Catching Up!

Well, as you can imagine, life has been pretty hectic this week.  Returning to work after vacation is a monumental task.  It has meant a bit of overtime, except for tonight.  Tonight, my dear friend Heidi and I decided to have a girl night to celebrate my birthday.  First we went and had pedicures.  We had decided this over the weekend before we knew it would be pouring down rain and cold today.  Heidi reasoned that your feet stay wet longer in shoes and socks so we met at the nail place in flip flops.  I had to wear my blingie ones that I bought on clearance.  I picked out the reddest, shiniest, glitteriest nail polish I could find.  I tend to wear boots all winter so my feet were looking all wintery and somewhat like E.T.'s feet.  They nearly had to get out the Dremel hardware.  LOL  Now they look all pretty and I am so happy.  

Afterwards we went and had a great dinner and talked about books, classical music and our houses.  She bought a condo the same time I bought my house.  We each love our places and share our weekend warrior stories.  It was so nice to have friendship time on a Wednesday.  It felt like a mini vacation.  We laughed and had a lot of fun.  It is wonderful to have such amazing friends.  Each of my friends are the ones who will walk through thick and thin with me.  They are truly incredible people who just inspire me and make me feel fortunate. 

Of course, the best part of the evening was walking in to see my sweet furgirl and receive one of her wonderful greetings.  The groomer did her hair a little differently into more of a puppy cut.  She looks like a puppy and her eyes just look so big.  She gave me lots of kisses, then brought me her duck to throw so she could chase it.  She is such a happy girl.

If you like to look at houses and interior decoration, I have the best site to recommend.  My coworker told me about it and it is totally house eye candy.  It is called houzz.com.  You can type anything into the search box and thousands of photos will pop up.  She demonstrated by typing "outdoor fireplaces" into the search box and 16,000 photos were available of the most stunning outdoor fireplaces.  I was looking at page after page of back splashes.   They were gorgeous.  I have to stay off that site or I will get into all kinds of trouble like I do on Pinterest.  Again, all eye candy for everything from recipes, to manicures, to home decor.  The internet can be a wonderful thing.  

I have to say it is so nice to be back to a regular routine.  I liked being on vacation, but I really like my job and the way my week flows.  Liesl is so happy to see all of her friends at work.  She has given them all kisses and wrestled with the big dogs.  She has let the little dogs chase her.  She has let all of her favorite people give her cookies.  I really do love the fact that she gets to have a pretty remarkable life, too, full of dog friends and people she loves.  She is pretty happy and it makes my heart sparkle to see her little smile.  I know that people will tell you how amazing it is that dogs love so unconditionally.  But I think we love them because we get to love them so unconditionally, too.  We get to love them without fear of rejection, judgement or being taken advantage of.  We love them because they accept that we mess up sometimes and they do not get mad at us or give us the silent treatment or yell at us.  They just move on to the next moment and are happy to have us in it.   And we are happy to have them with us.  It is a beautiful arrangement.

Thank goodness for our pets.