On this particular day, she decided to play catch-me-if-you-can. Here’s the sequence:

Are you trying to take yet ANOTHER picture of me?

POOF! The ol’ Vanishing Puppy routine…

You’re STILL there???

Oh well, half a Daisy face is better than no Daisy face!

5. Stop. Well, what dog wants to hear this??

STOP?! What does that even mean? And how dare you use such foul language!!

4. Wait. I’m an enthusiastic pup, why would you expect me to wait??

I HATE THIS I HATE THIS I HATE THIS

3. Heat. Daisy HATES hot weather as much as we do.

I’ll stay in here where it’s nice and cool, thank you. You can go outside and make the yard nice for me.

2. Bath. A commonly disliked 4-letter word among pups.

I…WILL…GET…YOU…FOR…THIS…

1. C-L-I-P. I don’t even dare spell that without hyphens, it’s SUCH a bad word around here. Daisy hates having her nails and fur clipped even more than she hates baths. It’s a three-way job for her nails – I clip, DH holds her securely, and DD distracts her with petting and chatting. The only time she relaxes during a hair clipping is right after a bath, when she’s wrapped up in a big cushy towel, sitting on DD’s lap. As I’m clipping her face and ears, she’ll lie down and relax…until I have to clip her face…a face clip is TWO four-letter words…

Look into my eyes…you will NOT clip…you will NOT clip…

Oh, and one more –

NO-O-O. Because we believe that’s how she hears it, long and drawn out and quite offensive to a curious, thrill-seeking pup!

You can’t tell me “NO” if you can’t find me… hehehe…

I’d love to hear what words your pets consider “most foul”!

I got a flashlight and looked through the doors – and there it was. A bat! And it’s not even Halloween! YIKES!!

A small brown bat had somehow made its way through the chimney cap meshing, past the closed flue and into the firebox. Of course, it was nearly midnight. He was probably trying to get out to make his nightly rounds.

O-M-G!!!!!!!!

We called a 24-hour emergency animal control place that didn’t answer the phone (really?? 24 hour emergency place??) and never called us back…not even the next day. Believe me when I tell you I left them some serious negative feedback.

Even though we have insulation around the fireplace doors, we stuffed rags between the bricks and doors to make sure everything was sealed up, and we put packaging tape over the doors to make sure he couldn’t push his way into the house. I know it’s not logical, but I was totally freaked out!!

All night and the next day he made a racket with his claws scratching up and down the walls of the firebox and climbing up the mesh of the screen behind the glass doors. It was really weird watching him move around, I never realized how creepy a crawling bat looks!

ACK!!!!!!!!!

I got another emergency animal control service to come out and had to pay an exhorbitant fee for an emergency Sunday call. At the time, I didn’t care. Here take my money, take it all, just get rid of the &$%! bat!!

The guy came and when he got on the roof, took off the chimney cap and looked down the chimney, he saw two more hanging on the chimney walls! At that point I was ready to pack my bags, hire a realtor and move to Norway. Or Iceland. Wherever there are no bats and no bugs.

The guy said our chimney cap is old and the meshing on it was good for keeping out birds but bats could squeeze through it – apparently they only need an opening the size of a pinky finger to get through. Who knew?! So he put bat netting up that’s supposed to allow the bats to leave but not let them back in. As much as the thought of having bats in our chimney freaked me out, I didn’t want them harmed, and this place uses humane methods to encourage them to relocate.

There’s a WHAT in the fireplace??!! A BAT?? PACK MY KIBBLE, I’M OUTTA HERE!

The guy didn’t want to open the fireplace doors to get the other bat out because he was very active and could have gotten into the house. I didn’t want him to die in there, but we had no choice but to let him be. I’m happy to report that the freaky little guy found his way out Sunday night! Apparently there’s a very small opening that has to be there and this little explorer found it, squeezed through it, and ended up where he shouldn’t be. Somehow he found his way back up and escaped. Whew!

They finally came yesterday, a week and a half later, to take the netting off, check the chimneys and put up new chimney caps on both fireplaces – there may not have been any bats in the second fireplace, but I’m not taking any chances!

So we’re out $800 unexpectedly but now I don’t jump every time I hear a sound. On to the next crisis…

Daisy loves DIY projects (she does NOT like outside workmen, she prefers Daddy does the job) and was completely obsessed with the whole process…even after it was all finished. But pictures tell the story better than words…

Daddy, I think there’s something wrong with the flusher in here…

“You mean here, Daisy?”
“Yes, that’s right Daddy.”

“I’ll just snoopervise from down here on this comfy carpet. You go ahead and stick your hand in the toilet water.”

“What was that you threw away? Oh yes, I see, it’s broken. Good job.”

“Let me just check around on this side…”

“…and around this side…”

“…and back here too. Gotta be sure it’s done right, after all.”

“Well, Daddy, I’ve completely assessed the situation here. You need to go to the DIY store.”

“I suggest you take a picture of the part you need so you don’t make a mistake.”

“Do you think I should fix this area here, Daisy?”
“Yes Daddy, that’s the problem spot.”

“I’ll stand guard here and make sure this toilet doesn’t get any wise ideas while Daddy’s gone.”

I’m happy to report that Daisy and Daddy made a good repair team – everything’s working well again!

THIS ENORMOUS MOTH WAS ON MY WINDSHIELD WIPER!!! Look at the size of him!

His antennae are like fern leaves!! Nature can be so beautiful (when it’s not a spider…).

And then there was this interesting David-and-Goliath standoff on our window screen:

Big grasshopper vs tiny moth – they stayed like this for hours! Believe it or not, the grasshopper backed down first!

Who are you and why are you staring at me??

How about this crazy kamikazee bird?? Why on earth was he nose-diving to the ground???

Dive-bomber bird!! What was he thinking??

And this gigantic leaf –

That is one huge leaf!

Normally we don’t want to see any critters on our home-grown veggies, but this cutie was more than welcome:

Cute, doe-eyed moth on our Swiss chard.

The gross bugs – yes I know they’re probably necessary evils but they’re still gross – have been awfully big, almost like the intense summer heat turned them into tropical bug sizes. When I see those I just screech and run away. Really!

And I just laugh and laugh and laugh at you! Heehee!!

One of the striking old homes in a small PA town. You know how much I LOVE old architecture!

DH and I discover these places by driving up the PA Turnpike and taking exits for towns that sound interesting – all very spontaneous, which I prefer to planned trips. We explore the town itself on foot, then drive along backroads to see what there is to discover.

Driving through Amish country

One of the interesting places we happened across was plopped miles away from any main roads or town centers, in the middle of hundreds of miles of Amish farms. We crossed a railroad track, and suddenly this popped up:

Nope, this isn’t a caboose graveyard, it’s an honest-to-goodness train hotel! They’ve collected real train cars (mostly cabooses, but some larger ones and one of the biggest is called the Bridal Suite!) and converted them into “hotel rooms”. It’s called the Red Caboose Motel and it’s so unusual.

Look how many there are!

A short distance away, there was a train depot…out there…in the middle of nowhere…

The proprietor of the hotel was kind enough to let us see the inside of one of the cabooses, and I took pictures but they’ve somehow magically vanished into the digital netherworld. It was amazing to see how much they could fit into those small cabooses – they even put in a small loft with another bed! They made every inch count without overcrowding.

Later we pulled into the parking lot of a large chain hotel to find out if it was pet friendly, planning, of course, for a future weekend away with Daisy. Nope, no luck, not pet-friendly…YET LOOK AT THE PATHWAY PAVING STONES THEY USED:

Is there any wonder why we thought this was a pet friendly hotel??

Daisy was none too pleased at this misrepresentation.

I’m throwing a BIG raspberry at that hotel!!

Because Daisy is a hunter-gatherer – once I settle into a spot, she hunts down all her toys and gathers them around wherever I am. If I move, she and her toys move there too.

You always know where I am, or at least where I’ve recently been. No secrets here.

This is part of my collection. Where I go, it goes. See me holding hands with my dinosaur, Bert?

My philosophy: Leave no toy behind!

Everything is good, just as long as we’re all together, right Mommy?

Sometimes I like to lie in the middle of my toy lineup and see if I can fool Mommy into thinking I’m a stuffed toy too!

We’ve had to make so many modifications to help prevent our little girl from injuring herself again that it seems like this is more Daisy’s house than ours. And why do we continually need to make all these modifications? Because our Daisy is a nut, a silly little looney-bird who won’t just run, she has to sprint out of control; who can’t just jump, she has to jump off the ground with all fours and do a mid-air spin; who refuses to allow any neighborhood noises to go by without racing wildly through the house barking like a madpup, trying to figure out what direction it’s coming from and who committed this horrific offense. No wonder one of our friends nicknamed her “The Blur”!

Daisy is a hundred-pound wolf trapped in a 15-pound snuggle-loving sweetheart. But sometimes that wolf comes out, and it usually results in a yipe and a trip to the vet.

So we make continual modifications every time we see a behavior that says “I can do anything, I don’t need to be careful and I certainly don’t need to listen to you!”

Daisy’s larger crate is now the centerpiece of the family room since it takes up so much more space with the ramp DH built for her. We even had to move the coffee table away.

Daisy’s famous crate, with a Tempurpedic foam bed covered with soft, warm fleece. And a custom-built (by DH) ramp with support underneath. Is that enough to keep her safe, do you think?

And of course there’s the huge, long runner we put through the kitchen to take her from one carpeted room to the next because she constantly slips on the wood kitchen floor.

“This is much better. Now I don’t fall all the time.”

But that wasn’t good enough. Daisy likes to stand by me at the kitchen counter when I’m cooking, and that meant going off her cross-room runway. So she’d either slip, which caused her body to twist, inviting yet another injury, or she’d keep her back legs on the runner and do a frustrated tap dance with her front feet on the floor, complaining with grumbles and whines that she couldn’t get near the action. Result? We put another shorter runner down to give her access to that side of the kitchen.

With no coordinated runner to be found, we were stuck with this. But it works!

Still not good enough – Daisy would charge at the sliding glass door on the other side of the kitchen whenever she saw birds or squirrels…which is all the time. So we added this.

We now live in a patchwork kitchen.

And of course, all couches and chairs must be blocked off so Daisy doesn’t jump up on anything.

Very inviting, don’t you think?

But we still weren’t done – the surgeon told us to carry Daisy down even one step leading into or out of the house…and in the next breath she recommended not picking her up. So……

DH made ramps for every door with non-skid strips. So now the outside of our house is as “Daisied” as the inside.

DH also made carpet-covered ramps for the cars, so she can get into and out of the seats without being lifted. Now the only time we pick her up is to put her in the sink for her bath.

Oh God, not more bath pictures…

I will not look at you in this humiliating condition.

You know I hate you right now, don’t you?