Mother’s Day – Otherwise Known as “Maybe This will Absolve Me of My Guilt Day”

Exactly How Many Calories are There in Styrofoam?

Our bulldog, Wonderbutt, seems a bit put out lately – possibly because we have been restricting his food intake the last couple of weeks.  Note that I said, “food intake”.  If you know anything about the history of Wonderbutt, you won’t be surprised to learn that his intake of everything but food has not decreased at all.  You can see from the widget on the left that he has miraculously made it almost a year without devouring our new living room furniture – but I’m not sure his self-control will last much longer.

It’s hard to explain to a dog why you are feeding him less, and that binging on beds with no nutritional value is not a healthy habit.

Wonderbutt’s bed, yet another one of our wise investments

Like I said, it’s hard to explain.

What You Can Do While You Wait For Your Daughter to Become the Next Synchronized Swimming Champion

We were out of town at a synchronized swimming competition this weekend and I am absolutely exhausted from trying to mark time between my daughter’s performances.  So, I gift you with this wonderful motivational poster that I made with a new app I downloaded.  Feel free to share and make it the newest internet meme.  Just make sure you give Wonderbutt the credit he deserves.  He’ll eat your sofa cushions if you don’t.

It Turns Out that it is Slightly Difficult to See With Egg on Your Face

Wonderbutt with egg on his face…

Happy Easter one day late from the Firepants Family.  I would show you more photos, but someone forgot to put the memory stick back in the camera and didn’t realize it until the Easter Egg Hunt was completely over.  Yes, it was me.  And yes, that wasn’t the first, second, or third time that has happened.  We have many memories of photos I thought I took from over the years.

Wonderbutt had a smashing Easter.  He was completely enthralled with the giant egg the Easter Bunny brought Dimples.

Wonderbutt fans will know that when he finds a toy that he really likes, he gets a bit protective and takes it out to his Poop Pen. This is where kitchen towels and Girl Scout cookie boxes go to die.  Dimples did not find this to be an acceptable location for her egg.

Once we got him back inside, Dimples problem solved, and came up with a way to “reject” any more of Wonderbutt’s attempts to escape with his plastic egg. With an egg on his face, however, Wonderbutt was not aware of his new boundary until he rammed into it.

Yep, this is how the Firepants Family celebrates Easter.

Good times.

Look Out Synchronized Swimmers! Wonderbutt is Headed for the Olympics.

Okay.  So, first, go to the farmer’s market and buy yourself a 70 pound watermelon.  Then, drive to Disney World (because I think you would have to pay for an extra plane ticket for the oversized fruit if you flew).  Just tell the Disney people I sent you, and I’m sure they will have no problem with you entering with a rather odd looking baby in an umbrella stroller.  Go straight to a gift shop and shell out a cool hundred bucks for a rain poncho.  Stand in line at Space Mountain for two hours.  Get in your little Space Mountain car, and buckle the watermelon into the seat beside you.  After the ride starts, try to dress your watermelon in the rain poncho before the ride ends.  Make sure you get every button snapped.  Oh, and smile for the camera.

Now you know what it’s like trying to get our bulldog, Wonderbutt, into a life jacket.

Stubborn our bulldog is.  Stubborn am I.  This time (0ne of the few times in 2 years) I won.  But just because I got him to wear it for 5 minutes on the back porch didn’t mean it wasn’t going to fly like a cowboy off a bucking bronco as soon as we got to the pond.

He seemed pretty keen on taking a walk in his strait life jacket, which made me a bit optimistic as I followed down the road to the pond.  As we neared the “tank” (as Texans like to call it), his pace quickened despite the heat.

Then we reached the water.

We all watched as the other dogs quickly strode in to the pond.  Wonderbutt walked around the edge for a bit, a little hesitantly.

Then he went deeper.

And, suddenly, he was swimming.

He. Loved. It.

Long after the other dogs had moved on to literally greener pastures, Wonderbutt continued to swim.  I finally made him stop because I was afraid he was just going to run out of gas in the middle of the pond, and I would have to go haul him out by the suitcase handle on his back.

We went back to the pond 3 more times that weekend.  Every time, my fat, attention deficit dog leapt into the water and swam until I called it off.  The last couple of trips, he even fetched a stick.

Wonderbutt never fetches.  When you throw something, he runs to get it, then races with it out to his Poop Pen so you won’t take it away from him.

But not this weekend.  This weekend, Wonderbutt was a stick-wrangling water dog.

By the end of our time on the ranch, Wonderbutt was a seat-hogging snoring dog.  Life is good.

The best car ride with Wonderbutt ever

Some People Impulsively Buy Shoes; I Wrecklessly Purchase Life Jackets for My Bulldog

“Did you call?” my husband asked.

“Yes, but it’s too late now.”

I could hear the alarm in his response, even though it was only one syllable – “Oh?”

“Well, yes.  We’re already home.  I was calling to see if you thought we should get Wonderbutt a life jacket because we were at Petsmart.”

“Well, how much are they?”

“Oh, you don’t understand.  I already bought him the life jacket.  You didn’t answer so I just made an executive decision.”

“Umm.  Okay.”

“But it doesn’t fit.  It was a medium.  So, we’re going back.  We’re going to take him with us this time so he can try it on.”

“Uh huh.”

I could tell that my husband was extremely thankful that I was taking care of all of this without his involvement.  Because:  A)  The thought of buying a life jacket for our bulldog seems about as logical as buying a kayak for a T-Rex, and Dos) trying to get Wonderbutt to try on different sized life jackets in the middle of a store registers about a 9.5 on his Ways-That-I-Refuse-To-Humiliate-Myself Scale.

So, well aware that my husband thought that we might as well build our dog a float out of crisp dollar bills for all of the good a life jacket would do, I toted Wonderbutt and my daughter to Petsmart for our bright orange fashion show.

Predictably, we immediately gained an admiring audience of Petsmart customers as I struggled to fit Wonderbutt into the next size up.  It had to be explained to everyone that he likes to swim, but tires pretty quickly – usually when he has just made it to the deepest part of the pond.

Wonderbutt is short.  But what he lacks in height, he definitely makes up for in rotundity.  So, even the Large jacket was no match for his girth.  We had to purchase the X-Large for him – the one with a very fit looking labrador on its packaging.  I found this slightly embarrassing, but Wonderbutt did not seem disturbed by this in the least.  Perhaps this was because he had absolutely no intention of keeping the thing on for more than 5 seconds.

“This isn’t going to work, is it?” my daughter asked, as we stood in line to check out, and Wonderbutt managed to wrestle the life jacket off his back and on to the ground.

“Sure it will,” I replied confidently.  Okay, maybe not exactly confidently.

Back in the car, I watched as Wonderbutt got in the back and proceeded to attack the life jacket with the zest he usually reserves for eating carpets or sofa cushions.

I looked at my daughter, whose eyebrows were raised.

I closed the door and got in the front seat.  Already, the buyer’s remorse was beginning to sink in.  I pondered my possibly expensive mistake, then turned around to speak to my daughter.

“Uh, just make sure he doesn’t eat the receipt, okay?” I said.

And so Wonderbutt’s next adventure began…

He looks like a 4-legged suitcase.

This Cookie Monster Has Gone out of Control

There is a slight possibility that our bulldog, Wonderbutt, ate a Girl Scout.*  So far, no one has reported that there is one missing, but the evidence in Wonderbutt’s Poop Pen is quite damning.  Yes, he could have just taken one of the boxes of cookies off of our counter, and devoured half of it outside.  But there is no way that fat little dog can reach the center of the counter where the boxes have been sitting.  He can’t even get enough altitude to jump onto his favorite armchair at night.  It is far more likely that: a persistent Girl Scout came to our door while we weren’t home, rang the doorbell twenty times, decided to make sure we really were not home by checking out the back of our house, climbed over the fence, saw the dog door, and decided to crawl through and deposit ten boxes on our counter along with a big fat bill.  Before she could unload her Savannah Smiles onto our counter,  Wonderbutt charged her, and gobbled her whole.  Still hungry (because she must have been a fairly small Girl Scout to fit through his dog door), Wonderbutt then proceeded to polish off the boxes of cookies that had fallen to the floor, only stopping when he heard us arriving home.  Then, he dragged the remains of the box to his Poop Pen to leave as a warning for any other adventurous, yet ill-fated, Girl Scout who might attempt to darken his dog door.

I just hope they don’t make us pay for all the cookies he ate.

*By reading this post, you have committed yourself to be my lawyer, thus ensuring your confidentiality in this matter.  Or you can be my therapist; you pick.

 

I guess he could have climbed the stool – but how likely is that?

Happy Wonderversary #2!

Two years ago, Wonderbutt, (B)Light of my Life, made his way into our household by using the subtle ploy of falling asleep on my daughter’s lap at the pet store we had visited with the intent of getting her a fish.  That was the last time Wonderbutt achieved a goal without bulldog-dozing his way through everything in his path.

During his second Christmas with the Firepants Family, Wonderbutt managed to commandeer as many gifts as he could – most of them from his sister, Mrs. Pain in the Butt.  Despite the fact that he had received his own gifts, Wonderbutt operates under the philosophy that the grass is always greener on the other side of the Poop Pen, so to speak.

Wonderbutt rests on the rawhide bone he stole from Mrs. P.I.B. His own bone was identical (with a red stripe).

Wonderbutt proudly holds the stuffed thing (beaver? gopher? we’re not sure) presented to Mrs. P.I.B. moments before.

Wonderbutt holds one of the toys actually bestowed upon him – the red toy – between his front paws. Note what he has in a headlock between his back legs…

Wonderbutt sits proudly on the new dog bed Santa brought – for Mrs. P.I.B.

“Which bed should I choose?” We’re going to start calling him Goldibutt.

Despite all of Wonderbutt’s machinations, the Firepants Family had a pretty good Christmas this year.  I will fill you in on some more of the day’s events later this week…

These Pictures are Copyrighted, So Please Do Not Steal Them to Put on Your Own Holiday Cards. You Know You Want To.

Something tells me that some of you might need a pick-me-up today, so I decided to spare you the riveting post that I originally planned that gave intriguing details about my unfortunate habit of dropping the floss container daily, causing the inner contents to fly across the room, forcing me to comb the territory of our bedroom/bathroom until I find it, and then taxing my already weakened mental capacity as I attempt to force the contents back in while Cap’n Firepants calmly opens his bathroom cabinet and begins to use his own floss that has never been dropped or taken adventurous trips to the land beneath our bed.  At least he thinks it hasn’t.  It’s quite possible that someone switched the jinxed floss container with the pristine one in his cabinet.  But I can’t imagine who would do a passive-aggressive thing like that.

Instead of that electrifying story, I decided to regale you with some pics from my latest photo session of the Butts – formally known as Wonderbutt and Mrs. Pain in the Butt.  I had some vague notion that I might be able to use the photos for a family Christmas card.  But this is becoming more and more unlikely as other priorities, such as repairing Wonderbutt’s latest damage to my winter coat, keep getting in the way.

I would like to preface this display by stating, although Wonderbutt went to Puppy Kindergarten and learned very well how to “Sit” when so requested, he never learned how to “Stay Sitting Long Enough for Me to Take a Good Picture”, so our photo sessions sound like this, “Sit.  Good dog, Wonderbutt.  Good dog, Mrs. P.I.B.  No, stay sitting, Wonderbutt.  Sit.  SiT!  SIT!  No, do not come over here and try to eat the camera!  Good dog, Mrs. P.I.B.  Come back over here by Mrs. P.I.B., Wonderbutt.  Do not eat her collar.  Sit.  Good.  I’m backing up slowly now.  Stay sitting.  S-T-A-Y sitting.  Good.  I’m slowly moving the camera.  Sit.  Good.  #@!$%!  Wonderbutt.  Where the #$!! are you going?…”  So on, and so forth.  I think you get the idea.

(The first pic below is actually a slide show of pics.  Just roll your mouse over it, and you will see several other pics – or you can click on the arrows to advance through.)

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And, lastly – a not too horrible pic of Wonderbutt looking less thuggish than usual.

December’s Dead Rubber Post

I need to title these a bit more carefully, I guess.  I was searching my own blog to find out if I ever did a November Dead Rubber Post, and found the one that I did last year.  Only, I had to read half of  it to realize that I wrote it over a year ago.  Which makes me wonder, “If I don’t even remember it, my readers, half of whom had probably not even chanced upon my blog yet last November, would probably not remember it.  Which means that I could do a little copy/paste trick and none would be the wiser.”  Except now that I’ve filled you in on my evil scheme, you would be wiser.  If I even had the energy to erase those first few sentences, I would not have to be composing a Dead Rubber Post to begin with.  So, here we are.

If you would like to read last November’s Dead Rubber Post, and to find out what the heck a Dead Rubber Post is, then you can click here.  Otherwise, you can just look at some pictures of Wonderbutt the Bulldog employing his usual diplomatic manners as he encounters more evidence of nefarious Christmas decor that must be eaten.

Wonderbutt and Mrs. Pain in the Butt confront a new holiday decoration.

Mrs. P.I.B. keeps her distance, but Wonderbutt never backs away from a fight.

Wonderbutt cautiously approaches.

 

Wonderbutt ferociously warns Penobscott Penguin that his presence is not welcome in the Firepants household.

 

Penobscott deflates in defeat.

Satisfied that he has established his Grinchitude, Wonderbutt retires to his bed to chew on his (rein)deer antler. We’re still waiting for him to discover the tree…