And 2002 is off!

Didn’t get to post any pictures yet because the computers were removed from their niche. After hanging out with Elmo for the week, Kevin was bit by the do-it-yourself (DIY) bug and decided he wanted to carpet the computer room. He consulted with Elmo before he left, picked the carpet, called Josh, and they began to lay away. I’m actually surprised to say that it looks good! It’s almost done and the computers will (hopefully) go back in tonight. Artie *loved* the carpet and spent every free moment rolling around and acting goofy on it. We figure it was the one area of the house that wasn’t covered with his dog hair and drool and he sensed this disruption in the force and went all out to rectify that. Unfortunately, Artie petered out and ended up snoring in the middle of the newly carpeted room. He had a rough weekend because we were invaded by the baby piglet.

Our friends, Anna & Todd, were leaving town for the weekend and needed someone to watch their dog, Eugene. He’s a one year old male pug who is absolutely adorable and absolutely crazy. He arrived Friday night and proceeded to chase the cats, bark at Artie, and run around the house like a headless chicken until he crashed in a little furry heap. I named him the baby piglet because he snorts just like a pig. He’s one of these dogs that goes full circle – he’s so ugly he’s cute. Those little frog eyes on the side of his head, the wrinkly brow and curl little pig tail. I simply couldn’t contain myself.

And, as it turns out, neither could the baby piglet. He wanted to PLAY and he didn’t care who with. So first, he snort around the house looking for the cats. If he was lucky enough to find one curled up sleeping somewhere, he’d run up to them and start jumping up and down and barking. Usually, all we’d hear was barking, hissing, and then a streak of black followed by a blur of off-white. They’d race down the stairs into the basement where we’d hear all this tumbling and crashing and then they’d come back up the stairs only this time Eugene would be first with a huge and pissed cat right behind him. Kevin would grab Eugene and I’d try to keep the cats from clawing their way up Kevin’s leg. Wicks wasn’t too bad -she’s so fast Eugene couldn’t touch her. But big fat fatty Blitz was another story. At one point, she started to stalk Eugene. I watched her creep forward, hair puffed up, a deep moaning coming from her 20 lbs of chub. I was scared for my life but Eugene was unfazed. I managed to coax Blitz away from the piglet but it was close. When the cats managed to hide themselves from his reign to terror, he’d move onto bigger prey – Artie.

Now that was a site to see. Here’s this little dog jumping up and down and pawing at Artie’s face. Artie would look at him with disgust and growl. That only made the baby piglet increase his jumping and barking. Suddenly Artie would snap and break out into a full fledge bark. This would throw the baby piglet back a few feet in surprise but in true puppy form he’d shake it off and be right back in Artie’s face. Poor Artie, he’d just look at us as if to ask, why me? If he tried to walk away, Eugene would walk right behind him and nip the back of Artie’s legs. This would result in Artie turning around and letting out a really pissed bark. Eugene would cower for a second and then, once he sensed the danger had passed, would jump up and start barking in Artie’s face again. It reminded me of those nature specials with the lions. The baby lions were all cute and tumbly and would run over to the male pack leader and begin to bother him – jumping on his back, chewing his tail, acting tough. The big lion would kind of ignore them until they went too far and then he’d turn around and roar at them. Those little lions were usually smart enough to take the hint and go find another lion to bother. Eugene, however, is no lion. He’d have poor Artie snarling and barking away and would kept coming back for more. I must say that after living with the baby piglet, I have to re-evaluate my opinion of Artie. Artie is a sweet, mellow, well behaved, gentle creature. Dang, my dog rocks.

Even though Eugene was a puppy terror, I couldn’t get enough of him. He followed me around, did the cute little puppy head tilt when to talked to him, sat right between my feet, and would curl up on my lap to sleep. And when he was sleeping and snorting away, I could forgive him anything. He was that cute.

Yes, I took pictures but I can’t post them (see opening paragraph) until later. But once I do, you will want a baby piglet all your own too. Once he left, all our animals curled up and slept for 12 hours straight and it was eerily silent without the sound to snorting echoing through our little house.

(Kevin was not as taken with the baby piglet because he pooped on the kitchen floor and Kev stepped in it and tracked it all over the house. Ick. Thankfully, he was wearing shoes!)

Been a while since the last update but things have been busy. Parents in town, Christmas celebration and more work on the kitchen. The good news is I got a digital camera for Christmas so watch out world! Going to post the in-progress remodel pictures this weekend. I have to keep this short because I’m heading to a funeral. My boss’ wife died on Christmas day. Sigh.

All for now….

I discovered how to really annoy Kevin last night. It’s so simple. Here’s what you do. Next time you talk to him, bring up the Lord of the Rings and pronounce hobbit as “ho” (the sound Santa makes) + bit (what you put in a horse’s mouth). This drives him absolutely insane.

“I felt they really captured the spirit of the book. I especially like the part where the ho-bits where running from the dark riders and the ho-bits jumped off the path just in time. Good thing ho-bits are so small or they would never have fit behind that log. And the ho-bits feet! I loved the fact all the ho-bit were barefoot with ho-bit hairy feet…..”

He will run screaming. It’ll be fun!

PS If you want to really get his goat, tell him you heard that his favorite character from the trilogy is Woodbeard the Fire Ant. Only say it quickly and then run for your life ’cause that one makes him really insane.

Things have been tense at work lately. The senior partner in my firm found out his wife has cancer. Actually, she found a lump months ago and was rushed into surgery for a mastectomy. She’s still young – early forties I’d guess. Then came the chemo and the medication. It leaked into work, of course, and we gleaned bits of news now and then. Finally, a month or so ago, she came into the office and announced she had just had her last chemo session. He was so happy. The kids were meeting them at a restaurant to celebrate. I remember he kept joking with her to take off her wig and she would hit him in disgust. We didn’t hear much else for a while and then suddenly things turned worse.

I guess she began having trouble speaking and remembering words so they took her back to the hospital for test. Next thing I heard, they had discovered the cancer had moved into her brain and she had three very large tumors. My boss began taking lots of personal calls behind closed doors and I didn’t really know what was happening except when asked how she was, he would say, “not good”.

The other day he got a call that she was having seizures and wouldn’t wake up. Amazingly enough, he returned to work the next day. I think he was just looking for something to do until the test results were back. But you could tell he was here in body only. His heart was elsewhere.

Today was our firm Christmas lunch and even though he was waiting for the results of a crucial MRI he can to celebrate for us. I don’t know how he sat through that lunch and laughed and ate and made merry with us. It must have been the longest lunch of his life. I saw him checking his watch and every time his cell phone rang, we all held our breath.

My co-worker just called me to say that the MRI was positive and there is hope after all. Not everything is fine go home tomorrow but also not time to say good-bye. I’m relieved but I’m still worried about her and about him and their kids. It all happened so fast. It was found and they thought it was over and now its back worse than ever. My boss is a great attorney and someone who I respect for his talent and knowledge of the law. But watching him go through this, I respect him now for his strength and his love and his hope. It can’t be easy to be strong for your kids and for your clients and for your co-workers. I can’t imagine having to find that level of strength.

So if you have a moment, say a prayer for her, ok? And if you have two moments, say a prayer for him too.

I stumbled across an interesting site the other day. It’s called nanowrimo which is short for National Novel Writing Month. Unfortunately, I appear to be too late this year as the event is held during the month of November. During this time, you sign up to write 50,000 words in one month. The idea being you don’t concentrate on how good your writing is, rather, you concentrate on finishing.

This appeals to me. I mean, really, how many time have you started your novel only to find your self bogged down seaching through your thesarus for the perfect word for the last sentence of the first paragraph. And then, even if you do manage to finish the first chapter, after you sit down and re-read it you through your hands up in disgust and fight your urge to tear the offensive papers to shreds. True to form, I have a whole notebook full of starts and not one finish story.

So nanowrimo appeals to me. You don’t have to write well, that won’t gain you any points. The only way to win is to complete your novel. You can’t use something you’ve already started but must start with word one and work your way through the remaining 49,999. Plot? Not necessary. Character development? Only if it eats up words. But to be able to say, with that nonchalance air, “Oh, my first novel was atrocious dahling. I shudder to recall it.”

So maybe next year, come November, I too will hole up with my computer and pound away furiously just so, at the vary least, I will have one single, complete, from start to finish with everything in-between, novel.

My dad called last night to apologize to Kevin and confess.

You see, Empress Chrissie is not a random phenomenon. Oh no, EC is an inherited trait from the Terry side of the family. After reading my entry, my father was overwhelmed by a sense of shame for he knew that EC came from the Terry clan. So last night he called and spoke to Kevin, man to man.

I heard something about a laptop in payment for Kevin emotional distress and signing some sort of release for all future harm but I digress.

I must admit that it is nice to know that I’m not some random freak of nature but instead, a freak of heredity. My dad, you see, is the Emperor of Tradition. Certain things Must Be in order for the Terry world to continue. The Emperor of Tradition dictates that you must stay up until midnight on New Years Eve and drink root beer floats with vanilla ice cream. Sounds normal, right? But what you don’t also know is that the root beer Must Be A&W and you Must Use the long spoons with the twisted handles – any other root beer or spoons are unacceptable. Many families make Christmas cookies, right? But in our family, the Emperor of Tradition has dictated that the cookies Must Be decorated with five colors of frosting – white, yellow, green, red and blue – and the frosting Must Be applied with special mini-knives that are used for this purpose only. On Christmas Eve, it Must Be that we all watch a certain version of Scrooge (black and white – no coloration allowed) and on Christmas morn, it Must Be that presents in the stockings are opened first before all others. (For the curious, here is a hierarchy of present opening established by the Emperor of Tradition. Presents Must Be opened in the following order: stockings, presents from co-workers, then relatives, and finally immediate family.)

So my father confessed that when he heard about the Christmas lights that weren’t yellow and white but pink and orange, his first reaction mimicked mine – disgust and horror at an obvious violation of a Must Be. The Emperor of Tradition and Empress Chrissie spent a few minutes soothing each other’s ruffled sense of tradition while my mother and Kevin rolled either eyes and sighed. (Actually, couldn’t see my mother but I swear I heard her eyes rolling over the telephone line.)

You know the old saying, look to the mother before marrying the daughter? Well, I’m afraid poor Kevin was sadly led astray by this advice. In this situation, look to the father before marrying the daughter would have been more appropriate. Ah well, at least I can rest easy secure in the knowledge that I will carry on the traditions of Must Be. Lucky Kevin.

PS It rained last night and today. It’s looking like we may get a 30 day rain streak. Is that great or what?!?