vote for me!

oh, there's so much to tell you....

but for right now, click on this link and vote for my design! You should make one for yourself, too!

**well, i wanted pictures to back this up but i have no working camera as of yet. my new one is still at nikon's service department and my crappy old one goes through batteries like a newborn goes through diapers. so, imagine if you will....

all last week johnny and my stepbrother have been building me a new front porch. yes, i was very excited because as you all know, my front porch was hideous (see below). the porch is now more or less done, waiting only for a few last embellishments, but let me tell you it is fabulous and i LOVE it. i want to spend all morning and evening out there. i have a place to perch and watch the neighborhood, hang out and chat, water my plants and enjoy other leisurely activities...



here is a progress shot from last tuesday. you can barely see the corner of the old porch to the right where it caught on fire last year. thank god i don't have to see that anymore...
here's what it looks like nearly completed:

as you can see, a vast improvement and i was very impressed with the workmanship. notice that the same day the deck was laid was Penelope's birthday. i have since then bought a bunch of plants and graded the area in front of the porch to create a path to my garden which (surprise again!) johnny built for me using the wood planks from the old porch. i can't wait to show you all of this but my stupid &$%# camera is dead.

and last but certainly not least - a small mystery worth remembering. at some point during the day last sunday while johnny and i were busy doing yardwork i noticed that Louie's whiskers were missing. yes. missing. at first, it was so strange i couldn't even wrap my mind around it so i spent the entire day questioning johnny and wondering out loud what the hell could Louie have gotten into that would cause all of his whiskers to disappear. well, they weren't entirely gone, but cut really really short. then i noticed his eyebrow whiskers were gone, too. in fact, every whisker in louies head was gone except for one lone whisker above his eye. he looked quite ridiculous and blissfully unaware of it.

i figured he may have gotten into the bathtub and was chewing on one of my razors? or perhaps they got singed off somehow? i can't even describe the frustration and sheer perplexity of wondering what happened to louie. although it was funny to watch him licking his chops and making weird faces. so after we finished doing yard work and were chillin' on the porch, i noticed that syrus had a few whiskers missing - but only a few... now that was truly weird because syrus is notoriously obsessive compulsive and would not allow anything to happen to his whiskers. i checked bibi's face - she was fine. so it was something that only syrus and louie could have gotten into. hhhmmm...

well, all i could do is wait for other members of the household to return home for questioning. i wasn't entirely convinced that johnny was innocent but i needed confirmation from B and my stepbrother. finally, late that night B comes home and sits next to me on the porch. we share the peace pipe and i started to ask her about the whiskers when johnny immediately went on the defensive before i could explain to B what happened. all she could do was laugh...and laugh...and laugh... she told me that SHE had "groomed" louie. he apparently needed a whisker cut. she said syrus wouldn't sit still for it. no shit.

i swear it was the funniest thing ever. you had to be there, i suppose... but what made it so funny is that this is the sort of trivial mischief that I would have done myself once upon a time... louie is just too easy to pick on. and only a mother would notice something like that... good one, B.

Dove Kills.