Wild, Wooly Weekend

What a wild weekend! Last night about 8:45 I just had to sit down and turn on the TV to get a few moments to decompress. It had been so hectic, so full of activity and people, not to mention other mammals, that I hardly had a moment to myself.

We picked up my friend SS Friday night, and he spent the night at my house. We talked a good bit, but I did give him plenty of time alone with Mabel, who is his goddaughter. They watched her Doctor Who DVD, played the piano and did a lot of laughing.

Saturday morning got fairly frenetic. The puppy hunt took on a whole new path as we found out someone we knew fairly well had a litter of Lab pups ready to go. There was lots of phone calling going on, in between entertaining SS, dropping him off at his mother's house and getting Mabel to gymnastics.

Saturday afternoon we went out to our friends house to see the Lab puppies. Holy cow. So freakin' adorable, we love in love instantly. And to make the deal even sweeter, our friend was only charging $50 for a pup. The only yellow female was already claimed (boo hoo!), so we got a yellow boy. Then my mother, who came along, decided she wanted the other female in the litter, which is black. So we wound up leaving with two puppies!

This is Bruno. He is a yellow Lab but was the darkest of the litter. In fact, he had some reddish-ginger tones to his coat, and we can't wait to see how his color develops as he ages.

This little guy was almost called Reno (Hubby's idea) but then my Mom and I came up with Bruno, which seems to fit him better. He adores Mabel. He follows her around wherever she goes. He is definitely her buddy.

The poor thing was polluted with fleas when we got him. We got some herbal flea shampoo a groomer friend of ours suggested, and that in combination with a flea comb has pretty much eliminated most of them. At least I haven't seen any more. But we've got an appointment scheduled with the vet for this afternoon to get their shots and see if we should do anything else.

This is the little girl, which I've named Pearl. Yes, I have taken a major liking to this little chick, and she definitely likes me, too. When my mom picked her out she was the most adventurous, courageous and friskiest of the litter. She's very intelligent and is already responding to her name.

Her fleas weren't nearly as bad as Bruno's, but we treated her with the same shampoo and we seem to have gotten rid of them.

While we weren't planning on getting two puppies, once we brought them home we couldn't bear to separate them. It's helped to cut down on the homesickness, and they love to wrestle and sleep together.

So far Mabel's allergies haven't been sent into orbit, which is encouraging. Of course, we're taking lots of precautions: we're setting a house rule now that the dogs do NOT go upstairs and in our bedrooms. We're teaching Mabel to keep the puppies from licking her face, and when we're done playing with them we're making sure she washes her hands and face just in case. We're also keeping her "doggy" clothes out of her bedroom. Hubby's been put in charge of grooming, and I'll be vacuuming regularly with our Hepa filter vacuum.

I must say I've been incredibly impressed with the dogs so far. For being as little as they are they're nearly house trained already, and their accidents only happens when we adults make them hold it longer than their little bodies can take. They want to go outside and do their business, and the great majority of the time they do.

I just hope I can take these two little horses once they start growing ... and growing and growing! But it'll be summer time and they can spend a lot of time outdoors during their ornery adolescence.

The rest of the weekend went well. Lots of Maple Festival events, which was interesting, because a lot of the people involved haven't seen me a lot in the last year or so, and I got several comments about my weight loss.

SS, who also doesn't see me often, asked me lots of questions about how I've done it, what I've learned from the experience, how I feel, etc. I felt a lot like I did when Frances interviewed me for her second book.

It's no wonder after all of that I was mentally and physically exhausted. But amazingly enough, the food and eating didn't go as bad as I thought it would. Granted, I succumbed to the seafood buffet Friday night and I didn't resist the yummy treats at the festival, but Saturday I really stayed vigilant and mindful. While I didn't eat all low-calorie foods all day, I really stayed aware of portions, didn't mindlessly snack, and at our banquet Saturday night I didn't/couldn't finish my meal and left a good third of the food on my plate.

So, even though it wasn't a perfect weekend, I could definitely tell this morning that I hadn't done as much damage to myself as I had done throughout the winter. Progress. Good stuff.

And here's the latest photo of me, taken Saturday night before the banquet. I wasn't that thrilled with the full body shot, but the head shot's pretty decent. I'm trying to grow my hair out and I've been dealing with awkward lengths and my stubborn hair that curls in whatever direction it bloody well feels like. It actually looks all right here, even though an hour before I thought it looked awful.

The funniest thing I noticed about the original picture was that as I stood beside SS, we actually looked close to the same size. Granted, I probably still weigh more than him, but I don't dwarf him anymore. Pretty cool.