“My Three Poodles.” Front, left to right: Sabra, Bee. Back: Shuggie.

I started working on this post to commemorate 150 days in quarantine, but it got kinda long and I thought it was probably better to just trash it.

In a one-paragraph nutshell: I’m still working. There might be a mandatory furlough or less hours coming. Todd is working overtime in his home office, BUT he did build some furniture during our staycation. I finished renovating the hall bathroom (excluding some minor final touches) and started renovating the laundry room (so far new paint). Veruca is still moving between our two houses and, contrary to what she thought she wanted, will not be changing schools. Opac IS changing schools. He transferred to Penn State University. He reports, on his first day, that it’s way better and more helpful by a landslide than his previous university. I’m just happy that he’s happy.

Today, not only am I still in search of sanitizing wipes, I am now also unable to find Windex, which is effing up my mojo since I use that shit for everything. The current trend is also a perplexing shortage of paper towels (not toilet paper!), liquid Lysol cleaner, and dish soap. I could speculate on this but I either don’t care or don’t have the energy.

Meanwhile, dogs. We are in week 5 with our two new girls, who formed a heartwarming pack with Sabra within the first week. Bee, the 3-year-old, is a good girl albeit a bit shy around strangers. Shuggie (rhymes with boogie), you may recall, is the one-year-old puppy girl who is naughtier than a toddler with a dirty diaper.

The challenges of Shuggie are sometimes a struggle, and frustrating because she is still the ninja pooper who continues to leave her mark in the house, even after –as Todd said one day – two hours outside in the yard. And don’t tell me the solution is not leaving her alone. The reason I call her the ninja pooper is because she can lay that thing down in literally the 3.2 seconds you turn your eyes away from her. And will come stand beside you wagging her tail.*

Mom came down last week to surprise V and meet the girls. We did not/could not anticipate the girls’ reaction to Moses. The girls are brown standard poodles, maybe 40lbs each, soaking wet. Moses is a large white furry dog, about 115 lbs (used to be 130) and looks like a displaced polar bear. At this point it would be safe to assume the girls have never seen a dog his size, and most definitely that color.

Bee hid downstairs and Shuggie was with me in the kitchen, as he climbed the short flight of stairs. She was barking like a scrapyard dog, backing up and bouncing on her paws, until he reached the top and then she bolted so fast out of the kitchen she nearly wiped out on the tile floor. (I may not have previously mentioned that she is the fastest runner I’ve ever seen. She crosses the lawn like a cheetah, it’s incomprehensible, turning corners like a motorcycle lying down.

Todd suggested they get to know each other outside. Bee went out downstairs so she ran up the deck and around to where we were sitting at the table and saw Moses for the first time. She stopped dead and starting barking in unison with Shuggie, running sideways away from him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dog run sideways.

Moses is THE most docile dog in the history of dogs. If he was any more calm, he’d be comatose. He paid no mind to these crazy bitches screaming at him. He laid down on the deck near Mom’s feet. It’s what he does. He finds a spot to lie down, and he lies down. He’s not excitable….  OR fast.

Moses is about as fast as Jason from Friday the 13^th and these two are running away from him, skittling past his huge body on the floor, like their lives depended on it. It was really quite hilarious, that is, until nightfall when Shuggie would not stop barking. All. Night. Long.

All the dogs are now sleeping with us in the bedroom, sans crate, and it’s going very well. Shuggie sleeps through the night (except for the aforementioned) and is hardly disturbed when I get up in the middle of the night and tiptoe around her. They also don’t have to take naptime in the crate anymore.

Their tags finally came yesterday and so now it’s official – their names and address and phone numbers are proudly dangling from their filthy collars. I say filthy because I had no idea how dirty they were until I took them off. These two dog collars look like they’ve been dragged around the yard 700 times by the tractor. WTF???

Poodles are typically (from my experience) clean animals… they’re not the type of dog to jump into creeks and dive into muddy bogs. They don’t like being out in the rain; they will turn right around and say “forget it” if you let them out. The first two poodles I’ve had – Pi and Sabra – were the epitome of this characterization. Very neat eaters. And they won’t eat things off the floor, even their own food. Bee fits this category.

Shuggie, on the other hand, is The Messiest Eater I have ever seen. Anything she eats – dogfood, crunchy treats –bits of food fall out the sides of her mouth onto the floor. There are crumbs everywhere, every day. She usually will clean them up. She does eat food off the floor. Chalk that up to puppy-hood and I’m sure Todd will say, monkey-see-monkey-do, and one day she’ll be too good to clean up the food just like the other two.

They’re due for baths this weekend, so I will have to drop those collars in the washing machine and hope for the best. We have toys! We have now joined the ranks of pet-spoiling parents everywhere – I buy toys every time I’m at the store and Todd has been ordering chew toys from Amazon. We have tons of treats.

It’s now 8:35 a.m. and they’ve just come inside from their third backyard adventure. Shuggie’s paws are muddy – which I didn’t notice right away and so there are now brown paw prints all over the living room and kitchen floor – her nose is brown-er – and she has tree sap on her head. Ugh.

*Shuggie has since become acutely aware that going in the house is bad. Lately, it’s Pup Daddy who has had to contend with these infractions and so then she avoids him and I become her new favorite person.

Today’s Stats

Mental Health: Between 4 and 7. Too many things. Just. Too many.

Physical Health: 5. No physical exercise for over a week and diet is limited due to unforeseen circumstances I may share in another post, which is also contributing to mental health scores. On the positive side, I have lost about 4 pounds.

Paper supplies: Reasonable. TP is stocked, although the scene of my last acquisition – Walmart – has been completely rearranged and I have no idea where they moved it.

Alcohol: Reporting, but I really don’t care. Currently on the wagon and happy for it. We have a few bottles of red wine. Apparently we’re out of vodka so I may go pick some up for Todd. (And mom, for next time she comes.)

Puppy accidents: Not every day. I know there was one yesterday because when I came home from work Shuggie was very happy to see me and was avoiding daddy like the plague.

Today’s t-shirt: None. Today is black Polo shirt day. With khaki shorts. Very slimming. I told him so and he smiled. J

Random tidbits:

Today is National Dog Day, of course! Created in 2004 to not only honor our fur babies but to raise awareness for abused dogs, puppy mills, and legislation pertaining to certain breeds including the banning of those breeds.

Today is also Women’s Equality Day.

It is also National Webmistress Day and Cherry Popsicle Day. Although my dirty mind went in another direction, a WebMistress is actually “a woman who designs, develops, markets and maintains websites.” (If you want my opinion, I think “mistress” doesn’t go well with “equality.” Just sayin.)

Americans spent more than $95 BILLION on their pets in 2019.

The Friday the 13^th franchise grossed over $529 million worldwide. Jason Voorhees was played by nine different actors. Ari Lehman was the first, in 1980, when he was just 15 years old. He is a highly acclaimed musician, having studied Jazz Piano and Big Band Orchestration at NYU (my alma mater), he went on to play keyboards with some of the top names in Reggae and African music, including work with Bob Marley’s Tuff Gong Records. Inspired by the enthusiasm of horror fans he encountered at the East Coast Horror Convention, he also created the punk/metal band, First Jason.

Fun fact: Kevin Bacon was one of the teen counselors in Friday the 13^th. He was killed by Pamela Voorhees, who was hiding under the bed he just had sex in, with an arrow through the mattress and subsequently through his throat.

Left to right: Sabra, Bee, Shuggie.