Undecided

Addressing invitations to the California & Texas wedding events (wedding/reception & reception, respectively).  With approximately 80 invitees to each event, someone has to address them.  To avoid cramping or other strain related to addressing them all at once, I’m doing 5 a day.  At that rate, it will take just over a month to complete all of the invitations.  March delivery (?) with return requested for April & May (California & Texas event respectively).

I think I seriously need a badly dubbed Martial Arts movie to duck out to while one of her shut-in friends whose trying to prove to her father that she’s not abandoned life because her ex-boyfriend dumped her and skipped town helps her address them all…  (If you missed the reference, it’s ok, it wasn’t that great.)

Sara Wilson posted a wonderful little snippet on Amazon Daily about pet management.  Since my girlfriend and I travel a bit from time to time, and because we can’t always take Sasha (our Yorkshire Terrier) I found this very enlightening.

Part III: My Dog is Spiteful

When you leave your dog alone, he destroys things – your favorite things! He has got to be doing that to get back at you for leaving him! He is soooo spiteful!

Right?

What’s Happening? Your dog knows you best through his nose. His world is a complex mix of scents, which we cannot even imagine. So when he misses you or is anxious, he doesn’t find a photo of you to gaze at, he cuddles up with a favorite shoe (smells of you) or your remote control (smells of you and of food, double winner there!) or curls up on your favorite chair. And then, as his anxiety builds, he may start to lick a bit, nibble and then rip. If, when you come home , you get upset (understandable but sadly makes matters worse) this only causes more worry next time you leave, more stress, more chewing and…. Around we go in a miserable cycle of correction.

Quick Fix: Try prevention rather than correction. Assume destruction is frustration and/or anxiety and try to limit both. Increasing exercise, giving your dog more structure and direction so he feels more secure, and confining him to someplace safe (safe not scary, no locking the dog in the basement please!) can all help. But if this has been going on for a while, speak to your veterinarian or a qualified training professional, because you both may need some help getting off this unhappy merry-go-round.

Plan: Next time we travel, leave something with our odor with Sasha.

I monitor Scott’s RSS feed and he seems to be doing what I’m doing, dumping old links to his blog for archival purpose.  Among the list of links that I found interesting was a blog article entitled “Planning your own EOL”

I never bothered much with a will because frankly I didn’t care what happened after the mythical moment when I no longer exist, but now that I’ve met my precious, I think more and more about doing things to take care of her should she ever find herself without me.