Poor Gracie & Photo challenge: Ground

This is a pretty typical shot of our ground (floor) in our family room. Ugly plaid carpet with a few.toys sprinkled around. In this case, one of Tyler's stompie crocodile slippers, AJ's beads, Easter bunny, stuffed monster, and his feeble toy and way in the back, Banana, a monkey Aunt G (Twin) brought Tyler from Costa Rica. We are constantly picking up toys!

In other news, we had to take Gracie to the vet today. She has a lump under her eye. We were pretty worried but "luckily" it's just an abscessed tooth. She has a round of anti-inflammatory and antibiotics and then back to the vet in a few weeks to have the tooth pulled. Yuck. Poor Gracie. And poor bank account :-/
Well Gracie has had her meds and some apologetic scrambled eggs made by me, so off to play with AJ, since he has knocked all his toys on the floor now! Day two of level two of the shred later!

Blog Challenge Day 5: Pets

Do I have any pets?

Sigh.  Yes, yes I do.

I'll start at the beginning.  In the summer of 2000, right after I graduated from high school, a stray cat wandered into the yard of my parent's house.  I was a huge softie when it came to cats, so I befriended the little female kitty with the pretty tortoise shell coat.  Before long, it was clear she planned to hang around for a bit.  I called her Autumn, since her fur reminded me of the season.  She was extremely friendly.  After a few days, we started to suspect she might be pregnant.  We were right and she ended up having four kittens on our front porch!  Two white ones (one with a black spot on her head, the other the tiny runt of the litter), a black one, and an orange striped one.  No one could resist them and eventually they had names and a permanent residence with us. The larger white cat was dubbed "Dot" because of her little black dot, which eventually disappeared, but was later replaced by a black freckle on her nose.  The tiny white cat, we named "Little Bit".  She is still a little bit, incidentally.  The black cat we called Salem and the orange one, the largest was Tigger.  All of them stayed at my parents house until Adam and I bought our condo, at which point Dot, who had established herself as mine, came to live with us.

Pet #1:  Dot, feline (note the question mark tail)

After a while, we decided Dot needed a friend.  My husband's sister's cat just happened to be pregnant.  Her litter only produced one kitten, a white and gray kitten we adopted and named Tippy.

Pet #2: Tippy, feline (picture doesn't do justice to her chub)

Side note:  Dot and Tippy did NOT become friends

 Some time later, my parents and older sister ended up living with us for awhile, along with my mom's three cats (The mother cat, Autumn had been adopted by one of Twin's friends, where she happily remained for the rest of her kitty life) and my sister's dog Misty.  We lived in an apartment style condo at the time and we would walk down to the "Dog Run" around the corner so Misty could be loose and run.  Our neighbor had a small poodle named Boo and we would all chat while the dogs played.  Adam and I liked it so much that when Michelle moved out, taking Misty with her, we found ourselves missing the experience.  The fall, I was in a funk.  I'd graduated college with a degree I didn't want (long story).  I'd gone back to school only to find I couldn't afford it, so that was a bust.  I'd been considering asking if my job could become a full time position when they decided just that.  However, instead of offering me the full time spot, the hired someone else and let me go.  I was bummed out and one night somehow Adam and I decided that a way to cheer ourselves up was to get a puppy!  We browsed the newpaper to see what was available.  I pointed out an ad for beagle puppies.  Adam couldn't think what a beagle looked like, so I googled it and showed him a picture of a beagle puppy and he fell in love.  Thus, Gracie came into the family.

Pet #3: Gracie, canine (beagle)

Bonus photo: Gracie with tongue action

Even later, my sister was literally followed to school one day (where she was working as a teacher) by a small black cat.  He hung around awhile so eventually she took him home.  However, she'd been looking into getting a second dog and when the opportunity arose, since she could only have two pets and I was smitten with the cat, we brought him home and named him Dobby, the housecat.

Pet #4: Dobby, feline (aka Doobie, because he acts like he is on something)

In the summer of 2007, Adam and I bought our first house.  My parents had just recently divorced and we had invited my mom to come and live with us.

My mom and her three cats, the kittens from Dot's litter.  Over the last few years, we have sadly seen the loss of Tigger and Salem, which leaves us with Little Bit.

Pet #5: Little Bit, feline (yes, I woke her up to take this picture)

That's it though!  Aside from our friendly rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks and birds that remain OUTSIDE, those are the pets I plan to have for awhile!

This is part of a June blog challenge started by Mommy Someday at Waiting for Baby. Pop over there and join in so I can learn these things about you! 

Our trial baby

My husband and I don’t have kids yet. But we are having something of a trial run. That came in the form of our beagle, Gracie. About a year and half ago, I was pretty down. I had lost a job, my parents were living with my husband and I in our two bedroom apartment style condo, and I was trying to decide whether I should keep going to college or drop out and find a full time job. I needed something good to happen in a bad way. So I got it in my head that I wanted a dog. My older sister had been living with us too, with her dog Misty. I had a lot of fun walking Misty and taking her to the fenced dog park down the street, hanging out with the neighborhood dogs. I liked the companionship and affection you get from a dog. And I’d never had a dog of my own. We had them growing up, but they were primarily one of my sister’s or my parents. I had cats, but cats are affectionate on their terms. Dogs love unconditionally. So when my husband got home from work, I started in on him. At first, he resisted, but it didn’t take too much before he relented. So we got out the paper and looked at the ads. We vetoed a few larger breeds—we both agreed we wanted a small dog. Eventually I pointed to an ad for beagle puppies for sale for $90. Adam asked what a beagle looked like, so I pulled up a picture of a beagle pup on the computer. That was all it took. Moments later I was on the phone to the owner, who told me that there were several girl pups and one boy left. Their home was about an hour from my house. But I couldn’t wait until the weekend, so Adam and I had a hasty dinner and got into the car to choose a new member of our family.

It was already getting dark when we got to the little house in a rural area. We knocked on the door and introduced ourselves to the middle aged couple, who led us to the back yard to see the pups. Adam and I knelt on the patio and let the puppies play and explore. There was one that would come up to us, play for a minute, wander away and find her way back again minutes later. She was a tiny thing, tri-colored with brown trimmed black ears and a cold black nose taking up most of the space on her small head. She was playful, but cuddled close too. We looked at each other, knowing that she had chosen us. We paid the couple and got back in the car. The little pup didn’t like the ride at first and she whined a little in my lap. Eventually I zipped her up into my jacket and she settled down to sleep.

Since then, Gracie has become our baby. From midnight potty runs (we don’t have a yard, so my husband has to walk her in the middle of the night) to ruined carpet from frequent puppy accidents, we have learned the responsibilities that we’ll need as parents. We even upgraded to a king sized bed to accommodate her—she’s still small, but she can stretch out pretty far!

Gracie is a total joy. She is sweet and funny and fiercely determined. She can run with the big dogs and hold her own, though she is skittish at first. She’s very smart, learning commands and words much like a toddler does. She has learned to sit and to speak (which for her means that trademark half bark/half howl). She knows some of her toys, including a stuffed hamburger, by name and can fetch them from anywhere in the house on command. She has learned that there are ways to get what she wants too. She learned to jump onto our hips to get to a toy we were holding out of reach. She’s also and award winning mootch—she loves people food. Her best friends include my sister’s dogs Misty and Honey, our neighbor Pat’s toy poodle, Boo, and our cats, especially our all black cat Dobby. Dobby and Gracie wrestle and play fight, leading us to coin the phrase, “Gracie’s munching on the kitty”.

I’ve been told that once you have a baby, you dog goes back to being just a dog. I don’t believe that. Gracie will always be my first baby.