The Crab Chronicles

Bieber and Xanax

Wow, is Justin Bieber a druggy or what? He's a hot mess, that boy. Too much, too soon, too immature. 

According to CNN: Justin Bieber was under the influence of alcohol, pot and Xanax when police stopped him for drag racing in Miami Beach last week, police documents allege.

"Yeah, we were smoking all night at the studio," the singer told a police officer who told him he "reeked of marijuana," according to documents released Thursday.

He's also been "...booked on an assault charge in Canada, accused of hitting his limousine driver in Toronto a month ago."

If one read that list - alcohol, pot, and Xanax - one might assume the least harmful thing in the list is Xanax. Not true.

Xanax is a BAD DRUG, Justin. Apparently Xanax addiction is all too common in Hollywood. Stars who have died in recent years, where Xanax played a part in the death include Heath Ledger.

Xanax is prescribed for anxiety and phobias. However, abusing it can lead to severe symptoms like memory loss, depression, and anxiety.

This article, Popping Xanax is more harmful than you think, says:  "If you mix a benzo with another drug that subdues your nervous system—painkillers, alcohol, antihistamines—the effects can be dangerous or deadly," Reinhold said. "Remember Heath Ledger?"

Xanax is prescribed for women twice as often as for men.

I guess Bieber has a drug supplier with severe anxiety.

The saddest part of all this is that Bieber actually has musical talent. He could go far. Yet he is skating into Lindsey Lohan EXTREME SCREWUP territory.

He needs to hang out with Miley more, and compare hair care tips...

Snow Stories and Roasts

I only recall one other time that I've stayed inside this house for several days without going anywhere, and that was the Snowstorm of 2011. That was about 5 days of staying inside.

That storm was far less damaging to Atlanta because it started on a Sunday, so there wasn't much traffic on the roads.

I am so glad I bought plenty of groceries the other day, and strangely glad I am not working a regular office job at the moment. I haven't had to worry about a boss wanting me to come in. The roads leading out of my neighborhood are both hills, and there are shady spots where it takes time for ice to melt. When I lived in Knoxville, which gets more snow, I did my share of slipping and sliding around on the roads, and I never want to go through that mess again.

When I had only been a paralegal a year or so we got a great snowfall one night and the next morning I thought GREAT, I can't get out, and so I can stay home today. My dad called just as I had that thought and said "I don't want you to drive in this. I am going in though, so I will come by the apartment and pick you up, so you can go on in to work." I went to work in jeans and a heavy sweater and boots, convinced he'd not be able to make it, but we got there. Some of the attorneys didn't even make it in. I was answering the phones, making coffee, doing everything plus my own work, because none of the other women were there.

My dad used to like to say "I never let the weather make my decisions for me." Mom would hear that and roll her eyes. Sometimes the weather has to dictate your decisions, even in Georgia.

My uncle Don and his wife lived here in Atlanta for about 20 years after their kids were grown, and Don lived in Marietta [north of town] and worked downtown, as an administrator at Georgia Tech. He sent me this email yesterday:

We’ve been watching all the TV clips last evening and several today on national screens about the weather in Hotlanta yesterday.  And results continuing today.  From what we can tell, the fine politicians there have a slow learning curve.

 

History repeats itself.

 

In the early 1980’s, we had a weather problem one day about this time of the year.  I was still happily working at GA Tech. We decided to send everybody home at approximately 2 PM, due to bad weather coming in.  I gladly jumped  into my little Honda Civic that I drove to work those days and headed home to greater Marietta.  Immediately upon getting onto I-75, I found that traffic came to a roaring stop. 

 

In spite of my usual outstanding driving that day, I got home that night at 10 PM.  We didn’t have cell phones those days, somy good wife had no idea where I was all that time – and I couldn’t tell her.  (10 – 2 = 8 hrs,)   Fortunately, I was driving theCivic, so some of the time I could wiggle around those other big old clunkers, otherwise I’d have been on that road a muchlonger time.  Needless to say, both of us were basket cases for several days after that.

 

A short time ago today, the good mayor of Hotlanta came on and said they’d have to find ways to fix that kind of problem. 

 

At the rate we’re going, we likely won’t live long enough to see their needed traffic improvements for bad weather.

 

This was my backyard yesterday afternoon:

Enough about the Snowmageddon. Let's turn to a more interesting topic: FOOD.

 

I made an awesome pork roast last night. I had bought a small pork tenderloin, and I mixed up a batch of spicy marinade. Here's the recipe:

 

Spicy Pork Roast

 

1-3 lb. pork tenderloin

1 cup soy sauce

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 can pineapple chunks

1-2 teaspoons red pepper flakes

1 tsp. ground ginger [or fresh ginger]

sea salt and pepper

 

Coat the roast with sea salt and pepper and let it sit for 30-45 minutes. Mix up the other ingredients. Pour them over the roast. I used all the pineapple juice but left about half the chunks in the can. Put it in a 250 degree oven for 5-6 hours, covered in foil. Serve with rice and a veggie. [I did asparagus]

 

The meat was so tender you could cut it with a spoon.

 

We also had some homemade applesauce I made last weekend.

 

I also made some spiced pumpkin bread yesterday. Michael took some to one of our neighbors down the street, an older lady who called and asked if he could come and shovel her driveway. He did so, in record time.

Atlanta's Snowstorm Nightmare

If someone had told me yesterday morning that I would spend this morning staring at my TV, transfixed in horror at the snowy mess all over my city, I would've been very skeptical. However, I talked to a friend of mine last night whose commute home was 6 hours and he wasn't even home at 7:30 last night.

I saw a Facebook posting by another friend whose commute home was 3 hours, door to door, and she was one of the LUCKY ones.

We had 2-3 inches of snow dumped on the city yesterday starting around 11:30, and not ending until sometime after dark. Then falling temperatures iced the roads. Atlanta doesn't have a lot of snowplows or road crews ready to deal with snow and ice.

Plus, everyone left work yesterday around lunchtime. There are news stories about people stranded in vehicles all over the city, people out of gas, people walking miles to get home after abandoning their vehicles. Huge nightmare. There was a baby born on I-285 last night.

Photos of some of the gridlock are here.

The biggest nightmare was north of the city, in Cobb County, according to this story:

There were hundreds of children stranded in the independent Marietta school system. There were students at all seven of the city’s elementary schools, and at the middle and high schools, spokesman Thomas Algarin said. Those schools were not dismissed early, but the two magnet schools were. Those children either made it home by bus or were re-routed to the district bus depot where they may have to spend the night.

Cafeteria workers, teachers and other staff are on hand at the schools, so the students will be fed and cared for by people they know. “If it turns out that we’ve got to house the kids, they’ll be warm and they’ll be safe,” Algarin said. “We don’t have cots or beds, but certainly we have those gym mats that are used for P.E.,” he said.

I cannot imagine the anguish of those parents who couldn't get to their kids, and the fear of the kids, unable to get home. I imagine there will be some lawsuits filed as a result of this.

I had a job interview yesterday at 1:00, and I went ahead and went to it, only because the office is 5 minutes' drive from my house. Fortunately, the attorneys were wanting to get home and the interview was cut short. The snow was falling fast. When I got home at about 1:45, this is what I saw:

DeKalb County Schools did an early release and Michael was home before 3, on the bus. I wasn't overly worried about him getting home because he can always walk, and he's in good shape and accustomed to snow from living in Kazakhstan the first 10 years of his life.

By the time he got home we were hunkered down, and I had a pot of chili in the crockpot.

Lola was a bit freaked out.

above, the view if you come out of my house and look left, down the street - made around 5 p.m. yesterday

Mike doesn't have school today. I told him it's a catch up on laundry day, do some chores day, and a day to stay in and not go running around too much. He did some sledding yesterday over at the middle school, where they have steep hills, but today it's icy icy icy. His "sled" was a plastic box lid. We don't need sleds most of the time down here.

The HIGH today will be 31-34. Doubt we'll see much melting.

On Being A Big Mama and Being a Good Mama

When I was a child, the designation "Big Mama" was one of great respect and affection. My best friend Joanne's grandmother was "Big Mama." She wasn't really big, actually.

She was a southern matriarch, however. She was a true Big Mama. That's a great thing.

In the South, to be called Big Mama means - at least in my mind - that you are seeing someone who is all about love, and all about being a fierce tiger mama. You hold your family together. You are a bible-reading, Sunday-School-going, fried-chicken cooking Epitome of Motherhood.

My aunt Myrtle asked her grandchildren to call her Big Mama. She asked my children to call her that. I so wish that before she passed away a few years ago I could've imparted to my children some of the love, awe, and respect that I felt for my aunt. She adored all children, and they knew it instantly. The first time she met my kids she hugged them.

In a deeper sense, Big Mama implies everything that - to me at least - is good about the South. There are so many negative things in the media about us. There is so much caricature out of Hollywood. Sometimes I just despair at ever seeing southern women portrayed fairly.

I have decided not to go and see August Osage County because that matriarch, portrayed by Meryl Streep [who is NOT on my Christmas list, at the moment] is supposed to be Southern, and she's a foul-mouthed pill-popping Satanic version of a Big Mama. [Just FYI, nobody in Georgia or Alabama or South Carolina considers Oklahoma the South. It's out west somewhere. We don't dislike it or anything, but it's just not Southern.  It's a Broadway show with singing and dancing cowboys, in my mind.]

Also, Steel Magnolias and Gone With the Wind offer distorted versions of what it means to be Southern.

What Hollywood never captures is that to be a real Southern Lady has nothing whatsoever to do with money or class or race. It has to do with character.

My friend Cindy over at Big Mama Hollers is going through a lot of angst because of some very negative comments left on her blog. It burns me up to know that anyone would unfairly criticize Cindy. She has adopted 38 children, large Hispanic sibling groups that nobody else would adopt, many of the children with huge emotional issues. Most of her children are doing really well. A few have had some major issues, but Cindy has moved heaven and earth to get them the help they needed, at a great emotional cost to herself and the other children.

There's a special place in Heaven for Cindy, the brightest star among all the Big Mamas I have ever known.

I could never even aspire to her level of goodness, but I have tried really hard to be a good mother.

I had a long talk with a friend the other day, who had quite a bit to say to me about my relationship with my daughter and our recent head butting. He's a really close friend, much like a brother, and his criticism stung. I tried to explain to him my viewpoint, and he couldn't see it.

What is dang near impossible to explain to anyone who has never adopted a child is that there are NO GUIDEBOOKS to our kids.

I've had tons of well-meaning but utlimately useless advice from friends with kids who thought they knew best in telling me how to manage my kids. What is unfathomable to most folks is that my kids are NOT typical of any other kids in the universe.

Probably the most articulate among my other blogging friends is Cindy LaJoy, who speaks of her struggles with her 5 adopted children with incredible honesty and candor and grace. Although she is not southern, she is the ultimate Big Mama, in my book. She has children adopted as babies and some adopted as older kids. She writes so movingly about their struggles, her posts often leave me with a lot of food for thought. Sometimes they make me cry. (Sometimes they make me want to move to Colorado, where she lives.)

My two adoptve mom blogger-mentors, Cindy L and Cindy B, help me to keep going every day, even when I want to throw in the towel and take a Gown Day. Right now they are dealing with issues of 16 or so kids at home [between the two of them].I am dealing with 2.

Cindy L homeschools her kids. Cindy B grows most of her own food.

Those are Herculean tasks I'd never even attempt.

Our kids may not be the most gorgeous or the top grade-earners in school but they are all fortunate to be getting loved by Big Mamas. Cindy B called her blog Big Mama Hollers because it's her way of coping. Cindy L doesn't write as often, but her posts are always thoughtful and insightful.

Our kids are not like any others, and yet they are exactly like others.

What's so hard to explain about our kids is that there can be great intelligence and also great disabilities. Michael is making almost straight A's right now in school. He also can't remember the months of the year, or how many ounces are in a cup.

My daughter has incredible puzzle and problem-solving abilities, but managing her own life is very tough for her.

Loving our adopted kids means dealing with SO MUCH. No training on earth really prepared us.

I do not expect anyone to feel much sympathy for me and I am not asking for it. I chose this life, and I chose my kids. I felt strongly that God was guiding my decisions. (You don't have to agree with that, but I would appreciate simple respect.)

I have wondered what my future grandchildren will call me. My grandmother was always "Mamaw." My Mother likes to be called Granny, like her own grandmother. Having struggled with my weight all my life, would I be comfortable with Big Mama? I don't know. (At 5'4 most people don't see me as BIG; more like extra wide...)

Maybe I am, deep down, trying so hard to be a Big Mama that I should embrace that term. It encompasses Big Love and Big Sacrifice and Big Faith. So maybe we should all aspire to be Big Mamas.

my aunt Myrtle [in blue] with two of her children, plus Mother and Bruce [around 1960]

Watching the Grammys

Michael has seen me watch the Oscars every year, because I literally cannot help myself. I have always loved the movies. Even if I haven't had time to see any of the nominated films, I watch.

Every year, though, I get a bit more jaded about the whole process.

Little films that struggled to get made often end up winning all the prizes. So why is it still so hard for small films to get made?

I have a teenaged son. He likes movies where something explodes every 5 minutes. Sometimes I've said to him "We're going to watch a DVD and this is a movie about PEOPLE, not explosions. I'd like you to look for 30 minutes and then if you don't want to continue to watch, OK." I have to say, most of the time he will end up watching the movie and enjoying it, if I've chosen well.

Michael loves music and so last night I said let's watch the Grammys. I remember watching them every year for many years, until I got old enough to be out of touch with popular music. This year, however, I've been listening to Michael's radio stations in the car, and so I know a lot of the songs. So I thought it would be more fun to watch.

Well.... yes and no. I had heard most of the pop songs, but none of the rock or country songs. That's OK.

What was shocking to me was the utter lack of talent. Even Beyonce, who I have to admire because she has a terrific voice and usually sings interesting songs, was stunningly awful. The show opened with her straddling a chair like in Flashdance, and she proceeded to writhe around and sing some awful un-melodic song. She had on no pants. Her butt was literally hanging OUT.

Michael was shocked. He laughed about it. I debated about whether or not to just turn off the show, but I decided to let him keep watching. Whether or not he wants to watch next year.... who knows.

Then, early in the show, Katy Perry did "Dark Horse" - but it looked like a very amateur scene out of Macbeth, or perhaps a bad early 80's MTV video. I was not impressed. I thought it was just silly.

 

What was really sort of depressing was that a young artist that I've heard on the radio many times, who has real talent but isn't flashy, Ed Sheeran, didn't win.

A country singer named Kacey Musgraves, who has no voice and sang a really lame song, did win.

I guess that's the most frustrating thing about the Grammys, the people who should win often don't.

In the end, I suspect that within a few years I will quit watching all awards shows altogether. I may even follow my brother's example and throw out the TV. It's not really necessary. You can see everything on the computer.

One of the comforting things about the Grammys is they always include Madonna looking silly. You're over 50, lady, get over yourself.

of course, it's not hard to see where she found inspiration:

Drama Days

Lots going on here and most of it I can't blog about. Suffice to say, my daughter and I are having issues. Nothing really new, just painful ground that I can't really discuss. Parenting doesn't end when someone turns 18, or when they move out. It just gets more complicated.

I will say this: parenting a child adopted at 13, who spoke no English, has been a huge challenge. HUGE. There were no parenting classes available for someone in my situation. There were almost no books or blogs. I've made mistakes, despite my best efforts. Yet, I wouldn't time travel and un-do anything.

Alesia said yesterday my blog makes her uncomfortable. OK. So, I have gone back and un-published some blog posts and will continue to do so.

When I adopted her, I made it clear from the beginning that I wanted to blog honestly about the experience of raising an older child, to encourage people to adopt older children. Too many parents don't write publicly, with honesty, and other parents need support. I have showed her blogs, and told her it's fine for her to read them. I've always been open with her about all of my writing.

Alesia has never before expressed any discomfort with anything I wrote.

However, since she doesn't want me writing about her as an adult, I am respecting her wishes and deleting a lot of blog posts about her.

I expect most of my blogs in the coming years will re-focus on my life, and shift away from my children, except in the most general way. And that's OK. That's as it should be.

However, if other adoptive parents need or want advice, I want to be there for them. I can always be reached by email. [see right column]

When I was about 18-25 my relationship with my mother went through shifts. We both had to make adjustments. I used to get annoyed sometimes when I heard her on the phone with someone talking about me. I think that's normal. The good thing is that we have always been close, and I cherish that relationship.

I still have hope that one day my daughter will be able to see that no matter what differences we may have, I love her wholeheartedly and I only want her to be happy.

Beans and Bricks

I got a Tweet from a friend who went to UGA with me and remembers seeing me in The Mikado in 1983! Wow, he has a good memory.

I think that was the show where I was told to basically stand in the back and sing OUT. Well, I have a huge voice, so I could've stood in the parking lot and been heard, but I still was a bit ticked off to hear that.

I don't look Japanese, duh, not many of them have auburn hair and blue eyes. But the show's not really about Japan. The show consists of [usually] white people made up to look Japanese. It's a spoof of English society and has nothing to do with Japan except the costumes and names.

Yes, I know that sounds weird, but when it was written it was very popular.

GIlbert and Sullivan [for those of you not musically inclined] wrote a number of light operas, and The Mikado is one of their best known shows. It's great fun to sing.

This is a video of one of the best-known songs, Three Little Maids from School. The wigs and costumes look like those we wore at UGA:

 

I was working in the costume shop that semester, and I remember making a bunch of "wigs" out of black silk which were a huge pain in the butt to get to look right. The costumes were basically like bathrobes, and we rented them from somewhere, so no big sewing there.

So I was in the weird position of hanging out with both the actors and the backstage folks on that show. Usually, I just worked backstage in some capacity. I only did a couple of shows at UGA where I was onstage acting and singing.

My aunt and uncle drove over from Marietta to Athens [about a 2 hour drive] to see me in the matinee performance of The Mikado. I somehow talked them into going out to lunch with me beforehand at a Mexican restaurant I liked, because the food was cheap and tasty. I always got a big plate of refried beans.

Well, all afternoon I was onstage singing and dancing, and.... dealing with flatulence. Let's just say I was very glad there were a lot of percussion instruments in the orchestra and I knew all the music really well...

I was also glad my butt was encased in a heavy kimono.

The next day, I think, after the last performance of the show, a bunch of us went to a bar in Athens called The Dawg House. Cheap beer, and no fancy bar type decorations. The bathrooms were two side by side stalls, one marked Women and one marked Men. You couldn't be modest in that situation. (It prepared me well for going to Europe a few years later.)

I decided to leave on the clown white makeup all over my face and get totally hammered drunk. I was still reeling from the refried beans humiliation of the day before.

I was also Young and Stupid.

The white makeup started running off my face and into my shirt. I get sweaty when I drink beer. I must've looked like a haint. Everyone else was hammered too, thank God, because nobody [I hope] could have a very clear memory of that evening.

I do recall the bricks we threw at other bar patrons.

The most fun people in any Drama department are usully the techies - the folks backstage who make the production run right. I knew and liked all the Techies at UGA, despite the fact that they generally looked down their noses at actors, viewing us as intellectual inferiors - which is true of many actors, I'm afraid.

Anyway, some of the techies took styrofoam bricks to the bar. They looked VERY realistic. When one is thrown at your face and you're too drunk to respond quickly, it's a frightening experience... until it bounces off your nose. And then it's an inordinately funny experience.

You'll have to take my word for that.

I don't think we got thrown out, but we should have. I lived very close to the bar so I walked home.

Anyway, any time I hear the word "Mikado" I have a flashback to wigs, beans, anxiety, and throwing bricks.

All to the tune of "Three Little Maids from School."

Harmonies

Do you ever get to the end of your week and look at your To Do list and think ACK!! where did the dang week GO?!

No? Me neither.

[cough cough]

I whipped through a number of things on my list today, I'm proud to say.

Yesterday was a weird day. I had the school appointment, then a break, then an audition.

When I was young I did a lot of singing and acting, so auditions were no big deal to me. Now, however, I had not even attempted choir singing in about 6 years, so my voice is.... rusty.

I studied voice for 5 years when I was a teen. My voice teacher got mad when I was 18 and he started talking about my Opera Career, and I said basically, um, NO. He was way up in his 70's and I think had forgotten to mention to ME that he thought I should sing opera. I had [and still have] a big voice, close to three octaves.

I love to sing in the shower. I now don't CARE who hears me. Hey, it's a free concert, y'all...

But real singing is different. It's like the difference between playing a game of catch in the backyard and playing in the World Series. The yucky part about being 51 is that now my high notes are sounding wobbly, when I can reach them at all. ACK ACK ACK!!!

I started vocalizing at the piano yesterday afternoon and quickly felt faint. I've always been able to get close to a high C, but I couldn't get anywhere near that thing. Disappointed and horrified are not strong enough words to describe my feelings.

So I went to my audition for the Atlanta Women's Chorus without a prepared piece. I couldn't see singing "My Favorite Things" an octave lower than normal. That would just be creepy.

The audition went much better than I had thought it would. There was only the choir director, assistant director, and me. They were super gracious. I did some warmups, some sight-reading, and then just sang America the Beautiful, acappella.

I am excited to be part of a chorus that's aimed at everyone, not just a church audience. I loved singing in church choirs but I didn't always like the repertoire. I like all kinds of music.

I will be singing Alto, which is a bit of a challenge, but there are audio files available of each part on each song, so it should be OK.

When I was in middle school in Knoxville the choir director, Ms. Gilbreath, made tapes for us of each vocal part and we listened to them many times to learn our part. I learn best by ear, although I can read music.

Anyway, our first concert isn't until June, so we have time...

Just to get in the harmonizing spirit, here is a funny song from the hilarious Steve Martin and the very talented Steep Canyon Rangers [none of whom are women but who cares?!]:

 

College and Life

When I was a child it was always understood that I would be going to college. I never even thought about doing anything different. My parents both graduated from college and my dad earned a master's degree in business.

However, by the time I finished my senior year in high school I thought maybe it would be nice to just take a year off. I had been working, going to school, and I'd been in 3 plays, in the space of a year. I was TIRED. At my high school, you could take just a few classes your senior year if you had nearly all the graduation requirements.

My dad took a dim view of my "year off" idea and said simply NO. You're going to college, Dee. End of discussion.

I wish he had been a little less harsh. I was 17 when I graduated.

Michael will be 19 when he finishes high school. I can't be so intractable with him.

This morning, we had Michael's meeting with his counselor to discuss his classes for next year. I won't go into the details, but suffice to say it was interesting. He isn't going to take Spanish again next year but he will take Into to Engineering.

Mike isn't sure he wants to go to college. I think he is just scared of the idea. So I've been telling how much more fun college is than high school. You can go to school just a few hours a day. You get treated like an adult. You take some basic courses, then concentrate on what you like.

I loved college.

I didn't love intense studying of subjects I didn't like, like Math or Science, but overall I loved the experience of college.

Michael is taking some computer courses next year as electives and I hope those will spark his interest in computer type occupations.

I tried to talk him into taking Art and/or Drama, and he wouldn't even discuss it. Oh well.

I was thinking today, what classes did I take where I actually used the material that I was taught, later in life?

One of my favorite classes in undergraduate school was Makeup. I was a Drama major. I had to take the class, I think. It showed me a lot of cool tricks and ideas, and it was great fun. I used it every day for years, back when I wore makeup.

My mother took a lot of interior decorating type classes when she was in school. So our home always looked nice. I didn't realize how nice until I grew up and started going into the homes of people who were clueless about stuff, and whose homes looked very strange.

[I went into a home not long ago where there was an entire room just off the main family room, devoted to cats and their toys. Needless to say, those folks don't have kids. It was a big room though, the Cat Room....]

Logic was another class I continue to use, all the time. It taught me how to think.

I took a class my freshmen year about Key American Presidential Elections. Really hard class. Really valuable. I use the skills of thinking historically and critically about presidential candidates all the time.

Of course, most of what I think is cynical and negative, but so be it.

Michael is already very logical and a deep thinker, but I hope he will choose to go to college. I pray daily he will figure out what he loves to do and do it. I am trying not to force him into any one particular direction, though.

One thing I know about my son is that he is stubborn. More than me.

Here's what I want to say about college: it's where you learn about LIFE. It's a hothouse environment different from the real world but it is a good gateway to the real world. You have to learn how to learn. You have to get along with folks you live with. You have to live on a budget - well, most kids do. You have to try and understand yourself, and how to live your life.

If you're lucky, you make friends you keep for the rest of your life. If you're really lucky, you find your spouse or partner.

It's the one experience where, when you're doing it, you think wow, I want to be done with this, and when you finish, you wish you could go back.

Anyway, here endeth the lesson. I had to post that photo because he's just so CUTE?!

Asleep on Granny's Bed

OK I admit I am biased, but there is really nothing cuter than a Bassett Hound. I love all dogs but bassetts win the cuteness prize, in my book.

Below, me and Molly. I was in college.

Lola is our 4th Bassett in about 40 years.

I have an old afghan on the sofa in the family room, covering it just so Lola can sleep on it but then we can wash the afghan and get all the doggy hair off it. We can also whip it off the sofa and offer visitors a hairless piece of furniture when necessary. Michael was sitting on the sofa last night after dinner, and Lola went over tn carefully nosed the afghan off the end, and settled herself right down for a nap, with the afghan scrunched up and her bare butt on the sofa.

Lola had a busy day yesterday. She got half a loaf of bread off the counter and ate it. She ate another partial loaf on Monday. I had to send Michael to the store yesterday to replace the bread.

Every morning after Michael eats his breakfast and I leave with him to drive him to school, Lola trots into Mother's room and gets on the loveseat or the bed.

This is where I found her this morning: