Day 2075

I feel poor. After paying a horrendous batch of August bills and watching the Dow plunge 531 points in a single day, it was easy to feel a bit discouraged. The stock market is right back where it was in 2011. Four years of gains have been erased in a single week. I just wonder how all this is going to end. Everything is getting more expensive, but wages aren't going up. The stock market rises and falls on political unrest instead of market fundamentals. Everybody wants a job, but fewer and fewer people have marketable skills. It's a mess.

Dot pooped in the house again. This time I was ready for her. I quickly moved a rug out of the way, held her harness so she wouldn't fall, and made sure she did her business on the brick floor instead of ruining another rug. We need to move some of the rugs around. She often poops while she is eating because food makes her excited, but unfortunately the biggest area rug we have is right under her food bowl. We need to start buying Outright by the gallon. Without enzyme cleaners like Outright and Nature's Miracle, many of our rugs would have been totally ruined by now.

I think we're just going to have to learn to live with Dot's condition. You can't leave her outside in the yard to do her business because she can't stand on her own. I can spend half an hour outside holding her harness, but she just won't go until something makes her bark or gets her excited. The challenge now is just looking for the best ways to control the damage. I talked to Dot's oncologist today and she agreed to discontinue the Palladia pills for another two weeks based on the initial results we have witnessed so far. Dot may not be any stronger, but she is definitely feeling better now that we have stopped the chemotherapy for a while. When a full month has passed, we will scan Dot again and see whether discontinuing the Palladia has caused the tumor to grow. Until then, we'll just hope she continues to grow stronger.

I managed to finish almost everything this week. My writing assignments have been turned in. Websites have been updated. Bills have been paid. And new piles of poop have been cleaned up. I'm ready for the weekend. My breakfast restaurant was kind of quiet this morning and I managed to snag one of the three good parking places. For some inexplicable reason, most of the parking places have been re-striped so they are about a foot narrower. Only a smart car of a Mini will fit in these small slots, but that doesn't keep the F-250 pickups from trying. I usually park far away to avoid door dings.

I tried again to get the big rug that Dot soiled yesterday clean. I've washed the rug thoroughly with a hose, but it's going to take about a week for it to dry. Janet already bought a replacement rug, but I'd like to see if I can clean the rug anyway.  I'm sure this is going to happen again. If the rug wasn't so stiff, I could probably take it to a laundromat and wash the thing in one of the big commercial washers. I don't think it would fit in the machine though. You can tell that my brain isn't being fully utilized if my big problem of the day was dealing with a poopy area rug.

We're invited to a party tomorrow. I'm always apprehensive about parties, but we'll probably go. There's a fine line between being a little reclusive and becoming completely anti-social and I don't want to cross it.

Cookie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1068

Two down, three to go. As I pulled into our photo location this morning, I realized that I'd been to this particular strip shopping center in far north Dallas before. It used to be home to one of the only stores in Texas that sold astronomical telescopes. I bought a telescope here four or five years ago. I was disappointed to see that the cool little telescope store had disappeared. The building now housed a Condoms to Go store. A sign of the times, I guess.

We didn't have as many customers today as we did last week. The low turnout was more or less expected, since this was a new location for Dalmatian Rescue. Usually we do better in subsequent years after our customers tell their friends about us. The locations where we've been for three or four years now draw huge crowds.

One of the dogs peed on my backdrop today.  This always happens one or two times a season. It wouldn't be a problem if the twenty foot long muslin backdrops weren't so hard to clean. You can't just throw the big hand painted backdrops into a commercial washer, because the colors will run. Generally you just have to tread the stain with a bacterial enzyme stain remover like Outright and hope for the best. If you manage to get the stain out, everything is fine. If you don't, other dogs start to pee on the same spot and you're hosed. At that point you just have to throw the backdrop away.

Even though I didn't photograph as many dogs as I did last week, I was just as tired. At one point, during a lull in the activities, Santa and I both fell asleep. Everyone liked their pictures though, and for once we had plenty of room to set up. I think this will be a good location to return to next year.

The weather continues to be exceptionally nice. After the photo shoot, I got home just in time to feed Dot and Dash their dinner and go on our evening walk. We saw another beautiful sunset, but I didn't feel like doing any more photography today. You'll just have to imagine how pretty it was.

Puppies are today's Dalmatians of the Day

Watch of the Day