No Owls Required

My birthday is coming. I like my birthday. A lot. Even as I edge closer to being ‘of a certain age’, I refuse to surrender the sanctity of my own personal holiday to the adult relics of ‘just another day’. Nope, I have birthday parties. With cupcakes. And friends. I celebrate a ‘Birthday Week’ in fact. I’d take the month if I could get away with it. I usually manage to accomplish somewhere around 10 days of birthday bliss. The places I want go, the foods I want to eat, the movies I want to see, and yes, even the things I want to buy, all a little easier to negotiate with The Husband and myself during my birthday vacation. I didn’t mention that? I take the week of my birthday off. Every year.

Why? Because the most important gifts are the ones I give myself. Read more

How-To Not

The corner stone of any quality blog is the ‘How-To’ post. How-To pick an avocado, how-to live rent free, how to paint furniture.

How-To’s get pinned on pinterest. They get liked on facebook. How-To’s go viral.

I’m in no position to tell anyone how to do much anything. That’s not currently a service we offer. Ok, perhaps with the exception of a dog topic or two. I’ve got broad personal and professional experience to cover those. When it comes to dirt though, to growing, starting, tending and all tasks Ugly Garden… Well, how about you tell me? Otherwise, here’s how I’m currently not.

Lettuce table, I officially declare you, epic fail. Read more

Corporate Dining

Here’s a confession. For all my eating local, my gospel of whole foods from known entities, to contrast the stacks of expensive food from Farmer’s Market’s you see every week, I love me a hot cocoa from the evil empire of Corporate Coffee.

And when I say love, I mean love. It is a true love. Reaffirmed week in and week out, with my afternoon forays into sip-able chocolatey heaven. Sure, my cocoa could come from any number of places. Independent places. Sometimes it does. Mostly it doesn’t. Because for my palette, this cocoa is the most pleasing. Its probably the squirt of vanilla they add to the decidedly non-fair trade chocolate syrup. The vanilla that without a doubt contains high fructose corn syrup. I’ve never checked. I’m assuming. All this stirred into milk from unhappy cows. Add in that paper cup, its an easy trip down the shame spiral. Read more

Enhance Your Dog’s Kibble with 3 Ingredients

Boring ole Meat Cereal. Look at it.

Not something I’d want to eat day in and day out. Fortunately, our dogs are less discerning. Even if they’ll eat it, there are problems inherent with the format. Technically yes, its ‘nutritionally’ complete. In a sprayed on synthetic vitamin sort of way. As with any highly processed food though, is some value lost in the extrusion and high temperatures required to make kibble? Are our pooches, with their short digestive tracts capable of extracting the full value from such a source?

Doubts aside, kibble is damn convenient. Scoop, Scoop, Done. We are used to it. The dogs are used to it. Homemade food is a heck of a lot more effort. There’s still a bag or two of kibble in my pantry. There probably always will be.

So how’s about a happy medium? Read more

Free Stuff, Facebook & a Favor

I’m breaking some rules today. Rules plural. In for a penny in for a pound and all that. Plus, rule breaking is exciting. Even if they’re your own.

What rules am I breaking?

#1. I’m skipping Money Saving Monday. That’s more of a guideline than a rule. Not that exciting. We’re just getting started.
#2. I’m revealing a little personal information. This is a big one. I’ve kept much of my identity shrouded in myserty, secret agent style, but a lot more boring. I’m making an exception here. For a good cause.
#3. I’m bringing Dogs or Dollars to Facebook. A bandwagon I never thought I’d jump on. Again, good cause, more accessibility to my readers, and hopefully a little more free form dialogue between us.

Why am I doing all this?

To give you free stuff! Free dog stuff!!. And to ask a favor. Read more

Sunday Spending: Sore Muscles

This weekend I…

Bathed a bunch of dogs,
Then vacuumed, pretty much required at that point,
Celebrated a friend’s birthday,
Worked on blog excitement for tomorrow,
canned twenty or so jars of strawberry jam,

Oh yeah, and ran 13.1 miles … Read more

13.1 Tomorrow

I was working on another post for today. It’s postponed. If I posted something else, I wouldn’t be able to share this very important, very timely announcement.

Importance being completely relative.

I’m running my first half marathon tomorrow. Insert a bunch of anxiety and excitement noises here.

Chickens: 3 Months

The Ladies are getting big. And they’ve had a rough week.

Let’s start with the size issue. That’s nice and straight forward.

Bigger. They get bigger. The Cherie Chicken, in all her copper-y feathered glory, still not full size, still without her proper adult head gear (combs and waddles haven’t grown in yet). Nonetheless getting to be quite a big chicken. Read more

Corporate Servitude In Review

Today is a special day. Special isn’t right. Special is for of birthdays and Christmas. Let’s try that again. Today is a day of note. Today represents one year of Corporate Servitude. One year since I reluctantly left the Pet Store and returned to my small, beige cubicle slice of ‘comfort’.

When I tried to come up with a picture representation of the past year, this is what I got. Somewhat bland, but visually appealing. A brick wall to be scaled. Read more

Meet the Mutts: Miscellaneous

This series is supposed to be done. Psych! There’s another dog. There’s so many I loose count. No, not really. There’s extenuating circumstances. This dog, while not technically ours, he’s certainly in residence. And going nowhere fast.

We hope.

Ford.
Read more

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