Doggie Catering, Nanny Down, Zoe & Top Gun

When we first got Hope, her food would barely hit the bottom of her bowl before she was chowing down on it. Often, I'll bet it wouldn't take her 90 seconds to eat her entire meal. That's how hungry she was. And maybe it was partly because she'd had a rough life to date (we assume) and a nice meal was not a luxury she'd always had. Also, in those first days, we were wanting a bit of an active dog, and so we'd often take Hope running with us (I think we were also training for a half-marathon at the time). She was getting a lot of exercise--much more than she does these days--so she was probably hungrier, too. (Her bad back subsequently nixed further extreme exercising.)

These days, however, she treats eating almost as a chore. And that wasn't such a big deal--her skipping a meal--until recently, when we found out she has cataracts and glaucoma (in her left eye). Because of those conditions, she has to take a pill morning and night, presumably with breakfast and dinner, her two meals of the day. In fact, the vet said that the pill should be taken with food because it can cause an upset stomach otherwise. So now we really want Hope to eat, but she doesn't (very often), without prompting. Thus, we often end up bribing her with various human goodies in her food; cheese is the most popular bribe, though table scraps work on occasion, too. (Will baby food do the trick next year?) This morning I felt like I was making a doggie chef salad, throwing pecorino cheese and turkey into her bowl to get her to eat. Oh, Hopey!

Childcare update: Bonnie the nanny has mono. She probably had it a couple weeks back when she was sick, but it went undiagnosed. She apparently hasn't really gotten well since then, and she was finally diagnosed with mono last week. Long story short: I am homebound for probably two weeks, before Aunt Kelli is done with finals and might be able to spell me a couple days so I can actually go in to the office. Nana and Aunt Colleen will also be taking Zoe duty over the Christmas break from school, but we don't yet know what we're doing when I start full-time.

Lisa knows that I hate to drive in traffic. For this reason, for example, she does her best to get out of work early whenever we're traveling (to Austin or Houston, most likely). And though I do take the cake for hatred of traffic, Lisa doesn't like it either. So it stands to reason that Zoe would not like traffic either, and she doesn't. Zoe often sleeps in the car, but whenever we slow down or stop (heaven forbid!), she may start to throw a fit. Fortunately, this weekend we had both Aunt Kaitlyn and Uncle Brian in the car with us during a trying trip down Louetta Road in Houston. Stop light after stop light stood in the way between a pleasant trip back to Nana's and an ear drum assault. But with Kaitlyn manning the pacifier and Brian using his patented "car seat shake" at each stop light, we managed to make it. Zoe is definitely a fan of that famous quote from Top Gun: "I feel the need, the need for speed!"