Arlo & Sissy - or The Good, The Bad, and The Puppy

So, as I've mentioned in an earlier blog, being a dog parent is definitely an experience.  For all you out there who are going through it with puppies like I am, I thought you might enjoy a laugh.  So this is the short story of the lives of Arlo & Sissy during the last six months.  In photographs.

In June, while Will & I were on our honeymoon, Arlo & Sissy spent a week with their grandparents.  This is where they met Remy, their beloved baby (well, cousin).  They both fell in love.  Sissy let him chew her toes and held him between her legs when she laid down.  Remy only weighed two pounds, and Arlo & Sissy were more like 30.

To speak for Arlo and Sissy, since this is their story --- Our favorite thing to do is go running running.  We especially love going to the park and chasing tennis balls.  We make our dad le tired.

But it makes us so happy.

And then it makes us le tired, too.

But maybe that's just because we love napping in the car...
We adore playing with our friends, too.  Our favorites are our neighbors Zoe, Apollo, and Rocky (playing with us on the tennis court here).

Sissy especially loves napping in strange positions, as many pups do.  Here, she's in her favorite chair.

And while this may not be easy to see (phone pic), she also loves sleeping with her bed in her mouth.  She fluffs up the bed between her front legs first.  And wakes up with a massive puddle of drool.  She also likes trying to carry her large bed around like a toy.

Arlo & Sis both have certain games they like to play.  For Arlo, it's ball.  Hands down.  I'll kick/throw the ball, and he'll fetch it, carrying it back in his mouth and dropping it at my feet.  He stands like this, staring at the ball until it moves again.  On the tennis court, Arlo immediately (without training) mastered the art of jumping and catching the ball mid-air.  He's very athletic and could do this ALL DAY.

Sissy prefers more subtle forms of entertainment.  Here, she's playing her favorite game - Where's Sissy?

We aren't always fun, though.  We're really very mischievous when we want to be.  We often find ways to reach things that we normally wouldn't be able to reach.  This is what happens when Mom leaves the room:

We chew up her metal wine stopper,

we peel her bananas and eat them, we eat her breakfast pastries,

we shuck and eat her sweet corn,

and we demolish Dad's soccer ball that we had formerly loved so much.

We also don't love bath or haircut time, even though they happen frequently.  We're voicing our dissatisfaction here after bath time while getting our after-bath brushing.

At the end of the day, though, we're still the cutest, sweetest cuddlers around.  Hands down.  And good cuddles make any struggle worthwhile.

Love and licks to everybody!

The Topic of Weight

A few years ago, I lost a lot of weight.  When I say a lot, I mean a lot for me.  I lost 10 pounds off my only 106-pound, 5'3" frame.  I looked and felt terrible, so I went to the doctor.  She told me it was likely stress-related (this all accompanied lots of anxiety and panic attacks), to eat milkshakes and such to help me put the pounds back on.  The only problem was, I didn't have a craving for them.  The only food that sounded remotely good to eat was fresh produce.  Even the idea of fast food made my stomach churn.  People told me I was lucky, that they'd give anything to have my problem so they could eat whatever they wanted.  I wanted to slap them.

Much to my frustration, the loss of appetite was only part of it.  I got car sick every time I rode somewhere.  I didn't feel hungry until I would suddenly have the sensation that I would faint if I didn't eat.  Sometimes I would see stars and feel shooting pains down my arms and legs.  And I knew I looked rough to other people, because I looked rough to myself.  I missed what little curves I had had and worried that maybe something bigger might be wrong.  But I worried silently, except to my then-boyfriend, who was sweet enough to offer to pick me up any kind of food I might suddenly have a craving for.

In the meantime, it felt like people kept bringing up weight around me.  At family gatherings, parties, running into people at the mall, etc.  I went to church with my parents once and saw a former high school classmate outside as we were leaving.

"Hey!" I called and walked over to her.  "You look great!  And your teeth look awesome -- when do you get your braces off??"

To which she replied, "I get them off soon.  You look awful.  You're so skinny.  It's sick."

I stood there trying to smooth the conversation (always my first thought, never to defend myself) and said, "Oh, yeah.  I guess I'm trying to put my weight back on.  I wish I had your curves, but I think my youngest sister inherited all that our genes had to offer."

And Annelise, the youngest, came walking over just in time to provide me with an excuse to leave.  She was only 13, but she had the womanly curves of a much older teenager.  Great boobs, hourglass figure, cute butt.  She made me look like a prepubescent boy walking beside her.

I brushed the comment off as typical of this girl, who never had a filter between her nosy thoughts and her mouth.  But it still let me know that people saw what I saw.  And I probably ate a milkshake a day for a week.

Then came the baby shower for a high school age friend of my little sister's, a soon-to-be single mom.  We had known this girl when we were kids, and I went to show my support.  At her shower, I never even looked around at people's weights.  Just as I never have.  I talked to people, asked about the baby.  And the women kept telling me how skinny I was, that I needed to put some weight on.  "You gotta get fat like us!" one yelled, and the surrounding crowd laughed.

They served the cake to us while we sat watching the mother open her gifts, gushing over the tiny booties and onesies and such.  I wasn't paying attention to the cake the woman must have put in front of me until she screeched, "This one gets a big piece, cause she's too scrawny!"  And again with the laughter.  And my mortification.  I mean, the woman interrupted the girl we were all there for to call me out of a crowd for my weight.  I just pretended to laugh and tried to shovel the sugary insult down my throat.

But all of this brings me to a question - is it any more appropriate to tell people they are too thin than it is to tell them they are too fat?  In a mirrored situation, would everyone have laughed if a room full of thin people had given a curvy girl a tiny slice of cake, announcing, "Cause she needs to drop a few pounds!"  And why do people pay so much attention to weight anyway?  Some people who are very close to me like to make comments about people's weight - calling attention to overweight others in parking lots or at restaurants.  It has always made me terribly uncomfortable.  I can't help but think about my struggle with weight (one that has improved over the years so that I'm now back to about 104 - yess!!!!).  It was nothing, I'm sure, in comparison with what some people experience.  Some of us can hide our struggles on the inside, but others aren't so fortunate.  So let's all share a slice of humble pie and practice looking beyond the shape to the person within.