Gaurdian Angel Effusion

Oh my God.


I got home the other night to a cute little package sitting on my doorstep. If you're like me, getting a package in the mail is the most exciting thing ever. Well, not quite as exciting as reconciling my bank account but I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who likes to do that.


Little did I know that this package would make me burst into tears. One of my absolute favorite bloggy sisters, Stacy (You know, The Random Chick) was so thoughtful and sent me this:





Here is a closer look,





It is a bottle of her famous Liquor del Cafe with a custom made label with my two angels displayed on front. I had no idea she was doing this, she did this all on her own! She designed the label and everything. I am going to keep that bottle forever. (Empty of course, nobody can resist her homemade Kaluha!)


Stacy, like many of you, knows what it feels like to lose a furry child. She lost her best friend, Elvis about 3 years ago. He was with her for 13 years and saw her through many rough times.


Stacy, you have no idea how much that meant to me! I really can't thank you enough. I also want to thank all of you for your kind words and emails about Dozer, it helps just to know that there are others who understand.


Justine, who just lost her darling Stinky, Julia who lost her Schmobie not long ago, Blue Violet who is the most kindhearted person I know, Karin Katherine who truly lives up to her name, KK who I know is always there to talk to, Dellany who is the biggest pet lover I know, Queenie Jeannie and The Bella who always make me smile, my two sister-in-laws who sent me flowers, and the countless others who have shared their stories with me.


Thank you De for the card and the converstions, you are the bestest friend ever!


Thank you Andrea for all the much needed girl's nights and for letting me spill it all in your "counseling chair".


And a big thank you to my lil sis and little Logan who have become my life line.


After Dozer died, we had a paw print made to remember him by. We did the same thing a couple years ago after Bain died. Well, I got the paw print just yesterday, look at this cute paw!





It's funny how you can tell who's paw is who's. Dozer was tall and skinny:







And Bain was just huge all around:






I'm so glad Alex had these made for us to remember our big boys by.


Okay, okay, you're probably sick of hearing about my fricken cute dogs, this is that last time you'll have to read about them.


But I'm not making any promises.

How To Lose 10 Pounds In One Day

First I just want to thank everybody for your kind words and sympathies about losing Dozer. You guys really have helped me deal. It makes me happy to think that he and his brother Bain are now running around together in heaven causin mischief. Dang cuties!





I'm also thankful I still have my darling gay kitties that make me smile every day.







~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~




My sister has found a great weight loss plan, she lost 10 pounds in one day!


ONE. DAY.


Don't believe me? Check it out, here is Lindee before:







And here she is after:






How did she do it?


She cut off a FOOT of her massive mane of thick luscious locks! If you haven't had the pleasure of meeting Lindee in person, you can't really appreciate how THICK her hair is. It's ridiculous. Her hair was down to her butt at the age of two. I fricken hate her.





But she is fricken cute. She's America's next top model ya know, she's a natural.










Here is the giant trying on my extremely high sandals.





Did you know that she is 6 feet tall? Yeah, you thought I was tall, well my younger sister beats me by two inches.





I won't even get into the size of her enormous feet. I'll just say that my sandals are now stretched out and fall off my size 8 1/2 feet. Al refers to the monsters as skis.


It's quite accurate really.






Now I'll leave you with what Logan and I do best. Makin silly faces.










Thanks for playing, please come again.

My Little Boy

Last week was the worst week of my life. Through all the shit I've dealt with in my life I can honestly say that last week topped them all as the worst ever. The universe decided to chuck anything and everything it could right in my direction, but among everything that happened I'd like to talk about Thursday night.


My awesome lil sis knew I was having an awful week so she came over Thursday night with Logan to cheer me up. She is my life saver I don't know what I'd do without that girl and seeing Logan's smiling face can't help but put a little cheer in my heart.





The night was fun, I actually forgot about the mess in my life for a few hours. Logan of course immediately wanted to give Dozer treats. Logan knows all the commands and hand signs to use with Dozer. He'll have him sit, lay down, put the treat on his nose and balance it there until he says "okay"!





I love it and of course Dozer loves it too.


We all got to bed a bit late that night and as I was lying awake in the dark I could hear Dozer whining at my door. Which was normal because he always wants to come and sleep on our bedroom. Usually he will give up after a couple of minutes but this time he didn't.


I opened the door thinking that he probably had to go to the bathroom. He was lying on the ground panting and whining. He gets pretty excited when we have guests over so I convinced myself that that's all it was and I let him outside. It was about one in the morning by this time.


After I let Dozer back in he began to pace around the house then try to lay down in his bed but he'd immediately get back up and pace around again. I tried to calm him down and pet him because that's usually all he wants when he doesn't want to go to bed, just to be loved.


I decided to lay on the couch to see if he would calm down and go to sleep. Well, he didn't and soon he started going downstairs and coming back up and whimpering. I went downstairs and found that he had been throwing up a foamy white substance.


I freaked.


"Ok" I thought, "Something is definitely wrong, I'm not just being paranoid anymore." I didn't care what time it was, I finally decided to wake Al up and ask him what to do. His dad is our Vet and Alex has worked as a vet tech in the past so he knows what to do.


I felt Dozer's belly and realized it was bloated and extremely tight. We took him to the hospital right away. I could tell he was in so much pain it was hard not to cry. We arrived at about 2 in the morning and the doctor on call immediately got him back for x-rays.


Alex's suspicions were right, Dozer had a twisted stomach. Apparently it is very common with large chested dogs. To fix the problem they have to do surgery and untwist his stomach and then stitch it in a way that won't allow it to twist again.


Alex called his Dad to come do the surgery. I was so grateful that I was able to stay with Dozer the whole time which wouldn't be possible of course if Alex's dad wasn't his vet. It was a common surgery and Alex said Dozer should be just fine.


They began prepping Dozer and got him hooked up to an IV, and the surgery finally started at about 4 in the morning. My mom-in-law and I were able to watch the surgery from right outside the door of the operating room. Dozer has never done well under anesthesia so they had to monitor his heart beat closely because it would skip from time to time.


At about 6:30 or so I went to the restroom and when I came back to the operating room everyone was just standing around looking at me. Alex came over and I saw that his eyes were red and wet. His voice broke as he said "He didn't make it" and he took me in his arms.


I didn't believe it, I was just here and he was fine. How is it possible? He was going to be fine. All I could do is shake my head in disbelief, I refused to accept it. Finally I broke down and went limp in Al's arms as he guided me back to his dad's office for a some privacy.


We cried.


And cried.


Just like I am crying now. Dozer was our child, my little boy how could he be gone? Just like that? Just hours ago he was happy as can be, I just couldn't understand.





During the surgery, Dozer went from good to bad within 15 seconds and they did everything they possibly could do to revive him but his heart was too weak and it just gave out on him. Dozer was just too old and his heart couldn't handle the stress.


I feel pretty empty right now, kind of like I am floating around and life isn't really real. There is a hole in my heart. Every time I walk through the front door I expect this black drooling mass to come running at me knocking me over. He was always happy to see me. I miss him terribly.


Every time I'm at home and hear a dog bark I run to the back door by habit to tell Dozer to be quite. I wake up in the morning expecting to wake his lazy ass up and drag him outside. I arrive home from work and expect to see him whining from behind the fence begging for me to let him back inside.





I finally cleaned my house yesterday. All of his hair is gone. That annoying coarse black hair that I hated to clean up is gone and for the first time I wish it would come back.


I'm going to miss finding slobber on the walls.





I'm going to miss cleaning up dirty paw prints on the kitchen floor.


I'm going to miss finding his bones buried in the laundry basket or in the corner of the room.





I'm going to miss taking him on walks and having everyone ask me "Who's walking who?"


I'm going to miss all the bruises, scrapes and scabs that I get while playing soccer with him in the back yard.





I'm going to miss cuddling with him while I watch a movie.


I'm going to miss yelling at him to get off the damn couch.


I'm going to miss the scraps of toilet paper that I find around the house or the chewed up can of tuna that he pulled out of the trash.


I'm going to miss those brown puppy dog eyes pleading with me for just one scrap of food.





I'm going to miss how excited he gets when I put on my tennis shoes because he thinks he is going on a walk when in fact I am just going to the gym.


I'm going to miss him growling at Smokey when he gets too close to his bone.


I'm going to miss asking him "Where's your baby?" and having him go looking until he finds his stuffed animal baby and brings it back to me.





Most of all I am going to miss the unconditional love that he always had for me.





We love and miss you Dozer.

Our Old Man

Happy Birthday Dozer!

Dozer just turned 70 years old.


It just breaks my heart.

Heaven Called and They Want Their Rolls Back

Imagine waking up Saturday morning to the sweet aroma of fresh from the oven cinnamon rolls.






That right there is heaven to me. Well, it could be hell if I couldn't actually EAT those cinnamon rolls, but I pray to God that will never happen. And God loves me so I think I'm safe.



I don't know what's been wrong with me lately but I've been baking up a storm of bread, cookies, bagels, cakes, and cinnamon rolls. I just can't stop myself. Ok, I haven't really tried to stop myself but I'm sure I couldn't if I tried, I'm pretty stubborn that way.



And this has not made Albert happy either. He can't eat anything I cook so basically that hell situation I explained above is his reality.



Albert: "Why can't you be obsessed with cooking something I can actually eat like chicken and potatoes?"



Me: "Um, because that is boring and gross and you can't snack on that while you're baking it! There's no spatula or bowl covered in sweet batter waiting to be licked afterwards. Sheesh."



So my coworkers have received most of the benefits of my baking obsession, and sadly, the hubster has not.



Okay so are you still staring at those cinnamon rolls above wondering how the hell you can get them from your screen into your watering mouth? Well wipe off your chin and put on your apron because I've got the recipe to share with you!



I promise I'm not trying to make all of you fat.



Just most of you.



And as I've told you before, I'm a pretty messy cook!





This time I managed to keep myself clean but Dozer wasn't so lucky.





Oops. He wasn't too happy with me.

Okay so here's the recipe for all you fatties!




DAMN GOOD CINNAMON ROLLS


*I only made half the recipe which made 25 rolls. The full recipe makes 50! I'm not a big fan of maple frosting, so I also made a regular glaze frosting too which was delish. A cream cheese frosting would be excellent as well!


Recipe is from The Pioneer Woman Cooks.
Pictures are, well, mine.


Dough
1 Quart whole milk
1 Cup vegetable oil
1 C sugar
2 Packages (4 ½ t) active dry yeast
9 Cups flour
1 Heaping teaspoon baking powder
1 Scant teaspoon baking soda
1 Tablespoon salt








Filling
2 C Melted butter, plus more as needed
¼ C Ground cinnamon for sprinkling
2 Cups Sugar









Maple Icing
2 lbs Powdered sugar
½ C Whole milk
6 Tablespoon (3/4 stick) Butter, melted
¼ C Strongly brewed coffee
Dash of salt
1 Tablespoon maple flavoring or maple extract






1. For the dough, heat milk, vegetable oil and sugar in a medium saucepan over medium heat; do not allow the mixture to boil. Set aside and cool to lukewarm






2. Sprinkle the yeast on top and let it sit on the milk for 1 minute.






3. Add 8 cups of the flour. Stir until just combined, cover with a clean kitchen towel, and set aside in a relatively warm place for 1 hour.






4. Remove the towel and add the baking powder, baking soda, salt, and the remaining 1 C flour, Stir thoroughly to combine. Use the dough right away, or place in a mixing bowl and refrigerate for up to 3 days, punching down the dough if it rises to the top of the bowl.






5. To assemble the rolls, remove half the dough from the pan. On a floured baking surface, roll the dough into a large rectangle, about 30x10 inches






6. To make the filling, pour 1 cup of the melted butter over the surface of the dough. Use your fingers to spread the butter evenly.






7. Generously sprinkle half of the ground cinnamon and 1 cup of the sugar over the butter. Don’t be afraid to drizzle on more butter or more sugar!






8. Now, beginning at the end farthest from you, roll the rectangle tightly toward you. Use both hands and work slowly, being careful to keep the roll tight.






9. When you reach the end, pinch the seam together. When you’re finished, you’ll wind up with one long buttery, cinnamony, sugary, gooey log.






10. Transfer to a cutting board and with a sharp knife, make 1 ½ inch slices. One log will produce 20 to 25 rolls. (I use a peace of thread so that the rolls don't get smashed!)






11. Pour a couple of tablespoons of melted butter into to the desired pie pans or baking dishes and swirl to coat. I used two 13x9 inch pans for half of the recipe which made 25 rolls! The full recipe will make 50! Place the sliced rolls in the pans, being careful not to over crowd






12. Repeat the rolling/sugar/butter process with the other half of the dough and more pans. Preheat oven to 375 degrees cover the pans with a kitchen towel and set aside to rise on the counter top for at a least 20 min before baking.






13. Remove the towel and bake for 13 to 17 min, until golden brown. Don’t allow rolls to become overly brown.







Maple Frosting:

14. In a large bowl, whisk together the powdered sugar, milk, butter, coffee and salt.


15. Splash in the maple flavoring


16. Whisk until very smooth. Taste and add in more maple, sugar, butter or other ingredients. As needed until the icing reaches the desired consistency. The icing should be thick but still pourable.




17. While the rolls are still warm, generously drizzle icing over the top. Be sure to get it all around the edges and over the top. Now I'm not a big fan of maple so I made half of the cinnamon rolls with a powdered sugar/milk/butter/vanilla frosting.






18. As they sit, the rolls will absorb some of the icing’s moisture and flavor.


Eat em while their hot!