Ooooh, Paris the dog..

She doesn't understand the concept of her new dog potty.

Neither does Chewy, as he has joined her below the potty now. I'd grab a picture, but it's too dark now.

Bawston Homesickness

Yes, I am homesick. Mostly I am lonely, so I really need a job and/or friends. I also need my mom to move here, but I guess the job and friends are more realistic...

I haven't gotten to explore Boston too much yet, but I did find a nice running spot in the Public Gardens (I have to double-check "public" every time I type it because I am afraid I will leave out the "L") and on Commonwealth Avenue. It's a street with a walking/running path in the middle, and it is shady with trees for the entire .83 mile. My goal is to run up and back Comm Ave without having to stop.

Yes, you can be skinny and still be THAT out of shape.

Sad. I will change that, but not today - not on Comm Ave, anyway. It's supposed to hit 90 degrees today with like, 60% humidity or something disgusting like that. When I woke up at 9am it was already 80 degrees. Groooooosssss!!!!

The dogs are having fun but they are definitely getting cabin fever.

This is what cabin fever in dogs looks like.

I can't walk them when it is so hot out! I do think I need a lawn chair though, just to sit in our small yard and let them occupy themselves with sniffing, and rolling in dead bugs. I wonder if Off! makes lawn chairs with centipede repellent...

Beauty Alert!!

Okay, this is pretty exciting: I just got my first Blog Swag!!!

To start at the beginning:

Since I had been in my house for so long with bunion surgery, I thought it was the perfect time to grow out my overplucked brows. Since I was starting to get out in public more and more, I decided that it was the perfect time to visit Stacya Silverman to get my brows done. She not only gave me lower-maintenance brows, but told me just where to pluck them to keep them looking thicker and natural. Check out my amazing After photo. Well, I don't look so awesome, but my brows do...

I was trying to get Paris into the photo so that she would distract people from my house-wear and funky hair.

Yaaay! Stacya was so quick and pleasant to talk to. She also has an awesome dog who was in her office. He was like a giant version of my dog, Paris:

Paris enjoys collecting squeaker toys

Awwww, isn't she so cute???? Stacya's dog is just as cute and sweet, but eight-times bigger than Paris. Or twenty times bigger, when you count his thick fur.

Anyway, I mentioned my humble little blog to Stacya and told her it was about pretty things (and ugly bunion surgery), and gave me some of these pretty things:

image from the Beauty Alert online store

They are called Beauty Alert!® and they are sets of stickers that help you to keep track of the "age" of your makeup and skin care products. You probably know that your cosmetics have a limited shelf life due to bacteria buildup, and products like sunscreen decrease in effectivity over time. Savvy users will keep track of this. I am ashamed to say that I never have kept great track, and I used to just change out my mascara out every month so I wouldn't lose track of how old they were.

Stacya and her friend Alissa heard about women sticking ugly pieces of tape on their beautiful cosmetics to record the date of their opening. While they knew this was a good idea for the sake of having clean and effective beauty products, they were appalled at the idea of marring their beauty products with pieces of tape. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention, and the pair created Beauty Alert! labels. They are a pretty way of knowing the birthdate of your products.

Since I have had to become more budget-conscious lately, I can't replace my Mary Kay mascara every month, and I am not sure of the birth date of my current tube of mascara. I think that tomorrow I'll start a new tube, and I am sure you know what I'll be using to keep track of its age this time!

The (p)upside of being gimpy

Everyone thought I would go stir-crazy when I stayed (mostly) in my house for the 4 weeks that I was confined to a wheelchair. Everyone was wrong. There are a few reasons for my sanity staying intact:

1. Lovely friends and family coming over.

2. Lovely husband.

3. HGTV.

4. Lovely puppies.

Puppies are key to maintaining my sanity.

Here are just a few things I get to see/watch while at home:

Pups play-fighting

Puppies sleeping in funny positions:

Puppies snuggling with each other (the top puppy is my foster dog who just went to her new home!):

Puppies snuggling in their new bed:

And as I type this, I have one puppy twitching in her sleep right next to me, and another pup laying across my right arm, annoyed that my typing is disturbing her attempt to nap there.