I was going to write a blog post tonight, but I got sucked into the first part of The Real Housewives of New Jersey reunion special, and lost so many brain cells I can barely spell my name.

Instead, here’s a list of three things I’m thankful for this week:

1. I have a three (and-a-half) day weekend coming up. I’m looking forward to sleeping in, reading in the backyard, and walking the dogs.

2. Gracie is no longer in heat.

3. After a month of sinus headaches I have been headache free for two days. (Yeah, I know—I just jinxed it.

So what are you grateful for this week? Or today? Or if things are really bad—this hour?

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Whoops! I have a blog! There’s been so much going on that not only have I not updated here in a week, but I don’t think I’ve read a single post on anyone else’s blog.

It wasn’t an intentional “vacation” from Snark, but the last week has been crazy. Here’s one of the highlights:

Remember the mouse that Gracie and Penny caught? A few days after that I woke up a little before 6:00 a.m. because I heard Penny violently throwing up. It sounded so painful. She threw up about six times, and when I though she was finally done, she started to scream in agony. SCREAM in AGONY. I’m pretty sure the neighbors thought I got tired of all of her barking and finally stabbed her with a butter knife. That’s how bad it was.

And that’s when I panicked.

I thought the mouse was making her sick. And worse? I thought she ate a mouse that had been poisoned. Which meant she was poisoned.

Thank god for my vet. He recently opened a second location—the only 24-hour, 7-day a week emergency vet center in the immediate area. I called to tell them I was coming in and I left Gracie in the house, bundled Penny up in a towel and tossed her in the front seat of my car. She screamed bloody murder the entire way. Every time I pulled up to a stop light people looked over to see what the hell kind of wild creature was making all that noise.

When we got there, I ran inside with her just in time to have her puke all over their floor. Three times. There was another emergency that came in right before me so we had to wait a few minutes to see the vet. While we waited, Penny was writhing on the floor, barking, screaming, yowling, but when I rubbed her belly it seemed to calm her down a little. That’s also when I noticed she went into heat that morning. *sigh* My little girl is a woman. Ehem.

So anyway…

Once I explained to the vet what I thought happened they decided to take her temperature. If anyone thought Penny was loud before, none of us expected the screeching sounds she emitted when they tried to stick the thermometer in her rear. I tried to hold her but I was no match for her. My entire right thigh is STILL purple from where she clawed and dug and hurled her body into me.

Another vet tech came in to help hold her down, and the screaming OH MY GOD THE SCREAMING BECAUSE THERE’S A THERMOMETER UP MY BUTT almost shattered the window. Right then a family with a little boy came in and he immediately burst into tears because That Poor Dog Must Be DYING. Someone ran out to reassure them that she was fine, that the dog wasn’t dying.

When they were done violating Penny with the thermometer, the asked a bunch of detailed questions about when she ate it, how much did she eat, did she have any symptoms before today. They decided to do some blood tests and go from there. As an afterthought the vet asked if they could take X-Rays if nothing showed up in her blood.

I signed my house over to them (I already put the vet’s son through vet school with Callie, the dog we had before Gracie) and left Penny there while I went home to get out of my PJs and take care of Gracie. (Yes, I was pretty much in my PJs and slippers but I did manage to brush my teeth and wash my face before I left.)

When they called me a couple of hours later the vet told me that no she isn’t dying from rat poison, but yes, she swallowed a metal zipper. Right then I looked down at her new dog bed and saw that the zipper was missing. Just the metal tab—not the whole zipper track. The screaming was from the pain of it moving from her stomach into her intestines.

They wanted to keep her there overnight hooked up to IV fluids so they could X-Ray her every two or three hours to see if the zipper would move on its own. They wanted to monitor it because they were afraid it would perforate her intestines. They were hoping it would just pass so we could avoid surgery.

By about 8:00 a.m. the next morning—26 hours after this whole thing started—we were on Poop Alert. In case you aren’t familiar, it’s that awesome sport that dog owners play when their dogs eat something totally inappropriate. Every time they go, someone has to go and sort through it to see if the object has expelled itself (in case you’re wondering, this is when I went through this with Gracie). Going through Penny’s poop turned out to be some poor vet assistant’s job that day. By noon, Penny had passed the zipper. No damage was done to her stomach. Bill likes to say that paid the vet $1,000 to watch her go to the crap.

To make that situation worse, while all of this was going on, I made the epic mistake of posting a status update on Facebook that said something to the effect of “Penny ate a poison rat and is very sick. Keep her in your thoughts.” People commented on it all morning and sent good wishes, which was sweet. I did talk to a few people over the phone about it, including the woman who owns Penny’s father. However, the actual breeder (the woman who owns her mom) saw it that afternoon, realized I hadn’t posted an update in four hours and called me up screaming, “Oh my GOD, she’s dead, isn’t she???” Now, she’s unhinged in the best of circumstance and, honestly, I sort of forgot we’re Facebook friends, otherwise, I never in a million years would have put anything up there.

She became unglued thinking that because there was no update that Penny had passed away. I finally calmed her down and reassured her that Penny was alive and drugged with pain meds and an IV drip at the emergency hospital. Who would have thought THAT was the better option?

After that, I got no fewer than 653 calls from her that day. She was questioning how good my vet is, questioning his treatment protocol, questioning my “parenting” skills (but in a really passive-aggressive way).

I was so glad when Penny crapped out that zipper. Mostly because I was so happy she was fine. But also so I could stop having to talk to the breeder.

And that? Was only the beginning of my crazy week.

Open Wide

My oldest stepson is engaged so we thought it would be nice to invite him, his fiancé and her parents over for dinner. We’ve been planning this for a couple of months, mostly because it was so hard to get everyone’s schedules coordinated.

Needless to say, there was a lot of build-up by the time this happened. I’m not sure who was more nervous—me and Bill, my stepson and his fiancé or her parents.

But it seemed to go well. Not a lot of awkward conversation, everyone was friendly and we had a nice dinner.

Our future in-laws are dog people, so after dinner when we were sitting out back having coffee, they asked if we could let Penny and Gracie outside. We had kept them in our bedroom all night to keep the chaos under control, so they needed to be let out.

The dogs came out, and Penny made the rounds greeting everyone, but Gracie immediately ran to the back fence and locked in on something in the dark. She stared at the wall, and whined and paced. I figured she saw a possum or squirrel but whatever it was, was out of her reach.

Except. It wasn’t.

It was a mouse, and it stupidly made a break for it. Right toward Gracie. It must has thought it was faster than the big dog. It wasn’t.

I heard a squeal, and saw Gracie shake her head. That was the end of Mickey.

Gracie ran toward me with the mouse in her mouth, totally proud. She laid the thing at my feet like it was a gift just for me.

I screamed.

She picked it up and brought it over to my  stepson’s future mother-in-law.

Thank god she laughed.

Penny got in on the action and the two of them played catch with the mouse until Gracie grabbed it and ran into the corner of the yard to finish her treat.

Samoyeds have a hunting instinct. Callie, our first Sammy, was the original Great White Huntress. She used to lie down under a nest the birds built in the eaves of the house and stare up, waiting patiently for a baby bird to fall out. A couple of months before she passed away from kidney failure, she wasn’t feeling great but that instinct still kicked in. We were working in the front yard and all of a sudden Callie leapt out of dead sleep, jumped up and caught a blue jay out of the air and decimated it. It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.

So after Gracie ate the mouse for dessert, the party broke up.

I’ll have to remember that trick the next time a party runs too long.

Two months ago I signed up for a 5K mud run. It’s a few days before my birthday and I thought it would be a cool way to celebrate. The plan was to prove that as I hit the age of 41 I was still a bad-ass.

When I signed up I was working out pretty regularly, going to the gym, running on the treadmill. In the air conditioning. With a TV in front of me. Not at all a real-world running on pavement experience.

It sounded like a good idea at the time.

Of course, within days it got insanely hot outside, I got busy at work and I needed to put in some overtime and then I got a cold. In two months I’ve only seriously trained a handful of times.

Fast forward to this week….

The run is this Saturday and tonight was the first time in a couple of weeks that I was able to get out and train. The course is going to be pretty hilly so I planned a run that’s about 2.5 miles mostly uphill.

It started out okay, but really only because the first half mile was flat.

As soon as I got to the hills it turned ugly. The reality is, the hill wasn’t all that steep. But as far as I was concerned it was like scaling Mt. Everest.

As I moved upwards my legs felt like uncoordinated stumps and my lungs burned. But I put my head down and trudged up the hill. I grunted and heaved and tried to settle into an easy pace, but I just couldn’t get comfortable. My shoulders were up in my ears so I tried to relax them, but my elbows splayed out in this weird, uncontrolled swing. As I shuffled along like my 82-year-old father, I was totally unable to find a good stride. For some reason I was running bow-legged like I was ready to drop a baby out of my Mother Nature. My hips saddle bags felt like real saddle bags, weighed down with sand, locked and tight.

Before I could shuffle up the first hill, I was lapped about 18 times by a 78-year-old Japanese woman walking (WALKING!) who just laughed at me every time she passed.

I finally got to the top of the hill, but running down wasn’t really much better. My calves, used to wearing towering high heels, cramped up in protest. But the searing pain in my calves couldn’t compete with the stitch in my side that I got from not drinking enough water before I started. And it turns out that running downhill requires way more coordination and skill than I possess. I stumbled a few times, tripping over my own damn feet. I pictured myself tripping over myself, rolling ass over feet, straight down into traffic.

When I got back on flat ground I restrained myself from laying down on the sidewalk—mostly because I didn’t want any of my neighbors to see me—and walked the rest of the way home—about a half mile.

Instead of celebrating how fit and healthy I am, this run is doing the total opposite. I’ve bitched about turning 41 but until this week I’ve actually felt okay about it. For the most part I look pretty good—most of my parts are still roughly where they started out, and the wrinkles are pretty minimal—but doing this run has been a lesson in humility. And humiliation.

But I think I figured out a way to get through this run. Have you ever seen dog racing? They put a fake rabbit on the rail inside the track and the dogs chase it, right? I’m going to have Bill run ahead of me with a fan attached to the back of his head and a TV strapped to his back, preferably tuned into The Real Housewives of New Jersey. I figure instead of re-creating a real outside running experience, I’m going to re-create a comfortable gym experience.

He doesn’t know this yet, though.

Otherwise? I’m screwed.

Saturday night I was propelled back into 1972.

A friend gave us tickets to see Ringo Starr at the Greek Theater. I am not such a fan of Ringo’s solo stuff (can I even name any of his solo songs?), but he is a great drummer and hello! he was a Beatle. So there’s that.

The tickets were won at a charity event and they came with backstage passes. Which is kind of cool. If you’re cool. Which I’m not. And going backstage just magnifies my extreme lack of cool. But here’s the weird thing: Almost nobody backstage was cool. Dan Castellaneta, who does all the voices on The Simpsons was back there, and he is the embodiment of cool. Mostly because he doesn’t try to be. But that was it.

I don’t know if this is specific to Los Angeles, but the couple of times I’ve been lucky enough to do something like that, I’ve noticed that everyone backstage is ALL ABOUT BEING BACKSTAGE. No one knows who the hell anyone is back there—most people are too concerned with making sure they look like they belong—and everyone ends up looking awkward and uncomfortable. Everyone sizes everyone else up, wondering who you are and if they should know who you are. It’s just weird. The only advantage of getting in was that they had some snacks and a private bathroom. Aside from that, I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

We finally meandered out to our seats—which were Ah-May-Zing!—and we settled next to a woman who was 70 years old if she was a day, and she still had that funky vibe of a long-time groupie. She was a little pixie of a woman who wore her Sgt. Pepper–style jacket—epaulettes and all—rings on every finger, and those tell-tale stoner fingers—yellow with brown tips from years of smoking joints down to the nubs. She immediately leaned in and started telling us about every concert she’s been to see the Beatles as a group and individually. Her scent of patchouli and pot was overwhelming.

The second the music started, though, she stopped chatting with us and was all business. She was Old School, waving her lighter instead of an iPhone with the lighter app, singing along and dancing. Until the assholes behind us totally harshed her mellow and told her to sit down.

Now, I don’t know if this is specific to Los Angeles or not either, but I’ve noticed a trend at rock concerts (yes, I realize that phrase just aged me) is to SIT DOWN. In your seat. What the fuck is that? Yeah, there are physical seats there, but I generally believe that those should only be used during the slow songs. Otherwise, isn’t the whole point to going to a live show to get up, dance your ass off with thousands of other fans and sing along? In some circles that’s known as having fun. Maybe it’s the median age of the concerts I’ve been going to lately, but in L.A. they seemed to have mastered the art of either sitting and looking bored or doing the chair groove—sitting in the chair, bobbing their heads to the beat, maybe throwing in some shoulder action if they’re really rocking out.

The pixie looked so bummed at being asked to sit down but she did. Then she’d hear the first note of a song she’d love and up she’d go, and get her groove on. Until she was asked to sit again. I heard this exchange a few times and kind of got pissed. So I stood up. And made sure to shake my ass extra hard just to piss the group behind us off. I stood and danced for the rest of the show.

The concert ended up being kind of cool because Ringo’s band was made up of musicians from the ’70s and ’80s—guys like Edgar Winters (you haven’t lived until you’ve heard “Free Ride” live) and Gary Wright (if you’re under a certain age you may remember “Dreamweaver” from Wayne’s World. If you don’t even know what that means, you shouldn’t be here) played Ringo’s music as well as their own hits.

I suspect that Ringo would have been stuck behind a drum kit and wouldn’t have had many solo opportunities had he not been a Beatle, but the awesome thing is he doesn’t seem to take himself seriously. His Peace & Love schtick seems a little hokey after a while, but I think he genuinely believes in that, so more power to him. Plus, how many musicians would generously share the stage with so many awesome (and legendary) musicians. For that alone, it was a great show.

As far as the pixie goes, I can’t help but wonder how she manages to function in real life. But peace and love, honey.