1. Important Dates in a Frame
2. Map of California Coast
3. Julia Child Quote
4. Please Wash Your Hands
5. Hello Front Door
6. Over the Rainbow Quote
7. Happiness is

… Oh sorry. Back to Pebbles…

These ratings are on a scale of 1-10, 1 being not into it and 10 being unbearably into it.

Snuggle Scale: 9
Food Obsession: 10
Amount of bark: 2
Cuteness of bark: 10-4 depending on what she is barking at. It’s a 4 when it is the neighbor’s dog that she is barking at and a 10 when it is the hiccup-like gruff when she hears the neighbor’s kids playing in our front yard.
Jump height: 7
Playfulness: 5
Car-riding: 10
Pathetic-ness upon your return home: 9

Best quality: there are too many to count. She is just awesome. She does only poop behind the bushes, making it super easy to keep the yard clean.

Worst quality: her obsession with the neighbor’s dog. I wish she would just give it a break already.

Penny is aloof. She is the one who just chills by herself when she wants and only gets close when she wants. She pees when people come in the house and greet her, though this is getting better.

These ratings are on a scale of 1-10, 1 being not into it and 10 being unbearably into it.

Snuggle Scale: 5 – she only gets close when the lights go off.
Food Obsession: 2
Amount of bark: 10
Cuteness of bark: 0.00 – I’m sorry Penny, but for a breed of dog that is supposed to be quiet, you certainly broke the mold.
Jump height: 1 – she needs lifted onto the bed… and sometimes off as well.
Playfulness: 7
Car-riding: 2
Pathetic-ness upon your return home: 2

Best quality: she can keep herself happy
Worst quality: BARK

All of this time with the dogs has made me think about their individual and pack mentality. I thought I would share this with you because it gives me a reason to post pictures of cute puppies.

Let me introduce you to Maeby. She the youngest (just about a year now) of the bunch and my sister and her husband adopted her less than 6 months ago.

She has got to be the wiggliest dog I have ever met. I also thought I could never meet a dog who wanted more attention than our dog, but here she is.

These ratings are on a scale of 1-10, 1 being not into it and 10 being unbearably into it.

Snuggle Scale: 15
Food Obsession: 10
Amount of bark: 2
Cuteness of bark: 10 – sweetest little howl I ever heard
Jump height: 8 – I saw her head pop up to the countertop last night when I was dishing out dinner
Playfulness: 8
Car-riding: 8
Pathetic-ness upon your return home: 9

Best quality: she is damn sweet
Worst quality: she eats poop

Starred items in my RSS feed that need to be sorted: 474

These are articles on starting your own business and being successful, as well as items I want to get on Pinterest before I forget their awesome existence.

Number of emails in my inbox at work: 3,837

Dude. This is insurmountable. I have given myself 30 minutes a day to sort through this stuff. I can’t believe how much email I get here at the office. It’s a good thing I can delete the approximately 1,300 emails related to getting coffee or lunch

Number of emails in my gmail to sort: 1,963

This is my NON-junk mail account. And I have 2,000 emails. The problem with Gmail is that they make it so easy to just not file things. With that handy dandy search, I can always find what I am looking for, so I have a tendency to just let things sit in my inbox.

Number of emails in my hotmail to sort: 1,052

This is my junk email. I check it 2-3 times a week as it is the email I use for online purchases. I am kind of surprised that the number is so low here. I am not going to panic until I reach about 2,000.

Let’s do the math on how long it will take to get my internet back into a svelte little organized machine:

That is MORE THAN ONE WHOLE WORK WEEK! This doesn’t even include sorting through my RSS feed. You know what I might do instead of sorting through the email? Make baby boy pants.

Yes I did the math. I now wish I hadn’t. Yikes! Does any one else have this problem?

p.s. I think the explosion drawing function in powerpoint is highly under-utilized. Just sayin’.

2. Homemade Nutella

3. Oh Baby Bars

4. Devil Dogs

5. Homemade Oreos

The line is called Marine and it is manufactured by Birch Fabrics. It is organic cotton, which I don’t feel is an important selling feature. At just a little over $16.50 a yard, it is hard to justify buying any copious amounts of the fabric, but I also don’t think that you would need very much to make a bold statement on a child’s quilt.

First was getting used to stabbing myself with needles. In addition to the four daily injections, I had to check my blood sugar an hour after every meal. Needles! Sure, I’ve stabbed myself a zillion times on accident while embroidering and sewing, but this is different. Medication was going in! Blood was coming out to be measured! Turns out – injections were only scary before I started giving them to myself. It rarely hurts. I generally inject close to the same site in my stomach every time. It gets a little discolored, but nothing too major. And the finger pricks for the meter were a piece of cake once I figured out that my ring finger consistently bled and hurt much less than the other fingers. Remembering to do all of these things took some finagling though. I ended up using an app called Glucose Buddy. I could keep track of meals, injections, readings, and I could even set alarms so that I could remember to do the injections and readings.

The second hurdle – and one that no technology could solve – was the change in my diet. I really thought I was doing okay. Not eating sweets, more whole grains than not, avoiding sweetened drinks. But once you have to avoid all sugar all together, with the exception of two small servings of whole fruit a day, you begin to see the painful flaws of the American diet. This is still a struggle for me. Because not only do I have to be incredibly selective of my food, but I have to eat six times a day. Not four, sometimes five times a day. SIX times a day. And every one of those meals has to have a specific balance of carbohydrates and protein. Top that off with the no lunchmeat situation, and you have one very disgruntled and never hungry Mimi. Some days are easier than others, but I’ve lost weight while pregnant (this is OKAY! according to the myriad of doctors who have examined my situation) and I am feeling so much more healthy than I had before. So good, that I might try and keep up this lifestyle one the baby’s born!

I’ve got a lot to stay on this topic, but I don’t want to overwhelm either myself or you with it. Let’s save some for another day.