One of Those Days....

**UPDATE: We found Abby Dog! I was coming back from the grocery store and when I came in the gate of our neighborhood I asked the guard at the guard shack if they would post my flyer in the window and he did me one better! He handed me a flyer that someone had given him, advertising a "Found Beagle" who was our Abby Dog! Yay! Thank goodness for kind neighbors!**

I'm having one of those days.

Its actually been going on longer than just today, but today has been extra-special.

It all started Monday when I had to get in the car to drive home from the trip. Why is the drive home never as fun as the drive to the vacation? I'm not sure why I was so crabby, I was actually looking forward to getting home.

After we got just far enough away from my parent's house to be in the middle of freaking nowhere, my car broke down. Seriously.

I stopped at a gas station that had a DQ (yummy) and got gas, then drove the car to a parking place so AJ and I could grab lunch. We walked back out to the car with Blizzard in hand and the car won't start. In fact, it wouldn't even turn over, making me think it was really bad and was most likely going to strand us for 2 days in the middle of nowhere cost $9000 to fix. (The stranding in the middle of nowhere thing has actually happened to me before, remind me to tell that story another time.)

I did what any sane, almost 30-year-old, self-sufficient, adult traveling with her daughter would do. I called my dad.

Okay, so maybe that is just me. Either way, I didn't cry. (One point for me.)

After talking to my dad (and him surprisingly not being able to do a damn thing over the phone) I walked into the gas station store and asked the woman if there was so where to have my car towed to. She gave me a business card and told me to call Ken.

Ken (may very well be my own personal angel) showed up precisely 15 minutes later and hooked my car up to his thingy-ma-bobber and told me that my battery had a short.

Now, I'm not sure what that means, or how it happened in the 12 minutes AJ and I were eating lunch inside, but it only cost me $150 to fix. That included parts (a new battery), labor, and a convenience fee (since Ken had driven out to the gas station to help me there). It honestly could not have gone any better than it did.

Add this little mishap to my speeding ticket from the first leg of the trip and I'm beginning to think that I won't be traveling for a while.

Don't worry. It gets better.

I arrive at my Aunt and Uncle's house unscathed, albeit later than expected, and get a phone call from D informing me that the dog has gone missing. He let her out while he went for a run (was gone approximately 45 minutes) and when he came home she was no where to be found.

Me, Abby and a bunny.

We had an invisible fence installed about 2 months ago and she is deathly afraid of crossing "the line."

Under no circumstances do I think she ran off. Each of the 4 times in the past 2 months that she has come into contact with the line she has run back into the house, whimpering (no, the shock is not that high, she is a total wuss).

Abby wearing a jacket.

We're pretty sure that someone drove by our house and took her. Our neighbors are also missing their dog and historically, this would not be the first time dogs have been stolen and then re-sold around here. Plus our next-door neighbors were outside, so if she had been, say, attacked and eaten by a wild animal, they would have heard her screaming or something.

Pretty girl.

Then while I was posting things all over the interwebs about her being missing and stuff I was trying to find a verification email that went into my spam folder. I got in there and saw what I thought (stupidly) was an email from a blogger about a giveaway that I entered. I immediately responded to the email with my full name and address (no other information, thankfully). Then I realized that I was in my spam folder and looked at the email address. Sure enough, it was something random. Sooooo, hopefully no one comes to our house to murder us or something, because we don't have a watch-dog anymore. :(

Not that Abby was ever a watch-dog.**

So yeah. I'm feeling pretty damn awesome about life right now.

If you have been a super-sleuth and know where we live (and happen to live near us), please keep an eye out for an overweight beagle named Abby.

She's talented...standing on an exercise ball.**

*Please excuse the massive amounts of dripping sarcasm used in this post. I tend to deal with things by being sarcastic.

**She hates us, BTW. The only reason I'm sure she didn't run away is because she is literally too simple-minded to plan an escape. Seriously.

P.S. "Simple-minded" is a really nice way of saying "she is the stupidest dog ever." I'm not trying to be mean. Anyone who has ever met her knows this to be nothing short of the God's honest truth. So, if you do happen to find her, wandering around somewhere, speak slowly and offer food (preferably Sonic Tots).