Ham, Anyone?

Yesterday I was trying really hard to not feel bad for myself after AJ woke me up at 5:27 am and I left the dog sleeping in my bed. I mean, she has been a great sleeper up until now and its not really that big of a deal to wake up early when all you have to do is sit on the couch and drink coffee, making sure to keep the endless stream of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Yo Gabba Gabba playing, right?

Plus husband had to get up at O'dark Hundred for a 12 mile ruck march and had time to come home to shower and change before he had to be back at work, so I wasn't going to be the one to complain about being tired. I figured I'd leave the complaining to the dog.

I decided to make my day productive so I folded some laundry, ran a couple of loads through the wash and made homemade granola. I had the granola pans on the stove cooling and had just pulled the ham and kaiser rolls out of the freezer for dinner tonight when I decided to run to the grocery store real quickly. I had told husband earlier that I'd grab him some beer when AJ and I ran to the grocery store.

I pushed the granola pans back as far as they'd go on the counter so the dog couldn't get to them and made sure there were no glasses or cups within dog's reach before we left the house. About 30 minutes later we came back in and as I set the grocery sacks on the kitchen counter I noticed a piece of something on the carpet in the dining room. I walked over to get a closer look at what it was and I saw the ziploc bag that had the ham in it sitting on the dining room floor. Empty.

Yep, AbbyDog ate almost an entire Christmas ham while we were at the grocery store. I say almost because it was the ham we had for Christmas dinner, so there was about 3/4 of it left that I froze to use for ham & cheese sandwiches. I was really shocked that she was able to eat the whole thing, especially since it was several pounds and Abby only weighs about 35 pounds (more now). Then I remembered that she is a beagle and they have no self-control, or brains for that matter (as is evidenced by the time she ate an entire 1 pound bag of Hershey's kisses with the tinfoil wrappers still on them).

I decided at this point to let myself have a little pity party about the ham. I mean, come on. That was our dinner. Now what are we going to have?

I took AJ upstairs to put her down for her nap and I noticed something on her bed.

I kind of looked away, afraid that it was barf, but after closer inspection I realized that it was ham. It was the center part of the ham that was still very frozen and the dog apparently couldn't eat anymore of. In AJ's bed.

I really couldn't make this up if I tried. And thus continues my own personal struggle with ham.

What We've Been Up To: Instagram Style...

Since I've apparently decided to limit my blogging to once a week (unintentionally, I swear), I decided that you all deserve some photo evidence of all that has been going on around our house lately.

There has been some apple eating.

We've also done some intense TV watching.

And there was a little laying on the dog as well.

We moved most of AJ's toys from the family room upstairs into the bedroom that is connected to her room. I put her tent in there along with lots of other fun stuff and she has been enjoying the change of scenery!

My dad came to visit for a night, so AJ and Grandpa played in the tent in her new playroom.

After he left, AJ and I hung out in the tent for a while. (I may or may not have filled the tend with pillows & blankets so I can relax comfortably keep a close eye on AJ while she plays.)

I've done some running along this path (but not nearly us much as I should be doing).

And we've spent a good deal of time smoochin' and lovin' on this baby girl.

Last but not least, we had visitors this weekend (my FIL) and he bought us a deep-fryer! I know you're probably thinking, gross, that is terribly unhealthy! Well, you'd be right, but the food that came out of that deep-fryer? Delish.

I realize these don't look like pickles, but they're the sandwich stackers, so they are long and skinny.

We made fried pickles, fried shrimp and hush puppies. I'm not going to be able to take any credit for the hush puppies because they are simply a mix that you add water to, but man, they were good!

Hush puppies!

I posted the fried pickle recipe on my food blog, you should go check it out!

And yummy, yummy shrimp!

I hope you'll forgive me for not posting very much!

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).

Belated Easter Pictures

I know that Easter was more than a week ago, but I never got around to sharing our pictures with you all! Our Internet has been wonky and as a result its been tough to get pictures uploaded to Blogger in a timely fashion.




This wasn't AJ's first Easter, but last year she was so young that this might as well have been! She got to join in all the fun, traditional Easter activities with us like dying eggs, getting an Easter basket and hunting for eggs in the yard!


We're pretty good friends with the family across the street and they have a boy who is almost 3 and a daughter who is 6 months younger than AJ, so we did our Easter egg hunt in our yard with them! We mostly put animal crackers and goldfish inside the eggs and once AJ realized that the eggs not only opened up, but had goodies in them, she was all about the hunt! Ha!


Someone else was a little too interested in the inner contents of the eggs too, ahem, Abbydog!


All in all, we had a great day, I cooked for us and some friends and we had a delicious Easter Linner (lunch-dinner) of quiche, ham, green bean casserole, and biscuits.

AJ wearing her Easter outfit! She was pretty excited!

I'm Not Feeling It

I feel like there isn't anything to blog about today (or this week really).

I actually have a lot that I could talk about, but doing so would make my location very obvious and while many of you already know where we're stationed, I don't really want to broadcast it here, mostly out of respect for my hubby.

With that being said, we're getting an invisible fence installed today (yay!) and hubby is home sick from work (boo!). He was in the field last week and while he was gone AJ and I both came down with a 24 hour (flu?) bug. Well, I'm pretty sure he has it now. He texted me early this morning and said that he was puking and then he practically ran through the door and upstairs at about 0800.

Yesterday I went to the dentist to get a cavity filled and have another filling fixed. They were quick and it was (relatively) painless so I can't complain there. Guess I need to step up my tooth-brushing game!

Oh, we are also supposed to go to a wedding this weekend but its looking like that won't happen either, as our babysitters backed out on us. Boo.

Such a glamorous life I lead, no?

Hopefully something exciting will happen and I'll be back to my regular, enthralling bloggy self soon!

Tail Wagging Tuesday with Abbydog!

I have recently seen a few of my bloggy friends participating in this blog hop, and since I rarely post about our first child, our beagle, Abbydog, I thought it might be fun to start participating! Anyway, this week we're supposed to choose our most favorite photo of our pet. Now, the amount of doggy photography happening in our house has decreased drastically over the past year or so, you know, since AJ was born. Choosing my favorite photo of Abbydog isn't easy, but there are only a few of her that I absolutely love! So, here you have it!

Make sure to head over and link up with C Mae at Live What You Love if you want to participate!


This picture is from Halloween 2008. Abbydog had only been in our lives since April of 2008 and this was the first chance I had to really dress her up!

Now that I'm looking through all my Abbydog pictures, I realize that I almost never talk about her on my blog and I need to do a post with a lot of pictures of her so everyone can see her craziness!

Oh, by the way, the reason we call her Abbydog is because when we adopted her she came with the name Abby, which just happens to be my sister's name as well. Oh, and my college roommates name, too. Ha! It's just easier to refer to her as Abbydog.

Mamarazzi Monday: Halloween Edition!

Happy Halloween, everyone! AJ got all dressed up yesterday to celebrate and got to go ring a few doorbells in our neighborhood with her Daddy. She even brought home some candy (that she grabbed out of the bowl herself) that D already ate! Ha.

Without further ado, here she is!







Her dog-sister also dressed as a ladybug.


Happy November!

My Poor Puppy Dog....

Pup pup hasn't been feeling very good lately and has been acting really weird. I made an appointment for her at the vet this week and we didn't exactly walk away with great news. She had been drinking lots of water (like LOTS) and couldn't sleep at night. She kept us up all night the other night so I made the appointment for her.

Resting with all her friends.

The vet ran a bunch of tests, including blood and urine tests and she found that Abby's platelet count was 23,000. The normal range for a dog her size is 175,000-500,000. So obviously, her count is really low. The vet said that sometimes the machine used to run the test messes up, so they checked it manually and unfortunately, it was still low. They had us come back to draw more blood to determine if maybe it was the sample that was tainted or something and the third time they tested, Abby's levels came back low.

We have an antibiotic for her and the vet seems to think that its due to an infection she contracted from a tick. She said that it is fairly common in this area. We need to go back in a month to have her levels checked again, so hopefully she does well on the medication.

I'm not going to lie, if that was confusing its because I honestly have no idea what I'm talking about.

The thing that scares me is that I Googled. Oh yeah, I went online and googled "dog low platelet count" and read all about the terrible things that go along with having low levels. Words like "infection" and "cancer" were mentioned a lot, and my research did very little to assure me that Abby would be fine.

If you've ever googled anything medically related then you know that no good will come from it. In most cases, the information that is available online (and is easily located) is most likely the worst case scenario and not at all what is going on in your case.

Anyways, the poor puppy dog is currently sleeping on the couch, watching Law & Order: SVU, so I'd say that things are looking fairly normal around here.

Tag! I'm it!

Maranda over at My Camo Colored Life tagged me in this little meme, and I'm not gonna lie, I feel pretty cool about it! Maranda and I are stationed at the same post, have mutual friends, and yet we still have not met in real life. Don't fret, dear readers. We will meet very soon, I'm sure of it! Anyways, on to the post!

1. If you could have any superpower what would you have? Why?

Hmmm. I wish that I were like Mary Poppins in the scene where all she has to do is snap her fingers and a mess is straightened up. Is that sad that I really just don't want to have to clean anymore?! lol

2. Who is your style icon?

Well, apparently its hmb, but if I had to pick someone that most of you would recognize (aka a real celebrity, not that hmb isn't, but you know what I mean) then I would have to choose Reese Witherspoon. She usually looks pretty casual, but always looks nice, and she is typically wearing pretty plain individual pieces.

3. What is your favorite quote?

"Well-behaved women rarely make history."
-Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

4. What is the best compliment you've ever received?

From my hubby. He tells me often that I'm a good mom (and his opinion is the only one that really counts).

5. What playlist/CD is in your CD player/iPod right now?

Its called "Beth's A Runnin'" and its my running mix. I listen to vastly different music when I'm running than any other time. The run mix includes classics like Bad Romance and others by Lady Gaga as well as timeless favorites like Crazy Bitch and Turn My Swag on.

When I'm not running (from the law, apparently,) I listen to lots of classic rock (like Billy Joel, Steve Miller Band, and The Eagles), soft rock (Michael Buble, James Blunt) and alternative/indie stuff (Green Day, Maroon 5, Barenaked Ladies, and Spoon, Manchester Orchestra, Modest Mouse, and Motion City Soundtrack).

6. Are you a night owl or a morning person?

I'm neither. I think this may have to do with the fact that I have a 6 month old baby, but I want to go to sleep at 7:30 pm and sleep until 10 every morning. Typically its easier for me to stay up than it is for me to get up, but once I'm up in the morning, I'm up.

7. Do you prefer dogs or cats?

Dogs. I grew up with dogs and our beagle, Abby, was my first child.

8. What is the meaning behind your blog name?

My blog name is a play on the title of the radio show "This American Life" on NPR. I feel that I'm a pretty patriotic person and with D being in the Army and all, well, yeah. The radio show itself has also played a fairly large role in our lives in the sense that we listened just hours after we were married in the county courthouse. The topic of the broadcast that day was actually the reason we named AJ what we did.

Mamarazzi Monday!

This week's edition of Mamarazzi Monday is focusing on the other baby in my life!

One of Abby's doggie friends celebrated her 3rd birthday this week and she brought over some doggie cupcakes for Abby to enjoy!

The before picture.

Mid-way through.

Almost done.

She obviously didn't like it at all!

Finished!

Ready to go out now!

New Blog Layout!

So I finally got around to adding a background to my blog! It is no longer boring and plain white, in fact, I think its quite cute! I am going to be clicking around on the internet looking for other gadgets and widgets to add to make my blog even more fun! Its just too bad I don't really have anyone who follows my blog or really anything exciting to write about...LOL. It is still fun to look back at the things I wrote about, because sometimes I forget or like to look back and see how I was feeling about this or that.

I'll be messing around on here trying to add new features and things to my blog tonight! It will give me something fun to do on a boring Wednesday night. Other than wash the dog, that is, which is already done! She is starting on a shampoo regime for her itchy skin and she has to be bathed with special shampoo on day 1, 4 and 7, then sprayed with a special spray every few days for the rest of the month. Today was day 1. We will just have to wait and see how it works!

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks!

D has been pretty busy lately trying to teach Abby new tricks! He bought an exercise ball a few weekends ago and decided that the dog needed to learn how to balance on it. He also wants to make sure she knows how to jump up on it on her own.

So far he has gotten her to jump up on it a few times, but that is it. She will stand on the ball as long as he holds on to her, but when he lets go, she forgets that she is balancing and just starts looking around the room. She always starts leaning to one side or the other and slowly starts falling over. It is so funny!

Tuesday Plans

I have been spending my weekdays sitting (or laying) on the couch and watching copious amounts of TV since we got here. I decided this afternoon that tomorrow I am going to do things around the house and get up and move!

First on my list of things to do is take the dog to the off-leash dog park in Steilacoom (a few minutes from our house). I read a blog in which a dog owner talks about the park and it sounds like it is HUGE and much better than the dog park that we went to often at Ft. Benning. The blogger was talking about the tall grass and the hills and dales (it sounds more like a natural setting than the baseball diamond that she used to run around on!).

Taking Abby to the dog park will have more than one benefit. To start, I know she will love riding in the car to get there, and she will really enjoy running free since she hasn't been able to run since we moved here (no yard, much less fence). Secondly, seeing as it is summer, I figured that it can't hurt for me to get out and get some fresh air! I might feel a little bit better if I can get out than I have been feeling lately with all the laying around and being lazy.

The second thing I am planning to do tomorrow is make either cupcakes or a cake. I have been craving cake (specifically Fun-fetti cake) so I decided that I am going to take matters into my own hands and suck it up and bake. For most things, if they are not pre-made, I have been finding restaurants to just buy whatever I am craving, but Fun-fetti is a specialty cake that I am going to make myself!

I can't wait to get started on everything tomorrow!