...and Tammy is staying warm with three blankets.
She is as snug as a bug in a rug :-)
We had a dusting of snow in the past two days but nothing significant. My friends and family in North Carolina got enough to cover the ground and cancel school. I doubt those of us in the Upstate are going to get any more at this point in the season. But I've been wrong before.
Today was a very good day. God answered prayer and provided for my needs in a mighty and powerful way. I am going to bed tonight thankful for His provision and for the people He used to accomplish it with.
And since it's been awhile since I've posted a pic of her, here is my miniature dachshund Tammy making a German spectacle of herself. How shameless!
It was actually a few days ago on April 8th, the same day as the solar eclipse. Here's the pic I snapped of Tammy on her twelfth birthday.
Such a sweet little dog. Tammy has been a little angel on four legs all these years. I definitely could not have gone far without her company. She keeps me going. And she has saved my life more than once. There's not a day that goes by that I don't thank God for her, and ask Him to please let us have many more years together. I hope so anyway :-)
Last night Tammy, my miniature dachshund, got on the sofa. And she brought along one of her Christmas toys: a plush dachshund toy, which came courtesy of my cousin Lauryn and her husband.
So she got up under her blanket, on my lap, and I noticed that she and her toy each had their tale protruding out:
Which one is Tammy?? In real life it really does look like there are two dogs in my lap.
It doesn't help resolve matters that the toy is almost precisely the same size as Tammy. She could make serious trouble if she wants to :-D
Today is the 120th anniversary of the first powered air flight, by the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
In May of 2017, not long after coming back east after nearly a year of traveling across America, I took my dog Tammy on a day trip to the Outer Banks. I wanted her to be able to say (to other dogs anyway) that she has seen the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. We drove down to Cape Hatteras and visited the lighthouse, then went back north. We spent a little while at the Wright Brothers monument, and got our photo taken at the spot where that very first airplane flight took off from:
Have had some scary time lately with Tammy, my miniature dachshund. Two weeks ago she hurt her back around her hind quarters area. I took her to the vet and sure enough, she probably injured herself jumping onto and off from the sofa and bed all this time. The vet gave her three medications and I've been sleeping in the living room since then, close to where she's made a nest of her blankets on the floor. Just making her take it easy.
Fourteen days later and Tammy is much better! She's still not allowed to try to jump onto furniture, so I've been carefully picking her up and putting her on the sofa so she can be near me while I work. She seems to be satisfied with the arrangement. Here she is from this afternoon:
A very dear friend is in the process of making Tammy a set of ramps that she can use to get on the bed and sofa without risk of injury. Which maybe I should have done a long time ago already.
But for the time being, she is recovered and spunky as ever. She's happy, and that makes me happy too :-)
I really should post more pics of Tammy, my miniature dachshund. She's just so cute and comical... and sometimes too smart for her own good. She has also literally saved my life and sanity. I would be a far different person - and maybe not here at all - were it not for Tammy.
So last night we were getting ready for our Saturday evening ritual of tuning in to Svengoolie, on the MeTV network. I was finishing up a few things at my desk before the show, and Tammy had peeked her head out from under her blanket. And she just looked so cute, reclining back on the sofa. It was such a good pose that I picked up my iPhone to snap her picture.
And it so happened that I caught her about to yawn. I quickly hit the button. And got this pic:
Maybe I'll get lucky one day and be able to snag some video of her yawning, because she sounds really sweet when she does that.
For some time I was posting new pics of my miniature dachshund Tammy every Tuesday. It's been a fair bit since I've done that. But it just so happened that I caught a really good snapshot of her this afternoon while I was working at the desk in my living room. I was eating some crackers and she insisted that I pay her the "cracker tax" (there's also the "chicken tax", the "cheese tax", the "barbecue ribs tax", etc.)...
I know: Tammy is not as red as she used to be. Well, she is over eleven years old. There's no not facing that. But she's still in excellent health, and if you saw how playful she is you would think she's much younger than her age. She always accompanies me when I turn in for the night and she makes sure that she takes a toy to bed, just like a human child would bring a stuffed doll. I've been told by the vet that if Tammy maintains good health and is kept at an ideal weight, that we'll be in each other's company for many years to come. Which, would make me very happy.
It's Tammy's Tenth Birthday Party!! Here are some of the pics from the event, which was attended by two dogs and their collective three humans. Including photos of the cake I baked for the occasion. And a good time was had by all! Click to embiggen:
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| The birthday girl and me :-) |
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| Tammy's friend Sasha |
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| Tammy did NOT like the idea of wearing a party hat! |
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| The cake |
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| Tammy couldn't quite blow out the candles but it wasn't for lack of trying! |
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| Sasha enjoying some cake (which was tasty by human standards too) |
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| Tammy eating her birthday cake |
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| Tammy's new toy, courtesy of Sasha's person Melody. It took her all of ten minutes to destroy the squeaker! |
Incidentally, if you want to bake a cake for your dog, here's the recipe I found courtesy of Dorothy Kern at Crazy For Crust. The main ingredients are peanut butter, sugar-free applesauce, and honey. And like I said in the captions it was tasty for humans too. But I'm sure dogs appreciate it even better :-)
HAPPY TENTH BIRTHDAY to this little goober:
Yes friends and neighbors, it was ten years ago today on Easter Sunday 2012 that my miniature dachshund Tammy was born! She was one of a litter of five - two boys and three girls - and she was also the runt. I think it's safe to say that she has ended up with a more interesting life than most dogs get to have. That she rode in my lap for a year spent driving across America, alone puts a lot of character on those stubby little legs. She has been my sweetest companion, my bark of conscience, my life saver (at least once), the person I can trust to understand me when nobody else on earth does.
Happiest of birthdays, Tammy. And here is to many more :-)
No getting around it: this past week, from last Saturday on, was pretty craptacular.
How bad? Something happened that has prevented me from driving for the most part, until further notice. No, not a speeding ticket or anything like that. I haven't had a ticket in... wow. Over ten years now. Not since I racked up those three in less than a month and a half (with two of them in Virginia on consecutive weekends... hey I was eager to see my girlfriend what can I say? :-).
I like... I like... to believe that things are getting better though. Why do I say that?
My cooking skills leave much to be desired. It's not that I'm a BAD cook per se, it's more like... well, I'm intimidated by the kitchen. It all goes back to that Boy Scout Jamboree, and my night to cook for our troop. I put WAY too much salt into the mashed potatoes. So much so that it's rumored that the ground where we dumped it at is still too barren for foliage to take root (sort of a mini "Devil's Tramping Ground").
Yes, I've blogged before about some excursions into culinary experimentation. Recently I wrote about preparing wild boar baby back ribs. That was pretty easy though: laying the ribs on a foil-lined pan and cooking for two hours. Very little preparation at all. I think the most complicated dish that I've documented on this blog has been baking a pecan pie... and I got that recipe from a friend in Belgium.
Ever since then I've been a little scared to make more than a Chef Boyardee pizza. I won't deny it: my diet has mostly consisted of frozen food, Subway sandwiches and Cocoa-Pebbles. But with inflation hitting hard and less money to spend on "extravagant" cuisine, I'm having to learn to overcome my fear of the kitchen.
So that brings us to tonight, and what I did for dinner.
I had no idea what to make for dinner, just that I was hungry. Tammy - my dachshund - was getting hungry too. No, I didn't want Chicken McNuggets again. We've had that twice already this past week.
Then I remembered that I had some spaghetti - the kind you find on the pasta aisle of any grocery store - and some sauce and parmesan cheese. Christmas gifts from a friend who wants me to cook more for myself. So that's what I endeavored to do.
I knew enough about cooking spaghetti to know that you break the noodles in half before you put them in the water. And after Googling it I learned that you put the pasta in the water after it's started boiling. Eleven minutes later the spaghetti had finished cooking. A heapin' amount of sauce and cheese later and it was all finished.
And, I surprised myself by how good it was! Making it myself, somehow made it even better. It was easy-peasy Japan-esy. And now I have another dinner to add to my (admittedly small) repertoire.
But you want to know what the best part of cooking spaghetti tonight has been? It's been discovering that Tammy loves it too. I had no idea that a dog could enjoy pasta, but apparently she does. So now there is something I can whip up in the kitchen, that she and I can enjoy together. Much healthier than sharing McNuggets too, no doubt.
So, that's today's post as part of blogging every day for Lent this season. I have an idea of what tomorrow's post will be. In fact, I'm about to watch another episode of it now.
More later.
