Bob is BRILLIANT

Every so often Bob reminds me, through some brilliant deed, why I married him. This morning, when it was time to engage in the "let's get Cooper to sit on the potty to pee" game, he said to Cooper "Let me introduce you to the joys of READING WHILE GOING POTTY."

Why didn't *I* think of that??? The men in my family have a long standing tradition of using the bathroom as a library. The kid is obsessed with Green Eggs and Ham, and could not sit down on his potty fast enough to peruse it while piddling. Score 1 for the Bob!

And today I am finally the proud owner of my own car. I went to the dealership to finalize the buyout of my lease, and got to have yet another odd and slightly uncomfortable exchange with David, the finance guy. Today he went on a riff about the Balloon Boy episode - the one with the kid who everyone thought went up in his family's homemade helium balloon, but now it appears it was a hoax - and how it was irresponsible of the chief of police to go on national TV and accuse the family of perpetrating fraud. Irresponsible of the POLICE? That family is lucky they still have custody of their kids if you ask me. But I politely declined to get pulled into a discussion of how it was or was not an invasion of that family's privacy and said that I was leaving it in the hands of the state of Colorado to figure out.

But now I have new plates, a fresh and shiny new inspection sticker and WOW is my car clean. They detailed it last week as part of the inspection. It was only this clean when I first got the car.

In the sad news category, I arrived at work to find an email announcing that early this morning a couple who lived just down the street from our campus were found dead. Apparently it was a murder-suicide. They were in their late 80's. It brings home the dread I often feel when I consider how hard it is to get old, what with the loss of independence and physical and mental fortitude that is often part of the experience. What level of despair does a couple have to reach to bring them to the point where the husband is willing to kill his wife and then himself? Apparently there was no history of known domestic violence, just an old couple who had lived in that house a long time.

SADNESS.

Also, my first born dog, Gus, is going to the vet today. He has been throwing up since Sunday. He made it through almost all of yesterday without barfing, so we thought he was over whatever he had. Then at 4am there was a lot of barking from the Schnauzers, and I went down to find he had been sick again. Poncho does NOT like being in a messy kennel. No he does NOT. He is the one who barks very insistently when Gus yaks in the kennel to get someone down to deal with it. So I don't know what the vet will do for him, but they wanted to see him. Dogs are even more frustrating than kids when they get sick, because at least now Cooper can tell me his tummy hurts. All Gus can do is look sad and limp. I hope it is nothing BIG.

The Gus.