• Miss Maddy
• Maddy-girl
• Little lioness
• Mad-Eye Maddy
• The Maddiator
• Miss Fluffinstuff
• Fluffernutter (by Scott)
• Fluffy butt
• The Fuzz
• Spazzy
• Bossy lady
• Idiot (by Scott, when she’s acting, well, like an idiot)
• You! (by me, when she’s done something idiotic)

Circus dog
Self-appointed sentry of the homestead, Maddy has been trained not to claw at the windowsill, but that’s not going to stand in the way of her surveillance.

You are cordially invited to follow Maddy and the whole Brat Pack in photos and videos on Flickr.

Gordon, by the way, underwent successful treatment for giardia shortly after I published that list and thankfully outgrew the nicknames inspired by his egregious olfactory abuse. I did neglect to include one of his common and perennial pet names: Bubba (and the delirious variant Bubbalicious).

Happy New Year from my family to yours!

Anyhoo, to drum up some penguin mania in advance of this documentary screening (since we’re almost three years behind the curve here), we staged a stuffed penguin death match with the dogs, or as Scott has dubbed it, Munch of the Penguin. Enjoy!

Gordon went under the knife on Wednesday and, three extracted rotten teeth later, returned home positively indignant that he’d been tricked out of breakfast. He’s rebounded remarkably fast to cheeky bunny from little bear with a toothache. Here he is doing his best impression of a garden statue.

“This is a song with a lot of weather in it, and I don’t know about you, but I’m a sucker for weather.” -Tom Waits, November 2004 (listen from 04:55)

So! Moving right along.

Yesterday was cold and dry, and I tried to spend the daylight hours outside. Scott and I headed downtown to the last outdoor farmers market of the season. I bought a pair of poblano peppers because they’re so damn cute and quite tasty in quesadillas. At one of the apple stands, Scott picked out a bunch of Stayman Winesaps and Mutsus, and I cleaned up on pippins. Time again to try my hand at dumplings.

Back home we turned the dogs out to romp and rummage and turned our attentions to the garden. During the week some mad winds had blown the tin roof off our little porch shelter thing and stripped the remaining foliage off our two maples. So while Scott hit the roofs, collecting and stowing the tin sheets and scooping out the gutters on the house, I raked the maple leaves into a gorgeous pile by our new compost bin behind the greenhouse. (Okay, okay. It’s not as idyllic as it sounds or appears. That photo shows the garden in summer before we bought it. The greenhouse currently sits empty, as we haven’t actually moved in to it yet, and the plants are rather soggy and brown these days. But I’m really proud of our leaf pile.)

Gordon snacked on some gutter gunk before I chased him inside. Maddy obsessed over cat tracks in the bushes until I chased her inside too. She smelled, quite pleasantly, of mint and rosemary!

I took a break from raking and climbed up the rickety ladder, stretched out on my back on top of our house, spied into the neighbors’ gardens, felt a little lighter.

[Hollers at Maddy to get off the sofa]

Thanks, chenb, for your thousand-plus words.

I managed not to cry yesterday, despite heavy doses of Lucinda Williams and Kris Kristofferson, nor did I wash my hair, so I guess I’m in pretty good shape luck-wise. Definitely could have done with some fireworks and dumplings though!

Now, go enjoy more “aw”-inspiring photos and ponder the irresistible allure of Aardman dogs and conversational British English. That’s a good dog…

Did I mention I’m not concentrating well these days?

Back home, I gathered the post and added another job rejection letter to my growing collection. But it’ll be okay, because it turns out Saint Matthew’s Churches out of Tulsa, OK, are poised to pray for me and my job search. In fact, they say in their letter they “FEEL THAT SOMETHING VERY WONDERFUL IS TRYING TO COME TO [ME].” Apparently, the next 24 hours are crucial, because “timing is important to God.” Bad news for a procrastinator like me! As I consider their list of prayer needs, I wonder if I’m supposed to check all that apply. I certainly wouldn’t want them to pray for “confusion in my home”! The Brat Pack can manage that on our own, thank you. They offer to pray for “a money blessing” and even provide a space for me to specify an amount. No blank to indicate the exact make and model of “new car” I might want, however, and could I substitute a bicycle anyway? As for the mystical paper prayer rug I’m to mail back with my needs checklist and my seed gift, I’m with this guy: I’m keepin’ it. Unless maybe Paul Turner would be interested in hanging it with his velvet Jesus at the Darkside.

As they say over at Salon’s Video Dog, all together now, Aw!