We live in a fairly new neighborhood with all the amenities we could want. We have a water park, lots of trails to walk, play grounds, a spray park, good schools, and freaking paper hanging doorbell ringing sales folk. More than once in the last couple of weeks, Illi was down for less than 15 minutes when the doorbell rings, Mydrinn goes crazy, and it is just some moron selling something stupid with the same pitch everyone else uses. “I was just over at __________ (some generic name)’s house, and she loved this and bought a ton. But first, let me bore you about my company and other crap you don’t care about.” I mean really, we don’t give a rat’s who bought what, assuming the rather dubious assertion is even true. They never take no for an answer, and just keep talking (I assume) after the door is closed.

So, we researched the laws of Fort Worth, and found out that putting up a “No Soliciting” sign means that anyone that puts anything on our door, or petitions us for any reason can incur a $500 dollar, per incident fine. The only people exempt are government officials. We looked around online for something tasteful (and affordable), couldn’t find one (this one came up on our search many times - yuck), so we just put up a paper sign in the window with the following:

No Soliciting
Violation of this notice may result in a $500 per incident fine.
City of Fort Worth (Ord. No. 15245, § 1, 9-17-02) & (Ord. No. 17829, § 1, 10-9-07)
This includes Handbills and Religious Petitioning

Hopefully that will get the point across. If not, I will just start turning everyone into to the City for code violations. We like our sleep around here, and our “guard dog” Mydrinn will not be deterred from his solemn duty, so do us all a favor, just go away, we aren’t buying anything from you anyways.

There were several good stories around on the net about this topic, but one of my favorites was this girl’s. Her blog name and motto are just so good, I had to link back.

Illianna giggled for the first time a couple of days ago. She’s been smiling for a while now, and I always think she’s so unbelievably cute when she does so, but now her giggles take the cake. Illianna has always enjoyed Adan and Mydrinn. There have been multiple times when I’m getting her bottle ready while she’s crying in her little Boppy chair, so the dogs go over to check on her and start playing with each other to entertain her. 50% of the time she quits crying. Well, Ryan was holding her and playing with the dogs. She was all smiles. Then she just couldn’t contain herself and she giggled. We hope to get it on video in the next couple of days, and I’ll post it.

This one was too sweet not to post on the front page.

Happy 2005! We’’re almost a month into the New Year and things have been on the busy side. I think as you age things start speeding up, which makes since because you have more time under your belt to compare things to. When you’re a kid a week seems like forever because out of the life you’’ve lived so far it is, but as you age you find yourself looking at the clock on Friday at 5 thinking, “Where did the week go?”

What have we been up to? We have a new fish tank, which occupied many weekends, but now that we’re about stocked to our max that has slowed down. This past weekend we stayed home. Ryan didn’t want to ride around and irritate his hip, so I was forced to do some touch up painting around the house. I still have quite a bit to go. My goal is to have it done before company gets into town, but I think I’’m the only one that notices there’’s even a problem.

The dog and the cat, they’’re having to earn the privilege of being called by their names, recently had some fun in the trash. I’’d thrown away an old ham, and for the first few days I was concerned about them getting into it, but to my surprise they ignored it, so that of course lead me to let my guard down. Sure enough we came home one night to quite the mess. The fact that there was trash all over the kitchen was the least of our problems. The dog ate so much that he just about popped. He went #1 in two different places ‘thank God it was on the tile’ and #2 on the carpet. He was hiding under the table when we came home. He, unlike the cat who was still gorging herself as we walked into the kitchen, knew he’’d been bad. He got to spend quite a bit of time outside ‘being sick’ and in his crate. Unfortunately he didn’’t have the sense to not eat what he was unable to keep down. I thought our dog was above doing something that disgusting, but alas, he is a dog. It wasn’t until 3 or 4 days later ‘we had to get him to the groomer’ that he was able to venture around the house. I do not think he’’ll be doing something like this again, but I’m quite sure the cat will. If she licked a pan of bacon grease clean, then a little rotten ham isn’t going to stop her. Actually, she’s spending her day in the utility room because this morning I thought I’d be generous and let her run around while we were getting ready. It dawned on me that she must be up to no good when it had been 5 minutes and she wasn’t in the bathroom begging to be fed, something unheard of. Just as I suspected, she was in the sink licking a pan I left to soak overnight. Ah, the joy of animals.

1. Put both lids of the toilet up and add 1/8 cup of pet shampoo to the water in the bowl.

2. Pick up the cat and soothe him while you carry him towards the bathroom.

3. In one smooth movement, put the cat in the toilet and close both lids. You may need to stand on the lid.

4. The cat will self agitate and make ample suds. Never mind the noises that come from the toilet, the cat is actually enjoying this.

5. Flush the toilet three or four times. This provides a \”power wash\” and rinse\”.

6. Have someone open the front door of your home. Be sure that there are no people between the bathroom and the front door.

7. Stand behind the toilet as far as you can, and quickly lift both lids.

8. The cat will rocket out of the toilet, streak through the bathroom, and run outside where he will dry himself off.

9. Both the commode and the cat will be sparkling clean.

Sincerely,

The Dog