Adoption Day fun and an unexpected visitor.

First and foremost, thanks very much to all of you for the Adoption Day wishes! It's been so touching to see what you all wrote to Alice. Just a little over a year ago, this little dog had nothing. Now she has friends and family who love her. Can't ask for anything more than that!

Alice's Adoption Day was pretty darn fun for all of us. It started the Tuesday night, when I couldn't wait any longer and gave Alice a gift from Mamala-- a new Mousie. Unfortunately, I was an idiot and deleted the little video we took of her receiving Mousie. She literally bounced all over the house with it-- just precious.

The next morning, I gave Alice my gift: twelve tennis balls. I'm pretty sure Dog Heaven comes with multiple tennis balls.

Later in the day, Alice and I went to Wiley Wagg, her special dog store. We got a couple different kinds of treats, a hedgehog toy, and a smiley face cookie:


And like many an Alice treat, it ended up in bed.


For lunch, Alice had two containers of turkey from Jason's Deli. If you ever come across one, stop in-- they make terrific sandwiches and were more than accommodating with Alice.

The whole day, Alice wore something very special: a beautiful pink Adoption Day bandanna. Mamala made it specially for Alice, and she got many compliments on it from people. One of the girls at the dog store flipped out over it.


Once The Human Male got home, she got her present from him: a McDonald's cheeseburger. I so wish I had pictures of this. She didn't gobble it down (or shove it between the pillows on the bed) like she does most delicious treats. Instead, she ate it slowly and stared at it with awe, like it was a unicorn-- a cheese-covered unicorn. It was like she couldn't believe something so wonderful existed and was traveling into her mouth.

All in all, it was a terrific day. Little Alice ended it by crashing out on the sofa.

Around 3:30 this morning we had a surprise visitor. I got up to use the bathroom and found a humongous cricket in the bathroom. This summer's been super awful for bugs (bad by even Southern standards), so it wasn't too much of a shock to realize that I had company in the bathroom. But I have to say, it did make me cry for a totally different reason.

The first night we brought Alice home, we kept her in her crate, not knowing how she'd react to trying to sleep in new surroundings. She was a little bit huffy, and it'd wake me up (I'm a light sleeper). There was also a cricket outside that was louder than all get-out. Around 3A, Alice got the reverse sneezes. I got her calmed down and went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. That's when I noticed the cricket had gotten noisier. Well, maybe not noisier, but more that he was in the house. At that point, I gave up on trying to sleep, so I turned on my work computer and started emptying the dishwasher as it was booting up. As I bent down to get some dishes out, I saw the cricket... on my leg. Needless to say I screamed, woke up The Human Male, set Alice off, and probably ticked off our neighbors as I opened the front door and yelled at the cricket to get off. The poor cricket toddled away, shocked.

Last night was the first time I'd seen a cricket since then. Maybe it was just 3:30A logic, and obviously it wasn't the same one, but I felt like that was a sign, there was a purpose to his check-in-- maybe a "God is in small things" moment.

I let the cricket show himself out this time.