Today is the The Good One®'s fourth birthday!

I told Henry he had to sit real nice for a birthday portrait, and he did.

However, I think his brother is starting to get jealous of all that special birthday attention.

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On April 1, the high was 77°. On April 2 and 3, the high was 84°. On April 4 and 5, the high was 85°. (Atlanta broke a 54-year record high.) They say it'll be cooler next week, but I decided I'd seen enough of my poodles lying around panting, so they got their first clipper cut of the earlier-than-expected summer season yesterday.

I love cutting on my living topiaries. It's very relaxing for me, and the boys don't complain too much. Louis mostly likes the attention, but Henry will make himself scarce if he sees me moving towards the scissors storage, so I have to be sneaky!

I always leave the whiskers a little longer around Henry's muzzle, but as you can see, I generally trim Louis completely. I think this is the last time I'll be doing that. Sure, he's cute with short hair, but when fuzzy, he looks a more like a teddy bear, which really suits his personality better.

Meanwhile, Henry's just ready for a break in the pollen and heat.

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Henry and Louis' first snow day.

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We asked Audrey what she wanted for her birthday, and of course she said, "Food!" So Mom baked her a cake.

Much to Audrey's disappointment, we did not let her eat it all at once.

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I threw a ball into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
Or, more perhaps it flew such height,
That trees would dare constrain its flight.

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Thirty minutes into trying to craft a coherent post about my ongoing October ennui, I made myself sick at my own pretension. So I erased all that.

Instead, here are pictures of Louis and Henry watching me play with my phone.

Henry looks that way because I'm standing right next to the basket with the nail clippers in it. And Louis... well, Louis is always just Louis.

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*Note to self: Today was a very good day. It so rarely occurs to me in the moment that I'm having a "good time," so I think it is probably important to make note when it does. I woke up to watch UGA win, then gave haircuts to both Henry and Louis, then all three of us rode the Jeep over to Dad's to play with Cece, then I had Chinese takeout (vegetable lo mein and white rice) and played a video game (Borderlands 3) with an online friend (Brian) and watched even more football until the wee hours of the morning. I enjoyed all of those activities, many of which I partake in regularly, but football season is here now and football is just the best.

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Smokey Bear turned 80 on August 9. That was during the Olympics (when I had Izzy out front), so it took me a little extra time to get this big boy to the street.

Obviously, I cannot take credit for that design, just the painting. (I'm pretty confident that the original line art was by Rudolph Wendelin.) I didn't even take any liberties with the colors, as the U.S. Forest And Service has very strict Smokey Bear Guidelines: "Smokey always appears only with his traditional blue jeans, belt, buckle, and 'campaign' hat. Optionally, he carries a shovel."

I'm not interested in running afoul of the USFS, no sir. They employ bears.

That bit of fluffy white you see at the bottom of the image isn't fire-fighting foam: it's Henry the Poodle, who refused to get out of the frame. Oh, Henry.

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About a week ago, I took the boys for our usual walkies. It was unusually blustery, and I stopped to check the weather radar on my phone. At exactly that moment, a golf carts drove by.

Despite the fact that we live just across the highway from our local country club, golf carts used to be rare in my neighborhood. Back when I started walking the girls, there were only two carts on my street. The gas-powered one belonged to the people who teach horseback riding and use the cart to ride along the street and collect the horse droppings, like a motorized version of the street sweeper at the end of Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. I only saw the batter-powered one occasionally when the kids got bored and took it for joyrides, doing donuts in their yard.

(Side note: I personally don't think golf carts are more fun than watching Rocky and Bullwinkle, but I doubt those kids have ever seen it. Back in the day, there really wasn't that much to watch or that many channels to watch them on, so everyone knew everything on television, making pop culture references the coin of the realm. You made friends in school by quoting reruns of shows that had been first runs for our parents' generation: Leave it to Beaver or Gilligan's Island or Monty Python's Flying Circus. I have no idea what tweens watch these days after school, but if I threatened a kid today with a loaded banana, they'd think I was brain damaged.)

There are lots of golf carts in the 'hood now. The boys love 'em. They go crazy when they see one. I don't know why. So long as I've had the boys, they've never been within five feet of a golf cart. A golf cart has never brought them a treat. But I guess they do drive by slower than cars, making them easier to chase, and the ones in my neighborhood often have other dogs on board, making the chase worthwhile.

Anyway, as I was saying, the golf cart drove by while I was half paying attention, and Henry and Louis went berserk, and their leashes damn near pulled off the fingernail on my left index finger. Not totally. It just bent it back halfway. It hurt a lot the first few days, but it's gotten better. Or at least I thought it was getting better. I showed it to Mom earlier today, and she nearly swooned. So maybe not all better. I'm just taking it one day at a time. (Boy, that Schneider was a card.)

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47/2358. So Proudly We Hail! (1943)
The main narrative of this melodramatic romance is very dull (despite the male half being George Reeves), but the background situation of a group of American nurses trapped in Bataan as the Japanese war machine begins to roll through in the Philippines at the start of World War II is quite riveting. It's all utterly horrible, and from what I've read, reality was worse.

Side note: since this is Superman Month, it's probably worth noting that there is a recurring bit in this in which one of the American soldiers is repeatedly referred to as Superman. (Fun fact: it is NOT the character played by George Reeves.) The events are set in 1941, and Superman would have been only 3 at the time. (He was barely 5 when the film was released!) This was a Paramount picture, and Paramount was also responsible for the brilliant Max Fleisher Superman cartoon shorts that debuted in 1940. So the name-dropping here counts as brand synergy product placement! You! Ess! Ay!

48/2359. Crimes of Fashion: Killer Clutch (2024)
Sadly, Hallmark mysteries don't always hit the mark. All the characters in this whodunit act like idiots so that the romance between the protagonist, a fashion psychologist, and the French policeman can get more screentime. The conclusion is particularly ridiculous. What's the haute couture world's equivalent of "two thumbs down"?

49/2360. Mean Girls 2 (2011)
Speaking of two thumbs down: this made-for-TV cash-grab sequel is inferior in all ways to its predecessor, especially the script, cinematography, and editing. But also the casting, costumes, acting, direction, stunts, and setting. (It's Atlanta! Standing in for Ohio?) Even the title, which should have been "Meaner Girls." (In this case, they nonchalantly commit crimes.) About the only thing the movie got right was the product placement.

Mean Girls drink Diet Coke

Meaner Girls drink Coke Zero

50/2361. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)
Darker and less satisfying than previous instalments in this franchise, I would probably be hating on this movie if not for the scene-stealing Cosmo, a talking dog obsessed with being "good." Seriously, cut out the rest and just fast forward to the Cosmo scenes... or go watch this YouTube video.

More to come.

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