dysfunctional. d-y-s-f-u-n-c-t-i-o-n-a-l.

my parents bring a smile to my face, even in a sad time such as this, when we are all trying to move forward after losing sadie. i sent the link for my blog to them today; until now they never knew it existed (and i'm still not sure dad knows what a blog is...).

i called them tonight on my way home from work and they both told me that the last entry, the one about losing our sadie, brought them both to puddles of tears just as it did for me as i wrote it. dad swears his keyboard is officially waterlogged.

now, something you should know...after sadie, i am the most perfect one in the family. at least in my parents eyes. even when i mess up, they are proud of how i recover from my mistakes. so of course, after reading the blog entry about sadie, they decided i am a brilliant writer and probably should be published. they forwarded it on to the relatives so that they may also get a brief glimpse at moi, the rising star. (remember, i'm speaking for my folks people, i really do have the slightest bit of modesty...)

anyway, i told them not to make such a big deal about the blog, that it's just an online diary and, to quote bridgette jones, everyone knows diaries are filled with crap. too true. but the more i said don't make a big deal about it, the bigger deal it became and so on, to the point were my mom was calling my aunt to make sure she didn't read any other entries, and my dad asking if my brother knows about it and, if not, should he not say anything?

yowza. we know how to make things complicated. long story short, this is my blog and it goes out to millions of people, if they so choose to view it, so obviously i'm not going to say anything too incriminating or embarrassing, etc. (not that there is anything like that; remember, i'm perfect). i don't care who reads it. love it or leave it, i say.

personally, i think my parents will love it.

the last thing i said to my mom was that i had to go now so i could make fun of my parents in my latest blog entry. she said, "do you know how to spell dysfunctional?" and i said yes, i'm planning to use the word at least three times.

one more just for luck...dysfunctional.

love you mom & dad.

loss.

Just after midnight on Monday August 20th, my favorite dog in the whole world, Sadie, had to be put to sleep. She had an enlarged heart and was experiencing arrhythmia and constant seizures. Once she got sick and had her first horrifying seizure last Thursday, things progressed from bad to worse very quickly and at the advice of the vet, she went to sleep forever, lying in the laps of her (my) mom and dad, her tail still wagging until the very end.

sadie loved to fish, loved to swim and was the smartest dog i'd ever met. she loved her biscuits and putting on her "jewelry" (collar) so she could show it off to everyone. she was more human than any human being i've met except that, unlike humans, sadie loved us all unconditionally. i will never forget her and neither will anyone else who's life she touched, i know that for sure.

i am crying as i write this, i have been since i found out about her death and probably will cry many more times to come. she is being cremated and i believe we will scatter her remains at the lake, her favorite place. mom and dad can't even bring themselves to look at the dock, let alone walk down there.

there's a very big empty place in our lives that sadie once filled. i miss her so much.

goodbye for now, sadie girl...

oh sadie girl...

i'm soooo tired tonight; i've been cleaning all evening and doing like, i don't know, eighty loads of laundry?! at least it feels that way. i have been so busy with homework and other things that i've taken little time to stop and smell the roses. but i think i'll try to do that a little more. so much can happen so quickly! i think a lot of us have learned that lesson lately.

this past thursday night my favorite little puppy (ok, she's 12 years old but she'll always be a puppy to me...) had to be rushed to the animal emergency room after a very scary seizure. i wasn't there, but as far as i could tell from my dad's very accurate description and my mom's sobbing, it was very scary. sadie's legs went right out from under her and she shook and stiffened and lost control of everything...

turns out she's got heart disease, an arrhythmia and now they have to figure out what to do next. she ended up having to stay in the hospital two nights because her heart raced at 200 bpm! but she's back at the cabin now, resting. sleeping a lot from what my folks have told me. she'll have an echo cardiogram on monday and i guess we'll know more then. i'm scared and worried and my mom and dad sound very concerned and sad. i wish i were there. sadie is a big part of our family.

i will hope for the best. she's got a really good spirit and loves fishing for sunnies too much to say goodbye. i love her very much and hope she's dreaming of eating cheese and doggie paddling around the dock right now. xoxo. love you saiders...

ok, i have goossebumps.

i LOVE the coen brothers and tommy lee jones. i totally can't wait to see this...

not even remotely interesting to anyone but me.

here are pictures that make me smile. but i am posting them purely for my own enjoyment. sorry. i can be a bit egocentric at times...



i took this one on our honeymoon in aruba. tony likes it a lot and thinks i should send it to the shoe company and ask them to use it in one of their ads. he has a very good eye for quality, to be sure.

this is also from the honeymoon (and yes, we pretty much spent every moment at the private island owned by the resort we stayed at, i highly recommend it). there are flamingos everywhere, kind of like the squirrels in the parks here in the cities, and at first it's very cool and you can't get enough snapshots and you feed them your extra fries from lunch. big mistake. after a while, these buggers follow you every where and if you are innocently laying on your beach chair and happened to point at something with your finger, they will bite it in the off chance that it's a flesh colored french fry. moochers.














this picture is for my good friend rose and her main man erich. for our wedding, they gave us this awesome portable dvd player on which we watched episodes of the sopranos all the way to and from aruba. it rocked and hopefully the thumbs up expresses that. by the way, this is obviously on the trip home, as i actually have a tan. usually, i'm pasty white. very attractive. easy, i'm taken fellas.

ok, enough for now. i should be doing homework (as usual). i am a slave to school and resent that. which is ironic considering i'm graduating with a degree in education. i love to torture myself.

yikes!

if my parents dog could watch this, she might not be so quick to "chase the munks"...

(definitely view with sound)

bad boys, bad boys, watcha gonna do?

we live in a suburb of minneapolis and, granted, our place is on a busy road so we see a lot of strange stuff. but in the past five months i've had to call 911 three different times. doesn't that seem like a lot?

and i'm not overreacting, either. the first time, i woke up at 3:30am to use the bathroom and there were tail lights shining in on me. keep in mind, right outside the bathroom window IS THE YARD, not the driveway or road. i kept the lights out and went to a better vantage point to inspect. oh, by the way, my husband (boyfriend at the time!) was out of town and i was home alone.

when i looked outside, i saw an suv stuck in our front yard, spinning their wheels in the muddy mess it had recently become with all the snow melting, while a couple other people were madly pushing to get the vehicle going. at the same time, another person came walking out of my garage toward the suv and i'm thinking, "holy shit, these freaks are here to rob and rape me and when they saw the light go on in the bathroom, they tried to high-tail it and got stuck"!

needless to say, that was my first 911 call.

as it turned out, it was the star tribune paper delivery person and they mistook our yard for our driveway. a rocket scientist, i'm sure, considering they'd been delivering papers without driving through our yard for like two months prior. here's what they left after the tow truck had to drag them out (and believe me, the picture, as usual, does not do it justice)...


the next get together with the police happened just about a week ago when we realized that somebody had waltzed into our unlocked (at the time) breezeway between the garage and home and stole hundreds of dollars worth of tools, not to mention tennis rackets (not that either of us has played in the last year). it's true, maybe we shouldn't have been keeping them out there, but the scary part is that that the cop said whoever did it probably just came in a grabbed the stuff while i was home alone! youch. that one hurts. not feeling quite as safe lately, needless to say...

and speaking of youch!, my most recent 911 call was to report domestic violence on the sidewalk in front of my house. look, if you don't want me to call the cops on you, then don't stand 20 feet in front of my picture window and punch your girlfriend (or whatever) in the face.

on the one hand, i'm hoping my mom never sees this or she will lock me an attic somewhere to keep all the evil in life away from me, and on the other hand, i'm hoping she sees this so that she understands that no matter where you live-city or suburbs-shit happens.

i used to live right in the city and when my brownstone caught on fire and was a blaze at three 'o' clock in the morning, the only thing that woke me up and got me out and saved my life was a local homeless woman running back and forth outside my bedroom window on the sidewalk screaming "the building's on fire! get out, get out!". after the whole incident happened, and the smoke was clearing (literally and figuratively) my cats and i even got to be interviewed for the evening news. i still have the tape and watch it once in a while.

i think i felt safer there. at least i had someone watching out for me. here in the burbs, it's every man for himself...

history...

thanks to my husband for taking this picture from his vantage point at work...

disaster.

i feel blessed to have been far from harm's way when this devastating bridge collapse occurred this evening in downtown minneapolis...as far as i know, all of my loved ones are safe as well. THANK GOD for that.

to say, however, that the incident does not have an affect on me would be so very wrong. i feel sick to my stomach with grief and concern.

my prayers go out to everyone tonight. and i do mean everyone.

hug and kiss the ones you love while you still can. it can all be taken away so quickly.