The Best Mother's Day Gift......

I have had the very best Mother's Day ever this weekend. It started on Friday night with homemade pizza. Logan did a fine job of slicing pepperoni, spreading sauce and cheese, and peering through the oven door till everything was cooked and melted. The only thing he didn't do was remove the finished product from the oven. Mom helped with that step.

Friday night when I tucked him into his bed he was busy setting his alarm for Saturday morning. We didn't have to go anywhere, but knowing that he likely had something up his sleeve, I didn't ask too many questions. I did check his clock once he was asleep - he had set it to wake him up at 5:27 in the morning, so I shut it off. That's way too early, even for a weekday. I did NOT want to get up that early on a Saturday, and normally once he's up, so am I.

When I did finally get up on Saturday morning, it was about 8:30. There was a lot of very industrious sound coming from the kitchen. Minutes after I arrived upstairs, I was served a delicious breakfast of strawberry pancakes, juice, and coffee. Am I spoiled or what?

We spent the day with family, and for supper Logan made "Ready Already Alfredo" from the Magic Bullet cookbook. He went a little overboard with the garlic, but the sauce was good nonetheless. All I had to do was boil some pasta. I had picked up a broccoli salad, and some pomegranate juice that we sipped from wine glasses - just to romanticize the whole evening further.

So, I had breakfast, family time, supper, more family time on Saturday. Today Logan and I were outside most of the morning, then we headed over to the mall to ride the charity Ferris Wheel. The Persechini Run-Walk-A-Thon is sometime around the 28th of May - so this weekend they had the midway running in the mall parking lot to raise money. $5 each for a ferris wheel ride is a VERY GOOD deal when the money goes directly to a charity. That's the same price we'd pay for a ferris wheel ride anywhere else, and who knows where the money goes if you're somewhere else.

Then (and this is the best part), Logan and I went in to the mall, and wandered around Coles book store. FOR TWO HOURS. TOGETHER. We read snippets to each other. We sat on the floor and read side by side. We meandered around looking at books that interested us individually, and we always seemed to meet up just a second before my sense of panic set in. We each chose a book to buy, and tonight after supper, we sat side by side on the couch. Reading. Together. I'm absolutely thrilled!

Charles Hamish Aloysius Sisman IV

My last post was incredibly hard to write. This one is going to flow much easier, I'm sure. Lots of changes in the last few weeks.... losing Muffy was the toughest one.
One night this week we drove up to Victoria Corners to pick up this little guy. His name is Charles Hamish Aloysius Sisman IV - we call him Charlie for short. Finding the puppy for us was easy - there were two left, one black pug, and one fawn pug. For a long time my folks have always said they'd like to have a black pug. That was the easy part.

Naming him presented other challenges entirely. I looked through websites listing "popular dog names", determined NOT to use any of them. Jaime and I emailed back and forth one day trying to come up with something suitable. I like the idea of using a human name for a dog. I liked Hamish. Dad didn't like Hamish. Mom thought it was "Hammish". But I still really liked the name Hamish. I thought I was the first person to transfer this name from the human population to the canine family - but no. Evelyn's son has a dog named Hamish. I am not confident that I knew that though.

This poor puppy was so small, and so sluggish, and so chubby that I thought Lummox was also an appropriate name. Dad didn't like that on either. Mom suggested all kinds of girly names. I don't want the poor dog to have identity issues when he's all grown up. Imagine...three or four years from now when he's sitting at the pub, drinking ale and smoking cigars. Some cute cocker spaniel would approach and ask him his name.

"Momma calls me Angel."

Nope. That wouldn't work at all.

At least with a flexible name like Charlie - he can vary his name to suit the company he's keeping. I have no doubt he'll be Chuck when he's watching football with the guys. He'll introduce himself as Charles when he goes for his first job interview, and when he gets accepted into the Political Science program at the university. But, for right here and right now, he's just plain ol' Charlie. And we're all wrapped around his little paws!