Sunday, 6:53 p.m.
I went away this weekend, to celebrate the splendor of me and the date of my birth. Tonight I am home, having just picked up the dogs at their daycare where they summered this weekend. I got there just under the wire of the place still being open, saving me having to pay yet another $63 to let them stay another damn night.
Sixty-three dollars. Marvin used to make me stay in motels that were less expensive. Remember how he'd pick the most nightmarish cheap motels possible and try to play them off as "fun"? Remember the various Hotels du Crack I was a guest in?
Not this weekend. I swear I'm not wearing mom jeans here. It looks like I am. I'M NOT; STOP.
This is not where I stayed. This is, however, my new house. Happy birthday to me!
Actually, that place up there is one of the Vanderbilt's mansions, called Biltmore, and you know who doesn't need to biltmore money are the Vanderbilts. I totally shoulda worn my lavender Vanderbilt corduroy jeans I owned in 1981; maybe they'd have let me in for free. I wonder if Anderson Cooper gets in free? What if he had on my lavender cords?
We toured said mansion, and there are 65 fireplaces there. SIXTY-FIVE. Also, if the Vanderbilts had a cat, they'd never fucking see it.
"Where's the cat?"
"I saw her in one of our five music rooms back in February."
They also had gardens and vineyards and of course shops, because they need us to spend money there, the Vanderbilts do, as they clearly are hurtin'. I noted their statue of Diana involved a Lottie-looking dog, and note how it jumps like Lottie, too.
Oh, look, it's trying to bite my face.
And speaking of Lottie, I took her to dog daycare on Friday for a few hours, to see if she'd be okay, then I took her there Saturday morning for her big weekend jaunt, with Edsel. The place was teeming with dogs. Teeming. Lottie went in a corner and looked hunched. It's weird to see her scared of anything. I stayed awhile and watched her, worried sick. But Edsel made the rounds, waving at his old friends and high-fouring and so on, then he came to Lottie's corner of terror and touched her with his snout.
Every time I checked in on them via webcam this weekend, he'd check in on her every few minutes. Walk over and sniff her. He's a good boy. He needn't have bothered, as she pranced around there without a care all weekend, eventually climbing atop the plastic bridge they have in there. "It gud now. LOTee in chargg."
Then when I went to get her today with my under-the-wire pickup time, I was all OH MY GOD. She looked so tall. Let's do laundry basket measuring again.
Lottie on June 5. She still had smushy puppy feets.
Lottie on June 26, with Edsel doing his mom-in-Cat-in-the-Hat impresh, at right.
The mom in Cat in the Hat.
I like how when we read this, none of us were concerned that she left her small children alone. Hey, the fish will take over, if necessary. Was there a sale on Mary Janes that she just had to get to? I wonder if she'd been at my house. Looks like hair on her coat.
July 17. Well. She's cleared the dots.
Why does she always sit like that, with one leg down? She didn't when she was a teensy pup, up above, for those seven minutes that she was a teensy pup.
Anyway, the good news is, both dogs are exhausted, and have been sleeping constantly this evening, giving me much time to get things done like eat everything.
Speaking of which, as I was headed to the mountains for my vacation, mini, I fielded many phone calls and texts from family because birthday, mine. One such call was from my cousin Katie.
"I just got finished with my Shakeology and wanted to call to say happy birthday!" she said. She is forever saying things like that. My mother has noted that my Aunt Kathy (Katie's mother) is forever announcing her next move, as if we are all on tenterhooks. "I guess I'll get up and have more pie," she'll say, heading to the kitchen. I feel like Katie is following in her mother's announce-y footsteps.
As Mother Teresa was famous for saying, I said, "What the fuck is Shakeology?" Is it, like, the study of shakes?
"Oh, you don't know about Shakeology?" she asked, perhaps a trifle smugly. "Well, it's a meal replacement shake. Except I'm not replacing any meals with it."
And there, folks, is the iron fist of discipline that is evident with all my family. An entire family of women who bemoan the size of their hips, drink a meal replacement and then have a meal.
She also, however, announced to me that she's been doing The Fix, some sort of cockamamie workout routine that sounds too hard for my brittle old bones. "I've lost 15 inches!" she said.
"From your dick?" I asked, and I'm quoting Mother Teresa all over the place today.
"No, my hips, my thighs, even my butt!"
My family is completely over me and my shenanigans, in case you hadn't noticed.
Naturally, when I got home today and picked up the tall dog and the helpful dog, I Googled both Shakeology and The Fix, and am interested in neither. Then I got my own shakeology, at McDonald's.
I still seem to have these troublesome hips.
Oh! Also! June says, not on 27 topics at all today, there was a doggie at my hotel! An ADOPTABLE doggie! Apparently, this place always keeps one foster dog there. This one's name is Petey and I was obsessed not at all. At the end of the night last night, we came back to the hotel for a night hat, and we were sitting in the hotel balcony. Right where we were seated, you could see into one of the offices, and someone was working late, so the light was on and I could SEE PETEY IN THE OFFICE, working overtime. His little crate was in there, and a blanket by the window, but mostly he was staring at the person working late and every once in awhile the person would talk to Petey.
Was obsessed. With Petey. OBSESSED. You know how I am. I was hella fun to have a night hat with. "Look at Petey! Look at his little bed! Hello, Petey!!"
All right, I'd better go. By the time you read this it'll be July 18, which means it's my 18th wedding anniversary, former.
Maybe Marvin will get us a nice motel where we can celebrate.
