Skippy is the junk in the trunk.
Time Magazine’s is one of the blogs I read regularly. Lisa Takeuchi Cullen writes about the workplace and right now she’s using her platform to document her role as a new mom.
There are a few other workplace blogs that I lurve, as likes to say, like Marci Alboher’s on nytimes.com and the Wall Street Journal’s but Ms. Takeuchi Cullen’s blog is probably my favorite.
Anyway, her today really hit home for me. It details the nightmare of certificates and forms I will one day face if we want our kids to have U.S.-Japanese citizenship. So far I have been lucky when dealing with Japan’s bureaucracy. My mom helped me get an international driver’s license 10 years ago, and both she and my dad completed the forms for my Japanese passport renewal this past spring.
There is no worse feeling in life than getting to the counter after a long wait on line and having the person behind the glass tell you that you are missing a form, or a signature, or completed something incorrectly. Doesn’t matter if it’s the post office, the DMV or the Social Security office. If I want to avoid this frustration with the Japanese consulate, I better start working on those citizenship forms now.
Hey! Don't be all up in my grill, bitch!
Some days, the early morning snuggle time gets a little rough. For Sammy Sanchez and Lola, that is.
Sammy and Lola take a walk together in Vermont.
We had such a fun weekend in New England celebrating our friends’ wedding. But the best part was spending time with the dogs out in the fields of Northampton, MA and Stowe, VT. As we drove up Route 91 we made a stop at one of the first rest stops in Vermont and let the dogs run around in the wooded area. They had so many adventures in the short time we were there. Lola chased after a phantom squirrel, Sammy went head-to-head with a fuzzy yellow caterpillar, and he also sniffed a big, white mushroom. They both took bathroom breaks, too, which leaves all of us with a satisfied feeling.
The dog days of summer.
We recently discovered something new and fun about Sammy and Lola: they like to swim! Well, that might be an exaggeration. They don’t mind the water is more accurate.
On a walk to Prospect Park one hot and muggy afternoon this week, Sammy and Lola dipped their paws into the water at the . This led to Lola playing fetch in the water and Sammy following close behind.
The following day, Sammy was more intrepid and stepped further into the water. You can see in the photo that he’s pretty far in!
Over the long holiday weekend, we took a walk over to the at Grand Army Plaza in Park Slope. It was our first time back at the market in nearly two years. We walked around from stand to stand feeling overwhelmed by the busy crowds and a little bit in awe of the bounty of foods, like kids in a candy store. We ended up spending nearly all of the cash we had in our pockets, but we had a few dollars left and stopped at a stand selling organic meats after seeing a sign for dog bones.
Sammy commandeers the big meat bone.
The man who helped us said that uncooked meat bones are very good for dogs, as he picked through a cooler full of what looked like props from a horror movie. We ended up buying a small bone for Sammy and a larger bone for Lola that looked like a knee joint. We barely walked two minutes after our purchase when we decided to treat the dogs right then and there. We set the bones on the grass and Sammy and Lo went to town. It was if they hadn’t seen food in days! It gave us so much joy to watch them gnaw on the treats.
It’s too bad that the bones can be a little messy. I would prefer to give Sammy a big bone instead of forcing him to wear a barking collar.
Since we moved last week into our new apartment, we decided to get Sammy Sanchez to stop using the wee-wee pads. Well, actually, it wasn’t my decision but I agreed that it would be a good thing to do.
The reason why I like to use wee-wee pads for Sammy is that he drinks a lot of water during the day. He drinks and drinks and drinks, especially on hot days. It’s cruel to make him hold in his pee for as long as Lola. What can you do? He’s a small dog and has a tiny bladder! So shouldn’t we give him a wee-wee pad so he can relieve himself when necessary?
Sammy watches Lola pee.
Instead, we’ve increased the number of daily walks and are now taking him outside at least three or four times a day, at about five hour intervals. There are many benefits to this new routine, the biggest one being that we don’t have to create a space in the new apartment for Sammy’s bathroom, visible to all to experience. We are also teaching Sammy to behave like a big boy and I guess that discipline will extend into other areas of his personality.
So far this experiment is going very well. Sammy has been doing great and hasn’t had any accidents. Like Lola, he waits to go to the bathroom when we get outside. A few times, he peed the first chance he got and I really felt for him. I also noticed a few times when he was wandering around in the morning looking for his wee-wee pad. Still, he held it and didn’t make an accident.
Despite his heroic success I remain apprehensive about Sammy not having a wee-wee pad around. But maybe it’s because I need to grow up a little bit, too, and learn to let go of the wee-wee pad. If Sammy can do it, I suppose I can, too.
Happy birthday Sammy Sanchez!
Today is Sammy Sanchez’s birthday! He turns three today. I’m not sure what that equals in dog years, but by his personality I would say that he is at a combo stage of the Terrible Twos and early Tweens. He is the male diva in our family.
We adopted Sammy from a breeder in Ottawa after seeing his photo online hearing about his personality. We probably should have waited a few months after Morris died before even thinking about getting another dog, but I couldn’t bear the idea of being without Morris and needed a new buddy. Sammy was and is so different from Morris. His brash personality and playfulness helped our hearts heal. I still think of Morris every day but Sammy fills me with so much love and wet kisses. Here is a picture of Sammy taken today in our new (old) neighborhood.
