My Spring Avatar

I have had several comments about my new April/Spring Twitter avatar so I have to tell you that there is a story behind it.

First, for my pals not on Twitter that read my bloggie, here is the picture.

The story was way too long for the Twitter 140 characters and some of you haven't made it over to my replacement legal Facebook Fan Page, so I thought the bloggie was the best place for the story.

My mom used to be afraid of sunflowers. Yep, isn't that funny, I hear you all laughing. She is a bit sensitive about it now and has a hard time explaining why. Something about how tall they get and the fact they grew in her backyard and when the wind blew that got really spooky looking. She says it's also that big section in the center that looks creepy. It's kind of like faces.

The funny thing is she never really told anyone about her fear until about 5 years ago. Her mom was in the hospital in a town away from where we live and she and her two sisters were staying nearby. They went out to dinner at a Cracker Barrel and mom made the big mistake of mentioning her fear. Of course her sisters bought a giant sunflower to tease her with. She says she is over her fear but I see her shudder when she doesn't think anyone is looking. They had a bunch of really big ones by the drive thru of our drugstore last summer.

The other funny thing is my picture in the center of the sunflower. It's my picture where it looks like I'm sneezing. Well, mom gets seasonal sneezy - less from flowers more from from the yucky green pine tree pollen, but this is the month for that stuff!

So that's why the avi is a joke on mom.

Photo by Jim Simonson (rocketjim54) used under Creative Commons License

Spring you pulled a foolie on me

First I probably have to educate you on what a FOOLIE is. When dad throws sticks for me to swim and get in the pond, I don't like to bring them back to him. He gave them to me, so they are mine all mine. Well, even in a yard with as many trees as we have sometimes a good throwing stick is hard to find. It's also complicated because when dad is looking for good sticks, I like to run ahead and find them first.

I'm trying to give you enough background so you don't think dad is just plain mean. But I do have to take some of the blame for seriously reducing the stick population and stealing them before he can get them. So to prolong the throwing and swimming fun, dad tricks me. He pretends like he is throwing the stick and I start running and launch into the pond, only to find he just put it behind his back. This picture says it all. You can almost see me down the incline by the water trying to find the #@*! stick.

So in my family we call that a FOOLIE. To use it in a sentence, "Daddy pulled a foolie on Yoda." As I said, it would be mean if it wasn't my own darn fault. I just can't help my stick compulsion. I need a 12 step program. [Mom loves this picture so much she uses it on her phone for when daddy calls her - always gives her a chuckle.]

To finally get to what this post is about, it seems that Spring did a foolie on all of us in Furrginia and maybe some of you in the rest of the country. It has been nice and warm mostly these last couple weeks and the calendar said it was spring last Monday. But yesterday some folks had snow in Furrginia (not us) and the rest of us had it really cold. Apparently the foolie even got the building mom works in because they have no heat today.

So I am announcing officially: SPRING you better stop with the foolie and give us the warm weather back right now, or ELSE!

Spring Is Here

The weather has been nice lately and I have been swimming several times already but the calendar says that the first day of Spring is really today. I think they might be right because mom is sneezing and there are all kinds of beautiful flowers blooming and colorful trees. It's a real nice change after all the brown!

Mom made a neat video for Spring for her work bloggie and I thought all my friends would like to see what spring is like in good old Furginia.

Oh and mom got the family's tickets for BarkWorld Expo, so we are all set.

I Think It's Spring!

Today it went up to 59 degrees (15 degrees Celsius for my International readers). Hard to believe it just snowed Tuesday night (before the nor'easter washed it away). That meant, you guessed it, time for swimming! Dad thought it was too cold to go swimming but how could anyone resist this?

Hurry dad! Let's play!

Dad took me out in the backyard and there I was swimming with the geese!

I just went swimming right away - I didn't even wait for dad to throw a stick!

Then he threw sticks in the pond and I fetched them over and over again!

Maybe I have some retriever in me?

Since dad took the pictures, there were 40 different shots of me pooping. He seems to be fixated on that. Fortunately it's mom that helps me with my bloggie so we picked one that gave me some privacy.

Privacy Please!

Too soon the fun was over.

A good shake after a great swim - priceless

Dad never dries me off (much to mom's dismay), so I brought back lots of water to share with mom.