manicdote

Sorry I haven’t posted much (or at all lately) but I’ve been CRAZY busy here at work. One of my many managers (the Traffic) manager here at work is on vacation and I’m here back up. It’s very stressful and complicated as well as a lot of work. She’s used to it because she’s been doing it for 10 years. I’ve been doing for what amounts to a few weeks (stretched out with a day here and a day there) over the past 6 months…but I always had my ex-boss (the one who was fired) here as a safety net because he knew how to do the job. But now that he’s not here, it’s just me.

So…today is my FIRST day completely by myself doing it. I’m doing good, I think. Let me see what I have to say when it’s later in the day, right? It’s only 3:00pm right now.

Sorry, no exciting pictures today. Don’t think I’ve taken any…? I’ll try to rectify that soon!

Everyone I miss you guys!!! We’re doing good on our new “low-carb” diet that we adopted for Terry’s diabetes. I’m totally craving ice cream though. Which is rather weird because I have maybe eaten it one or two times in the last 9 months? And a hamburger (with the BUN!) and french fries…YUM!

I have no idea what we’re going to do about vacation. Are we going to go wild off the diet? Or ”try” to be healthy. We shall be at Disneyworld in a little over a week. Hooray for us!

So lots of big news around the manicdote household. First of all (and most importantly) Terry was diagnosed with type-2 diabetes. This means a lot of changes for Terry…well, both of us, really. First of all Terry has had to cut out all the soda (Mt. Dew) that he used to drink. We’ve looked long and hard but currently “Coke Zero” has been the best-tasting choice for him. And I have to agree, it does taste pretty darn good! If blindfolded I’m not sure I could tell the difference.

The doctor seems to be hopeful that through diet, excersie and possibly some diabetes medication that he will be able to control it all. So cross your fingers…the “South Beach Diet” was recommended to us by his doctor and today is our first day on it. As you may or may not know, on the South Beach Diet one consumes more low-glycemic carbs, or good carbs, such as whole grains and vegetables. These are absorbed gradually into the blood stream as to not trigger the spikes in your sugar/insulin cycle.

I’m also doing the diet with Terry because (A) It’s supportive, (B) I do all the cooking and I’m not going to cook two entirely different meals, and additionally (C) I could stand to loose a few pounds myself. We’re in what’s called “Phase One” which lasts 2 weeks. It’s the most restrictive of the phases but it’s full of a lot of stuff I actually LIKE to eat so I don’t really feel like I’m missing out. I had eggs for breakfast, a salad with grilled chicken for lunch, and I’m going to have steak and broccoli for dinner with a dessert of jello. I’m not hungry. I know I’m only on day one but I’m pleased that I’m not already wishing for food that I can’t eat. I know those feelings will come but with someone actually doing the diet with me…I feel much more confident than I had in the past when it was just me. You know?

Outside of that not much else is going on. We’re still deep in planning for our upcoming trip to Disneyworld which happens in 13 days. HOORAY!!!

Oh, like I tripped and fell the other day. Well, about a week and a half a go. I fell right on my knee as I walked through a doorway - I swear I flew up into the air before soaring down and landing entirely on my left knee. I was wearing jeans so I got rug burn all over (painful!) and right now it’s like that sickly mottled yellow-purple bruise color all over it. But about a week ago I noticed that my foot was swollen.

I didn’t really think much about it as it’s been SO HOT here and humid here, but I started noticing that they were swollen in the MORNING! And my foot was getting so swollen it HURT.  So my doctor wants me to have an X-Ray taken of it. Yikes!

I’m not afraid of having X-Rays taken but I’m afraid that one of the little bones in my foot might have broken - I can’t be wearing a cast right now…I’m going to Disneyworld! I hope it’s just a bad sprain or something. Although I just don’t know how I managed to sprain it. When I fell, I fell on my knee…I don’t remember hitting my foot? However the knee might have hurt so much that it overrided any pain in my foot. Who knows. Just keep me in your thoughts!

Also, I’m quite annoyed now. My boss here at work got “fired” on last friday because an employee filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against him. Oh, the rumors that have gone rampant around here. What annoys me is that aparently he got fired over some supposedly “sexual” text message that he sent an employee. But aparently the entirety of it was that they were texting back and forth and she said that her boyfriend dumped her and he said that she could “do better”. That’s it. THAT’S “sexual harassment” these days? How insane is that!? I even heard that her and her father were out “celebrating” last friday night after he got fired. How tacky?

First of all - this employee is a total drunk and terrible at her job. Everyone around here believes that she only filed this lawsuit against my boss because she was probally on the chopping block and about to get fired herself. So it was just a “preemptive strike” as you might say. He was a great boss - ! What annoys me more than anything is that someone who actually cared about the company and was a hard worker was let go - but this girl who’s a terrible employe, barely competent at her job is still here. Seriously, I don’t understand this at all.

My point in even bring this up is that this boss was one of my main reasons for even staying at this job. It’s not a good job! The pay is terrible! The commute is really long. I went from making twice what I make, having an expense account, employees under me, a personal assistant, holding staff meetings, going on bsuiness trips, taking clients out - to being a “secretary“. I took the job because it was the first job offer I got here when I moved - but I KEPT the job because of my boss. He was a great boss and a great loss to the company. It definatly puts a lot of thoughts into my head like…why am I still working here?

*sigh* Oh, although on a happier note…Ruki is today’s PUG-A-DAY - ! Go see her and vote for her . She must be numero uno! My baby girl deserves no less. Click here to go see and vote for her! Thanks in advance! http://www.pugaday.com/

In conclusion, here’s a picture Terry took of Napoleon. It cracks me up because I love the expression (”What…another photo? I’m trying to sleep here!”) on Poley’s face. I also love that he’s using one of their bricks as a pillow (we’ve got bricks acting as stairs so little Ruki can climb into the litterbox). And don’t pity him. They’ve gone through about 6 beds (some EXPENSIVE!) in the last 6 months, and ruined all of them. So no more beds for them right now. They have a nice bath mat to sleep on. Once they get past their puppy-chewing-destroying-stage they’ll get a bed again but right now they’re bad little puggies and have to sleep on the floor. Although I don’t make them use the bricks as a pillow. That’s his choice. That’s how he rolls. Don’t you judge him!

Oh, and you can see his favorite toy, the “keys” in the picture- he’s even sleeping with them in his paws grasp (probally so Ruki can’t get them). Other favorite toys are “Sir Elephante” and the “Doggie Dumbell” you can see in the background.

Here’s a video from a recent training session Terry teaching Napoleon & Rukia to go sit and then ”lay down”. How do you think it’s going? Let me know what sort of tricks you’re teaching your dogs to do! Oh, in case anyone is curious - the treat that the puggies are doing tricks for in our video is American cheese. They love it!

Hello dear readers. Guess what? No, I did not win the lottery, but thank-you for your prayers in that endeavor of mine. Alas…one day!

Although I did win the lottery with Terry. He is a wonderful, smart, handsome man. I love him! And my puggy babies. Aren’t they adorable? I took this cute photo of them in their new bed and put it through the computers “watercolor” effect. Rukia is a little blacked-out but Poley looks adorable. And you can see their newest favorite toy, Mr. Loofa, which we won from darling Clover’s (Clover’s Adventures) Mummy during the Pay-It-Forward. They totally loved it. And I forgot to get a photo of the treats she sent. They inhaled them and completely loved them. ALSO, the best part of the gift was the gorgeous sketches!

Here are some pictures of the sketches. Clover’s mom, Jess, also has some pictures of the sketches up on her blog. They’re totally awesome! Mostly because they’re of my little darlings, but also because the artist was obviously quite talented: First Napoleone when he was a little puppy:

And then Rukia as a puppy:

Also, I wanted to post my recipe for Chicken Salad Sandwiches. Consider it my Pay-It-Forward gift to all my readers. These sandwiches are TOTALLY awesome! People would pay for them!

Allison’s Chicken Salad Sandwiches (2-4 people depending on your appetite)

3 Chicken breasts
1/2 cup vermouth (enough to make liquid around chicken)
Spice mix (Salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, season salt)
Olive oil (just a little drizzle)
Mayo (enough to coat)

1. Put a drizzle of olive oil on chicken breasts, rub on with your fingers. Then put spices on: Salt, Pepper, Paprika, Garlic Powder, Onion Powder and Season Salt - this will create a pinkish paste over the chicken breast.
2. Pour some vermouth over chicken - this will make some sort of sauce that is loose around the chicken.
3. Bake at 375^F for about 30 minutes, until chicken is cooked through (press with finger - meat should feel firm.
4. Cool chicken. Cube. Mix with mayo until desired texture. Add salt & pepper to taste.
5. Put on either a toasted hamburger bun or croissant. Enjoy!

Here are some pictures of the process:

Well, my little baby is growing up. Monday evening I caught him…humping Rukia. Yes, I know, it seems impossible. He is my little baby, he shouldn’t be doing that because he’s too young. But he’s almost 6 months old yet, and according to the vet, it’s about that time. Granted, I think Rukia was asking for it at the time because she was engaged in licking his privates right before the humping started. *sigh* Oh Rukia, don’t give it away so easy!

So, I’m getting him neutered. I mean, always was going to have it done, but like now I’m having it done, pronto. Because right now we have to keep Napoleon and Rukia seperated. Even though Rukia is only 3 1/2 months old, aparently she could get pregnant. And we certainly don’t want that. So seperated they are in two different pens. And they hate it. They whine and bark and basically act very annoying.

We’ve got an appointment to have his little peanuts removed on Friday. Poor little guy. Well, I guess he isn’t so little any more. Do any of you have stories about when you realized that your baby was growing up? Or when it became apparent that you needed to have your dog neutered/spayed?

Oh, and I cooked food up for the puggies from scratch the other day. It came out really good and they LOVED it. I steamed some carrots and potatoes, then mushed it up with some beef broth and lean ground beef, then threw in some oatmeal to bind it, and added blueberries, some bacon bits, and a couple of scrambled eggs. Then I mounded it into big balls and packed it up in serving-sized ziplocks. When I feed them I let it come to room temperature and then suppliment it with some vitamens and some kibble for crunchiness. They ADORE IT! I totally will make it again. It seems pretty well-balanced, right? Sorry, forgot to photo it when I made it. I’ll take photos next time.

Okay, first of all, we have some business to attend to. Today we have the winner of our 1st annual “Manicdote Haiku Contest“. And (drumroll please) the winner is….Ayatollah Mugsy! Congrats!

If you haven’t checked out his website, it’s a hoot and we always love silly Mugsy and Wendall with his freakishly long legs. This is the winning poem, and of course, they can take the graphic to the left of this text to use on their blog (if they desire):

Rawhide, so tasty,
Its sweet scent beckoning me,
I think I’m in love.

And we also chose an “honorable mention“; the haiku by The Aged Cat, because I like the word phantom and you so rarely get a chance to use it. Phantom. Anyways, here is their haiku:

Shadows of felines
lounge on the sofa and bed
phantom comforters.

On the game front, Terry and I have been playing this game called “Army of Two” and we’re loving it. It’s all about playing cooperatively; as a team you work through each objective and slowly earning money that you can use to buy better guns. It’s kind of like a 3rd person shooter with a little bit of RPG thrown in the mix. I’m quite enjoying it. Would I pay $60 for it? No. But I would trade in some old games for it. Or rent it if you’re a quick player. But definatly play it with another human. The A.I. leaves something to be desired.

In other news, I read on the Pug Posse’s blog about adding a tablespoon or so of beef broth to the kibble to soften it up a little and make it more appetizing…and so I gave it a try. Okay, the puggies LOVED it and ate up almost every single little kibblett! Thank-you SO much for this trick!

Napoleon and Rukia thank-you from the bottom of their little pug hearts and we took this photo after dinner. I don’t know why they look suspiciously innocent in it, but I’m not buying it!!!

“Love at first sight is easy to understand; it’s when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.” - Amy Bloom

“You call it madness, but I call it love.” - Don Byas

“A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.” - Ingrid Bergman 

Well, today is the day. The day all single women detest and women in a relationship count the minutes until gifts arrive. Well, Terry actually surprised me with flowers last night! I was pretty shocked when he showed up with red roses in a beautiful vase. It was the day before Valentines, so I was completely unexpecting anything (wow, that was terrible grammer. Whatever. Suck it, Trebeck!). Nevertheless, it was a beautiful and wonderful surprise, as no man has gotten me flowers in….a very long time. He also got me a box of chocolates (YUM!), Starbucks coffee (SUPER yum!) and, of course, Rukia was our gift to each other for Valentines.

But I also got him this video game that he’d been wanting, called “Devil May Cry 4″ and he was really stoked about that. He was playing it for a while last night and it did look pretty cool.

Here is an interesting fact that I just stumbled across: 3% of pet owners give Valentine’s Day gifts to their pets. Sadly, I am one of those 3%. Are you?

Oh, and if there are any men reading this - please check out this really great article on Valentine’s Day Myths. Good reading!

So, this is just a quick short post, mostly to tell everyone that visits “HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!” and that I wish you all a wonderful day and night. Here’s a picture of us (an oldie, but goodie) being in love and having a great time. Happy day!

Okay, I’ve been meaning to post some pictures of what I like to call “Fusion Feeding Frenzy” here at the Manicdote household. When you put food infront of a pug, you must take pictures fast because that food (after a very frenzied excited whine once they realize I’m getting their food ready) will be gone within moments after putting the food dish to the ground. The two of them start pacing, racing back and forth in their crate, running over each other in their eagerness. Then, once that food is down - it’s a no-hold’s barred, all-pugs-for-themselves fight too the last kibble.

Right now, I’m still feeding them a mix of kibble all day and wet-food once a day. If it was just Poley (a little over 4 months old) I would have weened him off wet food by now. But Rukia is still only just barely 8 weeks old and I want to keep her on wet food a little while longer because she’s still a little undersized. But without further ado, here are a few pictures that I just took showing what it looks like around here when I’m feeding my babies.

The first shot (top, left) is how nice they behave BEFORE the food its placed in the crate. Rukia was running around sniffing and I made Napoleon sit and behave while I place the food down. We’re working on the first command, Sit, with Rukia - but we haven’t been that successful yet. We shall prevail, I tell you! My will is stronger than hers!

This second picture is Poley getting too impatient and climbing up on the side of the crate. He sees the food dish in my hand and he wants that food. He is wholly focused on that food in my hand. As you can see, Rukia doesn’t really care. She is somewhat riled up at this point because he is, but I don’t think she really knows why he’s so riled up.

He’s moving around so fast now, you can see that the picture is blurred. Ha! He cracks me up so much. Oh, and I feel compelled to mention that the pink bed is actually Rukia’s. See, we origionally bought them seperate beds. But when they decided to just sleep together on one bed, and ignore the other, we now trade off with the two beds so while one is being washed - they’re using the other…because they enevitablly smoosh food or poop into the bed. Clever, no?

Well, lets just say that they push the food dish around the floor. The food dish starts out on one side of the crate, and it’s always either on the other side or flipped over. I don’t know how they manage it because I’ll go clean up for a few minutes and when I come back - the food dish will be demolished. And they spill food all over the place. We clean their crate DAILY and it still has kibble all over it. Gracious! They are messy eaters. But, I love this shot because you can see - look how nicely they share the food bowl together? I know once they get older we’ll have to eventually buy another food bowl, but right now it’s so cute to see them eating together.

Afterwards, I picked up each of my babies to give them a little loving, and I took the time to take a few photos of Rukia. I feel like we don’t have as many photos of just her, so I’m making a conscious effort to take a few pictures every day of just her. Isn’t she a cutie?

And here’s the extreme close-up of Rukia’s face. You can even see the remnants of food clinging to her whiskers. Aww…I’m sure Napoleon will lick that off later. And yes, I’ve seen them doing this.

In other news, I won a contest on my artistic friend, Melissa Langer’s blog, called Life is art…Art is Life. I’m SOOOO freaking excited because I love her art and I’ve totally been wanting something from her site but money has been so tight lately. She’s going to send me a signed print (of my choice!) - eek! I’m so happy. Terry and I are going to pick out one together and then once we get it we’ll have it framed. Again, thank-you SO much Melissa. We are so happy to have won!

Also, my favorite of the “Favs” on Survivor, Johnny Fairplay, was voted off first. Which kind of sucks (because he cracks me up) but he played the game abominally, so it’s his own fault.

Oh, and right now my favorite TV show is this amazingly interesting and well acted new show called, “Breaking Bad” which airs at 10pm on AMC. It’s already been on for three episodes, but maybe you can catch the show in reruns or OnDemand? The series stars Malcom in the Middle’s Bryan Cranston as Walter White, a struggling high school chemistry teacher with a handicapped child and a pregnant wife. When White is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, he breaks down and turns to a life of crime, setting up a meth lab in order to support his family. I highly, highly recommend this show.

Okay, so last week I was in Tampa, Florida for most of the week on business. It was such a beautiful city and warm (80 degrees) - I really loved the city, although I did miss Terry and the puggies terribly. Here are some great pictures I took of the city and my time there. Here’s the skyline right by my hotel. My hotel is the building on the bottow left of the picture…right on the canal! There are these cool river/canals all through the city and the schools are frequently practicing rowing in them, and there will be fancy yachts in them. Very cool! It reminded me a lot of Seville, Spain.

This shot is of WFLA-TV NBC in Tampa. This is where I was training. I am training to be the backup for the “Traffic” manager. You can see the station is merely across the canal from my hotel and it’s also in a beautiful location.

Here’s a picture of me walking down the street looking happy in the big city (despite missing my family):

And then finally here’s a shot of what I loved most about Tampa - Deep Fried Cheesecake with cinnamon ice cream. Need I say more?

Oh, and here’s a shot of some cute puggies because it’s nearly impossible to have a post without putting up a picture of them. This is a rare shot of them behaving and sleeping peacefully together.

I love Georgia and Alabama, I really do. But there are a few annoying things about this place. And now I will list them for you and rant.

A. Name Changes: Why on earth do they feel the need to change names of stores like Ralph’s (West coast) and Kroger (East coast). Okay, I totally get the fact that these were two seperate companies and they merged, so they kept the names seperate on the different coasts so people would know the difference, but frankly, in this day and age - it’s just silly. I’m smart enough to “get it” when they change the name of a store. There are also Carl’s Jr. (aka Hardees) or the mayonaise Best Foods (aka Hellmen’s) - it just annoys me. Call it a pet peeve. I don’t care - I just call it annoying.

B. Food not being available. For instance, I like chili. I’m not some crazy chili-fiend who eats it daily or something, but sure, yeah, every once and a while I like to heat up a can of chili, throw a hot dog in it with some cheese, fritos and avocado slices - and I’m a happy camper. But my favorite brand of chili, Dennison’s Original Chili Con Carne with Beans, is not available in the Southeast where I now reside. Why not? I have no idea why! Actually, the chili section of the grocery store is woefully small and only has Hormel. Ick.  And that’s my point. I’m not some sort of chili-freak, but now I’ve got a craving - probally because I can’t have it. And I must itch that scratch. Wait. Reverse those. And I won’t even bring up the sausages I can’t find, spices, frozen puff pasty, and certain veggies and herbs.

And while I enjoy the…peculiarities of my new home, it’s certain flavor, its…edible cultural heritage (like fried chicken, grits and okra) - and let us not confuse my complains for a desire to turn the United States into a homogeneous, bland culture - like one sort of giant food court where you can get the same food everywhere and at any time.  Because that’s not what I want. I just want my damn chili.