My Week, and My Dog, Jack "The Ripper"

Well it has certainly been a week here at Mother's house.  A very long, and yet so very short week, as usual.  I did manage to get quite a few things done and a few more started so I am calling it a successful week, whatever the hell that means.  I didn't do a whole lot today, but I did enough.  My camera ate a whole bunch of pictures again.  My husband keeps telling me that is not possible - they cannot just disappear - but they fucking did!  Twice!  I don't know how or why, but they are fucking gone and there is no getting them back!  I changed the memory card in my camera, hoping that that will solve the problem, but only time will tell.  So, for the fifth time now I get to re-take the same damn pictures of the same fucking shirts that I have already had to photograph four fucking times before!  Again, this is totally par for the course in my life, shit like this is as normal as the sunrise, so I do not let it phase me.  It is funny to listen to my husband rant and rave about how impossible it is for this shit to happen, after it HAS happened, but I would be happy to skip that part.

Other than the usual trials and tribulations that are a necessary part of any interaction I have with technology, the week went well.  I did the last of this years dyeing on Thursday, and finished washing it all out on Friday, and then on Saturday, I found two more shirts that I had dyed, and then totally forgotten about!  I left them outside in the dye bath for almost three whole days!  They got rained on, or in, as the case may be.  They still turned out pretty so it wasn't too big a deal, but I have no idea how I missed them entirely for so long.  I thought I was missing some when I washed them out, but after so many t-shirts they all start to blend together, so I am never quite sure.

Oh, and my dog, Jack, has started talking to me.  Well, he  has been talking to me for a long time, but he is expanding his ability to communicate, or rather, I guess I am expanding my ability to understand his attempts at communicating.  As I have mentioned in the past Jack is a Red-Heeler, a.k.a. an Australian Stumpy Tail Cattle Dog, a smaller medium sized breed that is highly intelligent and very sociable.  However, Jack thinks he is a German Shepherd.  He isn't really a trained attack dog, but he plays one in our life.  This is Jack:

One of his other favorite games, besides "Tear Mother limb from limb", is the perennial favorite of critters large and small - "Chase the Red Dot".  I keep a laser pointer in my desk drawer with my sewing supplies just for the dog's entertainment (the cat is old and doesn't care much about dots anymore).  Jack came up to me today, nudged me on the left leg with his nose (which is how he tells me he wants something), then he walks around me to the other side where the drawer is and nudges the drawer with his nose.  You should have seen this dog's eyes light up when I asked him if he wanted to play "dot".  He was off and running before I could even open the drawer!   I am not sure he is even really chasing the dot anymore, half the time he is ahead of it and the other half he changes directions long before the dot does, but he will run from one end of the room to the other and back a hundred times if I keep that dot moving.

Jack is a very smart dog.  He has probably 30 different toys in his toy bucket, and he know each one by name.  He can differentiate between the "Puppy Mouse" and the "Pink Piggy" as quick as you can name them.  But his all-time favorite toy above and beyond all else, is "Blue Ball".  And yes, I know he's color blind, but that does not slow him down at all.  He know the difference between "Blue Ball" and "Pinkie Ball" and "Blue Ball" is definitely better!  "Blue Ball is actually a rubber Racket Ball/ Hand Ball type ball.  Jack ate all the dog toy balls that we bought.  Just tore them to shreds within minutes usually, so we bought him a package of the hard rubber balls at the sporting goods store, and oh my gawd they are freaking awesome.  Of course my dog now had jaws stronger than your average pit bull after gnawing on these things for hours everyday, but they are the only things that can save me from complete dismemberment when he decides he needs to play "Tear Mother limb from limb".  And when he loses his "Blue Ball" under the furniture, or behind the washing machine, he will come and tell me that I need to go get it out for him, and he will lead me right to it every time.  Unless he is fucking with me, then we will go on a wild goose chase all over the house only to find the damn thing sitting right in plain sight in the middle of the living room.

Fortunately the little bugger is a sweet heart when he wants to be.  His new favorite thing is to climb on my lap whenever I squat down for any reason.  He is not a big dog, but he is too big to be on my lap when I am not even sitting down!  Once he is up there he will turn around and put his head on my left shoulder and just push up against me as hard as he can.  As near as I can figure this is his way of giving hugs.  Somehow he seems to know that I do not particularly like doggy kisses (I am allergic to his saliva - it makes me itch like crazy!),  so he tries to refrain from licking me.  Funny, it doesn't even slow him down from chewing on me, but that's different I guess.  

At the moment he is tapping my shoe with his head telling me it is time to change into my slippers so that he can chew on them.  He is not allowed to chew on my good shoes, they need to stay water-proof and holes do not help in that, at all.  He only chews on my slippers, and only when my feet are in them.  He is a pretty good dog.