March 12th

Happy happy birthday to my boy, Cooper!!! Can't believe our pup is already 2 years old!

One month from today Brian and I will be hitched!! It's approaching so G-Dang fast I can't believe it.

I thought about not mentioning this next statement but then I remembered my tag line about not having a filter.......so screw it........here goes. B and I were doing what some unmarried couples aren't supposed to do the other night and I realized that if I were to get pregnant now, we probably wouldn't find out until after we were married. Then it donned on me. For years I've been on birth control in an effort to not get preggers before I was married and I did it. I didn't get pregnant! haha

I don't know why that thought was in my head but for some reason I wanted to celebrate it.

Crazy.

So I still owe you a blog about my bachelorette party and I still owe you a blog about my bridal shower here in Chicago. I've been under a huge deadline with one of my clients and I just haven't had the time during the day and when I'm home, I just haven't wanted to pick up my laptop. I will get that to you, I promise.

In the meantime, we need a wedding song! Any suggestions??

Homeward Bound!!

Coop is on his way home this morning! We weren't able to bring him home last night; they wanted to keep him for observation and continue the IV treatment overnight. We did get to spend a good hour with him when we had to transport him to the overnight hospital and get him all checked in.

He was in awesome spirits. He was trembling still and whined a lot (but we think that's only because he wanted to get off his leash and explore the animal hospital). He even finished a whole jar of baby food and had some kibble at the hospital; so for a very finicky dog, that was all good news.

It was quiet in the house last night without him there throwing his toys in the air or chasing one of us around the kitchen island (an activity that Cooper NEVER gets tired of).

Brian is there now checking him out. Yay!!!!

Thanks for your calls, your texts and for your moral support!! Coop is one lucky dog and we are two very lucky people to have such a great circle of support! :)

Re-Cooper-ating

Our Doodler (that's his nickname) is getting better by the hour!! The vet said he's acting like a normal dog again and he's resting in a kennel. He's still on the IV to try to flush out the chemicals so we have to go back at 6:30 tonight. We'll then see if we have to either take him to the overnight hospital or if we can bring him home.

The vet told me that due to the fact that Brian got him in there so quickly really saved his life. Talk about a "lucky dog".

If our furnace didn't break then Brian and I would have gone to work and come home in the evening. After he ate the pills. Crazy how things happen like that, isn't it?

The Day from Hell

It's just after noon here in Chicago and already so much has happened.

The day started off when I woke up at 6am to find that it was only 60 degrees in the house. The furnace went out.

I left for work and decided to drive (Brian normally drops me off at the train) so that he could go to the store to get the part he needed to fix the furnace.

My car is driving really funny; it was pulling really badly to the right. I called B and he said he'd look at it later so I drove to work.

At 9:15, I get a frantic call from B. He came home from the store to find the dog acting weird. His eyes were half-closed, he was disoriented and when B let him outside he had horrible diarrhea. When he came upstairs, Brian found a brand new bottle of 5 HTP eaten on the floor. (I just bought it yesterday; it's a natural sleep aid supplement that helps achieve greater REM sleep. Lately, I fall asleep but wake up all night with a million thoughts running through my brain).

Sorry for the digression. So I google "5 HTP dog overdose" and find THIS. It can be fatal for a dog, not to mention the neurologic symptoms of seizures, hyperesthesia, tremors and other symptoms including vomiting, hyperthermia and blindness.

Needless to say, B rushed Cooper to the vet. By the time he got there, Coop was walking into walls, his eyes were closed and he was trembling. They immediately pumped his stomach, coated it with charcoal and they are pumping him up with fluids to dilute the amount of 5 HTP in his system. We have to pick him up in a little while to take him to the overnight hospital where he'll be treated for the next 48 hours.

I get back to my car to find the reason my car was pulling; my tire was totally flat. Great. I had driven my car downtown (2.5 miles) and back on a flat. So I admit....I had a bit of an emotional breakdown but I pulled myself together. Brian changed the spare and we went over to Costco to get a new tire. (Yes, I know, 'What kind of idiot drives on a flat tire without knowing?" Well looks like i just answered that question for ya, didn't I?)

That was all before 10:15 am.

The latest on Coop: he's responsive to the fluids, he's more orientated and his eyes are open now. They were coating his stomach with the charcoal when I talked to them at 11:30. They said he was doing much better.

Just say a little prayer for our little red bundle of joy!

I'll keep ya posted.

Why Good Dogs go Bad

We ran out of space on our camera memory card so as I was going through it and moving pictures to my hard drive, I found this one:

Yes, that's our dog.

In the Christmas Tree skirt.

And he's NOT very happy about it.

Just look at the utter disapproval in his face.

(If you would like to email Brian to share your disappointment in his decision to strip our dog of whatever doggie pride he had left, feel free to do so here, but please don't report us for animal abuse.)

Wanna laugh???

Happy Holidays from my family to yours!!!

Go Figure

As I was about to put my old cell phone in the envelope that was provided by the insurance company last night to send it back, I decided to give it one last college try.

What do you know? I plugged it in and it sprung to life.

I guess the good thing is that I got a new cell phone that appears to work faster and keep a longer battery. The bad thing is that I hope they don't charge me for it when it goes back today to the insurance company.

Now that I was able to get a few of my favorite pictures off the phone, I thought I'd share them. Sorry for the fuzziness...they ARE from my cell phone, afterall.

This is Cooper in his winter gear that protects his little feet from the salt. Also known as "Cooper directing traffic at O'Hare"

Brian and Cooper napping together.

My road companion during a trip to Michigan.

Awww....Coop as a pup.

Hide and Seek

I don't know if I'm extraordinarily brilliant or royally moronic for doing this but I've taught our dog how to play Hide and Seek. Seriously.

He follows me around the house no matter where I go, so if I want to play H-n-S, I tell him "Stay". Then I run upstairs and hide in one of the bedrooms, closets, showers, bathtubs or laundry room. I yell out "Doodle" (that's his nickname) and he comes a runnin' and sniffin' to find me. Once he finds me, we celebrate with lots of "Yay!!!!! You found Mommy!!!" and he jumps around with his tongue hanging out, proud as can be. Then I walk over to the steps and say "Go Downstairs" and he runs to the bottom of the stairs and sits and waits. I hide again, call him and he comes to find me once more.

We did this about 6 times last night and the funny part is that he won't check the places where he's already found me unless I'm in a REALLY good spot and he can't find me. But last night we played after I got home from the gym, so seeing as he's a hunting dog, he could probably smell me pretty easily (I know, eww).

So you be the judge. Brilliant or moronic?

Dogs do the Darndest Things

Aren't dogs funny? We thought it was pretty comical that our dog sleeps under a blanket, also known as his woobie. I used to think that he feels safe under the blanket, but finally admitted that it's our ceiling fan on full blast that keeps him covered.

I'd like to share with you Cooper's stages of weirdness in his bed. This is what he used to look like when he would sleep:

Normal, right?

Then he started sleeping with his blankie/woobie. Normally, you can't even see his head as he covers himself completely, but I pulled the covers off his head to take these pictures.

Recently, he started destroying his bed by digging in it as if he were trying to get to China. He ended up ripping open the entire side.....and then crawled inside. He even took his woobie into his new nest.

When I woke up yesterday morning this is what I found:

So my question is this: how in the world does an animal, void of thumbs, manage to crawl into a little space, bring his blankie with him and then cover himself up completely??

Yeah, I don't know either.......but he seems to have the answer.