Teddy Bear

I wanted to share a layout I did over the weekend. Doug took this picture around Christmas time and although it is sort of blurry I absolutely love it.

What do you think?

What a difference a day makes

Okay, so I thought I didn't like the rain, but snow? I *do not* drive in this stuff which means if Douglas is not around, I do not go anywhere! I know, I know, I'm from Connecticut so I should be used to this stuff, right? Wrong. People in Tulsa are some of the worst drivers I have ever seen in this stuff. I'm so nervous about it I'm better off just staying off the roads until they are clear.
I will admit, the snow is so pretty.
Priscilla Hauser, the decorative painter, had her open house yesterday.

I didn't know if the open house would get cancelled due to the weather but it wasn't. Doug drove me there and dropped me off while he went to a record store he likes near by. (Do they still call them that: ?record store?) I got to chat with Priscilla and her sister Ann. Two great ladies. I had such fun looking at all the artwork in the studio, watching them interact as they were doing a painting. Only a few people were brave enough to get out on the roads in the snow so there will be another open house scheduled in the near future.
Anyway, as I think I have mentioned in my previous post, I used to watch Priscilla Hauser on The Carol Duvall Show on HGTV. I used to dream I could paint like her and always wished I could take painting classes with her. Well, looks like my dream is going to come true! She offers all kinds of classes in her Tulsa studio and I have signed up for one. She was also kind enough to give me one of her books. Thank you Priscilla!
After the open house, Doug took me to Red Robin for a burger. I wasn't impressed. Honestly, for a ten dollar burger I guess I expected a lot more. Even the steak fries weren't all that great. Chili's has a much better burger that is less expensive and much more delicious. Guess we won't be heading back to Red Robin anytime soon.
Last night, Doug watched the basketball game while I went up to my craft room. I intended to straighten up but ended up scrapping a page instead. I'll probably post that later once I take a picture of it.
I've got lots of things I want to get done today so I'd better get off this computer and get moving.

I know we need the rain but...

This is what I'm seeing out my office window. Not a pretty sight ~ Pretty ugly and depressing if you ask me. And it's cold and only going to get colder. Yep, freezing tonight and snow tomorrow. Hopefully, this will be the last of it because I *really* am ready for spring.

This is what I'm seeing under my desk:

This is Nestle and he is very worried about all of the thunder outside. It makes him nervous! He goes back and forth from under my feet beside the space heater to look out the window to check out the commotion and back again:

The other dogs are sleeping peacefully in the nest. Not Nestle, he was jumping up and down all wild eyed and panting like a crazy man. I'm afraid he is going to have a stroke or something so I let him stay in my office with me while I work. The problem is sometimes he likes to bark when I'm on the phone. Not good.
I usually keep something soft like a wadded up paper towel on my desk and if I'm on the phone and he starts to bark, I bean him with it. Mean, huh?
Since I'm freezing and the weather is awful and I don't really want to go anywhere, my sweet Douglas is bringing me a hot steak grinder from Bellacino's. Yum!
Yesterday, I went to McAlister's Deli for lunch. In the plaza they had the most beautiful tulips all around. I love tulips. It was just starting to rain but they still are so pretty:

Oh! I almost forgot. A few weeks ago Doug and I went to the Tulsa Home and Garden Show. While we were there we saw Priscilla Hauser. She is a decorative painter. I used to watch her on The Carol Duvall Show on HGTV. I was so excited! As is turns out, she has a little painting studio here in Tulsa where we can take a painting class or have painting party with friends or whatever. I have signed up to take a class with her in a couple of weeks. Anyway ~ tomorrow she is supposed to have an open house to show off her studio. So I'm praying the snow isn't bad on the roads and the open house is still on. I'm SOOO looking forward to it!

Ooops!

Somehow I published today's blog without typing in anything. Let me try this again.

We went to Savastano's tonight for pizza. Call me crazy but I like my pizza cut into wedges ~ not into squares! At Savastano's they absolutely *will not* cut the pizza into wedges. They claim because it is supposed to be Chicago style pizza and the owners are from Chicago that they are not allowed to cut the thin crust pizza into wedges. What ever happened to "the customer is always right"? We asked for the pizza to be brought out uncut so we could cut it ourselves - into wedges. It may sound crazy but I think it tastes so much better cut into wedges. I don't like pizza without crust on the end. So, out it came and we cut it ourselves. Ummmmm.. delicious! and I was so much happier.

I will eat there again because the pizza is good. Next time though, I'm going to bring my own pizza cutter. Our waitress brought out the biggest clunker pizza cutter I've ever seen. The wheel was completely wobbly and I thought it was going to fall off the handle and go rolling across the floor. (I must be tired because I'm laughing to myself thinking about that wobbly wheel while I'm typing this -hee hee hee!)

Okay, so now that we've talked about food...

This is Phoebe. Also known as Phoebe Buffet, Phoebe who stayed too long at the Buffet, Curly, Girls, Feebs, Nerky, Narnickiny...the list goes on and on. She has never met a meal she hasn't liked. Let's just say she has a slight, ahem, weight challenge. We tell her it looks good on her though. :) I'm not sure if you can see from this picture but she has stumpy little legs and a nice, round belly. She sort of wobbles when she walks - kind of like a weeble. When she runs she looks like a little millipede.
Anyway. Curly and I have just started walking in the evening. We both need to stretch our legs a little. Since we are just starting out, she can't go very far without running out of steam so we are starting slow. The problem is, when she gets tired ~ after oh, about 100 feet or so, ~ she tries to walk directly under my feet so I'll pick her up. But I'm smarter than that. Tonight I tried to run just slightly ahead of her and made her run to catch me. I'm sure we were quite a sight. She just needs to lose a few .oz's and hopefully by helping her get a little extra exercise she can lose a little weight (and maybe I will too...).
I can't really put her on a diet or limit her food intake because she is already very food possessive and she gets even worse when I even think about limiting her intake. Plus with four dogs, honestly, it is so much easier to just free feed. So, as an alternative we are walking. Hopefully the exercise will do us both good and will wear her out so she will just sleep at night instead of guarding the food bowl all night long. Maybe we will both benefit.

Time is just flying by...

Gosh, where does the time go? I can't believe it has been almost a week since I posted last. In a nutshell, things we have been up to:
1. St. Patricks Day: Doug and I met Jerry and Annette at LXI for dinner and drinks. What a great time we had and great food too!
2. Friday night we went to Bonefish Grill with Dr. T and Tonya. Another great night of dinner and drinks and fun conversation with friends. It was a last minute decision to go and I'm glad we did!
3. On Saturday, Doug and I went to D'Lambrusco's for a nice lunch, we ran around doing some errands and then headed back home. Doug put together a bookcase for my craft room and I worked up there for the rest of the evening. I made a fleece blanket for the dogs and finally got around to making Doug's Boston Red Sock's fleece blanket (a year and a half later...)
4. On Sunday we rented a U-haul trailer and went to Edmond to empty out some of the stuff in the garage. I guess in our hurry to get things done we didn't quite load the trailer correctly and on our drive home the thing started swaying like crazy. It scared me so much it made me sick. We had to drive really slow all the way back to Tulsa. It was that or pulling over, unloading and reloading all over again. That probably would have been the safer thing to do. Oh well, we made it safely. We unloaded the trailer and returned it. I cannot wait until we are done!

The house in Edmond showed four times over the weekend but so far no offers. I'm really hoping something happens soon.

Tonight I took the dogs for a walk. One at a time. I simply CANNOT walk four dogs at once. Not my dogs anyway. Nestle and Niles do just fine. I used to walk them together all the time. Phoebe is just a mess! She zigzags all over the place and we hardly make it halfway around the block and she is running into my feet which means she wants me to pick her up. She's the one who needs to walk! I'm going to have to progress slowly with her because she is so heavy she just can't handle going that far just yet. Teddy is just a goofball on a leash. He jumps up on the curbs like a little jackrabbit and then is scared if the wind blows. Walking on the leash is all new to him. He is used to running around the back yard uninhibited. He is just too cute.

It was a nice night for a walk. The temps were in the mid 70's and there were lots of people out walking their dogs, riding bikes with their kids and just enjoying the evening. Our neighborhood is a great place to walk and I plan to do alot more of that this spring.

Doug may or may not be going to Georgia at the end of this week. I can't believe tomorrow is Tuesday already. I've got a list of things to accomplish this week that is a mile long. Wish me luck!

What a beautiful day!

Don't you just love spring?

These are some of my pretty pansies out front.
The weather today is almost perfect. Warm, slight breeze, in the 80's. Gotta love it! It is spring break here in Oklahoma and so far one of the nicest we have had since I moved here in 2001. Usually it is cloudy and rainy but it looks like we are in for a very nice week. I'm so excited!
This weekend was a productive one. I spent some time in my craft room organizing and cleaning. The room is a great size but my biggest problem is that I have SO MUCH STUFF! Plus, the room has a funny "L" shape with sloped ceilings so it is difficult to decide where to put things. Thankfully Doug put up two of my embellishment centers and a huge bulletin board for me. Thank you Douglasssss!!!

Sorry about the dark picture but the area is tucked away in a little corner away from the light. I'm just so excited to have a place to put some of my stuff. I've got alot more to organize and I will post pictures of that as I go along.

Of course, I can't go up there for one minute without the dogs looking for me. When I look around the corner, this is what I see:

Gotta love it!

Snow.. Ugh!

Woke up to a freezing cold day today with big, fat snowflakes. I am so ready to be done with winter. I need sunshine and warm days. The good news is that it looks like by the middle of next week we will be headed into warmer weather. Can't wait!

Last night we went to a dinner presentation at Flemings Steakhouse in Utica Square. The presentation was about continuous epidural infusion rather than a single epidural steroid injection for back pain. Exciting, huh? Actually, it was kind of interesting and definitely made sense for some of our patients. Look forward to see if it works better than the ordinary injection. The dinner part wasn't the greatest however. I was really looking forward to eating at Fleming's because I had never been. It was mediocre at best and it definitely wouldn't be my choice if I had to pay the bill.

Missed out on a dinner tonight because of exhaustion and a terrible headache. I was supposed to attend a meeting at Dave and Buster's but didn't make it. Been going like crazy and need a break. So, I'm just taking the evening a little easy, straightening up my office which has gotten totally out of control the last week. Also listening to my iTunes and to Doug hollering in the other room over the Sooners and the basketball game. Sorry Douglas. :( Seems as though the Sooners have let him down tonight.

Okay, enough doom and gloom. On a more positive note, here I am tonight with Teddy:

I know I look tired, but isn't he just too cute?!?

On other positive news, I booked our flight for our trip home to Connecticut this summer. Can't wait! We are going to stay with Bobby and Jess and I'm sure have a great time. Yay! We haven't been to Connecticut since September of 2007 and I sure miss my family. And I can't fail to mention my favorite pizza in the whole entire world: Pepe's Pizza on Wooster Street in New Haven. It's world famous. I tell my family everytime I go home that I'm going for Pepe's. They can join me or not but I'm not going to miss it - yes - it IS that good!

C'mon Spring!

Over the last week we got a teaser of spring weather. It has been in the 70's and maybe in the 80's and I have loved it! We had the windows open to let in some fresh air and it has been great ~ even though it has stirred up my allergies a bit ~ I'll take it! Unfortunately, that was just a tease. The weather is taking a nosedive this afternoon into the 40's and it will be cold for the next several days. NO FUN! I'm hopeful though because spring is right around the corner. There are cute little buds on the trees, my pansies are perking up out front and I'm feeling motivated! I've got my list of things to work on and I'm crossing things off a little at a time.

Work has been crazy. Dr. Webb is out of town for a conference and I thought I would use these few days to catch up on a few things. I'm not catching up like I hoped I would. Some days I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels. I just keep plugging away hoping to catch up.

Nice to be home...

While it is great to get away and get a break once in a while, it is always nice to return home. We got back Sunday night to a quiet, empty house. The dogs were still at Cathy's and I could hardly wait until Monday morning when I could pick them up. Boy, were they happy to see me! Usually they go a little crazy in the car but when I picked them up they all seemed to know we were heading home and everybody was so well behaved while I was driving. When we got home, I had four little shadows following me everywhere I went. I love those little bears...

Too, while getting away is nice, the work left behind always piles up. I've been working like crazy all week to catch up. I just have to remind myself that everyone else's "emergencies" are NOT my emergencies. However, I like to make people happy and I like to get things done so I let little things stress me out. I have to remember to take time to breathe.

One giant project I am happy to be done with is getting my personal and business tax records to my accountant. I'm praying I don't owe taxes this year. Last year, I got hit with a whopper of a tax bill and it took me quite a while to recover from that. I'm hoping for the best this year and I'm just so happy to turn my records over to him and let him deal with it.

The weather is supposed to be in the 70's for the next couple of days and I plan to take full advantage of that. I'm meeting my friend Phyllis at PF Changs for lunch tomorrow and I am so looking forward to seeing her and catching up. I'm not sure what Doug and I will do this weekend ~ maybe a trip to OKC to take care of a few things. Savastano's has opened their new restaurant (finally!) so we might try that. I heard that last night there was a wait to get in. We'll see how it goes.