Smorgasbord

Polly considers my chest her own personal buffet table.  In the evening, after dinner, she will jump in my lap and browse among the various food bits that I have spilled on myself.  She does a good job of cleaning me up, but it's embarrassing to know that's what she's doing...and that she just expects my chest to be covered with crumbs or perhaps something more juicy.

Walt and I have Haagen Dazs mini ice cream bars after dinner. Big enough to be satisfying, small enough to erase guilt.  We've been doing this for several months now and I don't think there as been one single night when I have not dropped some of the chocoate covering onto my chest.  If I'm lucky, I catch it.  If I'm not ... well ... there's another piece for the laundry.

Sadly, it's not just at home that I am a slob.  Today I took Lizzie out to Winters (about 15 miles from Davis) to have her groomed.  She had gotten so matted that you could no longer run a brush through her fur and, since it's summer anyway, "shaving" seemed to be a great idea.  Ashley usually grooms her, but about-to-be-born baby Gabe is now making dog grooming difficult, so she suggested that I take her to Megan, another SPCA volunteer, who has also groomed Lizzie in the past.

Polly wasn't too happy about Lizzie getting to go on an adventure, but she had to stay behind.  Megan said it would be about an hour and a half and I could either hang around the house, go wandering, or go to the Putah Creek Cafe (a favorite watering hole for most people in the area).

One of the lunch specials was sourdough French toast with strawberry sauce.  One of my pleasant food memories of childhood is having French toast with strawberry jam, so I decided to splurge.

This was not the French toast of my childhood, but oh was it delicious.

Shortly into the plate, I felt the first bit fall onto my shirt, but fortunately I caught it before it took up permanent residence, but a little while later, I looked down at the floor and saw whipped cream on my purse.

And sure enough, before I left the restaurant, I had spilled strawberry sauce on my shirt.  I told the waitress I like the lunch so much I was taking some of it home with me.  (I didn't finish it all, BTW).  There are some folks at Atria who bring their own bibs to mealtime with them.  I'm thinking I should start doing that (but then what would Polly snack on at night?)

It was a new dog I picked up from Megan.  Lizzie looked so good!  I won't let it go so long next time.  It was so easy taking her to Megan and the cost was reasonable for the results.

She was looking so good, I decided to take her to Atria.  This is something I would NEVER do with Polly, but I felt I could trust Lizzie...and I could.  She wasn't too interested in having anything to do with my mother, and my hope of getting a picture of her sitting next to my mother was not going to happen, but this was as close as I could get

But after she had thoroughly sniffed every inch of the apartment several times, eaten all of the cookie crumbs my mother had dropped on the floor next to her chair (I come by this trait naturally, apparently!) and started to calm down, she finally decided to get to know my mother.

It was, all things considered, a nice visit and I will bring Lizzie again some day.  One funny thing happened. She usually asks me if I'm going dancing tonight, though I always tell her I hate dancing. Today she forgot the word for "dancing" and asked me if I was going "hoopdy-do-ing" tonight. (I suspect I'd hate "hoopdy-do-ing" too.)

We came home after an hour and I settled in to do anything but hoopdy-doing.  I have to fix dinner so Polly will have something to clean off my chest.