The ways they contort, and methods they use to keep their noses warm, always amuse me.

This one’s a little fuzzy, I know, but I still thought it was cute.

Dogs. We love them in part because they have no dignity.

Those that come immediately to mind are “anxious” and “handitarded”

Bruiser and Chelsea’s response to the TLC and multi-step bathing and aromatherapy conditioning process I carried out on their little bodies yesterday?

Rolling around in (what I presume by their new stench to be) cat piss.

Never did post about the Chis stay with my Mom and Dad, did I? I should. But anyway, they’ve been more than usual cute since I got back from Savannah, or else I just really missed them hard and everything they do is cuter as a result.

Chelsea has solidified her new behavior of lurking for me outside the shower. Each night I go into the bathroom, throw my clothes on the floor and get into the shower. Each night I open the shower curtain and see petite la Chelsea curled up in my discarded clothing, looking up at me like “What? It smells like you!” Then when I step out of the shower she flees in a panic, because while she wants to be close to me and my scent, the thought that I might try to, you know, TOUCH her, sends her into a mini-panic. Then she comes back and sits by me while I do my hair, crying for attention. Depending on my mood it’s either adorable or irritating. But every time I see her curled up in my discarded clothes, looking up at me with her ginormous googly eyeballs, I have a serious “awwww!” moment.

Jake has realized that even when I am otherwise engaged I have a tendency to kick out at anything that attacks my feet, so he’s now taken to skulking under my computer desk and pouncing on them unexpectedly, in order to get me to pet his belly with one. He’s much better at training me to exhibit his desired responses than vice-versa.

The dogs have been banished to sleeping on the floor due to the “Reclaiming the Bed as a Territory of Jake in a Really Inappropriate Way at 10 p.m. on a night when Susan has been Driving for Thirteen Hours, Dammit.” incident. But that’s been going surprisingly well. Some niceness (ahhh… stretching out in own bed) and some not-so-niceness (Jake refuses to sleep if he’s not in the bed, so he runs around chasing Chelsea all night and they tend to be frazzled in the morning and then sleep all day. Also PB wakes me up crying every night and after that I have a hard time getting back to sleep. Also no cuddles.) But we’re adjusting. Sometimes I wake up to the sight of two pointy ear-tops and the top of a round-domed head pogoing impatiently next to the bed (that’s Jake) and it makes me laugh.

When I first got Bruiser I thought I could manufacture cute shots of her. I soon learned that you can’t make a chihuahua do cute things, you have to sit your happy arse down and wait for the cute to occur and hope you catch it. Forcing it scares them to death. See?

Terrified Chihuahua

Not-Terrified Chihuahua

Now, which do you think the chihuahua here: Cute Overload! is?

(not that I don’t love me some CO, because I do! Check out the baby fennec fox and die in the throes of cutegasm.)

So last day of my 4-day weekend today. It’s been nice to relax and not worry about “SUSAN - GOT A QUESTION FOR YA!” being hollered at me every 7.35 minutes by my new boss. </comment on that whole situation, as I don’t want to get fired.> Anyway, it’s been relaxing, chilling out and playing with my friends & family while not thinking about work. This weekend are Todd’s parties, which should be a good time, and I get to look forward to a whole week off starting on the 9th. Looks like I will be hanging in town, since the price of gas, the harsh reality of being responsible for a pack of wild dogs and everyone else’s schedules being awkward have conspired to make a trip anywhere too problematic. But there’s plenty to do here and, barring a giant heat wave or some new ghetto neighbors moving in next door, it should be fun to have time to myself (sans broken appendage).

I had to take Chelsea to the vet today for her shots and to schedule a dental for her. The clinic I go to has a rotating cast of vets, so you don’t always see the same one. This one I hadn’t seen in a year and a half, but she got all excited when she saw me. While I know I am memorable I don’t know that I am that memorable, so I was confuddled, but then she said “You’re the xylitol lady!” and I realized why I was hard to forget. Apparently she become quite famous on her veterinary listserv after that whole debacle, and the local expert on xylitol poisoning. I assured her that Bruiser was now fine and that we all gave up artificial sweeteners.

Then I got Chelsea (all 5.4 lbs of her) her shots and brought her home. Of course my ghetto-ass car had to go all wonky and the back passenger side window wouldn’t stay up. I think it fell off the track, and I think they can fix it at work tomorrow so it hopefully won’t be a big deal. For the time being it’s being held in place with - wait for it - loose change I had laying in the car. That’s all wedged in the cracks to keep the window from falling down. I reign white-trash supreme!

But that got me considering (again) that it’s pretty much time for a new car in Susanland. This one will be 8yrs old in October, and slowly but surely it’s starting to give out. Not mechanically, that would make my decision easy; but the windows haven’t worked right for a while now, and the door locks and alarm are wonky too. The stereo I gave up on years ago, and it’s starting to show some rust in places. But the thing is, I don’t WANT a new car. I don’t even want a new used car. I love that my car is totally ghetto-tastic and of no appeal to anyone. I love that I don’t give a crap if someone scrapes up against it. It’s a comfortable, reliable, nondescript car which no one would every want to steal. If I buy a new car I am going to want to buy a nice new car, not a piece of crap. And then someone is going to swipe it, or sideswipe it, and I am going to get all angsty about it. Of course said crappy car IS the reason I don’t think it’s a good idea to drive cross-country by myself right now, but I have to weigh that against having car payments again - ick, car shopping - double-ick, and the inevitable meteoric rise of my insurance rates if I buy something new. Plus I can’t justify buying a new SUV with the price of gas, but I can’t stand the thought of going back to a “car” car. Bleh. I can’t think about that today. I will think about that tomorrow.

Anyway, Jenipants shared some very exciting news with me today, so a big congratulations goes out to her. Seize the happiness, doll.

Oh! and this is my ONE-THOUSANDTH post! So, hooray and stuff.

Between the piles of blankets and the heating pad I added to that bed, these dogs have little incentive to move at all during the day.

I bask in the radiant heat of the heater thing.

I lay on the footstool thing to position myself to capture maximum heat from the heater thing.

The lady keeps calling me “Sphinx-y pants.” She is crazy, and later I will pee on her kitchen rug.

(I love how if you look closely here you can see the heat shimmering in the air above the heater.)

And just for the heck of it and because I am in the mood to miss myTodd™, here’s a picture of him and Princess B back in 2002 when we still lived next door to each other (And PB had more black than gray in her face. But don’t mention it to her, she’s sensitive.)

Guess who feeds the dogs from the table? It’s not me, and it’s not my Mom. If you want to see some Mexican-jumping-bean dogs, you should see these chihuahuas when my Dad comes around and eats something. Oh, and check out the ‘tocks on Jake (far right)

And here’s their dog, Cricket, who is the right color but the wrong shape and size to fit into the superBadPack. In fact, he matches the texture of that rug quite well, now that I look at it.

As you can see, Chelsea is what we like to call “highly food-motivated” in that she flees from all humans unless they have food - then she tries to crawl up their leg into their lap to get it away from them.

Yes, yes - I seeet on her. But she like eet! I swear to yooo! Thees little one, in theee back here? She no like. But theees one, she LIKE when I seeet on her! Is truth!

Sometimes? When my paw ees cold? She let me warm on her stomach. She ees good to me, no?

Haven’t had time to do much creative stuff in the past few months, but I did spend the last TWO WHOLE DAYS (well, part of the day on two days in a row, so, sorta) creating this video for you, and ONLY for you. It’s called Life on the Chihuahua Farm, and boy is it grand. (The life and the video.) There are appearances by the three doggies you’ve come to know and love plus a surprise appearance by my reflection! Also my legs at one point, but it’s just a flash on the screen, unless you pause it, you perv.

The file’s about 15MB and in .wmv format - for those of you with no idea what that is, it will take awhile to download but our PC will play it.

Hope you enjoy and Happy Holidays to everyone - thanks for whatever magical thing you’ve done for me this year — I know it was something good or I totally wouldn’t love you like I do!

Oh! There’s adult language in there! But you need the sound on to get the full effect, so if you’re at work wait until no one’s around, K?

I am just not going to make much of a comment for these. They speak for themselves.

Jake is clearly made of used bouncy rubber balls abandoned by children who (sadly) were later relegated to mental institutions.

Also this whole thing has a love-in/grope-fest vibe happening which makes me feel a bit voyeuristic.

RubberArms1 - stare you down

Originally uploaded by superBadGirl

RubberArms2 - the lickfest

Originally uploaded by superBadGirl

RubberArms3 - ear snorgles

Originally uploaded by superBadGirl

winterMonths

Originally uploaded by superBadGirl
In the winter months, some superbadgirls have been known to develop odd, Bruiser-shaped lumps on their chests. This condition usually rights itself by springtime, and seems to be somehow temperature and/or sweater-related.

Edit: LMAO - I posted this via flickr last night, late-ish. Now, my stuff on flickr is largely unobserved/commented because, well honestly it’s mostly of interest only to me. This morning I saw that this had roughly 5x the number of views of my average photo there, and I hadn’t even cross-posted it to any other groups or anything. Weird. Then I looked at the tags I had put on it in my sleep-dep haze last night. “Chihuahua, boobs.”

Mystery solved.

Sometimes the predictability of the world is a comfort, really, even as it’s in the middle of being ridiculous.