lola, want a treat?

Is it mean that I think this is funny? Because I laugh every time I watch it, and, at about nine seconds, a mildly interested Lola pops out of her blanket cocoon to investigate what she very likely knows is not a real treat offer. Ha. 

We get our kicks the old-fashioned way in our household. By tricking our dog into entertaining us, of course. 

a-roooo-ooo-oooooo

That, my friends, is the sound that I nearly guarantee you will be making in your head after you watch this video.

Lola howling at the tornado siren (don't worry, it was the monthly test, and not a true weather emergency). For some reason, Kevin and I find Lola's howling hilarious. Maybe it's that I think of her as earnestly trying to fulfill her doggy duty of passing on whatever message she thinks she's receiving in the form of a weather siren --- muuust sound ALARM.  The funniest part of this video is when I showed it to Kevin a few days after it was taken, and Lola started howling at the siren in the video - simultaneous Lola howls! So funny. 

I just love her beautiful little doggy heart. 

P.S. I don't have children yet, so instead I post poorly edited videos of my dog doing totally ordinary dog things. Fun, right? 

hehe

This is how we keep things interesting in our household:

Oh, man. I crack up every single time I watch this video (which, I might add, is quite often). This was taken the day that Kevin ran the Twin Cities Marathon, so, maybe it was a little unfair of me to take advantage of his mentally and physically weakened state, but, it was worth it! Watch it again, it just gets funnier. Now, please excuse me while I wipe the tears of laughter from my eyes.

P.S. It's more than a little embarrassing to admit this, since I pretend to hate that show, but, I got this idea from America's Funniest Home Videos - bahahaha!

P.S. #2 We're back from my sister and Alex's amazing Texas wedding weekend. A beautiful, fun, fantastic, amazing time was had by all --- bigger update on that later!

i love it when...

...my husband laughs really hard at really silly things.

if the shirt fits...

If ever there was a shirt for me, surely this is it.

post-its

Now this is what I call job security. In October, Kevin will make the move from advertising to the Post-it division at 3M. And really, will the world ever run out of a need for these magical little bits of paper? Nope, and here's why:

They're a handy alternative to paint and wallpaper.

They hold endless artistic possibilities.

They're an inexpensive way to redecorate.

They entertain children...

...and adults.

They help Kevin express his love for me.

bats

Anyone curious as to why I ate my lunch today with one hand holding on firmly to a tennis racket? Anyone want to know why every little noise I heard in our apartment today made me jump about a foot? Well...THE BATS ARE BACK! That's right, this time it's plural. As in two bats. In my house. In one night. Sheesh.

Kevin and I are returning home at about 9:15 pm last night after a lovely dinner party at a friend's house. We walk into our apartment and, as I am turning on the kitchen light, a bat comes swooping out of the living room and flies right at me. Being the panicker that I am (hey, I don't deny it), I start screaming so loudly that our landlord (also named Kevin) comes up the stairs to see what murderous criminal has taken me hostage. Next thing I know, the two Kevins are in our bedroom swinging tennis rackets around at the bat. In the end, the bat was whacked just hard enough to stun it, had a trash can placed over it, and was taken outside via a piece of cardboard slid under the trash can. Good-bye bat!

Kev goes to bed, I am up late watching the Olympics (what else), when what should come swooping in behind me? ANOTHER BAT. At this point, I have completely lost my sense of humor when it comes to having bats flying around wily-nily in my house. After much terrified (and truly unnecessary) screaming on my part, Kev comes out and we repeat the racket procedure. Sadly, this bat was hit a bit too vigorously and we are not sure it survived. We took it outside anyway and hope it eventually woke up and flew away (although not back into our apartment, of course). If not, RIP little guy and I hope none of your bat compadres stop by tonight.

By the way, let's all remember that there is a post from almost exactly one year ago recounting our hilarious middle-of-the-night encounter with another bat. Apparently, this is an annual thing with these guys. Or maybe it was the same bat from last summer, and he just missed us. Awww. But, also, ewww.

P.S. - The proper procedure for getting rid of a bat in your house (according to something I read online), is to trap it in one room until it gets tired enough that you can put a trash can or box over it, and then take it outside with a piece of cardboard. Or, we are supposed to gently trap it in a butterfly net which, of course, we all just happen to have lying handily around. Nowhere is there any mention of tennis rackets. Whoops.

music cats love

Late night television is total crap. Seriously, if you stay up late enough (like past Conan O'Brien and into the horror that is the time slot containing the Carson Daly Show and hilarious, if somewhat creepy, infomercials for "Music Cats Love: While You Are Gone") you get to see that day's Oprah episode again, along with the "Celebrity Real Estate" segment on Extra!, and reruns of the Bernie Mac show. Seriously.

The only good thing about watching this mind-numbing load of late-night nonsense is that my morbid curiousity about "Music Cats Love" (come one, you KNOW you want more info. --- who buys this stuff?!) inadevertently led me to this awesome picture:

There. Totally worth it. Man, I love Google Images.

P.S. Okay, no, I changed my mind, the real question is not who buys this stuff, but rather, who makes this stuff? I mean, is there currently some musician out there sitting in a recording studio, staying up late to make an album FOR CATS? The thought of this makes me strangely gleeful.

P.S. #2 If you, or anyone you know, has ever purchased any cat-specific music, please - I beg you - you have to tell me about it. I'm just very very curious.

you know what they say...

Here's a wee snippet of an amusing lunchtime phone conversation Kevin and I had today:

Kev: I'm going to the chiropractor today at 5:30.

Me: That's good. I can't wait for my appointment.

Kev: So, what are we doing for dinner tonight?

Me: I don't know, but I need real food because I don't think I can keep eating chocolate cake and banana bread for dinner.

Kev: You had cake? I had cake too. We celebrated Scotch Brite's 50th anniversary today!

Me: (silence) Your job makes me sad.

Kev: Yeah, haha.

Me: We should make stir-fry tonight. With the seitan, not the pork.

Kev: No pork?!

Me: We had beef stew yesterday, and I'm supposed to be a vegetarian!

Kev: Yeah, I was just really looking forward to the pork.

Me: Well, you can have it next week with some vegetables or something.

Kev: (silence) Well, you know what they say...save your pork for a rainy day!

Me: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

We're riveting, I know.

where DO we go?

I'm up late studying in bed while my sweet husband sleeps beside me. I just sneezed and it made Kevin lift his head up off the pillow and turn to me and ask, "Where do we go?" I was confused for about a millisecond until I realized that I was in the middle of one of my favorite Kevin experiences - sleep-talking! This is not the first time this has happened. In business school he used to sit up in bed sometimes in the middle of the night and start muttering numbers. Sheesh.

Here's tonight's little gem:

Me: (sneeze)

Kevin: Where do we go?!

Me: What?

Kevin: Where do we go???

Me: We go to (helpless giggling) sleep (giggle)!

Kevin: But, where do we GO?!

Whereupon Kevin lays his head down on the pillow and falls back into a peaceful sleep. He will not remember this incident at all and he'll only learn about it when he reads my blog tomorrow morning, which is a shame really because I so enjoy our midnight conversations!

P.S. - Kevin is going to kill me for revealing this, but my all-time favorite sleep-talking episode involves Kevin waking me up in the middle of the night to say, "Look at my muscles, Tam!" - all while flexing his biceps! Priceless, I tell you.

I wonder what he'll say next...

baby, it's cold outside

Just how cold, you ask? Well, today was the warmest out of the past few days and it was a balmy ZERO DEGREES. On Friday night, on our way home from the movies at around 11pm, it was 9 below zero! This is serious, people. This week's arctic freeze has left me wondering whether a person who is 3/4's Mexican is really meant to live in a place that is currently experiencing weather colder than that of Moscow, and a place called North Pole, Alaska. Are my hearty 1/4th worth of Latvian genes enough to get me through a Minnesota winter? I sure hope so because holy walleye, it’s cold out there!

What I would really love to do is crawl into bed tonight, wrap myself up in a pile of snuggly blankets, and go to sleep until it's oh, June. I could blissfully sleep away the cold months and emerge only once the snow had melted and I no longer needed 45 minutes to put on all of my winter clothes just to go down to the basement to do a load of laundry. I could hibernate and happily live up to Kevin’s nickname for me of “bear” (derived from my deep physiological need to sleep at least 10 hours per night, and Kevin's wise observation that you do not, in fact, poke a sleeping bear).

Lucky for you, my faithful blog readers, I cannot actually sleep the winter away. And so, assuming that the 18 units I'm taking this semester don't keep me holed up in a coffee shop reading until the cows (Minnesota dairy heifers) come home, then I should be fairly consistent in keeping you updated with riveting accounts of the Shevlin family happenings. I know there’s been a bit of an uncharacteristic long waiting period between blog posts of late, but I was busy recovering from a very stressful fall semester by doing absolutely nothing. It was glorious but now it is over and since I’ve vowed to be super organized and incredibly in-tune with the rhythm of my life this semester, I should be posting fairly regularly from now on. On the off chance (right) that my tendency to over-commit myself gets in the way of my being able to blog with any measure of consistency - don’t get your long-johns in a bunch...I’ll come back to it eventually!

Me, on 6-8 hours of sleep.

when bats attack

last night kevin and I shared one of the funniest - and most terrifying - experiences of our life together. let me start by mentioning that during my family's visit last week, on the night that kevin and I stayed at the grand hotel to celebrate our anniversary, a bat got into our apartment and gave my family an exciting night. the next day my family told kev and me all about their bat adventure, and we all had a good laugh - haha.

after my family left i sort of forgot about the bat. at about 12:30 last night,  kevin and I were in bed - he was sleeping and i was listening to my ipod - and i was feeling nice and secure tucked in next to my soundly slumbering husband. suddenly, i saw - and felt - a dark little figure swooping above my head, and, as i focused my eyes, i made out the unmistakable shape of a bat. a bat. being the totally cool cucumber that i am, i pulled the sheet up over my head and started screaming, "bat! bat! a baaaaaaat!!!" kevin sprang out of bed in a confused and sleepy panic, with a look of sheer terror on his face, and i actually burst out laughing (i'm sorry, it was downright comical). when kevin is woken suddenly from a deep sleep it usually takes him a couple of minutes to figure out what's going on. since i was yelling like a maniac, kevin probably thought that there was a fire, or that I was being bludgeoned to death by a fearsome burglar - some sort of real danger - and not that there was a bat in our bedroom. as kevin stood there, eyes wide in sleepy panic, i yelled, "shut the doors! shut the doors! it's a bat!" kevin sprang to our doors and slammed them shut, looked at me, and said, "i have a plan!" by this point, the adrenaline had gotten the best of me (it was an easy victory), and i got the giggles. while i sat in bed laughing hysterically, kevin got dressed (you know, to protect his skin from ravenous bat fangs), pulled the flashlight out from under our bed, and bravely ran out of our bedroom. the next thing i knew, kevin was jumping and flailing around the kitchen, swinging a tennis racquet at the bat that was swooping around him. I watched from our bedroom - half laughing and half fearing for the little bat's life (I am nothing if not an animal lover).

kevin's plan seemed to be to smack the bat with the racquet until it was either temporarily stunned or until it was dead. i wanted to trap it and take it outside. after about a minute of squabbling over what should be done, kevin looked at me and said, "fine, if you want it trapped you have to help me." so, i put one of kevin's t-shirts on my head (of course) and went out to the kitchen with a blanket. after about twenty minutes of the bat flying around our kitchen and kevin flinging the blanket at it, and me screaming and jumping behind kevin every time it came my way (very helpful), the poor bat got tired and swooped low enough to the floor for kevin to throw the blanket over it. then the little thing squirmed out from under the blanket, kevin and i both shouted, and, in a panic, kevin threw the plastic garbage can at it. the bat, having had something one-hundred times its weight hit it while it was in mid-air, made a crash landing. oh man. in the end we put the garbage can over the stunned bat, slid some cardboard under it, and took it outside - we are fairly certain it was alive. i had quite the laugh attack after it was all over, yet kevin looked, somehow, not as amused as me. i wasn't able to capture the event, since my camera died, but hopefully you can all picture it for yourselves - hilarity.