Victories, pyrrhic victories, and all-out fuckups

1. As part of our program to acclimate Cairo the Three-Legged Carsick Dog to riding in the car, we've been taking him on short jaunts to the convenience store (about 5 minutes each way). He'd been doing well on those, so yesterday we tried taking him to the county seat (about 14 minutes each way). We stopped once on the way there, then once in town. Each time we let him run and play so he could get some fresh air. He was doing great--not even drooling much when the car was moving. Then we headed home. We tried to stop at a park on the way back, but it was closed. We had no choice but to continue home. About 45 seconds later, he threw up. Today he wouldn't even get in the car to go to the convenience store. Back to square one.

2. I've been getting a lot of work done on the house. But yesterday, while painting, I apparently splattered paint on one of my beautiful three-week old dining room curtains. I wasn't working anywhere near the window--that would have been stupid. But I somehow splattered paint four or five feet away! Arrrrgghhhh...back to the store. I hope they have more of the same kind. I suck, I suck, I suck!

3. Learn from my mistakes: If you store corn syrup and Indian spices on the same shelving unit, do NOT, I repeat do NOT knock the shelving unit over. This morning I found out exactly how much fun it is to clean up a mixture of corn syrup, broken glass, garam masala, and mustard seeds. I would almost rather have cleaned up after the Exxon Valdez.

4. Since the shelving unit was off the pantry door (albeit in a rather unplanned manner), I painted the door. The color I chose for the pantry is a buttery yellow--an attempt to keep something close to the original color it was when we found it. (I like to put little historic touches in old houses.) The s.o. walked by, eyeballed it, and said, "That reminds me of something...what is it, what is it...banana Laffy Taffy!" Then, just as I was despairing, he added, "I love it."