Hunting Weekend

This past weekend was Jody's annual squirrel hunting trip with Dan out in the great wild of Indiana. As usual, Mom and I spent the weekend together so as not to go completely bored from being home alone.

However, after four days of Muppets and Curious George, poor Mom got restless. For those of you that know our Dot well, this is not a surprise. I had left the house while Taylor was napping this past Sunday to catch my weekly disappointment of Cowboys football, and while I was out Mom got started on cleaning up our yard. Now, don't get me wrong, we mow and edge, but we have some majorly out of control flower beds. I just don't know what in the hell to do with them, plus we may have a bit of a cricket problem, and those little black creepy crawlies freak me out bad enough that I've really put off addressing the situation head on. Plus, the entire back side of our house was solidly covered in ivy, and though I knew it needed to be trimmed back, I just had no idea where to begin.

Enter Dot. By the time I got home she had cleared out a ridiculous amount of the ivy along with the flower bed by the back porch. By the end of the evening she had cleared out all of our yard woes, and made the house barely recognizable. I'm only sad that I didn't take before pictures so that you could see the difference a little elbow grease bade. Other than that, it was a pretty uneventful weekend, and I'm sad to report that the only pictures I have are from my cel phone, as I totally forgot to upload the pictures from her camera before she went home. Thanks again Mom for keeping us company and clearing our yard!

Holy smokes! You can see our brick on the back of the house now!

The "flower bed" you see below the window used to be as tall as the window itself.

And look! Our tree has a trunk again! Before, it looked like a bush.

Go Dot, go!

And as I had a 5 second moment with my back turned to marvel at Mom's work, Taylor decided to take her first forehead-skid down our concrete steps. Thankfully a popsicle works better than a Band-Aid.

Lovie and Taylor cleaning up the ivy.

The aftermath of just the back yard alone.

I Go Out Walking

The last few days were actually not hotter than the pits of hell here (sometimes the unholy heat does make me wonder if there is a correlation though), so I decided that it would be a great opportunity for Taylor and I to get out of the house and get some much needed exercise. I had Jody meet me at work with the Munkie and the stroller, and after much slathering of sunscreen over her little spud feet, we were off.

The first day she oohed and ahhed over the ducks, and pointed them out excitedly anytime one was within sighting distance. I on the other hand gripped the stroller tightly, and walked a little faster anytime we were in their areas, praying that the damn geese wouldn't attack me like some sick watered down children's version of "The Birds." Seriously, those bastards are mean, and I had one particularly large specimen waddle up to the sidewalk as we passed so that he could flap his wings and hiss at me.

Day two was a little different. For about five minutes Taylor was excited to point out the sights to me again, until we got about halfway around the park. I was paying more attention to the jerks that were about a hundred yards away with TWO pit bulls, that were not leashed, and how in the hell I was going to fight them off if they attacked, than to why my little one had suddenly gotten so quiet. After the threat of the dogs passed, I finally pulled my head out enough to check my kid and found her totally slumped down in the stroller, zonked out. Poor kid didn't even wake up when I took her out to put her in the carseat. But have no fear, she quickly perked right back up and began shrieking like a banshee once the AC kicked on and she realized we weren't outside anymore. So like any good mother I fished out a "toy" from my purse (see pic below), because I couldn't reach any of her actual toys that she had thrown in the floor.

Snoozin'

Poor thing was totally sacked out.

Yes, that's right, she has my TAMPON CASE in her hands (click the pic to see it bigger). I can't give her my wallet anymore, because last time I did I caught her trying to jam my Sam's card into our water cooler, plus she dumps all my change out. This is a slightly more benign version that's at least shaped the same so she really doesn't know the difference.