We had a very sweet house cleaner come by this morning to give us an estimate.  Good news/ bad news: she got here at 8:30 while I was still in bed and Joey was in his pj’s.  Oops.  At least the house looked like it normally does and I won’t feel bad that we duped her.
The estimate is what I expected: $120 per session, two sessions to start, then bi-weekly or monthly thereafter.  She has dogs, likes dogs, doesn’t mind dogs – these are good things with our three dumbos running around trying to get her attention.  She seemed nice, is fully bonded, and my husband didn’t lose his mind over the prospect of strangers in our home.
So I’m wrestling with the idea.  Seriously wrestling. 
On the one hand, that’salottamoney.  On the other, we spend that much at Walmart. On things we ultimately use and throw away. {Don’t get me started on the ridiculousness that is paper towels.} 
On the one hand, that’salottamoney.  On the other, we just had the “I do EVERYTHING AROUND HERE” spat this morning.  {In my defense, not true.  In his defense, totally true if you look at the hours between 7:00 am and 9:00 am.}
On the one hand, that’salottamoney.  On the other, the calmest and most serene periods of my existence have correlated to having someone clean my house.  It makes me happy.  It reduces stress.  It makes husbands not resent wives so much for their messy, messy way.
On the last hand, that’salottamoney.  On the other, we used to pay that much in cable. Or credit card payments. Or motorcycle payments. Or eating out. Or bounced check fees (yes, I suck).
Remind me again that I said this would be well worth the cost if it supported my marriage?  What would you do?

Update: I did it.  My husband has to do everything around here because I’m either working or gone.  If the situation was reversed, I’d hope he’d do the same for me.

I think it’s funny that the “nesting” instinct brings to mind the one animal we don’t seem to have!

I’ve been home for two weeks straight (yay!) and have been very, very, oh, so very busy… so of course I’m dying to clean up my trashed home office.  Anyone else only feel the need to clean as a form of procrastination?

{Tangent: apparently procrastination is a personality trait for those of us who are ENFP’s.  I know this because I read an eerily accurate portrait of myself in Do What You Are: Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type’>this book while hanging at B&N over the weekend.}

But I don’t have time to procrastinate, so things are actually getting done.  Woo, hoo.  And while I was on an interminable call surfing the net paying close attention, I realized that I want this:

Both from Making It Lovely

Okay, not the baby (yet), but the warm, comfy, girly rooms.  In fact, every day I hold back from moving our Saarinen dining table into my office.  And while my Tulip chair isn’t a rocker, it would be great in here.

Since my home office doubles as my sewing room, I think I’ll use her studio as a functional guide but the living room colors for overall feel.  The walls in here are the same color are her curtains (hence the ‘A, ha!” moment) so I think if I switch it up, I’ll get the same feeling. 

Can’t wait to get a free moment so I can make a cover for my icy cold office chair in bright pink polka dots!

Who knew I’d be so fired up about something so unapologetically girly? 

I’m home.  As of this minute, I’ve decided I’m never leaving one day on a 6:00 am flight and returning the next day after midnight.  That might change in the next minute – because I get an extra night at home – but yowza, rough on a woman’s attitude, let me tell you.

I thought I’d be home next week, but no, not anymore.  Not only am I not home, I’m hitting two cities in two days: Indianapolis Thursday and Seattle Friday. Is that even possible?  I don’t know. 

I knew this new gig would require some travel, but not much travel.  And I haven’t even officially started it yet.

So again, I come back to: how does one maintain a happy marriage while on the road so much?  And again, I come back to: outsourcing.

Once upon a time, I moved in with a very clean and neat man (not this one!).  He liked his things just so, while I was (and still am) much more a tornado of stuff.  When discussing chores, we amiably divided them up… then I hired someone to do my half.  See, he felt strongly that cleaning should never be outsourced, that he’d never be happy, that he needed to do it with his own two hands.

Fantastic.  Not me.  I suck at cleaning.  So I paid someone, and eventually we paid someone, and all was well. 

Ten years and many, many raises later, you’d think I’d have figured this out, but no, I still keep trying to appease the cheap-ass in me by trying to do my own cleaning.  And this time, my husband is just as messy as I am, just as frustrated by the mess.

So I’m throwing in the towel and calling in help.  Last night, on my last flight home, my stomach started churning at the thought of being home for a few days because I knew we’d be frustrated by the mess.  It’s okay to deal when you have the luxury of time, but I’m taking 6:00 am flights in order to be able to spend an evening with my husband.  NOT CLEANING.

I keep counting the dollars in my head, wondering what else we should be spending them on, but I come back to: this is no way to live.  We, individually and collectively, are pigs.  We, individually and collectively, are stressed out by our pigness.  We, individually and collectively, have tried valiantly to be cleaner and neater and more in control.

We, individually and collectively, give up. 

And when I think about the money that could be spent elsewhere, I remind myself of the honest-to-gawd joy on the face of our house cleaner last year when she surveyed her work.  We’d hired her to clean in advance of our wedding and it was a Big Job.  Four hours later, she smiled. 

“It makes me so happy to know that you’ll be so much happier relaxing in your clean house.”

People, it’s like I’m spending the money to make her happy, you know?

You know how some people decide they’re going to do something, and then they do it?

Not around here.  Nope.  We still have the bonus house down the street, and while it is (mostly) plumbed, it is not (completely) plumbed.  The outside still looks crappy and trashy, the inside says “storage facility” more than “lovely home” and the window trim still isn’t finished.

We blame the holidays, the cold, and our general unwillingness to make progress in favor of laying around and enjoying our weekends.

But a girl can dream, especially when that’s about all she’s comfortable committing to.

And so, here we are.  Our actual residence needs a fence because our bonus animal sucks.  Yes, we still have the bonus dog.  Yes, we’re still looking for a home.  Yes, you can absolutely have him, and in fact, I will lovingly wrap his breakables with bubble wrap and send him right over! (Name the movie.)

Indiana Jones and his beautiful broken heart goes out the front door, does his business, sniffs some things and checks the perimeter, then trots happily back to the front door for his treat.

The others, not so much.  Beau used to be a good dog, but weeks of being cooped up inside and the shenanigans of a run-like-hell bonus dog mean that Beau has found the love of the road, of the wind in his hair, of the owners driving up in an SUV to chauffeur his naughty ass home.

We need a fence.  I was out of town last week and when I came home, my husband’s third sentence was, “we need a fence.”  (First, “Hi, honey!” Then, “I’m glad you’re home!”  A man can learn, yes he can.)

We have a crappy temporary fence out back but the area enclosed is too small for running so the dogs just sit at the back door looking pathetic.  It’s like a glorified dog litter box, so we don’t even bother anymore.

I did research, and I fell in love with these (of course, no links because even after blogging for 18 months, it still never occurs to me that I might want to show images I clip to anyone, so I never grab the source info):

The one above is from HGTV’s website.

The one above is from Home Depot’s website.

 

Evidently I love strong horizontal lines and nice clean edges.  The thing is, I don’t want a privacy fence.  In fact, I’ve struggled against the idea of blocking off the view to the street all along.

We like our neighbors!  In the spring and fall, they walk by with their dogs or babies and we stand in the driveway and chat (because sitting on the porch would be just too quaint, I guess).  We glance out the window to check on our elderly across-the-street neighbors, walk out into the street to wave hello at our caddy-corner neighbors, shout our apologies to the other neighbors (they of the yard the dogs run through when they go for a joy run).

I wonder if you can skip slats on the horizontal basket-weave fence and still have it work (as in, not fall down, not sag, not look stupid).  Anybody happen to know?  And can those of you with design eyes tell me if a horizontal fence would look stupid in front of our house?

{Yes, that tree was just seconds from tumbling down, down, down onto our front lawn.  It was pretty awesome.}

We still have no idea where the fence will actually go.  He wants to fence in the left side and back only; I want to fence in more so we can use the whole yard and still hang out with the dogs.  Either way, it will only be four feet tall.

And can someone tell my husband that the window pane-ness of the garage doors is really ugly and only serves to emphasize their age and out-datedness?  I painted them that dark blue from a lovely (ugg) seafoam-ish green but lost the battle over painting them a solid.  Just goes to show you how far we’ve come in our relationship: today, I’d paint them like I wanted them to and if he didn’t like it, he could repaint them.

 

I tore out the wonky picture frame thing around the fireplace.  It was solid wood – mahogany.  Doesn’t make it any less ugly, though.  And the stuff around the fireplace?  Two solid slabs of crab orchard stone.  My first thought was that I was right, it was solid slabs of stone.  My second thought was, crap, now I can’t, in good conscience, paint it.

But I did paint the wall and bookshelf (note: the wood shelves are permanently attached in some crazy godforsaken way).

While the first coat dries, I’m off to play at Benjamin Moore.  Any suggestions for a (free) software program that’ll let me mess with the proportions of the fireplace?  I think it needs a tall mantle.  And while I’d love to not trim it out, there’s a gap between the stone and the plaster.  Yes, plaster.  Not drywall, like in normal homes.

More tomorrow.  Smoochies for all the suggestions.  I’m not NOT painting that wall something other than white, but I have white so I’m painting it white for now.

Update: the second coat on the first third of the second wall is now complete.   Valspar’s Ultra Premium Ultra White in Eggshell is nice.  I still think I prefer Glidden, but we were at Lowe’s so I went with it.  Because it’s so thick, one gallon only covered one half of the loooong hallway and one third of this wall, which is a bummer, but I’ll stick with it… since I have no choice now (ever tried to match whites? DON’T).

First-world kind of “rough,” yes – or more precisely, “cushy first-world in the suburbs with a good job and relatively minor problems” kind of rough, but rough nonetheless.

God, how I suck at deciding.  You have no idea.  Proudly, I have a handful of coping mechanisms – asking the server to choose my meal, asking my husband to choose the paint, avoiding decisions as long as possible – but I still often end up frozen in indecision.  I’m one of those consumers that needs a sale or a coupon or a friend to push me into buying something.  I can’t shop alone.

New coping mechanism: asking blog readers for input!

I can’t decide what to do with the stupid fireplace wall, and I’m determined to do SOMETHING with it before Thanksgiving.  Yes, in two days (eek)!  I’ve painted it gray, blue, white, smoke (seriously, looked like a smoker hacked up onto the walls) and I’m three minutes away from going back to white.

Oh!  I forgot about the chalkboard paint.  Behold:

Yea, ew.  It was fun for Halloween, but the contrast-y drama I was going for didn’t happen.

I like contrast.  I like drama.  I love that Tulip chair.  I half-love the bench (which needs some lovin’, I see).  The brown couch stays because it’s indestructible.  The big black coffee table and ginormous TV stay because, well, all I can handle right now is paint.

I like Morgan’s place (who doesn’t?) but she doesn’t have original wood trim or badly proportioned fireplaces.  Oh!  Maybe the fireplace needs a more vertical mantle?

I like Kitka Design’s place (again, who doesn’t?… and again with the lack of wood trim and ugly fireplace):

And I like these (oh, forgive me, I have no sources, so if they’re yours, speak up and I will credit… *gulp*):

 

I think the one below is my favorite of the bunch, though it’s also the least like mine.  And it needs more yellow, or orange, or red, or turquoise, or SOMETHING to give it more life.  But I love it, still.

So I spent way too much time (correction: am spending) on Benjamin Moore’s website playing with paint colors, and now I need your help.

Just FYI, the hallway, previously a barely-almost-mint green (ew) is now white.  Ultra-white, which I’m now freaking out about, because I could have gone with normal white but then at the last minute I couldn’t decide so I made Joey choose, and he (being a man) could have cared less and arbitrarily chose Ultra White… *deep breaths.* 

See what I mean about the freaking out?

So, easy option A:

Oh, I covered the fireplace grate with some random flesh color and now I don’t recall why.  Please ignore.

Option B, which would require me to paint the other two walls something other than blue, which would then necessitate replacing of the curtains, which are a dirty cream color and would not at all work with bright white walls:

 

{Benjamin Moore’s Instinct from the Affinity line = $$}  The theory here is that with a soft gray-blue, the redness and ruddiness of the fireplace isn’t as ugly.  I’m chickening out about painting it (more on that later).

Option C (requiring the same stuff as option B, but I’m willing if it means I don’t have to paint this room again):

{Benjamin Moore’s Metropolitan}

Option D:

{Benjamin Moore’s Eternity}

The grays look great on screen but concern me, since we’ve already painted gray and then figured out the gray was contributing to many “blah, blah, I just wanna sleep” kind of days.

Liz suggested painting the fireplace all black, which freaks me the hell out, frankly, but here’s what it looks like:

Crap, I hate that fireplace.  The proportions are off, or the bookshelves are off, or something.  ARGH!  Seriously, I think I’m going to just paint the walls white and leave the fireplace alone.  It’ll look just like it did when we first moved in, except less “old.”  {Cue the freaking out about the Ultra Freaking White.}

Oh, how I hate coming full circle.

Thoughts?  (Other than: drink wine; it’s five o’ clock somewhere.  Don’t think I haven’t thought that already.)

Remember this guy?

He looks like this now!

 

   

Lamp Shady!

Now he needs a home!

We went to Sears to get a doodad for my quilting project and decided to wander around the appliance department.  Big mistake.  Within minutes, my husband found the biggest, priciest, most tricked out refrigerator in the place and was in love.  Deep, deep in love.  He actually impressed me – kinda – with his ability to spot the most expensive appliance in the place, then try to convince me that we really need the semi-pro gas range with cast iron grill pan, or the convection microwave with removable tray and super exhaust fan, or the Jenn Air convection wall oven.  Evidently we need $12,000 in appliances.

This from a man who cooks frozen pizzas and tacos.  Exclusively.

Oh, lordy, shopping for appliances is going to be fun!  (Ahem, not.  My cheap-ass cringes at the thought of a full priced “semi-pro” anything.  Marketing, blah.)

But we did end up talking about kids, something we do quite often lately.  And that got me thinking about all the things I never would have guessed grown-ups could do, which is a roundabout way of saying I don’t think we’re really grown-ups yet.

Things I Didn’t Know Grown-Ups (Still) Did:

Dry off after a shower with a t-shirt because nobody remembered to put towels in the dryer.

Stick the trash can in a closet because they just don’t feel like taking it outside right now.

Leave piles of clothes on the floor in the bathroom long enough that the cats start to nest (it takes three days, by the way).

Find scraps of wood, dog bones, rawhide, and a random sock hidden carefully within the covers of their bed… then climb in and go to sleep anyway.

Wear two different socks because a) they’re clean, b) they’re available, and c) they’re wearing boots anyway.  Same deal with swimsuit bottoms as underwear.

Forget when they last washed their hair.

Drop food on the floor and let the dog(s) lick it up; it’s easier to clean up that way.

Search high and low for their keys, then find them in the door/ on the porch/ in the shower.

Drink beverages exclusively for their caffeine or alcohol content.  Exclusively.

Find a strange kind of satisfaction in sweeping up piles of animal fur so large, the cats hiss at them.  (Note: this happens every two or three days.)

These are not things people with kids should do, especially kids who crawl on floors and lick tables and chew on random found objects.  When our favorite neighbor baby comes over, we hang out outside.  People, it’s safer and cleaner outside than inside!

I’m reminded of this post by Benjamin Wagner (although I suspect he prefers people to read his blog for the rock ‘n’ roll, I read it because of his divorced kid’s point of view on marriage):

Before I met Abbi (the first woman, it should be noted, with whom I’ve shared a roof), I did laundry only when I ran out of underwear. Before I met Abbi, I did the dishes only when I ran out of pint glasses. Before I met Abbi, I swept the floor only when I could see the crumbs.

It’s an interesting thing to be changing my behavior in an effort to be a better teammate. Given my druthers, I’d watch Nova or Frontline on DVR. Left to my own devices, I listening to NPR and blog.

But this marriage thing is my new reality, and calls upon me to step up my game. Accordingly, today I unloaded the dishwasher, took out the trash, ran three loads of laundry and washed the windows (and watched Frontline, and blogged). I don’t relish this new, hyper-vigilance. But I relish being considered a good partner, even if I do mope about it in only half-jest.

Though I must admit, the carpet sure does look nice. And it’s a real treat to be able to get into bed without wiping my feet.

What do you still do that you never thought grown-ups did?

I’m an ops girl.  That’s “operations,” or maybe “operational.”  When there’s a problem, I look for an operational solution.  Communication’s breaking down?  Show me your structure.  Need me to make a commitment on behalf of a program/ product/ team?  Let’s find an operating mechanism for assuring we follow through.

Other people look for people solutions.  My boss is one of them.  If there’s a problem, he will find the right person to deal with it. 

I’m trying to find a happy medium, because structures don’t allow for unexpectedly fabulous outcomes and people don’t always come through.

My husband and I are making progress on other other house, finally.  For months we avoided it because we weren’t sure how to frame in the windows we’d replaced, and then one day we just tried something and it worked.  Mostly.

We’d been estimating and planning and buying stuff in a waterfall way, meaning we’d take one experience and extrapolate it out to the others, and we’d assume that we could do all of one thing all at once for efficiency (painting, trim, demolition).  If this window took six hours and that many materials, five windows would take five times that, right?  If I paint the trim in one room, I’ll just do every room.

Two problems: 1) we didn’t have perfect knowledge, and 2) 35% complete on everything feels like crap.

Because we didn’t have perfect knowledge, we’d apply the same wrong technique or material or plan to five windows… and then be wrong five times more.  Theoretically we should have been more efficient, but in reality, where we were learning with every attempt, we just did a bunch of stuff that had to be undone.  Or returned, but of course we never got around to it, so I don’t even want to know how much we’ve spent on materials we haven’t used… never mind the ones that got lost and had to be purchased again.

Shoot me.

And the difference between 25% and 50% finished still feels UNFINISHED.  If we had to sell it in a week, we’d have a helluva lot of work to do, none of which is optional.  At one point, we might have skipped the decorative trim on the windows, but once it’s on half the windows, you have to either trim out the other half or remove the first half.

You still with me?

The waterfall method of project management – the one focused on efficiency gained from the benefits of expertise and practice and careful attention to detail – doesn’t work if you don’t have perfect knowledge from the beginning.  It doesn’t work when you’re DIY’ing, building software, or working on a relationship.

We need Agile.  I’m delving back into geekdom, I know, but I promise it’s applicable to life.  In Agile development, we don’t attempt to convince ourselves that we know everything at the beginning, or ever, really.  We figure out what we do know and want, prioritize the most important stuff, and commit to a short period of time.  Instead of laying out a schedule for the next six months, we accept that we’ll know more soon – and knowing more almost always leads to more work – so we’ll deal with it when we do.  For now, knowing what we do, we can do X, Y, and Z within a two-week period, then we’ll reassess.

Because we assume we don’t know everything, we only estimate relatively.  (This is bigger than that, this is smaller than that, this is the biggest.)  We check our estimates when we’re finished and start to measure our success in terms of improvement and velocity rather than efficiency.  (We did three mediums and a small last week.  We did four mediums and two smalls this week.)  The longer our teams work together, the greater our velocity, because we know each other better so less time is spent debating and communicating and more is spent on doing.

Tell me this isn’t like the first time you embark on a DIY anything with your sweetheart.  I dare you.

Thinking this way has been mind-blowing to me.  Remember, I think about efficiency in the shower.  I want meetings to be quick and to the point, which was great when I was a project manager and the goal was status, but not so great now that I’m a leader expected to create collaboration.  You can’t have efficiency AND a good relationship.  Maybe someday way in the future, but at the beginning, you have one or the other, and I was choosing the wrong one.

Which brings me back to Twister.  I’d been focusing on being efficient.  How quickly can we get through the game so we can get back to other things?  (Note: “other things” weren’t even that great, things like surfing the web and reading the news and wishing I was doing something interesting.)

What if, instead, I stopped trying to rush through the day to get to… what, leisure time?… and instead just did the next thing, then reassessed?  When I found the fastest way to shower, I spent the extra time doing nothing.  Efficiency got me time I then wasted: a metaphor for my life.

Slower is better if you get it right.  My husband thinks (and assesses and looks and thinks some more) when he does anything DIY.  Drives me nuts.  Start at one end and keep going, baby.  Those five minutes of staring between two minutes of working adds up, you know. 

It’s appropriate, but only sometimes.  I like to paint because it’s methodical and gives me thinking time.  I divide my brain time between doing it better (the efficiency mindset is pretty ingrained) and pondering other things.  I write blog posts in my head, think through work challenges, figure out how exactly to hold the brush so I get the most paint on the wall quickly.

But if it’s not painting, and we don’t know what we’re doing, endless conversations at the beginning aren’t as beneficial as doing a bit of planning, trying, and reassessing.

It’s like if my way and my husband’s had a baby: it would be a perfect balance of doing and thinking, planning and trying.

So I’m trying not to think too far ahead, seeing the benefits to just trying something, and only buying supplies to do one thing at a time.  And we’re having more fun playing Twister.

{Speaking of Agile: Jilian, what did you decide about the new job?}

~~~~~

I’m making a baby quilt.  I’ve never made a quilt before – never wanted to – but then I saw a fabulous modern quilt on Etsy and decided to try it myself.  Instead of country-ish patterns, mine has only horizontal strips of bright prints.  I’ll “quilt” vertical lines and call it good.

Also, my horoscope (which I read after I got all fired up about making a quilt) said this: “If you really want to be different, why not put your credit cards and your checkbook away, and breathe new life into a garment or accessory you already own? You’re always in the mood to shop — but are you ever in the mood to create something new? Instead of making more debt, why not explore ways to stabilize your financial future. Invest in some raw materials. You might end up with a profitable part-time business.”

Wanna see?  I started last night.  I’m making two, one for each of the baby boys in our neighborhood.  The fabric is soft flannel and I love the bright colors.  I’m hoping it’s “boy” enough even with the flowers in the middle.  Boys can like flowers!  They’re nature!

Remember to imagine stitching going in the opposite direction of the strips of fabric (with this image’s orientation, the stitching would be horizontal).

This the back/ underside… so soft (and such a pain to work with because it gets static-y fuzz everywhere)!

I haven’t decided if I’ll use the fuzzy green stuff as the edging or if I’ll actually use this blanket binding.  Opinions?

The materials will end up costing me about $20 for each one and will take about two hours to finish.  I’m thinking that if this goes well, I’ll make quilts for everyone for Christmas (don’t worry, little bro, yours will be more manly… and you can take it on picnics and use it to get girls).  If I get crazy with the follow-through, I might try to find a way to make labels with each person’s name and the year.

I just need to find a source for modern prints.  Let the web surfing begin!

I’ve been on the road for the past two weeks.  This is the first Monday I’ve had in my home office and I’m very much enjoying it.  So are the dogs.

All three of of them.

If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you’ll recall that we have two dogs. TWO.  Uno, dos.  TWO is a really nice number.

Except that for now, we have three.  THREE FREAKING DOGS and five (!) cats.   My husband is a saint for managing the brood while I’ve been out of town (and also the sucker that took in that third dog, but it’s one of the many reasons I love him to death).

On the very first day I was out of town, a little brown dog appeared on the front porch, a sweet little brown dog weighing about 35 pounds and sporting this:

No, it’s not an eyeball.  His eyeball is fine.  That is a tumor/ cyst/ growth hanging off his lower lid.  My husband, being male, has been fighting the urge to clip it off (don’t worry, he won’t) for weeks now.  We confirmed with our vet that it is, in fact, a tumor/ growth/ cyst thing and that it needs to come off surgically.

He’s very sweet, gets along fine with the other dogs, and thinks cats are the devil (which is fine by us… and Frank, who is pretty pumped about having new meat to terrorize).  He slept in our bed last night and didn’t move an inch for fear of having to leave (score!).

The tumor/ cyst/ growth thing doesn’t seem to bother him.  He shakes his head and wrestles with our dogs as if it wasn’t there.  We, on the other hand, live in constant fear that he’ll pull it off and spew blood everywhere.

One problem: he’s a Houdini.  He escapes our admittedly hastily thrown up back fence, so he can’t be outside on his own.  When he manages to escape through the front door off-leash, he cruises the neighborhood long enough for us to think he might have found his home, then promptly reappears.

Forgive the potty pic, please.  I wanted you to see his size.  He’s like a mini-Beau.

He’s neutered and well-behaved.  He goes into a crate happily and whines only minimally.  He is a super duper bath taker, sitting perfectly still and never trying to escape.  In short, he’s a much better-behaved dog than ours. He knows a few basic commands pretty well (Sit, Down, Wait) so someone cared for him.  Then again, he has calluses on his elbows and belly that imply he was sleeping on a hard surface for many hours.  I’m not sure that’s a big deal, but given the state of our dogs’ spoiled rotten-ness (they get a blanket AND the couch at night), my sweet husband thinks he wasn’t too well loved.

BUT WE’RE NOT KEEPING HIM.  I SWEAR.  We haven’t named him.  Well, I haven’t named him.  I didn’t realize that Joey had, thinking he was just referring to him as "the little dude.”  Then I discovered he meant, the little “Dude.”  As in, his name is Dude.

Uh, oh.

Seriously, though, we’re not keeping him.  Anyone interested in a really fantastic little dog?  Our vet thinks he’s 5 or 6 years old and he weighed 35 pounds last week.  We will pay for the surgery if someone will give him a home.  In the meantime, he seems pretty comfortable on our armchair.

But we’re not keeping him!