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One Hot Mama

At the risk of sounding like a real whiner, I have to say it was hot yesterday. According to the Weather Channel, it hit 91 degrees.

It was too hot for a motorcycle ride. For me anyway. Because I hate being hot. The air may have “only” been 91 degrees, but it felt hotter inside my helmet.

My head was sweating. I HATE that.

Maybe later in the year 91 degrees won’t feel so bad. Maybe by then we’ll have had time to acclimate slowly to the increasingly warmer temperatures. But when the HIGH swings 40 degrees in mere days, from 50 to 90, temperatures in the 90s feel damn hot.

Speaking of damn hot… it appears my post about my ass-less leather chaps was quite popular. So popular, in fact, that I felt a follow-up was in order.

Unfortunately, it was too hot to wear them yesterday while riding. But I know y’all are just dying to see what they look like, right?

Oh come on and just admit it.

Go ahead and say, “I’ve got to see what this idiot looks like in these ass-less leather chaps she keeps prattling on and on about.”

Periodically, I do poke fun at people on my blog. I try no to be too mean about it. And I poke fun at myself sometimes, too.

Like now, when I reveal the pics I took of myself yesterday. The pics I took actually wearing my fancy new chaps…

And you thought "hot" was referring to temperatures!

You may notice the dogs in these shots. That’s not because I wanted them there, it’s because I can’t do anything without my girls by my side.

See? They really are ass-less!

They are called assless for a reason. Now, at the risk of looking slightly pornographic and extremely silly, I just could NOT resist this shot…

Lovely' eh? This is why I need a wide motorcycle seat.

Also, just for you, I assembled all three pics into one nice little collection…

One Not-So-Hot ToadMama

I may not be afraid to poke fun at myself, but you may have noticed the size of these pics. The resolution is low so that, if anyone decides to plaster these lovely images anywhere for the entire world to see, they won’t be life-size shots.

I may be brave, but I am not stupid…

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A Different Perspective

Our house in West Virginia is about 150 miles from our house in Maryland. Depending on traffic, if we stop to eat and how many potty stops we have to make for the dogs and me, it’s about a three-hour drive each way. Some people would call that crazy. We’re used to it. We do, however, like to switch up the routes every now and then. We do this primarily to avoid traffic, but we both enjoy the change of scenery.

One of the more-pleasant routes we use takes us through Shepherdstown, West Virginia and Boonsboro, Maryland.

Farm just outside of downtown Boonsboro, MD

Unfortunately, we’ve never actually stopped to explore either town because the girls are always with us. Both seem like pretty nice places. We also go through Sharpsburg, Keedysville and Middletown in Maryland. On the West Virginia side, there’s Kearneysville and Leetown.

Small towns are cool. They have character.You never know what you’ll see, like this lady and her dog randomly greeting passersby through their window.

"Hello, stranger!"

Okay, maybe the lady and her dog aren’t real. But I think they are awesome. They are painted on the back of Vesta Pizza in Boonsboro at the intersection of MD-34 and US-40.

This painting technique is known as trompe-l’oeil. That’s French and essentially means “trick the eye.”

Here’s another view of the same building from a slightly wider angle.

Rear of Vesta Pizza in Boonsboro, Maryland

I don’t know when the painting was done exactly, but it’s been within the last year. The Google Maps street view stills shows the unadorned building.

Hubby told me to make sure I got the cat laying in the sun at the back door, so here it is.

Sleepy Cat

The trompe-l’oeil (pronounced “tromp-lou-e”) technique has been around since the Renaissance. If I’d paid attention during History in high school, I could probably tell you when that was.

Google trompe-l’oeil and you’ll see a very wide and interesting variety of examples, such as:

I’m not sure if you can see this next one without being a Flickr member, but we’ll try. In this picture of St. Paul’s Cathedral, you can see the trompe-l’oeil facade employed during renovation.

Sorry, I didn’t set out to make this post an art diatribe. I just wanted to share a few nice Boonsboro pictures. But the more I looked, the more I learned and the more images I discovered, which of course I had to share.

Anyway… the next time you drive through Boonsboro, don’t forget to look at the back wall of the Vesta Pizza building.

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Wedding Tackle

Every now and then, I come across a word or phrase being used as a euphemism in a new and unique way. Since I’m a word nerd, I get all excited and have this compulsive urge to share said discovery with my faithful blog fans. That urge becomes especially strong when that phrase/term appears in a passive aggressive note written by a guy named Fat Tony. If you haven’t guessed already, today’s phrase is wedding tackle.

If you haven’t poked through passiveaggressivenotes.com before, you’re missing out on fun stuff like:

  1. Encouragement for carnivores
  2. Diatribe of an angry apartment complex manager
  3. Rules for proper cubicle etiquette

The list goes on and on. Just keep in mind that some of the communiques are a bit racier than others.

On a completely unrelated note…

Hubby has been taking pictures lately, something he only does when he has good reason. Or when I ask him to, which I guess would also qualify as a good reason.

Anyway… I thought I’d share a couple of his shots so his efforts don’t go unnoticed.

Belle's Spot

Belle is a morning girl in more ways than one. Mornings are her favorite time to sit with me. Whether at the MD or WV home, she likes to be with Mama in the mornings. Hubby couldn’t resist this shot of Belle looking all cute (and me not so much) very EARLY the other morning. It was probably around 7:00 a.m., which is why I look so sleepy.

Enough is Enough

Hubby took this shot to show that K and Belle had been outside so long yesterday, K had planted herself in a sunny spot in front of the wall. It shows more than just that, however.

You can see Belle standing on the hill. When she’s been outside long enough, she stands in that spot, or close to it, and stares into the kitchen. That’s her way of saying, “I am ready to come inside!”

You can also see the little yellow ball. None of our girls really LOVE playing with balls, but they’ll pick it up occasionally. Sometimes they will chase it, too. But they never bring it back. They usually just drop it at some random spot in the yard for ME to go retrieve. They call that game, “Mama Plays Fetch.”

Finally, you can see that the snow is almost gone from our yard. Above and to the right of K is what remains of Bumnabul.

I am still holding out hope that we get more snow. It’s not looking good, though. Spring is just under three weeks away. Although it has snowed here as late as April before, I’m not overly optimistic.

"Mama, can we go outside now?"

I have to end this post now. Belle, who is in her customary spot on my lap, is giving me the look you see in the picture above, which basically says, “Are you done yet? Can you take us outside? Please?”

She looks so darn cute when she gives me that look, how can I refuse?

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The Calm Before the Storm

So, I was sitting here thinking to myself, “what can I possibly blog about today?” when an e-mail arrived from my new friend, Julia. She saved the day! Because I was about to say something boring like, “It hasn’t started snowing YET. But it will. Predictions vary, but we could get a couple of FEET.”

The e-mail contained a bunch of doggie pics, which I decided my faithful fans deserved to see. I call this collection of images Weird Shit People Do To and With Their Dogs. Thanks, Julia!

These images got me thinking about what other weird dog pictures might be out there.

So I googled “weird doc pics”. These are just some of the gems I uncovered…

Sorry, but that’s all I have time for.

And, by the way, it hasn’t started snowing YET. But it will. Predictions vary, but we could get a couple of FEET.

UPDATE

I was reminded that I forgot to add my girlfriend Tracey’s baby girl, Snowy Day, the toy fox terrier who was less than thrilled to be dressed as a pumpkin and then in a Santa suit. Truth be told, I think it was the gold lame booties that pushed her over the edge. She was SO not happy that she refused to move. So when Tracey stood her on the floor, she just fell right over!

Unhappy Halloweenie
Unhappy Snowy Santa
Really Unhappy Snowy Santa

I would have loved to get a picture of Snowy laying frozen on her back, with all four bootie-clad feet sticking straight up in the air, but we were laughing way too hard. You just had to see her face. She was pissed. It was priceless.

If you’d like to see a slideshow I made for Tracey a few years back, click the link below:

Snowy Day’s Tour of America

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I Just HAD to Share

Every now and then I come across stuff on the Internet that I just feel compelled to share with people. It could be something that touched my heart, or that I found disgusting, or humorous, or unbelievable. It could be anything that I read and thought to myself, “This is so good/interesting/funny/amusing/unbelievable/sad that I have to share it.”

Like this secret I saw when I read this week’s PostSecret blog:

Dear Frank,

Sunday I was with my boyfriend (we are both young Christians). I grabbed his laptop to go to the postsecret website. As I typed in the postsecret address the computer filled in the url with a pornography website.

I used my boyfriend’s laptop again to look up postsecret and the computer filled in the url with recently visited sites about pre and post nuptial agreements.

In my attempts to read other people’s secrets, I discovered his.

New secrets are posted every Sunday, which I why I didn’t just link to this particular secret.

Hopefully the person who submitted this secret has sense enough to RUN, not walk, away from this man.


Here’s something completely unrelated to the secret I shared with you above…

Now that we have three dogs, Hubby and I decided it might be a good idea to do some actual dog training.

Hubby has already started working on K so that she comes when he blows the whistle. She’s getting it, but is easily distracted and, therefore, much harder to train than Meg and Belle.

It’s not that Meg and Belle aren’t trained. They know the basic stuff like “sit” and “down” and “come.” But they’re both bad about jumping on people to greet them. Belle is a barker. Neither of them know how to “stay” when told.

Since K is a more-challenging dog, I decided to look for a good, comprehensive dog training manual. I even went to the bookstore the other day, but didn’t find one I liked. Then, last night, I stumbled across this ASPCA Web page, which has lots of articles on dog behavior. It is not just about training dogs either. There’s a whole list of topics on understanding various dog behaviors, too. There’s also information on rehoming a dog to help people decide if getting rid of there dog is really necessary and, if so, the proper way to go about rehoming.

There is a lot of good information there. If you have a dog, please visit the aforementioned informational page to see if there’s anything that can help you.

Now, you know I had to share at least one video, right?

Following is the most inappropriate zoo commercial EVER…

Yes, it’s a real commercial. And there are more like it for your viewing displeasure at ilovelocalcommercials.com.

Let’s not forget my mission to find totally taste-free Christmas stuff…

I think that’s enough sharing for today.