What I'm Listening To

I love podcasts. They are like the choicest bits of radio, just when you want them. And by choicest bits, I mainly mean stuff that should be on the radio, if radio people knew what the hell they were doing.

(It was explained to me once this way: Once upon a time, there were lots of radio station owners with radio station people who knew radio up and down, backwards and forwards. Then all those radio stations were purchased by three great big companies, who let their VPs of Value Driven Parameters run the radio stations. And since radio stations have nothing to do with Value Driven Parameters and all the old radio guys were released like butterflies into early retirement, the radio stations all ended up playing Lady Gaga. The end.)

Where was I? Right. Podcasts. I like podcasts.

Here are my favorites today. (This is fluid. I hear Paul F. Tompkins is working on a podcast and if that comes to pass, that will be my instant new favorite.)

1. The Nerdist. This is Chris Hardwick's new funtime hour. If you don't know who Chris Hardwick is, you will. His career is on a major upswing after years of floundering in MTV reality-host-land. He has a killer stand-up routine, and a LOL-based show on G4 called Web Soup. The name stems from his popular web site, nerdist.com, which is also his Twitter handle. You don't have to be a nerd to listen, but it helps. And as with many of the comic-based podcasts, it also helps to know a little about the alt-comedy scene. (Oooh. "Scene." Okay, "goings-on." Oh, that's ever so much better, Grandma.)

2. Jordan, Jesse GO! This one is hard to describe. It is the chatty, improv-based comedy-chat show by Jesse Thorn of PRI's The Sound of Young America and Jordan Morris, his college buddy and current comic relief clown from Fuel TV. They usually include a guest from the world of comedy and improv. It's silly, silly fun. And profane. NSFW.

3. I Love Movies. This is Doug Benson's 45-minute chat with comedy and film-based guests built around goofing on movies and playing a game Benson invented called The Leonard Maltin Game, which is like Name That Tune using the cast lists from Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide book. Benson is naturally funny and quick-witted. And mellow. He's very mellow. If you know what I mean.

4. Slate Political Gabfest. This is Slate's political editorial staff (John Dickerson, David Plotz, and Emily Bazelon) sitting around a table and jabbing each other with wit and knowledge. And they have lots of both. The Political Gabfest is a Friday morning tradition. Highly recommended. If you are not that into silly, skip my first three recommendations and go straight to this one. The other Slate Gabfests and podcast offerings are good, but this one, the first, is just full of that Alonguin Round Table vibe.

5. Radiolab. If I were able to force The Captain to listen to one podcast, it would be this one. Every week, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich (neither are misspelled!) make their listeners care about something they didn't know they could care about, and their listeners leave with a gleaming nugget of knowledge that they can take out at cocktail parties or at dinner with their spouses and dazzle them. This is just top notch radio.

6. This American Life. Haven't I gushed about This American Life before? I must have. It has been a staple of my radio listening and then podcast listening habits since its inception in, I don't know, 1996? The veritable Mists of Long Ago. And yet it still keeps its hipster sheen. Ira Glass introduces stories, usually revolving around a theme. The stories are well produced and an hour will fly by. I can't believe you haven't subscribed to this yet. Get cracking.

7. The Bugle. I can't believe I'm at Number 7, and I'm just getting around to the Bugle. A travesty. The Bugle can make me look like an idiot while walking my dog alone in the park, cackling out loud to myself. John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman (again, spelled correctly) cover the world news. Sort of. Do not listen if you are allergic to puns. Andy Zaltzman is the worst pun inflicter in the business. Do not listen if you hate laughing. Do not listen if you have recently mistakenly shot yourself in the thigh by going to a nightclub with a handgun nestled in your sweat pants, because they will NOT stop bringing it up.

8. WTF with Marc Maron. I like to listen to Marc Maron when I am at my most neurotic - when I can't bear to look at myself in the mirror, or when I skip church because I'm feeling all can't-look-people-in-the-eye, then feel all can't-believe-I-can't-look-people-in-the-eye. Marc Maron makes me feel less like a freak for being such a freak. It's a great sanctuary for neurotics, as he is one of us. And he airs his own anxieties in such a light-hearted way (most of the time) that it's good for me. And he interviews interesting guests, 50% of whom he needs to apologize first for past sins, which makes it fun to tune in to find out who he's apologizing to next.

9. Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me. Okay, is this in any order? Hey, if you know me and don't know about this show, then you haven't been paying attention. These guys are like old friends. This is another radio show that I have been listening to since it was in its no-audience infancy. I learned of Adam Felber's blog through Wait Wait, and through those blog posts, found a lot of new friends, some of which I have actually met in person. This is a Sunday morning tradition and a staple of conversation.

10. Popcorn Mafia. I could use this last spot for Studio 360 with Kurt Anderson, but that's what you would expect me to do. Here's something new. Grae Drake and Gariana Abeyta (Spelled right! I looked it up!) get sassy about movies and I end up laughing a lot. The only caveat: they don't mind letting loose with the spoilers. They expect you to do your movie-watching homework before you come to the podcast, so you can laugh along with them.

There's my Top Ten for Today. So go to iTunes and get busy.

This Is Sewious II: Die Harder

The new Thug Life U of O Duck Football Team has found a new mascot.

Colorado Springs Phase: Complete

I made about a dollar sweeping the apartment as Drew and the kids carried the last bits and boxes to the truck. It turned out to be a handfull of bike racer money - coins from five countries on three continents - not enough of any one kind to buy a pack of gum.

We finished loading the little moving van in a windy 15 degrees. We leave Colorado Springs with the van packed to the roof. Dean and Jenny follow in their red Ford pickup truck. It is snowing lightly. The road is wet and dirty with sand, and the windshield, at a nearly perpendicular angle to the road, is catching a lot of the schmutz. This is when we discover that the wiper fluid in this rental is plain water, and the spray freezes instantly on the glass.

We have our tiny new portable speakers hooked up to my iPhone and Eagles of Death Metal are on. Drew is peering out the less opaque spots in the smeared windshield.

Through Denver the snow is deeper and the traffic heavier. We try the slow lane, but the snow here is piling up too fast. We switch to the fast lane, where the wheels have made a clear trail. Once we get past Denver, both the traffic and the snow eases.

We stop in Cheyenne for gas, a sandwich and some real windshield washer fluid, conveniently located in one stop. Go America. I have career advice for the Subway sandwich maker who made my lunch today: learn the fine distinction between vinegar (what I ordered) and oil. Yes, I eat it anyway.

Sorry, Sad Lincoln. We will not forget you.

I feel a liitle guilty as we pass Entombed Lincoln's Head that we didn't stop and sympathize with him a moment, but our bellies were full and our bladders were empty. No time for Sad Lincoln.

Later, at the Fort Steele rest area, we learn that Bella the kitty, stuffed most unwillingly into a cat carrier for the duration, has lost control of her bowels and her dignity.

Every hundred miles or so along this stretch of Southern Wyoming there is a natural gas processing plant. My memory had truncated the distance between them to being within sight of each other. Now I remember how cursedly wide this state is.

Big Sky Country means there is plenty of sky for smokestacks.

Eating out of boredom and fidgeting in my seat. The seats in this van sit ninety-degree-angle straight against the wall of the cargo compartment. I try to slump down, but the seat pushes my head forward so that I'm looking at my lap. I straighten up. And sigh. Yes, I'm sure I sigh.

Animals with other animals painted on them.

Ogden marks the more-or-less halfway point, and we stop for the night at a Best Western. The hoard of children inexplicably roaming the motel had formed itself into a hallway soccer league outside our room. After a few cross words from The Captain, we sleep.

If you are in the market for sparkly birds wearing sweaters, I know where to get some.

When a motel offers free continental breakfast, I feel obligated to get my money's worth no matter how lousy the offering. So I really eat a warmed sausage patty on brownish toast.

The weather this morning is snowy and foggy. I feel like it requires accompaniment by piano jazz courtesy of Vince Guaraldi, but The Captain vetoes that (one vote is always enough to veto jazz, that is ironclad), and we go back to my Compromise Playlist.

Definitely a "black hat" sort.

I entertain myself with finding fleeting signals to update Twitter and Facebook on my iPhone while The Captain navigates past small Utah and Idaho towns. We make cell-phone-negotiated rest and gas stops, some with tourist lures like sparkly unicorns on sticks and western-themed "art," such as animals with other animals painted on them, which pleases me. Thank you, highway entrepreneurs.

This, I swear to God, is a pig wearing cow shaped fuzzy slippers.

We celebrate our re-entry into Oregon with a late lunch at Baker's Geiser Grand Hotel which has been recently restored and is quite grand, however, their buffalo patty melt could use some mustard or something.

We pass a few hours with the "Jordan Jesse Go!" podcast and Doug Benson's "I Love Movies." We try an audiobook, but it was a group of humorous essays from various artists (containing widely varying amounts of humor), and Drew has little patience with mediocrity, so we switch back to Compromise Music for the final leg from Hood River.

And then we are home. And that's not the royal "we." That's all four of us.

The Captain Chronicles: The Saga Begins

The Captain is meticulously ethical and would not allow any hint of the identities or embarrassing peccadillos of the citizens of the fine city in which he works, let's call it Fort Chinook, which oftentimes spill out during spousal confessions of fatigue over his burden as Personal Clean-Up Crew to thousands of taxpayers, to leak out.

I, however, am not so ethically bound.

These are the occasional chronicles of some of the more ridiculous of those taxpayer stories.

Relative to, say, Thanksgiving (flaming turkeys) or Independence Day (flaming city), the Super Bowl is a pretty low-key day at the fire station (Let's call it Fire Station Cobra). A station can expect a lull in the call volume during the game itself, and then a pick-up in activity once the beery spectators attempt to drive home.

Last Sunday was no exception with one exception. There is always a chance, on any holiday (and let's face it: Super Bowl Sunday is an American holiday), for simmering family feuds to boil over.

The call came in during the third quarter of the game for a woman with severe leg pain. Ouch, right?

So they pull up at the domicile. The husband of said woman is, as loving and supportive husbands naturally would, standing outside, smoking a cigarette. The woman with the ambulance-worthy leg pain is inside, waiting to tell her story. It seems as if her biggest complaint isn't that her leg hurt. In fact, it has been hurting for five days. What was really throbbing was her frustration with her husband for ignoring her complaints for five days (and, I suspect, her inability call a doctor or drive to a clinic on her own without whatever boost her husband's sympathy might have given her). So when the torture of their own passive-aggressive relationship hit its peak - in the third quarter of the biggest football game of the year - she chooses to call 911, and tell her story to three firefighters and an ambulance crew.

Touche, lady. Touche.

Don't forget, friends: firefighters are people, too.

Do You Believe in Love After Love, Green Couch Edition

This weekend we said goodbye to a couple of old friends. Green ones - a couch and love seat combo. Twenty years we had been together, through lots of fun stuff.

Here's the couch, making a background for Dean's birthday present - his first racing bike.

Here it is again, a few years later, assisting in the viewing experience of the Great Snowpocalypse of 2004.

Here's the love seat even more recently, looking on as Scotty wins another doggy race. He always wins the doggy race (but while he's winning the race, Annie is typically stealing his toys or treats).

Here's a young couch looking on as a young Dean tries on his new cowboy boots (his only wish that Christmas). The fact that we lived in Bend at the time might explain this a little. But not much.

There they go. We might have loved them a little longer, but they took the brunt of the stink from my little burnt-chicken-stock fiasco this week.

Yeah, that. Um, I put a chicken carcass in water on the stove after dinner, as per usual so I can have chicken stock by bedtime, but I forgot to take it off the stove. I finally smelled the smoke at about 4:00 a.m. By then, there was just a black, smoking lump in the bottom of the pot. The ex-pot.

I have finally managed to clear the rest of the house of the smell after a lot of kitchen cleaning and carpet shampooing, but the couches were not so simple. After a Febreze treatment, they smelled like chicken smoke and Febreze. They were goners.

So thanks, couches. Hope there's a couch heaven. Pretty sure there's a love seat heaven. I mean, it's got "love" right there in the name.

WANT

I told the Captain I wanted one of these for Valentine's Day. He knows better.

In Which I Use The Reader As My Therapist

To get the full ridiculousness of this post, don't skip the comments. There's a surprise ending!

I'd like to start by stating that my Body Mass Index is in the normal range.

That said, I am on that diet that I have been obsessing about all month to get my BMI to a number that is not quite so close to the Big Mac Enthusiast side.

That said, I am 47 years old.

That said, this just happened.

I have this shirt on. This shirt is a mash-up of internet memes that I bought as a joke at an after-Christmas sale. For background, see the 1,673 comments for this popular Amazon item here and the most popular piano-playing cat of all time here. At the time of this event, I did not have the sweatshirt on.

Dean liked it, so he snapped a picture with his iPhone (sans sweatshirt) and sent it to a friend (I'm not sure who). The friend texted back, "That is the shit. Where's it from?" or something to that effect. I told Dean the t-shirt company that sells it (Threadless), which he texted back.

I minute later, another text. I leaned over because I'm naturally curious. It wasn't meant for my eyes, and Dean tried to hide it from me. But it was too late. It said something like, "and where did those flabby arms come from?"

Ouch. Sucker punch. Awkward laughter. Change of subject.

Lasting bruise.

I'll be under the covers for the rest of the day if you need me.

Fat Credit

Do you know why it is so hard to lose weight? Because we have credit cards.

Losing weight is like saving money. The first month that you start your new savings account, it's a pretty sorry looking balance. It's almost not worth the paperwork. And the next month when you put a little more in, it's not any more impressive, and yet it's been a whole two months! And you want new shoes! But once you get used to the habit of putting money into the account every month and going about your business, it starts to grow into something substantial.

On a diet, you feel at first that you are sacrificing so much food and food-based fun that you really expect to see big results right away. When you don't it's hard not to give up, take the metaphorical money out of the bank and buy a pizza with it.

When you want something you don't have the money for, you now have a credit card. You buy the big-screen TV, and pay back the bank in monthly installments - kind of like saving the money, but backwards. While watching a big-screen TV.

What if you could get a fat credit card? Lose all the weight tomorrow, and then pay it back, little by little, by dieting after the fact? Would we pay the diet-debt? Or would we just rack up more debt, until we are forced to starve?

That would be some ultimate foreclosure. Foreclosure of the Mouth. Maybe let's stick with the savings account plan.

Living Your Best Life - Anvil Style

Last class, we discussed the movie Big Fan, in which a little round parking attendant lived a life of, not quiet desperation at all, but one of happy football fanhood.

Today, we will be discussing the Little Canadian Band that Couldn't Quite, chronicled in the documentary, Anvil! The Story of Anvil. The heart of Anvil is the duo of Steve "Lips" Kudlow and Robb Reiner, two nice Jewish boys from Canada who once got a taste of glory in Japan while playing to a packed crowd along with bands like Anthrax, Metallica and Slayer.

That was in the 80s. Since then, they have gone, kicking and screaming, into obscurity, now working menial jobs to support their families. The documentary follows them as they mount their umpteenth comeback attempt.

Reviewers luuuurrved this doc, calling it "touching, uplifting and inspirational." I respectfully disagree. I found it touching, sure, but in a sad way. These guys are now in their 50s, and they look every hard-living year. They do not exactly have heads for business. We hear the music they are recording for their big comeback, and it is unlistenable. Where is the hope in this scenario? It was more like watching the first few episodes of a season of American Idol, where the audience revels in watching hopefuls who have invested all their ego in a career that all logic tells them they have no business pursuing. I found it more voyeuristic than inspirational.

How would you rather live your life? As a parking attendant who lives with his mom and feels lucky that he gets to watch football and call in to a sports talk radio station? Or a school lunchroom worker who feels like Providence made a big mistake in denying him a life of rock stardom?

Living Your Best Life - Big Fan Style

I'm just going to be nattering on about Netflix movies. If you want action, read this first entry on Dean's latest adventure.

Last night we watched Big Fan with Patton Oswalt, directed by Robert Siegel. I put this on my Netflix queue solely because Patton Oswalt is my second favorite comedian (behind only Paul F. Tompkins, see last post). A really smart, intuitive little cherub of a man. Maybe not solely. His interview with Siegel on Fresh Air with Terry Gross probably played a role too (and worth a listen if you missed it).

Big Fan is about a guy who's sister-in-law has GIGANTIC BOOBS. I'm a conventionally married female and I could NOT look away. If you want to make a point that they were not gratuitous, you could say that her "look" said something about Oswalt's character's family. His brother was a Staten Island personal injury lawyer who married his secretary, which left me with the question: were the gigantic boobs a marriage selling point, or a wedding present? Questions left unanswered, my friends.

Actually Big Fan is about a little, round guy whose only love and only interest in life is the New York Giants. The rest of his life is only filler for the moments when he is either watching a game or calling in to sports talk shows and talking about a game. He could get a better job than his current gig as a parking attendant. He could move out of his mom's house. But that would detract from his only passion: making sweet love to the New York Giants.

This comfortable life is threatened when his favorite Giants player beats him up. Will he tell the police what really happened, or will he pretend he doesn't remember in the hopes that the charges will be dropped so that the player may be reinstated to the team in time to save their playoff hopes?

No, it's not a comedy, like Netflix seems to think. No, it's not a dark think-piece on the human condition. It's more of a light think-piece on this human's condition. And his condition is fine, as far as he is concerned. Should he want more for himself? Depends. Would that make him feel better?

Next in our Compare and Contrast Netflix Special: Anvil: The Story of Anvil - a portrait of another couple of fellows who are living their Best Life, which may not necessarily by your idea of a best life.

Stay tuned.

Paul F. Tompkins: Great or Unbelievably Great?

That this man does not already have his own TV show, dedicated paparazzi, and Sudanese orphans is an American Tragedy.

Eating My Own Flesh

It's January. That means diet time. My 2008 and 2009 diets were failures, so I've got two years of overindulgence to pay for. (No, I will NOT say "for which to pay." I am not THAT grammatically pompous.)

And it's been two GREAT years. As still-new empty nesters, we have been celebrating pretty much non-stop since the 2007 wedding. Too much restaurant eating. Too much wine drinking. Too many cookies and not enough cookie eaters. When Dean moved out, we lost the best leftover eater in the business, and we still haven't adjusted our cooking habits.

I'm trying to face this diet as medicine. I try to think of my extra weight as a condition (lipomania?), which I must overcome with this prescription of salad, vegetables and chicken, and this proscription of bread, rice, potatoes, crackers and cookies.

I'm okay with that prescription for a while. The period of time following "a while" is going to be tough. I'm having a hard time psyching myself up for another salad tonight and it's only been about a week and a half.

Luckily, the scale shows that I'm off to a pretty good start. Every day I can feel my body grumbling a little as it grudgingly turns to that extra fat for fuel.

Still. A big heap of tortilla chips sure sounds good right now.

Computer Monster

Jim Henson was so funny and brilliant. Check out this little nugget, starring a proto-cookie monster from, I'm guessing the 70s? I love the names of the components of this majorly awesome supercomputing machine.

What Would Jesus Eat

If this blog only serves to make you feel better about yourself, well, that's something.

Last Sunday in church, as I took my little square of what looked like maybe semi-whole-wheat sourdough bread which served as our communion loaf, I seriously considered pinching off a teeny-tiny piece to eat and pocketing the rest, as my New Year diet bans all bread for the first two weeks, no matter how whole wheat, fairly traded or organic.

This small bit of bread was not meant to be used as part of any diet, trademarked or otherwise. This bread is a symbol of a symbol (although in this particular church, it is not meant to have any magical powers - just a way of remembering why Jesus, you know, died and stuff), one that is reiterated every time it is offered, so that you won't forget between the time that the ritual starts and the time, mere moments later, that you look at it as South Beach Poison. Yet, I managed to lose the point within those moments.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS RELIGIOUS HERESY. YOU'RE PROBABLY BETTER OFF NOT READING FURTHER.

These days, Communion seems a little silly to me. I've begun to look at it as a typical human religious overreaction to Jesus' idea of a forget-me-not. To me the Last Supper story reads like this: one night when things were looking most bleak for our hero, Jesus had dinner with his friends and asked them that maybe, after he was gone, that when they had dinner they might look at the bread and wine on the table and remember him. That's all. No impressive-looking men in fancy robes lifting ornate goblets up to heaven. No special ritualistic words intoned in a godly voice. Just a thought: Have some bread. Remember Jesus. Drink some wine. Remember Jesus.

Does this mean that I live by my new heretical religious thoughts? No. I don't even say grace. I don't even know if I really believe what I'm left with to believe at this point in the life-long deconstruction and reconstruction that is my religious education.

So maybe it's best that I go ahead and try to think holy thoughts during this duded-up ritual that is Christian Communion. And that I try to take it seriously. If nothing else, it's a chance for silence. Quiet the flow from the brain. Shut off the pipe from the snark lobe. Well, maybe turn it down to a trickle.

See you in church.

Photographic Memories

I pulled maybe forty photographs out of five or six photo albums, scanned them for a family project, and then realized I did not note out of which album I had pulled them.

If I had proper, chronologically ordered photo albums this would not have been a problem. I could have popped them back in in their proper chronological order. However, my photo albums have grown wild and weedy over the years, with some starting before I was born and then skipping to the early Dean years, and some focusing mainly on bad pictures I took as a teenager and college student. Others have been limited to pictures that can fit certain sizes, which mean they are a bit of a grab bag.

The old "magnetic" (where "magnetic" meant "sticky") photo albums had an advantage in that you could put any size photos in them side-by-side. Now that the photos we placed so artfully in those either fell out into a pile when the "magnetism" failed, or have been eaten by toxic glue, we now have the "sleeve" style photo albums, which are either made for 4 x 6 sizes or 3 x 5. But not both if you happen to have both types of photos in the same general time period.

Whoops, that got sleep-inducing.

So I had a pile of photos. I filled all the obviously empty spots and still had a dozen or so photos. And in the process, two "magnetic" photo albums had fallen apart in my hands, and I had to "rescue" the photos and toss the old albums. I ended up slipping all of them into either a 4 x 6 sleeve album or a 3 x 5 sleeve album (that means more old photos in the back of the newest ones in our collection).

So I guess what I'm saying is, if you look through my photo albums, it will be a bit of a 52-card pick-up, which I'm just going to say makes it a more exciting experience. Because there is no way I'm spending a week of my life re-ordering and re-album-ing them. My posterity isn't worth it. And my posterior would object.

Maybe the Last Post Before My Kickass 2010 Posts Begin

As I may have warned you, I am turning over a new leaf in 2010. No more Lazy Piglet. Hello, Get Some Shit Done Piglet, and the accompanying Amazing Shit Piglet Has Accomplished.

First New Year's Resolution: Take the impending Rose Bowl Loss In Stride. Gonna start out with an easy one. This one comes standard with all University of Oregon degrees.

Second New Year's Resolution: Go Back To South Beach. The South Beach Diet, that is. It worked in 2007, it has to doubly work in 2010, as I have gained back the 10 pounds I lost in 2007 and added another another 8 for ballast. Leafy green vegetables, here I come (a single tear drops as she finishes off the Christmas candy).

Third New Year's Resolution: Put Down Those Crutches And Walk! Those crutches being the two glasses of wine I have been drinking every night. I'm not sure that yoga and an evening knitting project will patch the personality hole that is my natural twitchiness, which wine serves such a valiant job in soothing, but I need to cure this without (much) chemical medication. The South Beach diet requires that I knock this off anyway, so here goes.

Fourth New Year's Resolution: Shut Off the Noise. Less input, more output. This means a media brown-out. There's just too much - radio, podcasts, TV, and all so easy to vegetate to. I will not go cold turkey - that wouldn't be being a good citizen or a good life scholar - but it does mean that I will have to do a better job of choosing what I spend my time on, and budgeting output time - both writing time and painting time. Remind me of this in March. My instincts are to cuddle up and be entertained. And that's not evil. Input just needs to be balanced with output.

Fifth New Year's Resolution: Be Awesome.

By September, if you remind me how close my accomplishments have come to meeting my own expectations, I will personally stab you.

This is sewius.

I think this is about the Rose Bowl. Not sure.

The Muppets: Ringing of the Bells

Dog Lessons Part II

You know when someone says, "Living with [name here] has taught me patience," you know that [name here] is a pain in the ass.

Annie has taught me patience.

She won't relieve herself in the backyard when it rains, no matter how much it must hurt to hold it in (and she doesn't always succeed at holding it in). I might remind you here that we get 155 days of measurable precipitation a year.

She will pee on other people's lawns when it rains - no problem! - so I try to take her for a walk, but it hurts her to walk (arthritis), and one of our neighbors is a self-satisfied, velour-track-suit-wearing dog hater. We end up walking very slowly in odd dotted lines, kind of like a Family Circle cartoon read in slow motion.

She uses the furniture as her personal napkin and back scratcher, and has taught Scotty to do the same.

She spends all day in bed, getting up only for meals and treats and an occasional romp with Scotty.

In grooming jargon, she "blows" her coat twice a year, completely shedding and rebuilding her coat, top layer, undercoat, everything. To pet her during one of her shedding seasons is to get a handful of dog hair. Not her fault, but still.

Before her arthritis got bad, she would bolt at the first sign of an open door or open fence gate. To what purpose? Even if she could speak English, she would not be able to tell you, because I am pretty sure this is only one of the signs that she was dropped on her head as a puppy. For a dog who likes nothing more than spending the entire day in her fluffy bed, this behavior just does not compute. Yet, I have had to pick her up from the pound once, from the local water treatment plant once, and had to chase her down too often to remember.

But. Scotty likes her. It's fun to watch her outwit Scotty over toys and treats. And who else would put up with her? Besides, she's cute.

I'M SORRY I CAN'T HELP IT