Tell me this isn’t the cutest twosome you’ve ever seen.

Would it be weird to frame a picture of another person’s child and dog in your own house? Because this is exactly the kind of sunshine and gratuitous cuteness I need hanging in my hallway.

Last night, after an amazing dinner at Mercat a la Planxa (which has forever changed my negative opinion of Spanish food and lima beans), on one of our few actual “dates” since we moved back to Chicago and after an exhausting few weeks for us both, Rob and I came home late, looking forward to a long, restful night in a nice warm bed.

I’m sure you can see where I am going with this.

You know that Family Guy episode where Peter gets stuck in an out house and it tips over? And he goes, “Augh … augh God … auugggh … its everywhere!” (Watch it here)

That’s essentially the condition we found Molly in last night. Though she somehow managed to get “it” everywhere without actually tipping her crate over. Why am I not surprised?

Poor Charlie (and his perpetual state of gassiness) got blamed for the smell for a short while there, but I think he’s forgiven me, don’t you?

I made the mistake today of going out into the real world wearing yoga clothes.

Being that I work from home, I tend to forget that the vast majority of the population does not live their lives wearing Lycra pants and a hoodie. After all, I only emerge from my house to go across the street to the gym (where everyone is wearing spandex), or to walk Molly down the block and back (where, if I’m wearing anything other than PJs or yoga clothes, the neighbors start asking questions about where I’m headed off to, looking so nice). I live in yoga clothes, changing out of them only at nighttime, to put on my comfy pants.

I am fine with this. In fact, I think I look my best in yoga or otherwise lounge-y clothes. I am far more confident about my appearance in spandex or pajamas than when I’m all gussied up. I can’t wait until the day I turn 60 and it finally becomes appropriate for me to shop at Eileen Fisher. I knew Rob was “the one” the day he remarked that I looked better in my beloved gray pajama pants than in a dress.

So it’s easy for me to forget that I shouldn’t go straight from yoga to, say, the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Social Security office downtown to finally officially change my name, lest I should attract unwanted attention.

Spandex is a privilege, not a right — and this is a lesson I am beginning to learn the hard way.

Of course, I have made this mistake before. Last winter, I left my yoga studio in Nashville, picked up Molly, and started the drive up to Chicago for the weekend. I made it all the way to central Indiana before having to pull over at a truck stop to gas up the Honda. And wouldn’t you know it, no sooner than I stepped out of the car did the truck drivers start in with the commentary.

It wasn’t all bad, though. Who doesn’t like to be called “Hey Gorgeous” once in awhile? And one of the guys practically fell all over himself to scrape the ice that had accumulated on my windshield. 

I made a mental note never to wear yoga pants out again. But today, I did.

I dropped off my yoga mat at home and, without changing my clothes, headed out to go downtown. I hadn’t even made it to the Sedgwick L station when I heard from behind me:

“Girl, you’re pretty juicy for a white girl.”

I looked up to see the man pass me. He’s black, a little disgruntled and insane-looking, quite possibly on his way to the rehab facility/homeless shelter next to the L station. He’s pushing a shopping cart full of cans, but he pauses, craning his neck to take a second admiring look at my, erm, juiciness.

Now, ordinarily, I am not offended by whistling and ogling and so forth. This is mostly because I don’t get hit on too often, so, hey, I’ll take what I can get.

But juicy? Really? He obviously meant it appreciatively, but I had to bite my tongue to keep from demanding, “ARE YOU CALLING ME FAT?” (I figured the best way to kick off an afternoon in the social security line was not by confronting someone who’s on — or worse, not on — something.)

White girls do not want to be juicy. In fact, we go to great lengths not to be juicy, or even to appear to be juicy. When we put celebrities on the covers of magazines, we airbrush out any and all traces of juiciness. We aspire to be completely juice-free.

When I called Rob to whiningly ask if he thinks I am fat, he maintained that juicy just means “sexy,” with no allusion to size or shape or muscle tone whatsoever.

I know better. So does Urban Dictionary, which defines juicy as:

1. Description of a girl’s high sex appeal and shapely figure, often related to the curves of a round butt or large breasts; thick and curvacious.
2.  Laced with PCP, as in, “Man, I’m ripped. Was that chronic juicy or something?”
3. As in Juicy Couture, a cheap but overpriced brand of tacky velour sweatsuits bought mostly by preteen girls and white-trash middle-aged women who think they’re on the cutting edge of fashion. 

Thick and curvaceous? I am now feeling very distressed about the size of my derrière. I mean, I know I’ve been getting a little jiggly, ever since I started up with all those smoothies on our honeymoon. I know I’ve gained back, like, ten of the 20 pounds I lost a few years ago, when I was at my juiciest. I just didn’t think it was that … noticeable.

Ugh. Why do I always allow the offhand commentary of the homeless to usher in a major personal life crisis? 

Oh well. I’m off to make banana bread out of the healthy bananas I bought with the express purpose of letting them over-ripen so I could make some sugary, carb-filled banana bread. I’m putting chocolate chips in there, too. And I will probably have eaten half of it before the night is over.

So stick that in your juice box and suck it.

I took this post down a few weeks ago because Rob insisted it was boring, but I have since gotten quite a few complaints. So, back by popular demand, here is a post from May 9:

It was kind of quiet around here today, so I figured I’d liven things up a bit.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And that’s just from getting her ears cleaned. You can’t imagine what happens after she gets a bath. Wheaten Terriers aren’t big on hygiene.

Two days ago, Molly and I woke up to an usual sight in our backyard: snow!

It was 32 degrees exactly that morning, but by the end of the day, it was 50 and the snow had melted.

But don’t worry, schools are still closed. On the local news, coverage of this “major snowstorm” announced that several counties in Middle Tennessee got “enough to make a snowman — about a half inch, each!”

This weekend, Molly managed to get a hold of a “special brownie” left unattended in the coat pocket of our house guest.

After a few laps around the living room, I managed to wrest the finely seasoned dessert from her eagerly clenched jaws. And though she didn’t seem to have gotten much out of the plastic bag, she spent the rest of the night staring wide-eyed at her reflection in the window and trying to get me to take her to White Castle.

Tonight, Molly and I were invited to help teach Level 1 obedience at the Nashville Dog Training Club.

Now, ironically enough, I have recently been unable to watch my obedience mentor, the Dog Whisperer, in action. (For some reason our National Geographic Channel — that’s now Nat Geo, mind you — has been patching in and out, despite my frequent, desperate calls Comcast.) It’s too bad, too, because I was making real progress going all Cesar Milan on Molly’s ass.

But apparently, we no longer even need any TV dog expert to guide us on our way. We have passed the learning stage. The student becomes the teacher. The time has come to share my infinite wisdom with novice dog owners across Middle Tennessee.

Rob, you can pick your jaw up from off the floor now.