interest you in apple, sweet tea, or rock, ya'll?

We’ve finally finished moving in and settling and are just now beginning to decorate. The last few days have been an exercise in extreme patience when trying to get the cable company to understand I wanted to set up my apple airport—yes apple—no, not pc—no I don’t have a Windows operating system—no, ma’am, you’re looking at the wrong screen—no, I don’t use internet explorer and don’t need to disable an antivirus program, I don’t have an antivirus program—no. no. Finally, it took a very charming tech guy from Estados Unidos Mexicanos to come to my apartment and call his friend in Mexico (where the cable company call desk is located) and get my info registered for my wireless to work. For the first portion of my time dealing with the utility folks I was having the usual Northerner feelings/responses. Bossy. Sassy. Impatient. I’ll admit, even a little rude. Then, all of a sudden, something happened when Carlos was here—a little southernness kicked in. All of a sudden I was MORTIFIED that I didn’t have any sweet tea to serve and compensated by gratuitously thanking him over and over again for helping me (with a little twang edged into thang-k yuuuuuu).



Here’s a puppy story for you, Mary: When I first brought my black lab, Winston Amadeus home, he was a dream. Very good at the whole crate training thing. Calm. Motivated to learn and be good and fulfill all of my own girl+hound dreams. And I figured this was entirely because I, being the brilllllliant dog-cargiver that I assumed I was, put a baby receiving blanket in his crate. I mean he was NEARLY my first human baby. And I concluded, he’s a dog, not a beast, I couldn’t expect him to sleep on that cold, hard crate surface alone without any softness to soothe him. Well, about two weeks later I came home from school and he had eaten the entire receiving blanket. I didn’t even know it was gone until a whole day of him not eating or drinking water had passed. The vet said his stomach had expanded like 10 times past what it should, that it was like he had a whole little round seedless watermelon inside. Anyway he had to have emergency stomach surgery and it cost me around $1500. He didn’t eat anymore blankets after that, but as if to keep me on top of things, will occasionally eat a medium to large sized rock.