I worked almost 11 hours today. And its not like I’m a waitress or something and picked up a double. I work a regular 9 to 5 (well, 9 to 6) desk job.

11 hours. UGH. Auctions.

Cool thing of the day though: They were making the wadding pond outside of my office ice. Ice skating will be soon enough, yay! I took a picture of the Zamboni machine from my office. I’ll post it later.

I’m going to try my hand at December daily. I’ve been a bad blogger lately, so hopefully some alliteration will be enough to motivate me. Just text for now, but hopefully I’ll be able to add pics on my lunch break tomorrow or something.

Life has been kicking my ass lately. I’ve never had a dog before, let alone a puppy, and let me tell you it is like raising a kid! “No, don’t eat that. Wait, what are you chewing on? Leave your sister alone! Gah, no you can’t pee (t)here!” And with John gone, I’m pretty much a single mom most of the time. But we’re doing ok. Kipp is doing well in her obedience classes, and we have puppy play time twice a week. (Although, we’ve been the only ones to show up most weeks. :-/) Hopefully Kipp will learn that Twilight’s hisses are not an invitation to play, and that Twilight doesn’t appreciate her tail being nibbled on; even if its waved in front of her face.

Work is work, and the end of November/beginning of December is always hectic for me because of Bid on Rochester. So I’ve got that killing my enthusiasm for crafting too.

I would love to sit on the couch and do some embroidery or hand sewing or knitting or something, but every time I get something out, Kipp thinks it’s a snack. *sigh* I didn’t even get the doll finished, which is crazy to me because a couple months ago it wouldn’t have been a problem at all. But now…

On a humorous note, I think I’ve taught Kipp to smack! Actually, I think it’s been a team effort on mine and Twilight’s part. Twilight has been a good babysitter, following Kipp around and generally letting me know when Kipp is up to no good. I don’t know if its a good thing that Twilight has taken it upon herself to punish Kipp when she’s being suspicious, but it sure is funny to see. Anyway, Kipp now smacks my arm or Twilight’s back when she is being ignored. Like “You’re supposed to hit others when they’re doing something you don’t want them to, right? Like, I want you to pay attention to me and you’re not so I can smack you, right?” Any hints on how to get her to stop? I’m sure it will be dangerous when she’s older.

So, daily December. Hopefully I will find a way to get you done and get back to crafting. Fingers crossed!

John’s back in South Carolina, but so you guys don’t think I’m slacking, here is what I’m working on while not blogging, lol.

-General household chores (dishes, laundry, vacuuming, etc.). This is actually really hard with a puppy around!

-Working on my doll for the Momiji Couture Doll contest entry because the deadline was extended due to the UK postal strike. I doubt I’ll win, because I don’t think I’m very “couture” but I took the deadline changing as a sign to get back to working on it! (Sorry for the crappy webcam photo.)

- A present for a friend who reads this blog. I have a good deal of it done, but my end date is coming up way too soon!!! No hints though, sorry!

If I thought doing household chores was hard with a puppy, crafting is worse! She wants to eat EVERYTHING! I keep having to say “No, not a toy. No, no bite. No, No, NOOOO.” when I see that little mouth come close.

- Thrifting! Just clothes for the winter months, but yesterday I got a knitted (not by hand) vest, a couple really nice name brand sweaters, a stripped shirt that makes me feel French, and couple pairs of pants. I want to say I spent around $26 for all of it. Win! I’ll try to do a post about them later. They need to be washed and ironed, and one of the sweaters needs new buttons.

Does anyone know about these? My mom said that if the black is longer or the brown is longer that it’s supposed to say whether or not it’s going to be a long winter, but she couldn’t remember which color was supposed to be longer. Or something like that. Does anyone out there know what she’s talking about?

Hello! I’ve been away because John is home! He is on leave for the month, and we’ve been busy busy busy! Once he’s gone, I’m sure blogging will return to it’s semi-regular state.  FYI, this is going to be a long post.

It was really nice being with John for is OCS graduation, but it was even better to have him come back home with me! (The captions are going to be above their corresponding picture this time, not below like normal.)

I don’t have any pictures of it, but we traded in John’s old car and bought a Prius, since he has to drive down to Ft. Jackson in South Carolina at the end of the month. It is so nice, omg. Also that weekend, we bought a puppy! Her name is Kipp, and we didn’t even mean to get her. We were sensing that Twilight was a bit lonely, so we went to scope out a kitty brother or sister for her, but when we went to the shelter to look at the cats, it was like I was dead inside. Too soon. But when we walked past the dogs, I saw Kipp and had to bring her home. Who knew? And Twilight is adjusting well, but she kind of doesn’t know what to make of Kipp. She’d never met a dog before.

And my parents are here visiting! Twilight is very happy to have her buddy back, much to my dad’s amusement. And my mom is a dog person, turns out… as long as that dog is under 10 pounds, lol.

My brother is here too. You can take the boy out of Florida…

Yesterday was super busy. We went out to lunch, then we went to Green Acre Farms in Greece to pick apples, ride a hay-ride, and go through the corn maze. Their website said they had pumpkins, and I was thinking pumpkin PATCH, but it just turned out to be pumpkins on some tables. Bummer. We’ll have to look for a legit pumpkin patch sometime this week.

We also went to an Amerks vs The Crunch game. The Amerks won. Go Rochester!

PS: Kipp thinks falling leaves are pretty awesome.

If you got any comments from me on entries that you posted, like… a month ago, sorry! This morning I had 400 entries to catch up in my “crafty” section of my blog reader! I got through 200 of them, but whew! 30 more have already been added since I started working on this entry!

Dune lost his battle to cancer (?) on October 1st, 2009, right before I left for the airport to go visit John for his OCS graduation.

He was a good little boy, who lived a good life, and we will miss him dearly.

Towards the end, he was very mopey and didn’t move around much, but not so much that his passing didn’t come as a surprise. He was only 6 years old. We loved him very much, but are grateful that he didn’t pass while we were both away. I was able to stay up with him on his last night.

John and I laid him to rest on Saturday when we both got home. (John has leave until the 28th.)

Goodbye Dune, we will miss you.

I am on the hunt for a formal dress for John’s OCS formal! I would like something unique, and not crazy expensive. So I’m thinking of finding something used, and maybe altering it? Or maybe not if it’s awesome to begin with.

So I did some research and found these places to look:

Thrift Stores

• Salvation Army – opens @ 9:00
  535 East Ridge Road & 745 West Avenue
• Goodwill – opens @ 10am
  376 Jefferson Road & 1518 West Ridge Road & 451 South Clinton Avenue
• Thrifty Shopper – opens @ 9:00
  400 Jefferson Rd
• Volunteers of America – opens @ 9:00
  214 Lake Ave. & 89 Canal St.
• Second Season Clothing (Even though they advertise on PXY, blech!) – opens @ 10:00
  1555 Mt. Hope Ave – haha I found you online not through radio suckas

Estate Sales

• 321 Cedar Place in East Rochester 10am
• 1226 Stafford Cresent in Webster 9am to 3pm
• 12 Foxtail Lane in North Chili 10am-5pm
• 80 Sandbury Drive in Pittsford 8am-2pm
• 2981 Mt. Read Blvd. in Rochester 9am-5pm – numbers given out at 8am (!)

So… anyone want to go with me??  If you do, leave me a comment and I’ll email you tomorrow.

Halloween is getting close. Even though I didn’t really have to, I sketched out my version of this costume. I need to go buy some fabric!  I actually don’t know if this will work though.  It will depend on how cold October is.  Although, I guess I will be most likely going to Monster Jam this year, and that always gets hot because it’s so crowded.  So who knows.

I didn’t mow yesterday, but I did knit!

“Nom nom nom”

“WTF you mean stop?”

“But I waaaaant it.”

“Yarn yarn yarn.”

Should I just remake this whole post in the style of LOLcats?

PS: John was able to call yesterday. Yay!

John and I were married a year ago today.

He is in the field today, so I went up over Labor Day weekend so we could celebrate it. In case you were wondering, it is possible, and not even problematic, to bring wedding cake slices onto a Delta flight.

It was fun, and I loved seeing him, but it’s hard being at work knowing he’s not at home to greet me when I’m done for the day. I don’t even know if he’ll be able to call me. He asked his cadre (spelling?) if he can and we have our fingers crossed. We’ll see.

It’s been an interesting year.  I love you John.  I miss you.

I’m going to go home, maybe mow the lawn, and work on his blanket.  I’m hoping to have it done for his graduation, but we’ll see.  When all of you look at me, confused, when I say I want to make him a patchwork knitted blanket, think this.  I have a Netflix movie, but it’s about a wedding, and I couldn’t get through it last week.  Maybe this week I’ll be stronger.

Tee-hee, I match the parking garage stairwell floor today.