Wordless Wednesday: DONE

If you've been following along, you know we started a so-called "6 week" backyard remodeling project waaaaaay back in mid-October. Finally, for today's almost-wordless Wednesday, the word of the day is DONE.

"I love my new sunning spot!"

Wordless Wednesday: Old-Fashioned Tweets

Rita's not much for Twitter. She prefers her tweets to be the old-fashioned variety. (She actually prefers to try to catch birds, but seeing them on TV is the next best thing...)

"How did that bird get in here?"

Wordless Wednesday: Beam Me Up

Rita met her first cat.

This is my sister's cat, Topi. He's very sweet. I think this pic looks like he's going to put a tractor beam on me and beam me up. (Either that or use some sort of death ray to blast Rita to smithereens...)

Wordless Wednesday: Just Bee(s)

Today, instead of our usual photo(s) for Wordless Wednesday, I've got a video. A dogless video, though. Sorry...(come back tomorrow for doggy video goodness).

You can't actually see the main subject, but hopefully you can hear them:

That's the tree in our front yard. When the hubs went out to get the paper on Saturday morning, he came back in and said, "Come look at this tree." I said, "It's lovely. I can see it through the window." "No, I mean, come listen to this tree." It was actually a wee bit scary, since I've seen swarms of bees flying over the house before - as pictured below:

This is actually taken from inside - I'm not out there w/ them. Thank heaven!

I had JUST come in the house and closed the back sliding glass door, which had previously been standing wide open. I almost had a houseful of unwanted visitors. I like bees, but nobody likes unannounced visitors. (Do they?) Luckily on Saturday, they happily stayed in the tree all day and never tried to come in.

(As usual - I intended to be wordless, but that didn't happen... Maybe next time.)

Happy slightly-less-wordy Wednesday!

Wordless Wednesday: The Never-ending Deck Story

Remember way back in October when I posted the beginning "rubble"-stage photo of our backyard reno? At that time, we thought the project would be done by Christmas. At this point, I'd be happy if it was done by Valentine's Day. Sigh.

Anyway, at least we have boards on the deck now, so Rita can sun herself when the workers aren't there (standing around, gabbing). As you can see in the photo, the edging isn't done yet, and we still have no steps. Some day....

Maybe by the summer I'll have "after" pictures to share! (All I can say is, thank heaven it's a fixed cost contract and not "time and materials"!)

Happy (mostly) Wordless Wednesday!

Wordless Wednesday: Doggy Photo Ops

For today's post, I'm sharing some of my sis's photos from their fabulous holiday trip they took to New York, London, Paris, Bologna & Rome. (No, I'm not jealous. Really!)

Here is a quick trip through a few fabulous cities, as seen through a camera lens looking for cute dogs and dog-related things.

First stop - New York, Saint Patrick's cathedral to be exact. You're familiar with the phrase "a dog in the manger" right? Well, this manger scene has one!

Thinking I need to add a dog to my Nativity scene.

I love that he's got a good seat, right up front.

Wordless Wednesday: Basking in the Glow

It's been really cold lately in San Diego. Apparently not record-setting cold, but we have short memories here so it feels like it's much colder than past winters. So, since Momma didn't raise no dumb puppies, Rita can usually be found in the best seat in the house (if one of the ugliest).

We have an old leather club chair in our sun room, and that's her favorite spot on a cold day:

Warming up on a cold afternoon

Wordless Wednesday: Do You Mind?

... your pet's waistline?

Today I'm attempting something different. I'm not sure this feat is allowed under the Bloggers' Rule Book section 2.III.iv subpart D regarding blog hops, but I'm going to try to hop into two hops at one time. (Drum roll please...Hope i don't break something...)

Of course, today is the usual Wordless (um, slightly less wordy??) Wednesday, and since that's so popular (pupular?), I thought it'd be a great time to let all those hoppers know about the Show Off Your Dog's Waistline Campaign, brought to us by Dawg Business.

We've all heard the phrase "a waist is a terrible thing to mind" -- especially at this time post-holiday time of year. But, for your pup, if you don't mind their waist, who will? (Unfortunately, we also have to mind their waste... but that's another blog post.) The goal of the campaign is to bring awareness to pet obesity, which, just like with people, is a big-assed problem.

So, here's Rita's waistline:

"Why are you taking this silly picture, Momma?"

Wordless Wednesday: Happy New Year

Happy New Year! Here's hoping '13 will be lucky for all of us!

Wordless Wednesday: Rita's Christmas Recap

Rita here with a photo-journalist style review of my holiday.

It started out not too good. There was a lot of this.

Seriously?

Wordless Wednesday: Presents!

This is our first Christmas with Rita so it will be fun to see how she reacts to everything. We've been spoiling her and letting her open any presents she gets early. She seems to love the gift idea, and tears right in to the paper. (I've never had a dog that didn't instinctively know how to open a wrapped gift. I swear, dog toys must have a specific odor.)

"Let me in there!"

Wordless Wednesday: Scenes from a Walk

Okay, this won't be wordless, but it will be less-wordy and more-picture-y...

I got the idea for this post because I love this Abominable Snowman & Rudolph display in a neighbor's window:

Sorry about the not-great shot, but it's in a 2nd story window

Wordless Wednesday: Christmas Angel

I believe I have mentioned before that my sis does great sketches on her iPad (or even her iPhone). (Check her out at GerardArt.)

Well, the other day, she whipped up this adorable drawing of our beautiful Christmas angel, Abby.

Wordless Wednesday: Slut Puppy

I can't wait to see what sort of Google searches will bring folks to my page with that title...

Anyway, remember my earlier post where I said that Rita loves Lucy? Well, it's not nearly as much as Lucy loves the hubs. I think it's because he's the only one who will let her kiss and kiss and kiss him.

"I'm all yours, Mikey!"

Wordless Wednesday: The Poor-dog's Frosty Paw

The hub's physiotherapist suggested freezing cups of ice and using them to ice-massage some of the continuing trouble spots on his knees post-surgery. Well, Rita (who is completely uninterested whenever I try to give her an ice cube) has decided that these are super tasty.

"Oh man. I can't enough of this!"

Wordless Wednesday: The Power of Jerky

As you know, we've been in the midst of a backyard renovation project. It had hit a snag (caused by the city, which tried to give me a heart attack from the stress of dealing with them to get our permit, a process that only took about 10 days longer than it should have...), but we are back on track now. This is good news for me and the hubs, but terrible news for Rita, since she HATES the strange men in the yard.

Here she is in typical Cujo-mode when she sees the men out there working (been keeping the blinds down, but as you can see that doesn't really help...):

Yes, her feet are fully off the floor.

Wordless Wednesday: Agility & Jerky

Last Wednesday, when I posted the "in the trenches" shot of Rita in our torn up backyard, commenter Pamela (check out her Something Wagging This Way Comes blog for great info and insights on life with pups) suggested we should think of it as our own agility course. Well, this week we decided to turn it into an even more challenging agility course:

Rita in action on the course!

Wordless Wednesday: In The Trenches

...or, in this case, hopefully not in the trenches. The yard project continues and things are at the point where they continue to look worse each day.

Rita wondering where her yard went. (Nice clouds reflected in the window.)

We are hoping we'll soon be at a point where things will start looking better - but that might still be weeks away!

In Other News

1. As I'm writing this, Rita and I just got back from a fun outing with some other current/former Tripawd owners. We had a lovely time at Fiesta Island. I'll do a full on post with pics soon. 
2. I've been waiting to receive a fun package in the mail, which should also be fun for some of the blog readers. Someone is sending me something to share with y'all, so stay tuned for that. 
3. I got another really great review for What the Dog Ate the other day that you can check out here, on a super fun & funny blog called Chronicles of Cardigan. Check out some of her other fun posts while you are there and the pics of her gorgeous Corgis and cats. 

Somewhat Wordy Wednesday: Rubble

Today's word on Somewhat Wordless Wednesday is: rubble. Remember those (ugly) stone steps I just photographed Rita on the other day? Well, now they look like this:

Wordless Wednesday: Fall!

I love the fall - this is one time of year that I miss our east coast days. The fall was so great there! But, we really do have fall in San Diego. It's just that we have it in very small amounts. Sometimes you have to look pretty hard for it, but we have a nice little bit of it here on our street:

The neighbor's liquid amber trees. So pretty!