Old Dog, Same Old Trick

When we got Missy 5 years ago, she introduced herself to our family by gorging on 2 pounds of chocolate. That's when we met our vet. And cleaned our carpets.

You'd think she'd never want to eat chocolate again after that traumatic introduction to it, but no such luck. It's her mission in life to sniff out and devour whatever chocolate she can find. We've been very careful to keep it out of her reach ever since.

Until yesterday. She got her teeth around a small dark chocolate bar and downed it before I could get it away from her. I spent most of the night awake with her. If you've never seen a hyper geriatric basset hound, it's actually quite entertaining.

Not that we want to see it again. She's feeling better tonight and has been allowed back in the house to sleep.

You Win

We were playing a game with the youngest the other day to distract her from her "tired legs" on a hike. You know the game, the one where someone says the name of an animal and the next person has to think of an animal that starts with the last letter of the previous word.

Here's how the game went...

mom: elephant
dad: tiger
kid: rabbit
mom: turtle

...You get the idea. Add in about a hundred animals to fill a half hour or so, including pretty much any animal you could think of. Ideas were running thin...

kid: finch
mom: hippopotamus
dad: skunk
kid: um... Kentucky Fried Chicken!

Game over.

Henri Matisse is Dead

This probably doesn't come as a surprise to you since the French artist passed away in 1954. But for those of you who haven't met him, Henri Matisse (Henry, for short) was also the name of my youngest daughter's beta fish.

He lived a long and happy life... for a fish.

I'm not sure if it's a sign that we're raising the girl right or a sign that she is heartless, but the mourning period lasting about 22 seconds. Then the shovel came out and she picked the perfect spot to bury him, right beside the 2 frogs she had for about a day last summer. She didn't even flinch when she shoveled the dirt over that ever-open eyeball.

I don't think I could have done it. I'm sure someone else in the family always officiated over my hamsters' funerals while I sobbed into my handkerchief. I remember moping through a whole day of school (3rd grade) when Fluffy died. (And using his untimely death as an excuse for not participating in class activities.)

It's been almost an hour now.

She's campaigning for another pet.