I Have Been So Busy!

This is how I like to spend my weekends - chilling out in the family room, but Mom always finds things for me to do. I tell her that I'm tired from working all week, but it just goes in one ear and out the other. What does a pug have to do to get a day off?

So you may be asking yourself what has Stubby been doing and I can tell you in one word - LOTS! Where do I start? Some of you may remember that Mom ordered a rain barrel from the forest preserve district way back in February. Dad picked it up a couple of weeks ago and we worked on getting it hooked up last weekend. Mom thought it would be a good idea for me to autograph the concrete pad that the rain barrel will sit on and I was up for the challenge.

Dad was very careful not to press down too hard with my paw because he knows that I am very delicate. After I left my paw print, Dad wrote my name next to it and we left it to dry.

Mission accomplished! I was now on to my next project which was planting flowers. I really only agreed to help plant them because I like to pee on them. Don't tell Mom because she doesn't think my pee makes the flowers grow, but I know better.

I couldn't go to the store to pick out the flowers, so I told Mom exactly what I wanted and surprisingly enough she bought everything on my list. I love the color yellow because it is a happy color and I wanted a container full of these pretty yellow flowers at the edge of the patio so that I can see them as soon as I walk out the back door. Mom loves yellow too and we are probably the only house on the block with a yellow dining room. Dad calls it safety helmet yellow but Mom and I know that it is mellow yellow.

I needed other colors besides yellow in my flower containers, so I put this arrangement of orange, purple, and white next to the back stoop. Do you see how high that stoop is? Okay, maybe it's not that high but I can't jump up it anymore. I have to wait on the patio until someone comes and picks me up to take me inside, and I wanted something pretty to look at while I wait.

I sometimes go out the front door and I wanted my special dog planter that sits on the front stoop to be filled with red, white, and blue flowers. I hope these flowers grow big by the 4th of July so that all our party guests will like them.

Dad and I finished installing the rain barrel this week and it looks really cool. Dad had to build a wooden table for it so that you can put the watering can under the spout. Now all we need is some rain and we will be good to go. Mom is so excited that she won't have to use tap water to water the flowers, clean and fill the bird bath, and wash her car. Um, wash her car? Mom doesn't wash her car. I think she means so that Dad won't have to use tap water to wash her car.

Mom's Earthbound Farms tote came in the mail last week and she is in love with it! This is the front of the bag and that lettuce sure looks lifelike.

This is the back of the bag and because Mom didn't take a very good picture of it, I will tell you what it says. At the top it says "This bag is made from 20 oz recycled plastic bottles" and in the middle it says "We estimate that if everyone in the US used one reusable bag instead of a plastic of paper shopping bag just once a week for a year, we would keep more than 16 billion disposable bags out of our landfills. Wow! What a difference everyone can make by using reusable bags. If you are not using reusable bags what are you waiting for? You don't have to buy fancy bags since most grocery stores sell them for about one dollar, but if you don't want to spend any money on bags you can make your own out of old t-shirts.

You can't see what's inside the bag, but it's filled with goodies for our vacation. Yeah! We are leaving tomorrow morning and Mom has made sure that none of us will starve while we are on the road. I am soooo excited to be finally going on vacation that I can hardly sit still. We are taking Dad's laptop with us so I will try to post while we are gone. Barkwells - here we come!