Annie is having a seriously rough day. Seems I passed my crap-this-day-sucks-the-infinite-w***-o'-g** onto the dog. I'm just glad that mini-curse of yesterday moved from me to something else.

Last night, when Kris and I arrived home from ultimate practice, Annie did her usual greeting: she ran outside to pee. Not sure where she picked it up, but her habit nicely complements Bella's "How. Could. You. LEEEEEEEEEave. Me?" howling. As I was washing my hands in the kitchen, I looked out the window to see Annie cycle between throwing up and eating her vomit. An interesting dichotomy I recommend everyone watch at least once.

I called for Kris, my very own vomit-cleaner-upper (they're his dogs when they puke, or pee where they're not supposed to pee (say, in my bed), and mine when they're perfect angels, which is to say, they're Kris' dogs), who cleaned up the mess, after we carefully analyzed the contents of lamb bone, plastic yogurt container lids, grass and, funny that, more vomit.

As Kris was cleaning, I fed Annie dinner, but she wasn't particularly excited about her rawhide bone dessert, opting more for the vomit that was "right here (right here!) just two minutes ago, I know because I puked it up!" She ran outside, then inside, then back out for a few minutes before she clued in that it was gone. She moped around all evening until bed.

This morning on our walk, Annie made it almost all the way home before needing to poop. Highly unusual for this dog, who is part whale in her water consumption abilities and part goat in her eating abilities. She usually poops halfway through the walk, or in the first 2 minutes of a run. Once she squatted, we knew why.

Three yelps and a cry of pain later, Annie managed one measly turd the color of the half dead grass in my front yard. Well, the part that has grass. More like weeds, really, the half dead weeds in my front yard. Kris looked up and asked me to make an appointment for him to take Annie to the vet to make sure she would be okay.

Having learned from experience, I immediately resigned myself to taking the dog to the vet this afternoon. "Make an appointment for the vet" always means, "Hey, I'm willing, but I have the long commute, so you take the perfect angel to the doctor for me, will ya?" Ever try to take a dog with really really bad smelling anal sacs to the vet's in a sports car? Nay, convertible?

Yeah, the leather seats smell of foul fish for weeks afterward.

Lovely.

So, off to the vet we go, leaving poor Bella howling, why can't I go, too? Gee, dog, do you really want something shoved up your butt? And then your butt squeezed? Come on, dog, shut up.

The vet's office was horribly backed up. Normally, I would just leave and come back another day. If it's going to take an hour to see me, I have better things to do with my time than wait an hour with a psycho dog who recognized the smells when we drove up, and immediately cowered in the passenger foot well.

There were lots of dogs to say hello to, so Annie was distracted for the first forty five minutes. The next fifteen she spent with her butt firmly planted in the corner of the examining room. She was not going to budge. No, her butt was not the vet's playground and no, she wasn't going to change her mind.

Too bad I outweigh her four to one.

I relayed the previous twenty four hours to the vet, who told me not to feed her bones (Kris!), as she shoved her fingers up Annie's butt. In an exclamation of wonder, she pulled them back out, with a turd in hand. Huh? I wondered in surprise. You can pull those things out? Why didn't anyone tell me when I was a kid that you can just pull your turds out?

I'm just glad I couldn't smell it. One small victory for a loss of smell.

Received an email yesterday, from a reader! Holy crap, I thought, someone besides my mom and Megan is here reading. (Okay, okay, yes, there are more readers here, but I can still count you all on one hand!)

What was funny about it was the content:

Date:    5 May 2006 22:09:28 -0000
From:    Roshan 
To:      kittAThodsdenDOTeye-en-eff-oh
Subject: no updates today????

how come? 

Funny to me, anyway, since I blog when I feel like it. The site is for me I hate when I edit what I'm thinking because I fear someone might get offended, which is what I think when I'm writing with readers in mind.

Commercial voiceover: "It's beer, grown up."

Kris' response: "AKA, man soda."

Tomorrow, Kris and I are heading over to have our portraits taken. Having (admittedly very minor) surgery near my eye next Thursday has made me a little nervous, so I wanted to have portraits taken before hand. I had professional pictures taken last about eight years ago, so now is a good time to have more taken.

I asked the photographer, Sandra (the wife of a classmate of JenO's, which is how we were referred to her, that, and well, the amazing family photos of JenO, Bharat, Cole and Ally), what I should do about make-up. I'm so clueless about make-up. That I feel like an idiot when I wear it only feeds my cluelessness, so I wear it even less.

Sandra recommended I wear lipstick and a bit of blush.

Rats.

Especially since I don't have any make-up. I buy the stuff once every four or so years, so the various packages of make-up become single or dual use. The last stuff I bought was for my Aunt Marilynn's birthday on 02-02-2002, so time to buy more. Great.

I wandered to the cosmetics section of my local Safeway. Yes, that's me: the big spender on women's cosmetics. Only the good stuff for me (i.e. the $1.49 eyeliner, on sale!). As I stood there, in front of the small, yet seemingly vast, array of cosmetic choices, I felt ten years old again, looking at all the pretty colors. I remembered thinking how I wanted to have one of each, because I couldn't choose just one or two, how about all of them?

It's a sad, sad sight, when a woman my age (or any woman over 22, for that matter) has no clue what her colors are, what the various products are, or how to use them. How the heck do I apply blush? What's the current style? Match my skin color? Highlight my checkbones or enhance the hollows? There are no directions on these products. What the heck do I do with this stuff?

Sigh.