In Da Dawg House

Since Cappy's been out on the boat, I've had plenty to keep myself occupied. I worked to get things back to normal after the Seafood Courtboullion and Jambalaya family reunion. Cleaning and reorganizing. Now I'm going through the closets, etc., with a fine-tooth comb, either taking Cappy's mantra to heart: "To da Road!", or bagging stuff up and delivering them to Goodwill. In doing so, I rediscovered the gifts I have been stashing since...well, even before last Christmas, for this Christmas.The next time Cappy gets off the boat, we are planning on taking a road trip to western NY to visit family. (YEAH!!!) Since it usually costs us a lot of money to mail the gifts to NY, I hit on a brainstorm to go ahead and finish my Christmas shopping, wrap everything, and take the Christmas presents with us when we go. Now what a swirl of disorganization I've created for myself. My winter paper blizzard has come early, due to the computer room resorting I started before I unearthed said gifts. Now the gifts and wrapping paper, and lists are comingled with ...well, gosh...everything. I know there are better systems for doing this, but since I've already taken the plunge, I'm going to keep going. Or dah tryin' anyhow.
My curlie white companions, who are usually at my side, are mad at me presently. MarkyBear, our 'cow' boy, who should weigh around 20 lbs, clocked in at the vet's at 42 lbs. and SparkyBear, who would do well at ~15 lbs is about 29 lbs. Geepers...I wonder why they are fat?! They take after their 'parents'. Well, the vet didn't say anything about Cappy or me, but she is having one fit about Mark, so now, they both are on a diet and excercise plan. No more treats. No more me cooking for them, which I had been doing, ever since that Chinese pet food scare. MarkyBear had even been throwing up back then, so that really worried me. I cooked for them, pampered them and downright spoiled them, to the point that they totally disdained dog food. They still do. When, this morning, I cheerily put their bowls down, as I always do, saying, "This is for SparkyBear..and this is for MarkyBear", they walked, grudgingly, to their bowls, took one whiff, looked at the other one's bowl, snorted, walked away, threw themselves down, each in a different corner and glared at me, then moped. Even as I speak, they are not in here with me. From where I am sitting, I can see the legs and tail of one of them in the hall, and don't know where the other one had flopped, pouting.
MarkyBear has been having 'hot spots', too, so he's just not been happy, all around. Cappy said that having Mark groomed with a real short haircut would make him feel better, because of the heat, too, so today, I loaded up both 'boys' and took them to a new groomer. Mark, to get the 'works', and SparkyBear to lend moral support. While they were there, the girl said that I could come back later for them, if I had shopping to do. So, off I went.
I wandered around 'Wally-woild', picking up some very good bargains on my quest to, as afore mentioned, finish up my Christmas shopping. Good deals! I have tried to adopt Mr. Bebe`, one of our friend's techniques for getting on the better side of the store clerks. It has got to be something I'm doing (but I swear, I don't know what) that sets them off. Now yesterday at Rouse's, I smiled pleasantly at a a Miss Rebecca, and said, "Hello, Miss Rebecca, I hope you are having a good day". She smiled back, but seemed kind of nervous and kept furtively looking back toward 'the office' as she ran a basket load of my groceries across the scanner and bagged them. Just as I was about to pay for them, she told me that she had forgotten to mention that the computers were not accepting debit or credit cards just then. Well, that's all I had with me. She told me to shove my stuff over to the customer service department, run to the bank and get some cash, come back to the customer service and pay for them. nice. Still kinda/sorta smiling, I wandered, slightly confused toward the door, and noticed that there were several other carts there, laden with defrosting groceries, as well, waiting for their 'owners' to come back from the bank to retrieve them. Resignedly, I got that taken care of and came home. Home again, Home again, jiggety jig, I always say.
Today at "Malwart", I was getting such good bargains, and SMILING. I thought the clerks had pep rallies every morning to get them all in good spirits. No? The only one who smiled back was the lady at the jewelry case, who waited on me. The rest of them seemed downright surly. Not a usual occurance at that store, I thought. Although the store was getting busy, I found a short checkout line and soon discovered why. I noticed the gal waiting on us, was having a difficult time with the customer ahead of me. Or was it the computer she was angry with? As I was putting my things on the conveyer belt, keeping a big distance, between the person ahead of me, as I turned away, I heard a loud bang, turned to see the cashier had loudly slammed one of those divider thingys between my things and the lady ahead of me. There was at least a foot and a half on either side of it. She glared at me, and the lady ahead of me looked at me apologetically, so I said, "Gosh, I wasn't going to crowd my things in there". The cashier snapped, "If I don't put it there, I'll get myself all confused". I was thinking, "we aren't supposed to be afraid of our checkout people, are we?" and was almost relieved when a gal came up behind me, who was only holding a couple of items, so I let her go ahead of me, thinking maybe by the time I got to the cashier, she'd have time to cool down. It was not to be. She fussed with that woman's debit card because the computer was fighting with it, although the information on it was correct, they said. She was clearly aggitated, and I was seriously thinking about either putting my things back into the cart and finding another line, or just leaving the store. Too late, she grabbed my first item and tried to scan it, but once again, the computer was being beligerant. "Well, Miss Courtney, it looks like you are having a bad day, eh?" She actually smiled. She got the computer to work and everything else sailed right through. I was thinking Mr. Bebe` might have something there, about reading the label names and addressing them pleasantly, by their name. Miss Courtney began telling me about her miserable day, and I smiled, nodding my head...poor thing. Then she said she was going to go to Houma after work, get drunk and get 'laid', even if she couldn't find her boyfriend. (!!!!) TMI!! TMI!!! Wayyyy, too much information. And there was more....but, I dragged my blushing self out of there, saying I hope her day would get better...I think I even did one of those "...and have a nice day" things. Yow! I was wondering if all the ladies had somehow managed to all get on the same 'cycle' and were all "PMS-ing"? I nearly made a clean break of the store when the usually sweet gray-haired lady, amid the loud shoplifting alarm that was going off, said sternly, "You! You come back here so I can check your cart!" (and I've know this lady for years. I often stop to chat with her.) It seemed while I was shopping, that every few minutes that alarm kept going off, so by then, I was almost oblivious to it. "Oh! That was my cart that set it off??" As she started pawing through my bags, she said, "Yes it was". People started stacking up, as she went through every single bag, to no avail. Then she said, "Alright, let me see your bra". I was taken aback. My bra??? Then as she pointed to one of the bags in my cart, I remembered, oh yes, I was purchasing a new one. Sure enough, some kind of BIG plastic dangling clip was still afixed, so she had to write everything down about it, and told me I could cut it off at home before I wore it. I surely would have done that, and tried to get her to smile. Well, she almost did, but she had a lot of other people to tend to, so I slunk out to my SUV and drove back to the groomer to pick up my dogs. Well, they were glad to see me. Til we got home, where their dishes still contained the miserable dry diet dawg food. It's my own fault; I should have never let myself become a short-order cook for a dog.
What a day; what a day. One week down of Cappy being away. Hurry home, Cappy; the natives are restless. (yes we are;... yes we are.)