Wednesday, March 18, 2009

The Royal Welcome

18 March 2009

We arrived home from Santa Barbara around 7 p.m. tonight and received a royal welcome. That would be a welcome from Princess, William, Harry, and Diana, our new puppies (I didn't name them).

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That's Harry in front with Princess behind him and I'm not sure about the other two. I haven't had a chance to get to recognize them yet. But you can see that these 7 week old puppies have a severe skin problem! They are bald! It's a condition called Demodex and as I said in an earlier entry, Gizmo had it when she arrived.

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But Gizmo's wasn't as severe as these guys seem to be. I mean they have NO hair on their bodies! Look at Harry's head:

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("Hey, Fella, you're bald as a billiard ball. Bald...bald....bald..." - from Free to Be You and Me)

But I have medication and shampoos, and love to give them...and in time they will start looking more like real dogs again.

We had a nice day, all things considered. I was a little concerned when I got up, thinking I had nothing green to wear for St. Patrick's Day, but then remembered that one of my t-shirts has a green dinosaur on it, so nobody could pinch me after all. Walt says his shirt was a very faded dark green, but you can't fool me--it's really grey.

AliceGreen.jpg (36140 bytes)We stopped first at Maravilla, on our way out, to say goodby to Walt's mother. We found her still in the dining room, wearing her green sweater that she bought in Ireland many years ago.

We sat and talked with her for about half an hour and then told her we'd see her again in about 10 days when we return for Bri's first birthday. (I'm thrilled -- I get to make the birthday cake!)

On the drive home (when I wasn't driving), I alternated between reading my "real" book and reading the James Patterson book I downloaded to my iTouch Kiva application. I have to say that the Kiva ain't bad. I really got to liking it. But it depended on whether I wanted to read about grumpy Yorkshire men or psychopathic killers which I chose at any particular moment.

BQ.jpg (44451 bytes)We stopped for our usual hamburger at the Burger Queen (no...not the Burger King!) in Gonzales.

I'll tell ya, Carls Junior has nothing on the Burger Queen (not a chain, and they make your food fresh when you order it) as far as burgers that fall apart when you eat them because they are so full of stuff.

And my onion rings were great.

We managed to miss 99% of rush hour traffic, fortunately and enjoyed listening first to a tape that Jeri and Phil had made for Walt's mother for Christmas -- they send her such great stuff. She can't do much other than listen to tapes, so they just record conversations while they're driving around Boston. (We'll return the tape to her when we go back to Santa Barbara.) And then we switched to Walt's new "Oldies But Goodies" CD set and reminisced to songs like "Rock Around the Clock," "Blueberry Hill," and all the songs that we grew up with.

We were (almost) home in time for Jeopardy and now we're getting caught up on mail, newspapers and the bazillion programs that were recorded on the DVR while we were away!

It really was a wonderful weekend and it's nice to know that we'll be back again so soon to help Bri celebrate her first birthday.

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