YES, IT'S TUESDAY

 I had a shitty day at work and spent the entire evening preparing for work tomorrow. It's a little past midnight and I have to get up early to go into the office, which is a soul sucking frozen hellscape. 

Therefore, I will not announce the Freakin' Green Elf Shorts contest winner until Wednesday or maybe Thursday. I'm shooting for Wednesday. 

I apologize.

The temperature has dropped and I was out in the very cold waters of Lake Junebug at about 11:30 p.m. trying to adjust the pump because nothing was coming out of the hose. Fucking bloody hell is all I have to say. 

It makes me happy, though, to see Princess throw herself through the water. She loves making a splash.

Send positive energy my way and maybe I won't slap anyone at work tomorrow.

Now I'll get a few hours of sleep so I can get up tomorrow and be shit on again. This is supposed to be our slow season but we're getting slammed.

HO fucking HO HO

WE'RE HAVING A BIT OF A STORM

 Gentle Readers . . . and Maxwell,

It's one week until Christmas Eve. I'll be working six days this week, but I don't mind. The trees are decorated and I've baked most of my cookies. On Tuesday we have a holiday lunch at work. 

On Tuesday I will also announce the winner of The Freakin' Green Elf Shorts caption contest. We have a lot of great entries so it's a rough decision for me, but what a relief it will be to get those nasty things out of the house. I can't wait to bring in an exterminator. We also need a lot of aromatherapy and I need an appointment with my doctor and dermatologist to find out which treatments I need to recover from the horror I've experienced. 

We have happy news, too. Princess returned home yesterday. She finished her training program, although she and I will continue to have lessons with the trainer, Curtis. Curtis said she would probably be very tired at first because she needs to decompress.

She rests near me but hops up occasionally to grab a toy from the basket. For a while this morning she chased a squeaky ball around the house.

I wish we could go out for a walk, but this is happening:

Lake Junebug has achieved record depths, and the wind is blowing hard. I'll be glad when the storm moves on with those shorts. 

We had a lake of a different kind in the house last night. After the dogs went out and I watched Penelope pee, I prepared some supper for myself and sat down to eat. Penelope went to the back door to indicate she needed to go out, a trick she sometimes employs in the hopes I'll put down my food so she can run over to snatch some goody while I'm opening the door.

Forget it, Penelope, I told her. I'm not falling for it.

I ate my supper and about 20 minutes later went to the living room where I found Penelope had created Lake Superior under the Christmas tree! 

After I apologized to her for not letting her out, I heard Penelope snicker as I cleaned up the mess. Bah, humbug.

We have some new ornaments this year.

This adorable doggy was a gift from Mistress Maddie:

And I added this flag:

Some politicians want to forget Ukraine, but I won't. 

See you Tuesday for the big announcement.

Infinities of love,

Janie Junebug

IT'S TIME FOR THE FREAKIN' GREEN ELF SHORTS CONTEST

Gentle Readers . . . and Maxwell,

With all of those indictments, the golden shine has worn off of his Florida home, so it now look like this:

He wants an upgrade for the holidays (before he settles into a jail cell, we hope), and unfortunately, he showed up at my house on Royal Avenue. He thought King Charles would be here to entertain him. 

This is his arrival:

And now it's time for the contest. You come up with your cleverest caption for the photo below. You have until Sunday to submit your entries and on Tuesday next week, I'll tell you which one of your sorry asses I've chosen as the winner. 

I will then pass The Freakin' Green Elf Shorts on to you and you will hold the next contest for the nasty things on your blog. They are so stinky and gross I can't wait to get them out of my house. It's a good thing the dogs have been treated for fleas. I haven't been, though. Ooooo! Something just crawled down my leg!

You can also enter the contest and say that you don't want to win. All captions will be treated with equal love and disgust. 

Here's the photo for which you need to create a caption:

Yes, that's Penelope standing behind him. She was so frightened she peed right after the picture was taken. The dogs do not like having him or the shorts in our Little House On The Swamp.

I await your clever responses.

Infinities of love,

Janie Junebug

FREAKIN' GREEN ELF SHORTS IN THE HOUSE!!!

 Gentle Readers . . . and Maxwell,

Here I am, a nice old lady who grew up in Kansas, someone who has never used a curse word and has remained a virgin so long she could be a nun, yet somehow I won last year's FREAKIN' GREEN ELF SHORTS COMPETITION, when it was held by none other than that nasty man whore Mistress Maddie (click on the link to see how Mads held the competition).

So now it's my turn to present the photo captioning competition for the shorts, but I've run into a problem. I've had the box with the shorts for months and the box is pretty on the outside, but I was too afraid to open that Pandora's box of pestilence, pain, and fleas without personal protective gear. My hazmat suit was on backorder from Ralph Lauren for months. 

But, finally, it arrived, and tomorrow, the bacteria-laden things will be out of the box and contaminating some poor soul's ass. It's your job to bring your clever captioning skills to the photo you'll see here, same bat time, same bat channel. 

Even with my hazmat suit, I'm afraid. 

Infinities of love and hatred of the germs,

Janie Junebug

LIVING WITH A PRINCESS

 Gentle Readers . . . and Maxwell,

I was not prepared for the antics of a German Shepherd. Princess was restless at first, but she accepted me as her mom quickly and I learned it's true that when you have a shepherd you no longer have any privacy. She follows me everywhere and watches me intently while I work. The minute I get up from my desk, she's on her feet, prepared to follow me anywhere. When I'm walking, if Princess feels she hasn't had enough attention, she'll flop down on the floor directly in front of me to request a belly rub. When she wakes up in the morning, if my alarm hasn't gone off yet, she wakes me up by sitting on me––sometimes she perches uncomfortably on my hip and sometimes she tries to crawl onto my head. 

When I take a shower, Princess stations herself outside the bathroom door to wait for me. I'm almost embarrassed to be the recipient of such devotion. She likes to watch TV with me, but she's only interested in certain shows. When she arrived, I was watching the final season of Succession on HBO, which she liked a lot. I don't know why, but when the opening music began, she hopped up on my lap. Having her on my lap isn't as much of a problem as you might think. She places the front part of her body on my legs, while her rear stretches across the couch. 

 More recently, she liked Lessons In Chemistry on AppleTV. The only part of having her on me that I don't like is her shedding, which she does A LOT. Her fur gives the Roombas a work out.

Some of the stories Penelope told about Princess in blog posts were true and some weren't. It was not true that Penelope disliked Princess. Penelope wanted Princess to play with her from the moment she first saw Princess. Penelope did the doggy "let's play" bow and pranced around, trying to lure Princess into games of chase, but Princess wasn't ready to play until she had settled into life with us after about two weeks. Then the two became best friends; antics ensued. After Penelope had her annual wellness exam with Dr. G., though, and was tired and didn't want to play, she told Princess with a little growl and shake of the head. Princess backed off immediately. 

The two of them have some sort of communication system. Penelope knows Princess will escort her past a scary Roomba. At first, Princess nudged Penelope off of the big doggy bed. After they became friends, the nudging stopped, and Princess settled herself on the little doggy bed instead, although that means she's mostly on the floor.

Penelope told the truth about Princess, however, when she said Princess is a thief. With time she learned that stealing food from the kitchen counters is frowned upon, as is stealing soap from the edge of the bathtub. Yes, she really did eat most of a bar of soap. One evening I heard a strange noise in the bedroom while I was getting ready for my shower. I found Princess with a full bag of dog treats she had stolen and opened while lounging on my bed. She looked like someone settling in to watch a movie while snacking on popcorn.

Princess is a smart girl. She knows sit and she does pretty well with stay. She's escaped from the backyard twice. I'm convinced Penelope was the mastermind behind both escapes. Penelope came right back in the house, though, while Princess refused. She wanted to go for a ride in the car. Both times I had to get the car key, let her in the car, get a leash, and lead her back in the house. Last spring when I walked her, she did pretty well on the leash, but she lost those skills over the summer when it was so hot that we couldn't go walking. I haven't been able to get her to heel, and she doesn't seem to understand the word NO. She resists down. 

Consequently, Princess is attending dog training school. She's been there for a week. She'll be home in two - three weeks, so she'll be here to celebrate her first Kissmas and receive gifts from Santa Paws. I miss her terribly (Penelope's heart is broken), but thorough training is an investment in our future together. After she comes home, I will be trained in how to handle her. For now, I get a report card with photos and videos on Fridays.

I'll be so happy when she returns to us.

Infinities, of love,

Janie Junebug

And now a very important message:

WATCH THIS SPACE FOR NEWS ABOUT THE 

FREAKIN'

              GREEN

ELF 

SHORTS!!!

 

FRANKLIN & THE GREAT CANCER SCARE

 Gentle Readers . . . and Maxwell,

Some of you have already read about The Great Cancer Scare from Franklin's POV, but I'd like to add to Franklin's story. 

First, I have to tell you how I feel about Franklin. I love Penelope and Princess, but Franklin is my boy. We've been together such a long time (since 2010), and he was my walking companion until he started to stumble and struggle on our strolls. My all-time favorite dog was Faulkner, The Original Dog, but Franklin is a very close second to Faulkner.

I'm not the only one who loves Franklin. He was admired all over the neighborhood. People often called out to us to say how pretty he is and how they liked his fluffy fur. He's an exceptionally amiable dog. But when we had a front door with glass panels in the top, I took delight in the way he appeared in those windows to roar at strangers. More than one Jehovah's Witness backed away in fear. 

Rebekah's husband, Eddie, is something of a dog and cat whisperer. When Eddie and Franklin met, it took about 30 seconds for them to become fast friends. I wasn't surprised when Eddie settled down on the floor with Franklin to talk to him and brush him. That's when he found the red thing that resembled a pimple. The next day it was so much bigger that I made an appointment for Franklin at the vet's office even though our beloved Dr. G. wasn't there.

The vet we saw used to be our regular vet. We had switched to Dr. G. because of a scheduling mix-up at one point and continued to ask for him. The other vet said Franklin had cancer and he wasn't going to stick a needle in it to find out if it was malignant because it was so inflamed. He gave me an antibiotic for Franklin and some drops to put on the red thing. Then he opened the door and gestured for us to leave. And that was it. No further instructions. No here's when you should come back or this is what you should do next. I was in shock and didn't make a fuss.

So we went home and I cried while I worked and cried while I didn't work. I couldn't wait for Dr. G to get back. I have to tell you, also, that Maureen stayed with Princess and Penelope while Franklin and I were at the vet's office because Princess had been with us only a few days. The first time I left the house to go to Costco, Maureen said Princess cried. But when I took Frank to the vet, it was Penelope who cried and was inconsolable. 

Of course, Dr. G. removed the cancer, it was benign, and Franklin has been fine. He's been far more lively since that ugly red thing was removed, so something must have been brewing in his body for a while. I have to tell you about what happened after Dr. G. took Franklin's stitches out.

Dr. G. was done and it was time for us to leave. The vet tech opened the door to escort us to the front desk (the bills for the surgery were pretty substantial but we managed it). Dr. G. was on the other side of the room entering his notes in the computer. I stood up to leave. Usually Franklin goes straight out the door because he can't wait to leave. He hates vet visits.

But this one time, instead of leaving, he went to Dr. G. to stand next to him. Dr. G. stopped what he was doing to pet Franklin, who was looking up at him with Franklin-style love and devotion. I think he's saying thank you, I told Dr. G.

Dr. G. said, I think so, too.

We left a beaming Dr. G. when Franklin was finished showing his appreciation. 

I check Franklin's skin frequently for any new bumps or lumps, especially his back leg where the cancer was. When I took Franklin to see Dr. G. in October for his annual wellness exam, I told him every day with Franklin is a bonus. I don't know how much longer he'll be with us, but I love and appreciate every minute with him. to be continued with more about Princess

Infinities of love,

Janie Junebug 

THE ARRIVAL OF A PRINCESS

 Gentle Readers . . . and Maxwell,

Princess was very well behaved while traveling in the car, but when we arrived at the Little House On The Swamp, she was confused and distressed. She had no way of knowing why she was in yet another new place when she had become comfortable at the shelter.

Franklin and Penelope wagged their tails and welcomed her, but she had no interest in them. After meeting them in the back yard, she checked out the house and paced from one room to another for about three hours. This is the first photo I took of her when she finally stood still for a few minutes:

A few minutes later, Princess decided it was okay to lie down in the dining room. She must have been exhuasted, but after a few minutes of rest, she was up and moving again and she decided to check out some of the details of her new home. She discovered a bowl on the dining room table that held dog treats and stood up to help herself. 

No more keeping dog treats in the glass bowl on the table.

She also decided to help herself to anything she could find on the counters in the kitchen, including the medication I had out for myself for the following morning. If Princess had been feeling depressed or had allergies, perhaps she felt better after stealing my meds.

I hadn't had such a tall dog in the house for a long time. I had to train Princess not to stand up to take things from tables and counters, and I had to train myself to remove tempting items. Later in the evening when we settled down to sleep, she was fine and slept next to me. 

When I had to work the following morning, I told Princess we couldn't have any nonsense. She had to behave herself and be quiet––and she did and she was. She curled up on the couch and watched me so intently that I suspected she hoped to apply for my job.

And so those first few days went by. Penelope kept begging Princess to play; Princess ignored her.

On Saturday, Rebekah and her husband, Eddie, came over because they had graciously agreed to use their rototiller in part of my yard that was so overwhelmed by weeds that I couldn't remove them on my own. After Eddie did the work and he came inside, he asked for Franklin's brush. That was when he found the ugly, red pimple on Franklin's back leg that led to The Great Cancer Scare. to be continued

Infinities of love,

Janie Junebug