Blue Skies and Yellow Dogs

Look, the Zadge hasn’t had time to blog at you because her life has been filled up.

With dog hair:
And with finishing her ill-conceived project of painting the stairs black, which now have as much dog hair on them as the Zadge’s fleece:

Ize sorrie momma, i need to luze some hair before it gets hotz.

And with a visit from this cutie-patootie Baby Hazz, who kept calling Harry “Henry” and Bugs “Buzz”, which the Hazz and the Zadge kept joking were the dogs’ “blog names”:

And then the doozy hit – the Zadge’s old friend and Partier Extraordinaire, The Kaiser, flew into town for the weekend.  This meant lots of laughs, and food, and booze.  Babe the Builder joined in on the festivities on Friday night:

Doesn’t it look like Babe is reading from a teleprompter in front of her?

Let’s just say that so much fun was had Friday night that the Zadge and the Kaiser were forced to resort to a huge breakfast and Bloody Marys the next morning in order to feel human again:

But they did manage to sweat out the eggs and the booze with a great, if muddy, hike in the still-snow covered (arghh!) mountains:

Which then necessitated some post-hike brewskies:

Which then necessitated a post Bloody-Hike-Beer nap before hitting the town and starting all over again:

By the way, the Zadge and the Sista both have that scarf.  Twelve bucks at Tar-jay.

Then the Kaiser got a front row seat to see a true Rock Goddess play:

Maybe that’s what prompted him to say, “Oh my god, we need more wine” as he ran into the Zadge’s kitchen frantically pulling a bottle out of the wine rack.

Which led the duo to drink more and stay up really late while the Zadge forced the Kaiser to watch old videos of Keith Richards and the Stones.

Which led the duo to once again have to order some Bloody Marys the next morning:

So basically, the Zadge’s life has been filled with dog hair and Bloody Marys and that’s why you haven’t heard from her in awhile.

Hiccup.

The Zadge planned to do a goofy post about her weekend shenanigans, which really weren’t all that anyway, but feels too sad and dismayed about the Boston Marathon tragedy today to blog about something so relatively insignificant.

The Zadge lived in Boston for three years, right on the race route on Heartbreak Hill.  Every Patriot’s Day, she threw a party (of course she did) and she and all her guests got stupid drunk and cheered on the brave runners.  The Zadge never failed to be inspired and in awe of the determination and tenacity and strength and the nevergiveupness of those racers.

The Zadge saw this father pushing his son up Heartbreak Hill way back in 1988.  Here they are 25 years later, still at it.

So when the Zadge first heard the news today, her heart cracked slightly in sympathy for her old hometown.  Then she heard about the extent of the casualties and the injuries and the lost limbs.  And the death of an 8-year old.  And her heart broke.

She thought about the evil in the world, that it seems to be rearing its ugly head more and more these days.  She felt helpless.  She hit the Face and the Twit and started to see the Mister Rogers saying over and over, and this from Patton Oswalt on everyone’s timelines/tweets.

She took a deep breath.

And realized that evil will always lose.

Because all of the good in this world – you, me, your family and friends, all of our loving dogs, those good people we will never meet out there in Africa or New Zealand or Thailand or anywhere or everywhere- the good will always outnumber the evil.

Always.

By a lot.

And, damn, the good has a lot of karma.

So, like the brave runners in the Boston Marathon, the good has the determination and the tenacity and the strength and the nevergiveupness to kick evil’s mother-fucking ass all the way straight to Hell.

Karma’s a bitch, evil.

1.  Blue Lena is back home!  She’s safely in one piece.  She’s been strumming a lot of Elvis and Celine Dion since she’s been back.  You know why?  She was in VEGAS!  Yes, Vegas.  Southwest Airlines delivered her back to Old Vicky at 3:30 in the morning and said she mistakenly flew to Las Vegas.  She won’t tell the Zadge what happened during her little frolic and detour because, you know, what happens in Vegas…  Well, that and she’s an inanimate object with no ability to talk.

2.  The Zadge knows you all have just been sitting staring at your computer for a week doing nothing but waiting anxiously to find out what the Zadge decided to do about her ill-conceived and partially-completed project to paint her stair treads black. Before she jetted off to her desert getaway, she decided to just forge on with the damn thing and paint the rest of the treads black.  She just has to finish the project this weekend by painting the risers white to hide all the black paint mistakes.  She hopes black, glossy, real fur stairs will soon be the “in” thing in the design world.

3.  Put down whatever you reading and go get this book and start reading it: Best book the Zadge has read recently, and she’s read some good ones (check out her reading list to see the latest).

4.  The Zadge was hoping to have better photos from her trip to Arizona but she had issues with her Big Girl Camera, so had to rely mainly on the lousy iPhone camera.  The Sonoran desert landscape was cool and so different from the Rocky Mountains.  Although the Zadge felt like the famous Saguaro cacti were all just standing around giving her the finger:5. And mon dieu, the critters running around in the desert! These little lizards were everywhere!

6. After safely evading the snakes, and the Gila monsters, and the lizards, the Zadge basically spent the day working out for a couple of hours, then lying by this:
7.  and eating this:

It’s Healthy! (Ignore the bacon)

and drinking a couple of these:

8. Look what 100-pound Rottie is having a very serious standoff with a very intimidating elderly 11-pound cat:

9. Look what happens when said 100-pound Rottie — who doesn’t even have a damn tail – loses said standoff and runs like a – pun intended – “scaredy cat”:

Dead Vodka Tonic

10. Speaking of dead, or potentially dead, the Zadge is thinking about getting some CHICKENS!  Doesn’t that sound fun?  Beautiful big Martha Stewart-type chickens running around the Zadge’s backyard giving the Zadge an endless supply of fresh eggs, right? This is a good idea, right? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? Right? HARRY WILL KILL THEM THE FIRST DAY.  Right?