I’ve never understood the phrase “dog days of summer,” y’all… until now. The phrase should probably be “tired as a dog days of summer” because as it’s gotten hotter and hotter outside, Charlie has either matured by about ten years or is adversely affected by the heat. Emma can lie on the ground with him (see above) and he has no interest in her. (Well, he’s still interested but not enough to actually do something about it.) On one of our jogs last week, Charlie saw a puddle of water on the side of the road and tugged so hard on his leash to get to it that he nearly turned the double stroller over. After watching him stretch out his full length in the puddle, where he continued panting and groaning, Emma made the observation that, “Charlie is TIRED and HOTTTT!” True that, my dear. Charlie is now only jogging after the sun goes down and is WALKING the rest of the time. Come quickly, fall weather!

Speaking of Charlie and his walks, I took him out on Thursday morning, and as is customary on his walks, he squatted down about a quarter of a mile from the house and did his business. Lest you think me an inconsiderate neighbor, I take bags along and clean up after him every time. Because of this, I made the very unfortunate discovery that Charlie had picked up another batch of worms. Wonderful. As the vet tech explained to me on the phone, heartworm preventive will keep a dog from getting most every type of worm except for tapeworms that live inside of fleas. I explained that Charlie is a house dog, that we’ve never even seen a flea on him, and that he never scratches. Thus began an explanation of the unlikely (but true in our case) possibility that Charlie ATE a flea (or a dozen), digested said flea, digested its accompanying parasites, and now had a flea AND worm problem. At this point in the conversation, I gave my best exasperated expression to Charlie, who looked at me as if to say, “What? I’m a dog!” Sigh. It all worked out for the best, I begrudgingly suppose, as this gave our vet an opportunity to properly diagnose pano, to check the huge chompers that have grown in, and to give Charlie a clean bill of health. Well, except for the worms. Charlie has now taken meds for both problems and is his normal happy-go-lucky self. Now, we just have to decide what kind of flea treatment to give him, as he is obviously prone to snacking on fleas when the mood so strikes him. Oh, Charlie — you know how to keep things exciting around here!

Speaking of exciting, the World’s Largest Garage Sale happened this weekend in Duncan. What is the World’s Largest Garage Sale, you ask? Well, someone somewhere picks an arbitrary weekend near the end of summer and declares it such, prompting almost every person in town to have a garage sale. The result is chaos, as there are cars EVERYWHERE, driving to and from the myriad of garage sales all over town. We had our stuff out on Friday at 7am, and before I could even get all of it out, people were coming up to me and and buying it. By noon, almost everything was gone, so we closed up shop and made plans to spend the next day out of town as we had already witnessed numerous near accidents on the road in front of our house and wanted to get away from the insanity. You would have done likewise had you been here!

On Saturday morning, we headed out to Norman, where there just happens to be a Toys R Us, a mall, and a handful of bookstores. This may seem like no big deal to you, but these are all big deals to us since our last trip to a mall was… black Friday? I think so. We took the girls by Petsmart to see if we could find a toy that Charlie can’t chew through in a day (we didn’t find one), and when I showed them a picture in a book of what German Shepherds are made to do (herd sheep) and asked them what Charlie was doing in the picture, Ana screamed, “HE’S TRYIN’ TO EAT THE LAMB!!!” Dramatic much? Emma spent her time in Petsmart going up to every pet owner in the store, pointing to their dogs, and saying, “I want to PET him!” (Charlie didn’t know what to do with her when she came home smelling like all those dogs!) Anyway, we concluded the afternoon in Moore, where we discovered the future site of another Half Price Books! You may remember hearing me complain about the fact that we didn’t have a Half Price Books in all of Oklahoma, then rejoicing that they finally built one in OKC right near Penn Square Mall. (Near Ted’s!) Well, now they’re building a SECOND location in Moore. A location in Lawton is sure to open up soon, right? (Well, maybe not. But at least I can now choose between two locations in the state!) After eating a snack at Krispy Kreme (where Ana complained that her donut was not “perfect,” thus prompting Emma to eat it for her), we headed home. One of our neighbors was still having a garage sale, but for the most part, the town had returned to normal. Ahhh…

And now, I’m getting everything ready for birthday week. I have to tell you that having all of your babies during the same week is just genius, especially if they’re close in age. Not like we planned it that way, but I don’t think there’s anything more fun than a double birthday party. The girls will probably disagree with me when they’re older, but right now, they’re very excited about all the birthday fun we’ve got planned. As I’ve told them before, God gave them both the best birthday gift ever by giving them to one another. They’d probably rather have Toy Story toys than each other, but one day, they’ll appreciate the blessing of having a sister. I’ve been preparing them for birthday week all month long so that they’ll know who they’re celebrating this week, and I think they get it. I’ll ask them who has a birthday coming up, and Emma will shout, “ANNNNAAAA!” Then, Ana will shout, “THEN, EMMMMMAAAAA!” Love it.

Better go and get some errands run before lunchtime, when I’ll be enjoying some enchiladas a la Miss Lisa. They’ve been tempting me from the freezer for quite a while now, and I just couldn’t stand it anymore. Mmmm… can’t wait!