and a glass of warm milk (that one is just a joke but sadly isn't far from the truth). The most thrilling event was watching Vegas dig a hole in the center of our planter. I'm happy because the planter is filled with daffodils, which I hate. Since I don't like them, I turned a blind eye to the digging and went back to my quiet dinner.

how much is that...

doggie in the window? Well, yesterday, she would have been pretty darn cheap. I don’t mean that whole doggie window thing as a cute joke—she actually was in the window. I was doing the dishes and half-watching her. I could hear her whipping her rope toy around and having a grand old time. Then, silence followed by a few rustles. I walked in the living room, and she was on the bay window ledge. She had jumped on the couch, made her way through the curtains, and was playing up in the freaking bay window. Stupid me, I had left a blanket up there that she likes to chew on. I guess I figured she wouldn’t notice it there or at least wouldn’t find a way to get at it. I have been proven wrong. She did that a few more times last night before stuffing herself behind the couch to hide from me and my broken record of “Bad Vegas!”

stop stressing about distressing

Please do me a favor. If you ever visit our house, do not lay down on the floor in the living room and examine our couch. It is our first "real" couch-"real" as in not an old, cut-in-half, hand-me-down. It wasn't expensive, but it is leather, which means Matt is obsessed with every imperfection. While napping on the floor, he discovered that Vegas, too, is quite enamored with the couch. It appears she has attacked it on a few different occasions. We were warned about this. "Leather? You're getting leather with a dog? Good luck." Eh. I guess we'll just call it distressed leather and consider ourselves trendy.