Chaos Unleashed (the canine version)

So this past weekend I had the enviable pleasure of hosting Lola, Miss Lee and Music Man's beloved miniature dachshund.  She arrived on Friday and stayed through Sunday evening. 

You all know my household is stuffed full of pets and you would think that adding an extra eleven pounds of fur wouldn't be that big of a shift in chaos.  Oh but you would be so wrong.  There's a lot of chaos packed in Lola's little body.

For example, here is Nora, our decently sized mutt being followed by Lola...

Nora has about a five to one size advantage over Lola.  Evidently she is not aware of this as she is terrified of Lola.  This is the closest Lola managed to get to Nora.  Usually what happened is that Nora would see her coming and get up and move away.  Several times she got cornered and would leap over whatever was around to avoid having Lola actually touch her.  This included toys, instruments and other animals. 

Izzy actually wanted to "play" with Lola but I stopped that in it's tracks.  Izzy likes to poke things into running so she can chase them down.  Her prey drive is just a tad bit developed for leisurely play dates with small, furry animals (including dachshunds apparently).  They did lay together nicely in the house, but outdoors all bets were off.  Lola seemed to realize this and would generally stick close to me when we were all outside together.

The cats however were a totally different game for Lola.  Oh my goodness the cats. 

The first thing that happened on Friday when Lola arrived is that Tiberius wanted to come see the new guest.  Ti is a very good host and greets everyone that comes through the front door.  He's very outgoing and very much a busybody.  So he was about five feet from the kennel when I opened the door.  Apparently in the short time that she was in the house prior to me opening the gate, Lola noted and locked on to the this new creature.  As soon as the door was open, she BURST! out of the kennel and straight for the cat.  Tiberius, he of the even temperament and generally lazy demeanor, didn't know what to do with this flying furball but instinct kicked in and he started to run.  Only, not really run.

I'm not sure if he was just confused, didn't really care or was really just too lazy to run full speed but he was more loping than running.  He went around the table, around the couch, into other rooms and back again.  The problem was that Lola could fit in all the places that are generally considered "safe" because our two dogs are too big to fit.  So Ti would come loping out from behind the couch looking slightly puzzled and right behind him would be Lola, looking absolutely ecstatic.  Around and around they went, Ti looking progressively more "what the hell?" and Lola grinning behind him, ears flying in the wind and tongue hanging out.  Eventually I was able to safely corral Lola and pick her up.  Tiberius stopped, looked at us with disgust and walked away.

But from that moment on, Lola's sole purpose in life was to find (and hopefully chase!) the cats.

The biggest issue is that Lola is still a baby, she just turned one, so her hunting skills are less than stellar.  Case in point:  here is Lola searching for the Antagonizer in Master J's messy room...

As you can see, the cat is about two feet away, in plain sight, but Lola can't seem to find her.  It took her a solid three minutes to figure out where the cat was.  And then this happened...

Even closer...

I gotta give the Antagonizer credit for putting up with this invasion of personal space and not panicking.  As obnoxious as she generally is, she's very good natured for the most part.

As for Finnegan,

well let's just say he spent his time praying that Lola wouldn't notice him.

Why I don't have a Twitter account

I've thought recently about starting up a Twitter account but decided it probably isn't for me. Mostly I just want to be able to read the tweets of some people out there who regularly tweet something amusing and as far as I can tell I can't follow their feed without my own account. I suspect if I had an account it would be filled with the following:

First cup of coffee of the day, thank god for caffeine.

Hubby removed the ads from my newspaper, now I can't read it at all. Fairly convinced the stories have all been compromised.

More coffee.

Dog just threw up rocks on the carpet. Again.

Third cup of coffee, finally starting to feel human.

If a terrorist ever tries disguising themselves as a suburban mom with a stroller, our dogs have us covered. Shut up already you idiots!

Where are my shoes?

Dropping the child off at school shouldn't be a contact sport. Just sayin'.

Blech! Mouthful of cold coffee!

No seriously, where are my shoes?

Deli ladies know me by name but still can't remember that I never want a sample. Thanks but I'm pretending that I eat nothing but health food while out in public.

Favorite part of the day, hanging out on the patio with my coffee. Ahhhhh! Blissful peace!

Huh, it's 4:00 and I forgot to thaw something for dinner. Again.

Who left the coffee pot with a tablespoon of coffee and some grounds in it? The hell?

Child is in bed and hubby is sleeping in his chair. Must be 8:00 pm.

9:00 pm. Time for one more cup of coffee and then setting up the coffee-maker to run first thing in the morning.

It's 2:30 in the morning and I've determined that I need to quit drinking so much coffee all day.

Ta-Da!

I'm waiting for delivery of one more item for Mister C, but otherwise, I've been done with my Christmas preparations for a few days now. Lucky for me, Mamoo has graciously offered to have the family celebration at her house this year so I don't even have to worry about cooking. So the next few days are panning out to be somewhat relaxing. We are flying up to Fargo on Saturday to spend a few days with Mister C's side of the family but I'm not even really concerned about that because those gifts got wrapped and sent almost two weeks ago. Woo-hoo! Look at me go! Which brings me to the title of this post.

So for years I've had a love/hate relationship with to-do lists. On the one hand I think they serve a purpose in keeping me on track with what needs to get done. On the other hand, I struggle with the whole negative side of seeing everything I didn't get done still sitting on the list, taunting me. Telling me I'm such a loser because look, I can't even wrap up a list of things to do. I'm not as bad as SOME people (cough*Mister C*cough) that used to rewrite their list every night, removing the things they had done. I think that's ten times more negative than having a list with at least some things crossed off. To wake up every day with a long list of shit to do, I'm just not wired that way.

So I decided I needed a new way of doing things. And thus was born the "Ta-Da List". Instead of a list of things I need to do, I only jot down the things I actually did today. It's really quite simple and so much more positive. I wake up to a blank sheet of (iPhone notes) paper and I get to fill it with things as I accomplish them. At the end of day, instead of a crossed out sheet of paper (or worse, a brand new list of things to do) I can look over my list and see what I accomplished. The genius of this method is that I want to fill the blank page. So if I've gone a ways through my day and it's looking a little sparse, I actively look for something to do. There's always something that could use cleaning or doing around here.

So, is everything on my Ta-Da List a huge accomplishment? Nope. And that's okay. Because not everything on a traditional to-do list is either. And sometimes you just need to take credit for doing something, even if it was totally simple. So, sent out all of the Christmas cards? Ta-Da! Wiped out the microwave and took out the composting? Ta-Da! Dropped off books and videos to two different libaries? Ta-Da! (And I didn't even have to get out of the car for that one.) Wrote a post about my new Ta-Da List? Ta. Da.

Playing with iLife 11

Mister C just added iLife 11 to my laptop. It included lots of new features for iPhoto which I think are pretty fun. So far I've only played around with making cards and themed postcards to send to friends.

Like so...



It took me just a few minutes to pull together those photos and arrange them on the cork-board background and send it to my friend A. She suggested I throw it out here so all (3) of my readers could see what fun I was having (also, what a moron I have for a cat.) I'm thinking pretty heavily about using this to put together our Christmas cards as well. We'll see how motivated I am.

Anyway, this is just the tip of the iceberg for what you can do with this stuff. I wish I was getting paid to say I love my Mac because it would totally be true. And that would be on a normal day. The folks over at Apple have done a superb job with this newest setup which includes iPhoto, the thing I use the most.

They've also added some really cool things to iMovie, including the ability to make a "trailer" of your movies. It's pretty awesome. We don't have very many videos, I always had the regular camera in my hands so recording was left up to Mister C. But I might be able to throw a few things together from what we do have. I'll have to work on that. I wish I had more now. Also, it should be noted that in the big podcast Apple did where they show how to make the trailers, their home video footage was of a different caliber than mine. It's pretty easy to make a rafting trip with friends or a tour of Europe look cool. A little more work is required to make the family dinner at Christmas come across as exotic and exciting. Just sayin'.

The upgrades to GarageBand don't make me smile as much. Mostly it looks like they've added the ability to edit your recordings to the point where if you're a sucky musician, you'll sound good. Which is great. Until you have to play without your pre-recorded and fixed up session. I'm way too much of a music purist to put up with that. I say practice until you're awesome, then get a recording. Don't make your crappy recording sound good, that's just lame.

Anyway, cool software that's a lot of fun to play around with.