Scary Swiffers!!

Both of my dogs have always been afraid of the vacuum cleaner .... well perhaps not afraid but more believing that it is their sworn, mortal enemy. This started when Tosca was a puppy and she would bark and attack the vacuum, I can only guess that when Oakley was added to the household she pulled him aside and said, "that thing that sucks and makes the noise? It wants to kill you!"

Oakley has always been quite overt in his vacuum attacks, silently skulking behind me and out of nowhere lunging forth and biting (there are teeth marks to prove it.) On more than one occasion he has happily walked into a room only to encounter said evil vacuum, quiet and alone in a place he was not expecting it, then tripping over himself and howling to escape. I confess I have found these moments pretty damn funny, except the one time I was living alone and he started freaking out barking in the middle of the night and I was sure someone had entered the house to murder me, only to find that he had gotten up for a drink and been frightened by the vacuum in the hallway.


Today I got out the Swiffer - you know the non-powered broom with disposable cloths - to dust the wood floors. Well apparently his fear is not of vacuums but of any device used to clean, sweep or remove items from the floor. Seriously, what's scary about a swiffer?

My dog is such a pussy.
**the picture doesn't show the fear as well, but his tail is tucked between his legs and he sniffed it then very slowly backed away.**

Random thoughts ...

First of all, my home state is NOT pronounced "Illi noise" - the "s" is silent!! I was just watching the local news and someone pronounced it wrong and it irritated me.

Second, GO TIGERS!! My Missouri Tigers are now ranked #1 after a resounding victory over Kansas! Hmmm, fried Jayhawk anyone?

BJ was very proud of me given that I watched the game AND actually understood a good portion of it. We did have to occasionally pause so he could point out what was going on around the line of scrimmage (you mean the offensive linemen and the defensive linemen are different players?!?!) and I learned a few new things like what the safety does and how overtimes work. I did fall asleep in the 4th quarter, but in my defense I had gotten off work at 7:30 a.m. and just slept a few hours that day.

Third random thought, I am so sick of credit card fraud. I had a really bad incident about 10 years ago when my wallet was pickpocketed out of my purse by someone I *thought* I had bumped into, and they charged over $10,000 on my cards at Best Buy and Circuit City within 2 hours. They had my driver's license and opened up accounts in my name at several stores and continued to try to buy things for several months. It was a flippin' mess! Earlier this year, someone used my Citibank card number to charge $300 of foreign purchases in Germany, and now this weekend apparently my debit card number was compromised. Of course in this case they used it to buy some things AND pay off a T-Mobile bill so I'm hoping the culprit is tracked down. At least when my wallet was stolen a decade ago, I KNEW that there was illicit activity going on. In both of my recent cases, the cards have been in my possession all along. I know that I'm not going to be responsible for paying, but somewhere, someone is having to eat these costs.

Fourth, I need to pass along a miraculous discovery! I'll never have to scrub a toilet again!!! Momma K works in the plumbing industry and she introduced us to the Sparkle and Clean device that you attach to your tank. Apparently those bleach tablets that you drop in the tank are BAD BAD BAD and they corrode out the flushing mechanism. This device adds the bleach to the water in the bowl only so it's not bad for your toilet. My toilet has sparkled this past week, it's the best thing ever!!! I can only comment on the bleach one (which my Mom uses as well) - don't know about the blue ones, but you can get them at any home improvement store.

Fifth, I had posted a while back that I wasn't sure about my wedding dress?? Well I tried it on for my Mom when she was here and we both LOVE it!! I think the purple rocks!! And since we're eloping and it won't be seen amongst our general acquaintance in person, the link here has a few sneak peeks!!

Last random thought, I have the cutest damn dogs in the world! BJ's Mom stayed over last night for a quick visit and the dogs thought it was the best thing ever. As she was leaving this morning, they sadly looked out the door....

Evil Stepmommy??

I was starting to think that Cleo would never forgive me for moving in, bringing my two obnoxious dogs and wrecking her formerly simple existence with BJ, but I think she's learned to love all of us! What a good doggie!

An update on athletic endeavors

Since this was originally *supposed* to be a blog about my running and triathlon pursuits, which later turned into a discourse on my travel nursing, I should really get back to business.

As to the running ... my training for the Chicago Marathon has officially derailed. There's no point in beating myself up about it because it is what it is. I knew when I signed up back in March that training for a marathon was a serious undertaking that requires commitment to putting in the miles. I haven't kept up my end of the bargain, simple as that. Instead of making excuses or beating myself up, I'm going to look forward to what's next. Yes, I'm out the $120 registration fee, but I'd rather not run it, than run it and risk hurting myself.

With that in mind, BJ and I decided to turn our attention to a late year half marathon. It will be my third and hopefully an opportunity to break 2:30, and his first attempt at this distance. We thought about Tulsa, but then looked at the Las Vegas Marathon/Half- Marathon on December 2nd. It has an awesome course that starts and ends on the strip, tons of running Elvi, a run through wedding chapel at mile 5 (it's tempting, let me tell you!) and of course all the excitement that Vegas has to offer. So starting this week, BJ and I will be training for this race. We're going to try to do all of our long runs together so that we can find a good pace that works for both of us. This race will be my immediate goal with the overall plan of debuting as a kick ass marathoner at the Little Rock Marathon in March. Now that I've disappointed myself once - I don't think I'll let it happen again.

In travel nursing news, I started my assignment at Arkansas Children's and I've quickly gotten back into the swing of things. It's a massive unit and I've been surprised at how many people remember me! I've gotten lots of "weren't you here before?" which was a surprise because there are so many nurses there, I just assumed that most wouldn't remember me at all.

Regarding the sibling rivalry, I am happy to announce that all of the dog children are now getting along. There are still occasionally tiffs, just as you would expect amongst stepsiblings, but the days of poor BJ's dog getting a daily ass kicking from my spaniel seem to be over. I'm still not sure what the pecking order is among them, I have a feeling that the small terrier (nicknamed the "Great White Devil" by BJ) is actually in charge of everyone. In any case, they can now be unsupervised which has relieved a great deal of stress on my part.

The last fun thing to report is that BJ and I made our first big purchase together! We were at Dillards doing some pre-wedding registry research when we happened to see a couch that we had previously liked on clearance as a floor model. [Side note: who knew there were so many patterns of crystal and that he and I would each have such strong opinions on the vessel for holding the wine that will hopefully get us drunk for years to come?!?!?] Given how excellent the price was we couldn't' resist, and if we're getting a couch, we might as well get a chair right? So next weekend our new living room furniture will be delivered and we will finally start having "our" stuff as opposed to his and hers. It's an exciting time, let me tell you!! Now if we can just figure out how to keep the dogs off of it ...

Wedding Reconnaisance and Sibling Rivalries

This weekend marked my first *real* visit to BJ's childhood home in Fayetteville, AR. His parents were kind enough to watch his dog while he was escorting me across Kansas so we all -and by "all" I mean the two humans and my two dog children - loaded up the car and headed up the highway to Razorback territory. I had been there briefly once before for a quick brunch, but never had the chance to really hang out and bond. The "bonding" is important in my opinion because I would prefer to have "in-laws" as opposed to "outlaws" which is how one of my uncles referred to his wife's parents.

So picture this, it's a nice balmy day in Arkansas with a temp of around 103 - perfect weather for visiting! I arrive with my two adorable dogs, I mean seriously they're adorable and it can't just be a mother's love blinding her right?? We let them frolic outdoors in the yard and introduce BJ's dog who has met my kids before, and his parent's dog who has not met lots of dogs and perhaps might want to eat my terrier. It went well for the first 3 minutes until my spaniel Oakley who is 35 pounds soaking wet, decided to attack both BJ's dog and his parents' dog both of whom are dalmatians that could easily kick his ass if they wanted to. Unfortunately both of the dalmatians are well trained to not eat smaller dogs, so they kindof cowered which just egged Oakley on even more. At first I thought perhaps Oakley was just feeling cornered or something like that, you know being defensive, but upon observation saw that Oakley was clearly being aggressive. Great! My beautiful child is the proverbial bully on the playground!! I was so distressed because he's never acted this way at the dog park and he's normally so sweet! He was so bad that we ended up having to take turns all weekend crating the dogs so that they weren't all in the house or outdoors at the same time. Tosca my terrier got along with the big dogs and her new grandma fabulously, but Oakley was just a jerk to his new "sister" and "cousin." BJ's mom was very gracious (far better than I would have reacted if some strange dog was trying to beat up on my children) and I was mortified. Apparently the merging of families and children can be just as difficult for single parents of dog children as for human children.

In other news, we headed up to Eureka Springs which is where we plan on getting married. It's a quaint little Victorian style tourist trap of a town in the mountains of NW Arkansas. I'd never been there before but by its descriptions knew it would be my kind of place, lots of B&Bs, artists, and welcoming to gay people and bikers which are two of my favorite kinds of people!! One innkeeper we met described it as, "if the Ozarks are the Bible Belt, then Eureka is the hole the buckle goes through." I just wish it hadn't been 120 degrees so that we could have walked around more and enjoyed the place.

The purpose of the trip was to scope out wedding sites. For a small town, they actually do a pretty large wedding business, mainly in the elopement style, intimate affair of which we're envisioning. I had done lots of research online and then contacted about 6 places that seemed interesting and made appointments with the three who responded. One was a bed and breakfast, another was a wedding chapel, the third a historic hotel.

We loved the B&B owner, he was very laid back and cool but the parlor there just didn't fit the vision either of us had. We'll probably stay there at some time in the future because the suites were nice and not overly girly in that Victorian style that makes me puke a little in the back of my throat. The historic hotel wasn't what I had in mind either, but had a very cool restaurant that would be perfect for a candlelight dinner after the ceremony! It has a super small dining room that's a part of the open air kitchen and the people there seemed happy to accommodate us and even mentioned how "great of a couple" we make! (and it wasn't that patronizing we're trying to get your business tone, it seemed genuine) We're going to eat there at our next trip and make sure the food is tasty because I don't want food poisoning on my wedding night. The third place we visited was a wedding chapel that also does garden/gazebo weddings. The chapel was totally what I envisioned, really small, rock wall, candles everywhere, and the proprietors were very laid back. They do commitment ceremonies, handfastings, and non-denominational
weddings. Basically it will be easy to avoid a heavy-handed Baptist ceremony which I assume is prevalent in these parts because let's face it, I will NEVER agree to obey, or let my husband lead me or my future offspring in the path of righteousness etc. etc. . I've seen some of those vows and quite frankly they scare me!! Let's just go with richer, poorer till death do us part yada yada - I'm down with that. So anyway, barring any problems, it looks like we'll be doing the little chapel on a winter evening and then having a nice dinner afterwards. I'm also envisioning a hot-looking Jenn in a form fitting dress of some sort, a *real* wedding cake (not some Sam's Club creation) but smaller in scale, fancy crystal toasting goblets to use for the champagne and to save for future occasions, a buzzed bride and groom (yes, I'm a lush), a honeymoon in a cabin with hot tub, jacuzzi and fireplace, and a blissful week without any dog children. Ahhh, I can picture it now. If I can't have a Star Trek Vegas wedding, then I think this is a nice compromise.

Now if only our dog children can learn to love one another, and I can learn to shop for a dress, this whole marriage thing would be perfect!