Why I'm Not A Photographer Anymore and How I Almost Killed The Dog

I can't believe it's already Friday (and this is the third Friday the 13th this year, by the way)! We had a really busy week- it went by so fast! Frazier and I are just perpetually congested and/or drippy. But we all feel okay. ..and though there was lots of snot and some coughing Frazier never ran a fever. So I count my blessings. :)
I've been wanting to do a blogpost, but haven't gotten a chance, and now that so many days have gone by I can't remember what happened to post about it!

One thing I attempted this week was another photo shoot. Imagine that, right? (Hence the many pictures including those above.) But every time I do this, it reminds me why I'm not a photographer anymore. Sure it was stressful, and sure it meant spending evenings and weekends with someone else's family, but more than that...it's just hard to get good pictures. Especially of babies. Even at home, at the time of day the lighting is perfect, with all his favorite toys, right after he's been fed...Frazier still looks every which way but AT THE CAMERA AND SMILING.

These aren't half the pictures we took! :)

I've come to embrace the non-smiling pictures. They're priceless...and cute...either way. My friend Josie (allforfunphotography) is doing family pictures of us the beginning of December. I'm looking forward to those...and I have high hopes we'll get some good ones!

We're still having mid-70s sunny afternoons which are beautiful, but just not November weather (not that there is a standard East Texas November weather...obviously). I won't complain. It could be really cold and wet.

Oh- about Gatsby...here's a true story from earlier this week (Tuesday afternoon to be exact.) I almost killed the dog. (No- not on purpose.) I left 2/3 of a dark chocolate bar on the coffee table where I thought he couldn't reach. I thought wrong. In over three years Gatsby has NEVER jumped up on the coffee table. I didn't know he could. I don't think he did either until recently, but he's done it several times in the past couple of days. New trick, I guess. Super frustrating.

Anyway, he was outside when I put it there, and then I forgot about it until I heard rustling in the living room and went to investigate. He'd eaten, by my estimate, about an ounce by the time I got there and I wouldn't have been distraught (he got some milk chocolate once before and the vet- I called right away- said not to worry), but this was dark chocolate. I did some [very fast] research online and a number of sites suggested inducing vomitting (within 2 hours of ingestion) by giving the dog hydrogen peroxide (no greater than 3% solution).

So, crying and chiding myself all the while for being so incredibly irresponsible, I gave him some hydrogen peroxide by way of a syringe. Nothing happened. So I called our vet to see if I needed to rush him in and very calmly, they told me to continue with the hydrogen peroxide until he finally threw up. Which I did. Frantically. While sobbing. And sure enough...he finally threw it up. Three days later he's fine. So the moral of that story? Don't leave dark chocolate out...even in places you think your dog can't reach. And if you do...you're going to need a syringe and some hydrogen peroxide on hand.

Here are a couple of pictures of Josh and Frazier I took this week:

And I suppose that's it for this post...and not a moment too soon. I hear the fussbudget...dear little thing.