Craigslist: welcome to the 21st century

This week marked the completion of our first successful Craigslist sale! The turn around time was less than a week between the original post and the envelope o'cash. What an amazing age we live in! Giving out your address to a random stranger on the Internet who happens to be "interested in your table" does take some faith though, and I made Thomas come home early one day to be here when Jane Doe* showed up. She was completely not scary of course, and even brought along two cute kiddos.

Thomas in particular shed a few (metaphorical) tears over the sale of this set--it was one of his first "adult" purchases, and we certainly have a lot of fun memories of meals, game nights, etc. It was part of his "furniture trosseau," aptly named by a friend in light of Thomas' unusually huge inventory of stuff, and boy am I glad that he has good taste!

It was fun having two dining room tables for a while and made hosting several large group gatherings much easier. It is nice having our front entry way back though...

*name changed to protect the innocent

I'm back!

Because my husband is the awesome-est, I now have a revived will to blog! He made the header himself (drew those b.a. penguins from scratch!) and used a picture from the last time we went skiing in Vail.
Seriously, if our kids (and this is NOT an announcement of that) are half as cool as he is, I will be thrilled.

Playdates: How to realize you have no control over your dog

I know that I have a huge trip to update you on, but our pictures are still a jumbled mess (835 at last count), so that blog post will have to wait.
Yesterday a woman riding her bike zips past Sullivan and me out on our morning walk and then proceeds to turn around for a quick chat. Turns out she has a newly adopted ten year-old dog in desperate need of some doggie company. She manages to hold her composure when I tell her that Sullivan is five and a half months old and bravely does not rescind the invitation.
So, at 9 am on the dot, after a longish morning walk (in an effort to wear out the puppy so he doesn't kill the geriatric), Sullivan and I trot over to this house. Two things run through my head first:
1. Is this normal? I thought only kids had play dates? What happens if Sullivan claws this dog's eyes out?
2. Holy cow, this house is on a pond. A big one. And my dog is obsessed with water. And swimming--despite the fact that Thomas had to jump in the water at the dog park the other day b/c Sullivan likes to "swim" vertically.

The dogs run around together for a bit and the older dog is surprisingly spry. Sullivan's goofy uncoordination is evident and hilarious. After about 4 minutes of happy playing, both dogs BOOM are in the water. I scream like a fishwife on shore for about 15 minutes as Sullivan ignores my crazed shoutings and swims like a champ while running in and out of the water. So we take the dogs around front to play. Of course, 30 seconds later they have returned to the backyard for some more aquatic expeditioning.
The play date came to an abrupt end when both dogs, out of the water for once, were tearing around the backyard and due to an unfortunate aligning of positions, Sullivan bodyslammed the older dog into a palm tree. Lucy took it like a champ but it pretty much freaked out the two dog moms. After a quick shower together (oh my! on the first date!) the dogs parted ways.
I suggested my pondless, fenced in backyard for the next one, though my gauge of "how much of a disaster was that?"may be malfunctioning.

This sealed the deal for me on puppy training classes. I'm especially interested in the commands:
"Sullivan, get out of the pond right now" and "Sullivan, stop humping a dog old enough to be your great great grandmother"

Piccolo Spoleto, Boba Fett and everything in between

For the last few weeks, Charleston has been hosting the Spoleto Festival and its companion event, Piccolo Spoleto. It's a pretty neat thing and worth reading about if you a) don't live here or b) if you are like me and were guilty of not taking advantage of these opportunities before.
My parents, being the jet-setters they are, moved here in March and promptly set out to take advantage of all the cool stuff here in Charleston. This means that by the second day of the Spoleto Festival they had surpassed the number of Spoleto events that Thomas and I had collectively taken advantage of in the combined eight years we have lived here. Shame on us. Way to go, Mom and Dad!
Last Wednesday, at their prompting, we attended the One Man Stars Wars Trilogy show in the American Theater on upper King. The venue was pretty awesome in itself--a revitalized art deco room with lots of old movie posters. And the show was hilarious, if you are familiar with/enjoy knowing too much about Star Wars. To our amazement, a few people in the audience had never seen a Star Wars film, meaning that the performance to them must have been nothing more than an hour of mouth noises, strange storylines and bizarre names. It felt like that to me, too, but fortunately I could sequence everything together and appreciate the guy's sheer talent (if this is the right word) for imitating R2D2's noises, jabba the hutt's mouth and best of all, mark hamill's whininess and hilarious 80s hair. So, if you ever get the chance to see this show--the dude makes his living travelling around and performing Star Wars and Lord of the Rings--you should jump at it.
Following the performance, we walked over to the gelato store on John Street. Given the store's teeny tiny size, we were in close proximity to the other customers, and the kid standing behind us in line piped up with a "hey! You sat by us in Star Wars!" in a cute, "r's turned into l's," New York accent. He was wearing a Star Wars t-shirt and was super excited to tell us that he was destined to like the trilogy because his middle name is from Star Wars. We start throwing out names--Luke, Han, Leia ("no way! I'm a boy!"), Lando--but we can't figure it out. The kid proudly informs us that his middle name is Boba Fett, the bounty hunter who captures Han. He's the sort of character that if you took a bathroom break, you may have missed his entire performance in the movies.* The dad, somewhat sheepishly, confirms the truth of this by saying that it's printed on his son's birth certificate. If you're ever put in this situation, I think it's best to remain positive--"wow, that's so cool! I'll bet no one else has that for a middle name!"--while inwardly you wonder WHAT THE PARENTS WERE THINKING. Were they in a galaxy far, far away when they were picking baby names?
Can't you hear the high school graduation ceremony now? Or see the wedding program? The resume header? The college roommate letter?

*strangely enough, Boba Fett has a huge cult following

Litterbugs

I never realized how much people litter until I started walking Sullivan every day. Said dog is the ultimate magnet for trash--I can almost hear his little doggie mind producing thoughts like "oooh a beer can! oooh a gum package! delicious trash!"
Trash is, of course, second only to his actual favorite thing to pick up while we are walking: poop. Bird, beast, bug, it doesn't matter. It's all delicious defecation. Usually I attempt to steer him away from those tasty treats, but I have determined it's impossible to prevent all ingestion.
The picture was obviously taken on the beach and Sullivan is dominating (or attempting to dominate) some seaweed. Note the batlike ears, the ferocious look of determination, the crooked tail (ultimate sign of happiness) and the muscular stance of this goofy animal.

May

Well, I have a more substantial post in the works--or at least one that does not chronicle my continuing infatuation with our little beastie.
But it will have to wait for another day.

Here is our furry son in all of his long-legged, big-pawed, shiny-coated glory. What have we gotten ourselves into...

Talk of the town

"Your dog is hot."
-random skateboarding friend-of-neighbor kid.

Misunderstanding him, I responded with something to the effect of "I'm taking him home for some water right now." He clarified with, "no, no! I mean he's really...attractive." Staring at him, I mumbled something like "thanks?" The kid was embarrassed when he figured out that Sullivan was a boy, but I kept the compliment anyways. Apparently Sullivan is a huge hit in the neighborhood--I have talked to more neighbors in the last two weeks than in our entire 9 months here.

Obviously Sullivan is "hot"--he is handsome and well-proportioned. So there.
I look forward to our next encounter, skateboard boy, when you make more awkward comments about my dog's attractiveness.