Flannel Shirt

(night off)

We took Izzy to the dog park. You have never seen a happier dog. First time since before I got the knee done last year.

Restless leg syndrome

I've got restless leg syndrome. My legs twitch at night. They are twitching a lot tonight. No news from out in the world. 

This is a picture I made on the computer. Not tonight. My legs twitch too much.

This is an old picture of Lindsay and Joanie from the day after Christmas. Lindsay was working on Christmas. 

Otherwise, things are still quiet. I think the weather guy at six said that rain was coming in for the weekend, but that'll be fine with us. We're not working out in the rain, or raining going to work. We're retired. The only thing I have to do is walk the Iz. There are several different routes we use for our walks, more will be available in the Summer when I trust my knee going up and down the stairs at the end of our block, but for now we head west through the neighborhood. 

The first block, the way the neighborhood is laid out, is pretty much how we always start out.  Sometimes by the time we reach 47th as our cross street she's pretty much attended to her needs but if she needs a few more blocks we do it. My knee doesn't usually hurt on our walks anymore, so we're not limited to my condition. Maybe my conditioning. But wherever we go, what blocks we walk down, she's sniffing away. She likes to sniff under small plants and bushes where field mice and other little furry things may sleep. There's a pile of yard scrapes that someone left near the sidewalk where it's been slowly decaying over the winter. Izzy likes to sniff that. Sometimes we go where I want to go, sometimes I just let her take us wherever she wants to go. She generally turns around so that we can go past the gas station where they always give her dog biscuits. She's a dog but she's not stupid.

"Mommy, I did it!"

The little girl has discovered... MAKEUP! She got into Mom's makeup, doesn't quite have doing her eyelashes yet. I think that's mascara on her. She almost looks like it's the beginning of Lent.

It was pretty quiet up here. Foggy in the morning, overcast all day. Iz and I took our walk. There was a lot of sniffing around this morning. Like I say, when we go out and she sniffs it must be like a human reading a book. I really do think it's intellectual stimulation for her, whatever the dog equivalent of intellectual stimulation might be. Aside from her opportunity to take care of her bathroom business it's just a great time out for her. And me. 

With Mommy

A picture from Pacifica. 

Cold this morning, and foggy, but we took our walk. I seem to take more naps these days. Kind of nice.

The camera puts on ten pounds

And if you start out around thirty pounds, adding ten is a lot. 

Actually, this is another one of those pictures from a phone, Joan's phone, that doesn't translate well. The last time the photos were upside down. This one came out sideways, but when I flipped it right side up it made everything too wide. 

I asked Joan tonight if we did anything today and she said, "I'm still in my pajamas. That's your answer." Which is pretty much what we did. Izzy and I walked and it was a good walk. 

The camera puts on ten pounds

And if you start out around thirty pounds, adding ten is a lot. 

Actually, this is another one of those pictures from a phone, Joan's phone, that doesn't translate well. The last time the photos were upside down. This one came out sideways, but when I flipped it right side up it made everything too wide. 

I asked Joan tonight if we did anything today and she said, "I'm still in my pajamas. That's your answer." Which is pretty much what we did. Izzy and I walked and it was a good walk. 

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz

(night off, but check your email)

Here are our neighbors Dave and his daughter Ramona. Dave owns a company that sells a specialty line of raw freeze-dried dog food. He and his brother, who doesn't live on her block, own the company. We're not talking milkbone dog biscuits here. 

In any case, if you want to ride an inner tube down the mountain snow is better than rain, which is what we got this morning. I took Izzy out with her raincoat. We got the raincoat when we first got her, with "Izzy" embroidered on it. She's been well-fed since then and in the middle of our walk (and we had stopped and were talking in the rain with Dave and Mina, their dog) her raincoat had popped off and askew, hanging from her backside. So when we got back to the house and reported back to Joan, she decided to get another raincoat in a bigger size. Poor Iz's paranoia took hold of her when we tried to get her measurements. Joan and I took turns chasing her around the dining room table. Neck, length and girth.

So it's on order, a pretty red one. In the meantime, if it's a wet one outside we'll just face the elements and when we get inside Iz will let Joan towel her down. Then Iz gets in front of the fireplace. She rotates from front to back to finish her drying process, then she lies down and goes to sleep.