Tough day

Last night while trying to get roughly 10 hours of sleep I was disrupted by my little beast. He found it necessary to gnaw on his bone as loudly as possible. And then when that got boring he wanted to play catch with himself. Cut to 12am when Carrie gets home from a business trip and he practically scratched the door down to see her, and play. 

Then this morning while trying to take him out to pee, he managed to escape my grip 3 times and run away. I think he sensed that it was raining and decided that he would not be forced to pee under those conditions.
Well luckily he kept Carrie company while she worked from home today and was actively doing this:And this:No no, go ahead Bruise, you rest up and take it easy.

I feel so productive! And morbidly obese.

So this weekend was a lot of fun and today has been super productive. Friday Eileen and I went to see (500) Days of Summer and it was awesome! I've already bought the soundtrack. It made me miss 3rd Rock From the Sun...I totally cried at the series finale. I love Zooey Deschanel and I now enjoy Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Yesterday was a Target run, and an afternoon of cleaning (always a blast). Then out to a party at Retro on Roscoe. It involved a 2am Ian's Mac and Cheese Pizza run which was completely necessary. It was the most delish thing I've ever eaten. Followed by brunch this morning where I decided to get a breakfast burrito. Again, completely necessary. 

Then we took Bruiser to the beach! Well, I knew you could take dogs to this beach, but we couldn't find the actual dog beach...so he just sat with us on the regular beach. And then I started to get paranoid about getting fined $500 if he doesn't have a special dog license. Its bizarre. Long story short, he doesn't enjoy sand and HATES children so overall, it was interesting. BUT I did get to try these weird Mexican pinwheel-chip-like-things with hot sauce. And then I had to have the corn with MAYO, BUTTER and CHEESE! I've never seen this before but It was amazingly fat and I'm worried about food poisoning as the mayo was in the hot sun...but I enjoyed it. And don't worry- I needed to get my protein in so a hot dog was my solution for that.

I then proceeded to book my flight to Cabo in February!! Finally, after years of spending money on my Mileage Plus credit card, I finally used points towards a flight. I'm very excited about it!

Now if you'll excuse me I just found a movie called Legally BlondeS, a British spin-off of Legally Blonde on TV...it looks awful so I'm sure I'll watch the whole thing. 

Mini's Over It

Don't you love his new summer haircut? He enjoys it, minus the fact that some kind of bug has bit him all over his neck. So he's been itching non stop for a couple weeks. Tomorrow, its back to the vet for the second time. There's nothing I like more than throwing money to the wind!

I think I have a nickname problem. Its always been a family joke that I have a million nicknames for pets and sometimes people. I have NO reasoning behind half of the names. Poor Bruiser barely knows his actual name because of this. I fear for my future children. So far these are a handful of names that I have called Bruiser:

-Meaty Mouf (he used to eat wet food and got it all over his whiskers)

-Mini Man/Mr. Man, which is basically Mini to Min, which turned into Da Mini and Das Mini...?

-Chicken (Eileen calls him that)

-Kitten (Carrie calls him that)

-Mister Peepers

-Nugget, to Nuggs

-Boo

-Love Lamb

-Fu Manchu (he has one)

-Sniggity (he had snaggle teeth for a bit)

-Mr. Halitosis (self explanatory)

-Sweet Man

-Baby Face Jackson (Michael may have started this one)

I can't even remember all of the ridiculous nicknames he's had. I know...its a serious problem.

Adventures at Camp K

So every couple months I head out to the burbs to spend time with the fam. They LOVE when I come home. And by that I mean, Wendy prepares herself for a weekend of constant nagging and annoyance from me. Les just got back tonight from China and Japan for business, and I'm fairly sure he was more excited to Bruise than me. That's pretty standard.

This is my weekend so far:

Friday 7:45pm: In the car minutes from home, Bruiser pukes all over my lap, and then proceeds to have diarrhea on the floor mat of the car. Awesome.

7:49pm: Arrive at "Camp K" while Bruise runs around barking hysterically, the other two dogs (Tori and Amber- yes, I'm aware that they have stripper names) try to avoid him and greet me with dirty stuffed animals.

8:15-10:00pm: Wash my vomit jeans while watching HGtv.

10:15pm: Bed.

Saturday 6:00am: Awake to the sound of Bruiser crying outside my parent's door, trying to wake them up and take him for a walk. Evil.

7:15am: take Bruise to the groomers and debate leaving him there permanently.

7:30am: Take the other 2 dogs for a delightful walk in the park for 15 minutes and I then decide its much too cold to be out there.

8:30am: Reluctantly pick Bruiser up from the groomers. I now like him again that he's clean and has a cute bandanna.

9:00-1:30pm: Shop with Wendy and spend money that I do not have on things that I do not need.

4:30pm: Jay surprises me by coming home to see the fam. I try to get info out of him about girls, he lets me know nothing.

5:30pm: Les returns home bearing gifts! I have a new scent- Hermes Kelly Caleche.

7:15pm: I feel immense RAGE against chocolate companies that do not include a "legend"* with the chocolates. Am I supposed to guess whats in there? No, I don't trust that. I cannot risk getting a gross cherry cordial chocolate. Its almost not worth it... But I can't resist so I risk it and this time I was lucky- caramel and truffle.

7:45pm: Sit down to watch various pirated DVDs from Shanghai.

Then apparently we will be stopping the movie at 8:30 for Earth Hour, per my Dad's demands. I am not sure what we will do for one hour in candlelight while staring at each other. My guess is that he'll plan on falling asleep at 8:31 and leave the rest of us to entertain ourselves.

*What the HELL are these things called? Legend? Map? Diagram? I tried googling it to no avail.

Death stare:

This is how Bruise feels towards me being sick. He hasn't seen the light of day since Monday...is that bad? All the little guy wants to do is prance all over my body and in return I scream in pain and heave all 4.5 lbs of him off of me. Worst. Mother. Ever.

Happy V Day from Bruise!

His last day in the office :(

This was Bruise today, at his last day in the office after getting a new hair did by Brenda. He is retiring after almost a year and half of hard work. But really we are moving offices and there are no dogs allowed in the new office. Booo.

The tough life

You would almost think that this little mini had a really long, annoying day at work. But really he ran around and played catch for a while, maybe ate and pooped. Meanwhile, Carrie and I need our weekly wine to actually make it through the week. Really glad that tomorrow is Friday!

Things I wants for Bruise...

...but cannot afford. (Remember that whole "debt reduction" thing?)

How cute are these?? I really like the hat and there are more over at People Pets. I know this will be hard to believe, but Bruise already has a very nice down filled coat that the wears in the winter. And yes, it probably cost more than any coat I've bought for myself. However, it definitely came in handy yesterday when we were waiting for the stupid train in the freezing cold for a half hour. Long story short I almost froze to death and was beyond pissed off at the CTA. He has this little number below, but in black. Because you care.

Bruise loves the snow...sometimes

When he's not pretending to be paralyzed, he actually loves playing in the snow. And he looks hilarious.

My dog is out to get me

Alright so he doesn't look completely evil here, but I swear that he is trying to spite me. I'll give you the quick run down of his life. So I got Bruiser September of '07 while I was living with the ex. Shortly thereafter we broke up and I moved out. I moved into a palisade (that's how I like to describe it) of a studio where the only window looked out on a brick wall. So for 6 months during the winter last year, I could not see daylight from my apartment. Oh no, it wasn't depressing at all. God forbid I tried cooking something with garlic, and the garlic lingered for days. Don't be jealous! So it was just me and Bruise, holding down the fort. Oh, I forgot to mention that I had a mattress on the floor. So he could get on my bed, and sometimes he would pee on it just to piss me off (no pun intended). The BEST part of this studio was that laundry was $1.50 to wash, and another $1.50 to dry. Who has that many quarters on hand? I would have to make multiple trips per month to the bank to get rolls of quarters. So you can imagine my anger when at 10:00pm I find pee in my bed, and 0 quarters in my pocket.
Now let's take a quick look at his tough and hard knock life. Ever since he was like 10 weeks old, I have been taking him to work with me EVERY DAY. Yes, that's right. He gets to play with his only dog friend, Milo, and run around in our office all day. So he doesn't sit at home being bored, he is active. I have enough treats and healthy food for him to last a lifetime. Then even if we are home, I have 3 roommates for him to play with. Sometimes I will send him off to my parent's house, Camp "K", because he LOVES it. He gets to go outside and run around in the backyard with my 2 other dogs, play catch with my dad and probably get better snacks than he does here. Long story short, he lives a great little life but I definitely punish him if he needs it.
I digress, the whole point of this post is that while trying to watch TV in my bed last night I roll over to find my remotes wet. I freak out and assume that obviously there must have been a leak in the ceiling, dripping onto my bed. NOPE. It's urine. And at 1 am in the morning, there is no way I'm washing sheets/comforters. So I go to bed angry, and pretty much sleeping in pee. This is all on top of the fact that my 2 roommates downstairs have been finding little "gifts" around the basement.
When I was gone over the holidays, he stayed with my 2 roommates, Carrie and Eileen. And he went home with Eileen for actual Christmas. Now, I don't know if he's just mad at me because I left him and screwed up his schedule. Or he's just mad because he doesn't have a steady father figure. But he has definitely not been acting appropriately lately. Aside from trying to ruin my life one pee at a time, he is actually a really good little dog.