Friday Night Highlights

On Friday, my brother, his fiance, and her son Matthew came to visit and have dinner with us.  Matthew is a great kid, and at dinner he asked Greg and I if he could call us Aunt Dana and Uncle Greg.  Greg told him the cost was $50, and they are going to work out the details.  My moniker change was free of charge, so Aunt Dana I became.

I may as well get used to it, since I would have become Aunt Dana in November anyway, with the birth of Marco's baby.

We then decided that Leah should call Matt's mom Aunt Nelly, and, when we asked her to say it, she proudly said, Aunt Smelly, and that's kind of funny, and, well, sorry Nelly, but that's one of those things that's going to stick.  In 20 years when Leah introduces you to her boyfriend, she'll introduce you as Aunt Smelly.  You don't mind, right?

After dinner, because Sparta can't get their head out of their bum, we were informed that the outdoor concert was cancelled for that night, so we decided to head to the Sparta Dairy for some ice cream.

Our favorite ice cream server (barista? coner?) Erin was there, and we all got our faves and had a little rest on the bench out front.

It doesn't surprise me that Leah's mouth is wide open. 

Apparently she couldn't stop eating for the picture.

The apple and the tree.  They are not far from each other.

Our friends Rob and Renee and their two daughters, Faith (l.) and Shannon (r.), or, as Leah calls them--Face and Shanny--met us at the Dairy.  These two are Leah's besties, and Renee and I usually refer to them all as sisters.  I have a feeling that this motley crew is going to get themselves into trouble.  And I know Rob doesn't want to hear it, but I tend to think that some of that trouble is going to involve b-o-y-s. 

Matthew is a fave amongst these girls because he's 1) a good protector, and 2) a huge softie.  Faith was wondering if Matt had brought his Nintendo DS because he's always nice enough to let her borrow it. 

When the kids were done, they screamed "beep that horn" at passers-by while doing the universal horn-beep request with their arm, Marco and fam headed home, and Rob and fam came over to our house for a back yard fire.

Leah! Seriously. Put down the spoon for 5 seconds.

All in all, a pretty nice Friday night, as far as Friday nights go. 

Ok, I'll be honest with you: any occasion that includes me eating ice cream is going to get high marks in my book.
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The People In Our Neighborhood: Jo Ellen (And a Giveaway!)

Today's post features my friend Jo Ellen.  She has been a very good friend since college.  Instead of getting her words for the first part of this post, I am going to write about her.  And then, since she is such a nice person, she has offered to host our Giveaway this week.  Which I am really excited about!

So, Jo. That's what I call her.  First off, it took my husband a good five years not to give me the hairy eyeball when I mentioned "my good friend Jo."  Since, well, he thought Jo was a boy.  But, Jo is definately not a boy.

Jo may also kill me for posting this picture.

I don't care.

I met Jo the summer after sophomore year of college when we subletted rooms on opposite sides of a duplex near Boston.  She's originally from Cordova, Alaska, and one of the things that I admire most about Jo is that she's a little off--quirky is what I call it--and she knows it, and she embraces it, and she doesn't give a crap what anyone thinks about it. 

Jo is Jo, and she's true blue.

What Jo doesn't know is that she is responsible for keeping me in college Junior year.  You see, second semester Junior year, my roommate and best friend, along with a few other good friends of mine, went to study abroad.  A stranger moved into my apartment, and I found myself spending a lot of time alone.  I stopped going to my sorority house, stopped hanging out with my other friends, and just pretty much stuck to going to class and then going home.  I was incredibly lonely and probably a little depressed. 

Now, I'm going to tell you something that may shock you.  Especially you, Dad.  So, I would like you to just be prepared and understand that it happened a long time ago and your perfect, rule abiding girl Dana would NEVER do something like this now.

Right around the time that my close friends went to study abroad, I happened across a fake id.  The specifics are not important, ok?  I am telling you this because it's pertinent to the story.  Jo turned 21 a few weeks after the semester started, and, since most of our friends were still 20 (uh, like me), and most of our friends did not have a fake id (unlike me), Jo and I started going to this one bar next to my apartment to hang out and have a drink (or seven).  We had a lot in common, like our love of film and tv, and it was nice to have someone to be able to talk to and hang out with and just be myself with.

Now, if you think this is the part where I go into my brief, yet torrid foray as a college lesbian, stop right there!  This is a PG blog, and also, that never happened.  Jo and I just became really good friends, and I was so happy to have someone that I clicked with.  She got me out of my funk, and convinced me that I liked being at school and wanted to stay there.  Once my friends returned to BU senior year, I introduced them to Jo and we all became close. 

Over the years, Jo and I fall in and out of each other's lives, but we always are able to pick up right where we left off.  These days she makes her home in Minnesota with her husband Nate and her mentally unstable cat Ren.  She just launched her new business and is nice enough to giveaway a piece of gorgeous jewelry to one of my readers, along with a discount offer to anyone who wants to purchase anything!

I own a piece of her jewelry and I can attest that her stuff is gorgeous.  I hope you feel the same.  I'm going to turn over this post to Jo, who has written some words about the Giveaway.  If you'd like to enter, all you need to do is post your name and email address in the comments.

I'll leave this contest open until Friday, May 14th.  I urge you all to take a look at Jo's site.  If you don't go for the jewelry, go for the photography.  Or just go for Jo.  She's uh, what's the word?  Oh yeah, quirky. 

I mean, really, who gets married at the Mall of America? 

Jo.

“Sky-Blue Hearts” features freshwater pearls and hand cut blue-green apatite beads dangling from a delicate chain of heart-shaped links. Plus, I’ve topped it off with a sassy, yet sweet, arrow and heart focal encasing a matching pearl. I only used sterling silver throughout—from the chain to the clasp to the wire—so it’s appropriate even for those with common metal sensitivities. It measures a tad over 7”, but those with smaller wrists can easily adjust the length.

I’ll be adding one of these bracelets to the Codependent Kitty Creations Etsy site the week of May 16th when I launch my summer collection. Price: $32. But I’m so excited you’ll be giving one away to one of your lucky readers!

Plus, I’ve decided to give your blog readers a FREE pair of simple dangle earrings from my summer collection with any purchase of $15 or more from http://www.codependentkitty.com/ between May 16th and June 15th. (But, only if they mention your name when they place their orders. Hey, I gotta have a way to keep out the riff-raff.)

Ok folks, so there you go!  Post your name and email address in the comments section and I'll pick a winner on Friday.  Also, please visit Jo's site and don't forget to mention DeenutsDana when placing your order!
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Introductions: Doozer

When I first met Greg, he had a dog named Doozer. 

Doozer was a Rottie/Chow mix.

One of the reasons why I decided to date Greg was for Doozer.  I loved going to visit him.  Greg was nice too, but Doozer was my fave.

He was such an easy going dog.   Shortly after Greg and I moved in together, we got Penny the cat.  A few years later, we brought Ruby into the mix.  And then Leah.  And, while there were times where I swore Doozer would look at Greg and say with his eyes, "Remember when it was just us boys? The good ole' days?" I knew he loved us all, and he protected his family.

He was a big dog, but he didn't think so.  It didn't stop him from doing what the small lap dogs were up to.

He was just a good dog.  And so when he tore his ACL we thought nothing of having it repaired surgically.  And, despite a long recovery period, he was as good as new afterwards.

Doozer also held a special place in my mom's heart.  Sure, he drooled and shed, but as long as you remembered to never wear black when you came to our house, you were golden.

In 2009 Doozer developed a tumor on his leg.  The vet confirmed that it was cancer, and it was very far along.  Greg and I spent a week keeping him secluded and tending to his tumor, which was not pretty.  Or easy.  Actually, it was quite heartbreaking.  By this point, the tumor was messy and gross, but knowing that the cancer, which had spread to his lungs, was going to take over soon was just too much.  He didn't understand why we couldn't let him roam free, and we couldn't stand to watch him slowly lose his spirit.

So, we made a decision. 

And we miss him very much.

And think about him a lot.

Doozer

2000-2009

Don't forget; the $15 Starbucks Giveaway is going on until Thursday, April 15th.  If you'd like to enter, please go HERE and leave a comment.  Who doesn't love overpriced coffee drinks? Not me.





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Introductions: Ruby

Let me tell you a little about Ruby.

In April of 2005, my husband Greg came home from work and told me about a stray pitbull that he had played with that day while on break from work. The girl who lived next to Greg’s place of employment had taken her in, after a friend of hers decided he couldn’t care for her. Her name was Alizé (yes, Alizé) and, according to Greg, she was about 4 months old and very sweet and playful. I wasn’t sure why he was telling me about Alizé, as we already had a perfectly fine dog named Doozer and a finely perfect cat named Penny. Apparently, Greg’s friend’s apartment was too small and she was looking for someone to adopt Alizé. Well, good luck with that one, I thought, and went on with my day.

Here was our pet situation in April of 2005. 
Notice its perfection:

Two animals totally fine without any other animals present.

Over the next week or so Greg continued to play with Alizé at work (seriously, was he not required to actually work at his job?) and would come home and tell me about it.


Oh, Alizé is sooo sweet! She gives kisses all over my face! He would say.

Wonderful! I was wondering what that smell was. Is how I would react.




So, today, Alizé sat when I asked her to, and she took a treat so gently! He would gush.

Good for Alizé. I would return.





And on and on it went. And then one day Greg came home and surprised me with his daily Alizé news:

I told my friend that maybe we would keep Alizé, and she’s bringing her over here in an hour to see how it goes! OK??!!

"  "




I'm going to tell you that I reacted in a perfectly sane, quite respectful manner, and you can choose to believe me or not.  Completely up to you.  You see, we already had a dog, Doozer, and he was huge! He was lovable and snuggly and produced copious amounts of saliva! He was all the dog that I needed.  See:

Yes, I am that person who puts shirts on their dogs.

Furthermore, we had a snotty spiteful wiked precious 7 pound cat who, I believed, the sun rose and set forth from her butt.  And she definately did NOT want another animal to enter our house. See:

Please don't force me to pee in another animal's water bowl.

And neither did I! Especially a pitbull!

Greg! I shrieked, Pitbulls are bad! They eat cats and bite people’s faces off! Even when you think they are your friend and let them sleep in bed with you, you will wake up with one less limb! We cannot get a pitbull!

About an hour later, Alizé showed up. And, meh, she was cute, I guess. She had a sort of cute nose.

And, kind of a cute face.

And, you know, she wasn’t acting like she was ready to eat my face off, but I could tell she was thinking about it.

And, oh man, she just made herself at home, plopping her butt down on our couch, wrapping herself in our blankets, rubbing up against us, getting comfy, and breathing her sweet little smelly puppy breath in our faces.

Is this not enough blankets? Perhaps I should crochet you an additional afghan?

Aaaaaand about ten minutes later, I was telling her that I was her new mommy and I loved her so much and mwah, mwah, mwah, come give your mommy a kiss! We’ll sleep together and snuggle and I’ll just snack on your soft little ears my little snooky doodles!

So, I fell for her.

We ALL fell for her.

Mom and Ruby

Dad and Ruby

Including Penny.  But, please, shhh.  Don't tell anyone.

And we changed her name to Ruby. For two reasons. One, Alizé? Really? I mean, I guess it’s nice if that’s YOUR dog’s name, but, I wasn’t very fond of it. And we couldn’t shorten it to Ally because that was the name of the dog that belonged to very good friends of ours. Two-I wanted to name a future daughter Ruby, and, since I didn’t have any human children at the time, I figured I use the name for my dog-child. Ruby ended up being 6 months old and small for a pitbull.  The vet suspected she was the runt of her litter.  So, just like our other animals, her birthday was sometime in October.

It’s been 5 years since Ruby came into our lives. Doozer is no longer with us, and we’ve since added an actual human child, Leah. Ruby, however, never really thought she was a dog, so to her, we now have two kids and a cat. We love Ruby very much, especially since Doozer’s death taught us to not take our pets for granted. Everybody loves her and enjoys her company immensely.

Uh, most of the time.

The Fabulous Ruby