Muddy dog

Our new windows were supposed to be installed today and tomorrow, but it's raining. We'll be waiting at least one more day. No big deal...we've waited this long. Speaking of the rain, it's actually only sprinkling, and Otis just went out for a potty break. I noticed that the rain drops were getting a smidge bigger, so I called him in. (He doesn't mind, he doesn't like getting rained on or splashed anyway.) He came inside earlier today chewing on a rock that was as big as my fist, so I immediately checked out his mouth when he came in this time...no rocks, but his whole face was doused in mud! He must have taken a nose dive into the dirt somewhere. Of course, he'd licked most of it off by the time I could wrangle him into the mandatory headlock for wiping him off. Amazingly, there was no mud on his paws. He was literally out there just eating dirt. What a nerd.

Of course, he's not a nerd in the traditional "smarty-pants" sense. M and I keep trying to talk to him about the baby, and he's not getting it (not that we really expect him to understand what the baby is when he can't actually see it). Most of the time we can ask him questions like, "Otis, where's your mom/dad/bone/dinner," and he'll show off his superior intellect by finding the item in question. We've been asking him lately, "Otis, where's the baby," and he just stares back at us. This question brought on my daily "is this really my life" moment. I spent a few minutes trying to make the dog understand that the baby is in my belly. He was not interested, and I realized about three minutes into this inane exercise that I'm really only teaching him that my belly is a baby because he can't comprehend that there's a baby INSIDE my belly. Needless to say, I gave up. That's when he went outside to chow on the dirt. Seriously, is this really my life?

Oh, our spider friends are also back in full force. About a month ago, we noticed these freakishly enormous spiders spinning webs every night on our front porch. M made it his personal mission to smash their little guts out with a 2x4 every morning before work. (Please don't think that M is a murderous fiend...these are SCARY big spiders.) After several mornings of whacking at them, they were gone...annihilated, running scared, I didn't care. They were gone. Or so we thought. They are back. There is one in a big web about a foot from the front windows right now. Unfortunately, that means the web is about three feet back into the landscaping out front. I was going to take a picture of the vermin to see if anyone could identify it, but I'm too afraid it will attack me or that it has a secret army hiding in the hostas waiting for me to come closer like guerilla warfare. It's a scary world out there!!