our summer fun-very simple laser pointer

i decided that this week i am a very boring individual. "here, here," said the boys in unison. so i pulled out the laser pointer today for chaco and we played for a bit. it's one of his favorites...as soon as i pick it up, he starts looking all over the floor for it to come on. then i run all over the apartment with it to give him a little workout while bruno watches on and yawns, putting his leg out every once in awhile hoping to trip chaco up.

hi, laser dot.

if i leave it in one place for too long, he starts to dig at it.

we've played a little with the frisbee, a little with the squeaky toy...walks, but they won't play with toys outside-they are too distracted by everything else. i'm a little hesitant about letting them play in the grass because the winter was so warm that not all of the fleas got killed off...jessica (down at the office) said that one of the other residents was having flea problems. ok, not the resident, her dog.

i've been taking them on 15 min walks in the mornings, but yesterday, i took my own walk off to the park without them because it was above 100', and i was out for an hour-not good for little dogs who won't drink from the doggie fountains. anyhoo, it was great coming up the incline and not being tired or winded or even thinking about it as in the past. it's a gradual incline and i don't know if you can even really tell from this picture.

it's a pretty little walk, except for the annoyingly loud portion that goes by the construction site for a huge apt bldg going in-smells like downtown san jose, costa rica.

on the way back i took the long way around the pond, and the ducks were protesting the heat as well...and they still haven't cleaned out all of the algae. gross.

bottoms up!

they had the right idea-maybe i should just grab my bathing suit and go out and enjoy the pool tomorrow.

tonight we might just go down to the vitruvian park-it's supposed to be rhythm nite-see what the boys think about music at the park. if they don't like the tunes, we can just walk around the park. they call it vitruvian nites-i saw a banner the other day, and wish i'd known about it sooner! thursday nights are food truck nights...hmmm guess what i'm doing tomorrow night!?

i'm excited for my mom and dad-i mentioned that they had moved to mo. well, answer to prayer-mom got a job in her field (no, she isn't a farmer), anyhoo, she started this week, and will be doing some driving, but she seems excited about it being something a little different from before. i hope it ends up being enjoyable and full of stories, and not too stressful.

they live near the niangua river. if i ever moved back up that way, i would get a kayak! that is the big problem with dallas-not much outdoors around here to enjoy.
later-
julie

your flea ointment looks like an alien

so this morning i opened my eyes and bruno was ready to be up. chaco...was hiding deep under the covers somewhere off in a corner. so i told him, "oh chaco! you were in your man-cave!" he believed that it was a man-cave, so that will cut costs in the far off future when we look for a house-all i have to do is throw a comforter on the floor and say man-cave and he'll be happy. bruno on the other hand just sat behind chaco looking at me, shaking his head with that 'i-can't-believe-you-just-told-him-that-and-he-fell-for-it' look. now i just have to distract him if we're ever watching hgtv and they have a segment about man-caves.

after i woke up and checked on my loin. if you're dyslexic, you might think i'm a zookeeper checking on the king of beasts...if you're not, you might wonder what? didn't the men in the bible 'gird their loins?' but if you read last night's post, you will recall that i prepared pork loin and put it in the crockpot. and wowzers! i stepped into the kitchen and i had one last step to prepare it-one more hour. but i wanted to eat pulled pork for breakfast! it is so juicy and sweet! again, i wish this were a scratch and sniff blog!

since it wasn't ready, i just had some caramel truffle coffee with my heavenly creamer! (i was actually introduced to the caramel truffle by my previous roommate, heather-we love our coffee!)

and then when i got the keurig, i loved the kcups. although they can get ridiculous expensive! so thank goodness for the filter! if you have a keurig and haven't heard of them, the filter is a must! it allows me to go to central market and get my texas pecan coffee! melt in my mouth please!

and for the record, once i pulled the pork out, it was falling apart as i tried to take it out of the pot! i may or may not have gone ahead and eaten a generous portion for breakfast...it was so good i really didn't want to stop eating...i kept praying that i wouldn't get full. but i did.(which is actually good so i will have a meal or two more during the week). honestly i didn't use any measurements, but if i were guessing, i used about 3 squirts of honey mustard, about 3/4 cup brown sugar, a little garlic powder, a couple splashes of balsamic vinegar, and after poking several holes in it, i rubbed it all over with this little mixture and let it go on low for about 9 hours. then i drained it and took about 1/2 cup of brown sugar mixed with dried onion, garlic salt and a little more honey mustard, rubbed it on and let it form a carmelization for an hour..delish!

i know it's hard to tell, and it would look prettier with some colorful veggies, but i thank the pig that gave his life.

 well, we went to the vet for bruno's blood draw (finally) and he came out smelling like alcohol (rubbing alcohol, not like he'd been back doing shots with the techs). and they told me he has fleas. ew. so we got flea stuff for both of them and i couldn't think of where he could've gotten....oh but wait! when we went to the doggie park...? or how many times has he been in the kennels there at the vet over the last week around the dogs there? or...it could have been that wasp banging on the door yesterday-perhaps he was carrying his little flea friend on his back and dropped him off on my balcony-jerk. (remember the old cartoons with the flea circus??) inevitably when one of our students has lice, my head begins to itch. well, today the same thing happened with the idea of fleas.

so i took them for a walk because the weather was beautiful and we were right near the beautiful dog-walk area in addison. so here are some pics from our walk.

again, wishing for scratch and sniff because these bushes with the white flowers had such a light and airy, delicate smell. a little secret garden

this is one of the secret entrances. it's kinda nestled into this neighborhood and you don't recognize it from the street because there is a huge bush wall hiding the area; we just stumbled onto it one day.

this is a view of the length of the pond-walk

duck..duck..duck..duck...CHACO!!

once we got home, i got the flea ointment out and pulled out treats so they would associate good things with this nasty ointment. i think it must tingle because bruno used to go nuts when he was littler..and this time it seemed to affect chaco a bit more. rolling around on every surface possible-couch, floor, chair, stair, anything...

my biggest issue was 1. that it looked like alien ointment and 2. that they are speceists (like racist only against a species-against cats in particular).

and now there will be no dog bathing for 48 hours.

as the Bible says, fleas are evil. oh, it actually says flee from evil,
julie

p.s. i stand with israel-in case anyone was wondering.