2 and a half

Butter and the armoire

This is f-ing gross.

Here's a normal looking doll house armoire. Something that might have, say, doll clothing in it, or perhaps jewels or some other small item my girls like to hoard.

Open sesame and... a bar of butter. Not just any butter, but organic unsalted butter - the kind that, you know, little girls 3 years of age like to eat apparently. Oh, and keep in their armoires. 

Clearly it was a big bite. Put some in your armoire today.

I kissed a fish, and I liked it

Impaled

Barry had a bad day last Thursday. He was running around outside and, being the clumsy chap that he is, knocked a bronze statue over. It fell on him and punctured his rear leg.

It wasn't a large statue, but large enough. Forty to fifty pounds is enough to do damage to all but the largest dogs. He was lucky, in fact. It could have punctured his torso or some other body part.

This all happened during my commute home from work. I received a phone call from my wife and she informed me about what happened. She even texted me pics, and I would post them here but they are not all that pleasant to look at. There's some protruding muscle and some blood, and if you're like me that doesn't sit well.

An hour after the incident, the only 24-hour vet in town informed us that Barry had been "impaled" and would need surgery overnight. "Impaled?" I thought. The antler of an innocent-looking bronze statue of a deer had impaled our dog? It sounded so severe. But he had, indeed, been pierced by a heavy, pointed object.

Poor Barry.

We picked him up in the morning, complete with a partially shaved right hind leg, stitches, and a cone on his head. Why the cone? Because it prevents him from chewing on the injury, tearing out the stitches and otherwise infecting the wound. He looks like Bosco from One Crazy Summer.  It's really called an e-collar, although it's got nothing to do with the Internet.

If you've ever had a dog who has had to wear an e-collar, you know he's about a foot wider than he normally is when it's on. That would be fine, except he has no idea he's wearing it, which means the dog is generally causing havoc simply by walking around. Tables and and chairs get knocked over, walls get scratched, kids get taken down. That, plus the dog is handicapped. He cannot go up the stairs, for example, because the e-collar hangs too low and catches. He can't properly chew on a bone or a toy because he cannot hold it with his paws. And he often has to try several times to get through a doorway.

But, Barry can take solace in the fact that his cousin Sadie (my brother's red fox lab) currently wears an e-collar too. You'd think it's a back-to-school fad, but no. Sadie tore her ACL a few weeks back and has to wear one for the same reasons Barry does.

Everybody loves company, especially a dog. Here they are:

Have you had a dog who's had to wear an e-collar? What's been your experience?

 

First a balloon, now this

This is insane. Think if you were the baby's parent and saw this happen in front of your eyes. Miraculously this baby survived with only a cut to the forehead.

Paranoid about balloons

No, it's not a UFO although in 20 years when people have forgotten about this I bet somebody will try to pass this video off as a sighting of one.

It's an over-sized, homemade helium balloon that a little boy in Ft. Collins allegedly climbed into, untied from its anchor and floated away in. And it wasn't just hovering along the ground - we're talking 7,000 feet in the air.

I'm sure you already know most of this as it's been all over the news and it turns out that the boy wasn't in the compartment under the balloon when it landed - he either got out before the balloon rose from the ground or fell out. But anyway I had to post on it since it's close to home (Ft. Collins, where the balloon took off, and Keenesburg, where it landed, aren't that far from Boulder).

There is so much oddity about the whole thing.

The boy's brother apparently stood by and saw his sibling climb into the balloon and untie it, and watched the two rise into the air. Isn't that a bit odd? Wouldn't you walk over ahead of time and say, "Hey, umm, maybe don't do that?" Or grab the rope before it leaves the ground? Or maybe run into the house and tell mom or dad before it was too late?

Speaking of mom and dad, apparently they appeared on the ABC show "Wife Swap," which explains a lot if you've ever watched the show. We're not talking about the sharpest knives in the drawer here. According to ABC's website, members of the family "devote their time to scientific experiments that include looking for extraterrestrials and building a research-gathering flying saucer to send into they eye of the storm."

Nice to know they left one of their experiments - one filled with helium that had a compartment for a human and capable of soaring as high as a small airplane might cruise - tied up in their yard with a rope and accessible to their small children. They may not have found E.T. yet but they quickly are becoming the eye of a decent-sized media storm.

The reporting was odd also. One of the CNN articles I read had a quote along the lines of, "Well, it's a nice day. I'm sure it's chilly at 7,000 feet but at least the weather is calm." I just can't even fathom how that thought would enter someone's mind when a small child might be inside. Maybe you'd think something like, "Wow, if this had happened last week, when we had wind, an early snow and freezing temperatures, it would surely be a disaster. At least the boy has a chance."

I don't know. The whole thing is weird. It's so weird that I think it just might be a publicity stunt. But in either case I'm going to be paranoid next time I see Audrey or Grace holding a bunch of helium-filled party balloons.