I’ll admit, I laughed until I near cried reading this – and the graphics contributed to no end to my amusement.

Upon finishing this essay, I decided, “I must find the Dog IQ test!”

And Moxley scored 18 out of a possible 30 points*.

On the “hide the treat under a cup” test, he technically failed, with 1 point.  I showed him the treat and the cup, as well as my putting the treat UNDER the cup.  When I said, “OK!” he trotted up to the cup and sat down and waited for me to move the cup.  I consider it a success because he knows that he is not allowed to break into containers when I am watching.  But technically, a fail.

“Towel over head” test.  Maybe I put the towel too far over his body, I’m not sure.  But he gave two shakes of the head, couldn’t shake it, and then laid down for a nap.  1 point.

The “smile” test.  You’re supposed to stare at the dog and then give a big-assed smile (I assume this has something to do w/showing of teeth) and you see how long it takes for the dog to come to you in a happy manner.  I gave him 3 points on this one, because I wasn’t far enough away – he just looked at me and the tail went wild.  He just didn’t feel the need to actually move towards me because I was close enough anyway.  3 points.

“Treat under tea towel” – Sit the dog, show him the treat, and put it under a tea towel and see how long it takes to get the treat.  Mox happily ran up to the tea towel and then sat down next to it – again, waiting for me to give the OK for releasing the treat from it’s “container” – once I said, “Get it!”  he quickly pawed about to get under the towel and to the treat.  Once given the OK, he got 3 points.

“Getting food w/a paw!”  I automatically gave him the 5 points on this one, since I’ve seen him grab bits of food that the cats have knocked under their feeding table. 5 points

“Oh, banana!”  Use your normal sing-song-dog-voice and call him by “refrigerator” and “movies” and then his name and see what he really responds to.  I got a raised eyebrow and a tilted head from the voice, but he didn’t come to me until I said Moxley.  5 points.

So, perhaps my furball isn’t Harvard bound, but he’s smart enough to have trained me exceptionally well.

*Scoring
0-4 = Your dog must be an Afghan (I disagree – Buck from Married w/Children was an Afghan and he couldn’t have been TOO stupid!)
5-15 = Your dog is not too bright, but is most likely very cute
16-25 = Your dog is smart, but won’t go to Harvard
Over 25 = Your dog is a genius

Sure, I could move her. But she looks so sweet and comfy and she’s purring up a storm and I just can’t bring myself to relocate her to the sofa.

She’ll decide soon enough that she has important business elsewhere in the house and I can go on my merry way, but for now, the bank can wait.

So, today was, “Donald, grab a cat!” day. Fortunately they like him quite a bit, and they sat right in his lap and he kept them from other appointments, and the feline manicures were done in no time, and we didn’t even have to break out the towels.

In other news, picking out a new cell phone is a lot more involved than it used to be. Granted, the last time I actually picked out a new model of a phone was at least 5 years ago. They have some new features! Everything is enabled for GPS navigation, which is really cool cause I think I would use that a lot. It would be nice to go new places without having to factor in an extra 30 minutes for getting lost. So, it looks like I’ll have a data plan regardless. I could still get the current iteration of my old phone, but if I’m going to have a data plan anyway, I figure I might as well go ahead and get something a little more shiny. It’s down to the Samsung Reclaim (free) the LG Lotus Elite ($30) or the HTC Hero (Android, $100).

I think the Android phone, cool as it may be, may be way more than I’d ever need – tons of apps, but I really can’t think of any phone app I desperately need. So for the moment, I think the Lotus Elite is in the lead, touchscreen and a better memory card than the Reclaim. So, we’ll see.

It was a really lovely little break from routine and I loved every minute of it, but coming home was just as lovely. I pulled up in front of the house and as I got the cooler of little bro’s petsitting payment of BBQ out I looked up and saw a barking and bouncing dog in the window. How great is that? Hell, when I was married I didn’t get that kind of reception when I had to go out of town.

Inside, once I got past the bouncing and kissyness of the MoxleyDog, Carmen was next in line. She seemed slightly befuddled, as if she wasn’t quite sure how long I’d been gone. But I got an, “Hey! You weren’t here, but you’re here now! Let me show you the MOST AWESOME THING!” And then she went and lounged on the super awesome cat table that appeared as soon as I’d left on Wednesday night. (This is also known as the laptop table.)

It took a little bit of calling about the house to locate the LilyMonster. I found her in the center hall, and she was angry. It went something like this… “You LEFT me! You went away, and had fun and—-MOOOOOOOMMMMMMMY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” and she came running down the hall meowing at the top of her lungs and headbutted me with her Evinrude outboard motor purr.

Sometimes the best part of checking out for a few days is finding out you were missed when you return. Narcissistic? Quite possibly so. Heartwarming? Most definitely so.

The dog was in the entry hall barking at “something important!!!” and I looked around, even under a very low shelf that he was eyeing and saw nothing. Coaxed the dog back to the living room, which lasted about 3 minutes.

Then, “BARK, BARK, BARK!!!” Back to the entry hall. Looked under the low shelf again, saw nothing. Stood up and suddenly Lily comes sliding out from under the damn shelf. She does impress me.

My only other concern this evening is whether or not I will come downstairs to a destroyed kitchen and a collection of glass beer steins in a pile of shards on the floor. There was a small flying insect bopping about earlier tonight, and Carmen was hell bent to get it. (I said when I adopted her, “Big ears, good mouser!” We have no mice, so insects it is.) Donald whacked said bug out of business, but being the time of year when windows are open, I am sure there will be other little flying critters about, and I have to wonder what destruction will come about from her zealousness.

ETA: And there was a moth on the ceiling. I wouldn’t have noticed had Carmen not jumped on the back of a chair and stared quite intently at it. Apparently I am way too tolerant of small flying things.

I got home tonight, gave Mox his good boy biscuit and went about my business. I looked over a few minutes later and Moxley was snuffling about on the rug for any crumbs and Lily was right next to him, looking for whatever he was looking for. (She is the chowhound of the two kitties.) As I watched, she then just did a kitty bodyslam on him and rolled over right under his nose. Not many other ways a cat can say, “I love and trust you!!” However, the look on Moxley’s face was, “Holy shit, pointy bits up!! Move away!!!!” But it was still very sweet.

Of the two cats, Carmen is the strong-but-silent one. She’s just not the talker that Lily is. (Lily loves to hear the sound of her own voice.) Of all the other creatures in the house that she can get mouthy with, she talks to the dog more than anyone else. And it’s not “Back up dog, or I will cut you!” – it’s more of a “Hey, Moxleyyyyyyyy, whatcha doing?” as she creeps up to headbutt him. (Which also has Mox at loose ends, especially given that Snoopy & Target weren’t really into physical contact with the pup.)

Hopefully with just a little more time he’ll realize that the cats aren’t really out to get him and the pointy bits only come out when he steps on them.

HR 4872 may or may not happen today, aka health care. This should be interesting. I just hope that perhaps this can stop some of the nastiness going about. (Last I heard, Gerry Connolly was on board, deem and pass had gone out the window, and the fence-sitters were finding themselves in quite the spotlight.)

In other news, I am an Avon rep!! (Been dying to try the Anew line, didn’t know a rep and decided I would just be my own rep.) Thank you Melissa for being my awesome first customer! To that end, I have a meeting with my District Sales Manager tomorrow, a “Division Rally” next week and a sales meeting the week after that. Basically, more meetings in the next 3 weeks than I’ve been to in the last 4 years. At the risk of sounding like a sales pitch, I will say the online ordering and direct delivery they have now is pretty spiffy.

Now I am going to figure out what I am going to do with the rest of this absolutely gorgeous day. Well, after lunch.

The back window in my car has decided that it doesn’t want to work anymore, which would normally be something that I’d simply leave alone for another time, but unfortunately, the window is open about an inch and a half, and as such, actually needs to be tended to. So, I’m looking at being carless for a couple days and that annoys me, too.

There was a 6.1 magnitude aftershock in Haiti today. WTF, Mother Nature, didn’t have enough fun with the first one?

It’s sounding more and more like the health care legislation may be dead, so yay, I can look forward to my premiums continuing to rise unabated, despite my decent health and fabulous looks, and then being cancelled if I ever have to actually use it.

I have taken to turning off the ringer on the phone in my bedroom and leaving my cell phone downstairs at night because I’m done with answering tax question calls from my grandmother at 3AM. (She has a little problem with boundaries and bothering to look at clocks.) I’m pretty sure this makes me a bad person, but I need sleep to effectively be the CEO of “Keep Grandma out of a Nursing Home, Inc.” and she certainly has no problems picking up the phone during the day.

On the upside, the animals are all quite well. Carmen decided to have herself a good old fashioned feline crazy this morning and was chasing me, the dog, invisible bugs, and anything else that caught her eye. However, the Christmas tree is a little worse for the wear for her fun this morning. She is happily sleeping on my lap as I type this, which thrills Moxley to no end, because it means she is not in his crate. He was not having a super awesome time this afternoon as he couldn’t sleep in his crate because Carmen was in it (why he won’t just walk in and sit on her is beyond me) and Lily kept trying to sleep on his tail and feet. (She LOVES him and is also just a little obsessed with his feet.)

So yeah 2010 – I’m just not impressed so far. We’re stuck with each other for 11+ more months, so let’s get it together, shall we?

– Carmen is about 91% back to normal. She still looks at the ceiling fans with a suspicious eye, but is back to hanging out in the living room, and decided food was the winner in the fear of ceiling fan vs. eating in the bedroom. It may seem silly that it worried me as much as it did, but it’s just a tiny bit heartbreaking to not be able to explain that the ceiling fan is not a predator. Lily still looks at the ceiling fans and then looks at me with an expression of, “Seriously, I don’t get the issue here.” Or it’s, “WTF, why is the fan off?” I’m not quite sure which it is.

– Is it wrong that when I come in and want to know where the kittens are I say, “Where are my single ladies?!” and then sing a few bars from Beyonce’s Single Ladies song? They do show up when I sing it. (And I use the term “singing” loosely.)

– Sharyn* called today, and I’ll admit my first thought when seeing her number on the Caller ID was, “WTF has my grandmother done???” Yes, I know I’m going to hell for that. But, it was just an update. First being that the hot water heater is ON – and to expect some calls about that. (I couldn’t even get her to voluntarily leave it on when we stayed with her. So I just turned it on and didn’t tell her.) But, she’s not been super great about showering of late, for several understandable reasons that I am completely speculating upon because she won’t actually tell anyone:

a) Afraid she’ll fall & hurt herself
b) Not like she’s out running a marathon
c) Doesn’t give a rat’s ass, cause she’s 87 years old
d) Hot water costs money

But Sharyn is getting her a shower seat (the shower has a built in bench, but she could quite easily slide right off it it – hell, *I* could slide off it were I not paying attention) and will be there so my grandmother knows if she has any issues, help is immediately there. (And as Sharyn said, “Hell, if she wants me to get naked too, I’ll do it.” God bless this woman.)

Additionally, we’d previously talked about Meals on Wheels for more hot food options**, but they’re kind of insistent on “coming in & helping” and my grandmother just is NOT comfortable having strangers about (which I think is a good thing) and Sharyn did a little more poking around and one of the local hospitals does a pretty kick ass meal plan that can be picked up, which is better for all helping out. Given my grandmother’s good financial situation***, it will cost……$4 a meal. Christ, our Chinese takeout tonight cost way more than that. And she was reading one of the menus to me – Swiss steak, mashed potatoes, green beans, salad & milk. Hell, where do *I* sign up for that?

I’m very glad she found this, cause she has been cooking up things to take over to my grandmother, which is awesome, but I’m really glad to have this off her plate (so to speak) because I do worry that she’s doing too much already, despite her protestations to the contrary.

* The angel sent from heaven to Sun City to prevent me from tossing my grandmother into the middle of traffic on Bell Road.
** My grandmother would live on sandwiches & ice cream if left to her own devices. I am at the point of “Whatever the hell she wants” but I am outvoted, LOL. She will eat *anything* you put in front of her, but will never admit that she’d like anything beyond sandwiches & ice cream. As I have said before, she’s taken self deprivation to an art form.
*** I have told my grandmother on more than a few occasions that if I had her resources at her age, I’d be ordering Lobster Thermador & a Cabana Boy every night. I will be getting the contact info for this hospital meal plan and a nice donation will be made so they can help a few more people who *can’t* afford it, because frankly, she’s being ridiculously undercharged for this service.