Musings on a Saturday evening

I am just home from an evening excursion to Dairy Queen, a reward to my 8 year old for having a great week behavior wise at school. He has some trouble keeping his mouth shut (shocking I know, coming from a spawn of mine) and this week was unusually good for him, hence the ice cream reward.

After our indulgence, we headed to run a couple of errands and on the drive over stopped for a red light. On the corner was a group of young girls, my guess is somewhere between 16 and 20 or 21 years old. I'm really not sure, I have such a hard time judging ages. And who can tell these days? Girls 12 or 13 dress and behave like they are in their 20's. What are their mothers thinking? Anyway, these otherwise well dressed and attractive group of 4 or 5 young women were, I shit you not, standing on the corner smoking cigars and hocking loogies into the street every few seconds.

Isn't it bad enough that some men behave in this fashion, but do we really need our young women to do the same? I was shaking my head as we pulled through the intersection and blessedly away from the spectacle on the corner.

Earlier this afternoon we decided to forge ahead into uncharted territory. Giving the newly adopted Puggle, Daisy, a bath. I honestly had no idea what to expect from her once we finally coaxed her into the bathroom. Her first bath and grooming was done at Petsmart - which by the way, save your money and give your dogs a bath yourself. They did a lousy job - the dog smelled sour for 3 days afterwards. But I digress. I was more than a bit worried that she would get into the tub, see the cup of water coming at her and freak out. The scene in my head involved a full cup of water all over me and the floor, and a dog leaping out of the tub to land on my chest with all four paws. Despite my trepidation, I decided the 8 year old and I could probably handle it and plunged ahead with Operation Wash Daisy.

After just a bit of gentle encouragement, the Puggle was in the tub and getting scrubbed. She didn't seem to be freaked out by the process at all and other than wiggling and shaking like a loon the instant she was out of the tub and out of my hands, she was an angel during the entire process. Which caused me to wonder, for the 1000th time, why anyone would give up such a beautiful and well behaved dog.

Daisy has the sweetest demeanor and face you'll ever see. 18 pounds of lovin', she's been a wonderful addition to our little family. Freckles on her nose with a white mask and white paws, she's just adorable and for a moment (and believe me it was ever so brief, I'm not stupid) I wished she hadn't been spayed so we could breed her. Then rationality took over and I thought about all the work and gross crap that comes with whelping pups. Ah, yeah.....nevermind.

So now we have a clean, if somewhat irritated, Puggle. I am glad to report I was able to keep her from rolling in the mud the first chance she got. It involved several scolds and a couple of hard tugs on her harness, but for now she's still clean 5 hours later. Wonder how long that will last? My guess is, not nearly long enough. Meh.

One of these days soon I really need to blog about Archaeology - a topic I majored in while at the University of Iowa, but a field in which I will most likely never work. Ever since reading a National Geographic which featured an article about the ruins at Pompeii, I've been hooked. My son and I recently visited the Museum of Natural History here in DC and saw a great exhibit of archaeological remains dated to the 17th Century in Jamestown Virginia and St. Mary's City Maryland. Maybe next blog entry, eh?