People, except those who drop in unexpectedly, marvel at the cleanliness of my home. No more, my friends.

Behold my puppy-inspired decor:

I thought I’d done a decent job getting the joint puppy-proofed. I was wrong. Must remove everything in photo from life.

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Dining room table inventory, from left:

• Box of those storage bags that you vacuum the air out of to make contents compact, heavy and really wrinkly.
• Down jackets clean and ready for said bags
• Mattress cover that I washed & bleached after big dog Ria peed all over son’s bed in protest.
• Curtains.  Six of them.  They’d become Lily’s favorite chew toys and I got sick and tired of enforcing my no-biting-the-curtains policy.  Besides, I’m liking the minimalistic look for summer – I keep telling myself.
• Chew throw pillows.
• Good-idea-at-the-time puppy pads.  I planned to line Lily’s bed with them, but she just chews them to shreds.
• Coins scooped from some place suddenly within Lily’s snout range.
• My Frye boots that I’d forgotten were hidden behind the white couch.  Lily found them for me, bless her heart.
• Ignore the boxes and Christmas bags in the corner.  They’ve been there since, well, Christmas.

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The kitchen table’s possibly under this mess.  Yes, that’s a full bag of trash that I haven’t gotten around to taking out to the can.

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Puppy in motion! Oh, and is that a pee spot I see on the floor?  Quel surprise!  This photo illustrates why this post has taken 5 hours so far to write.

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The breakfast bar is now home to assorted cleaning products.  Lily’s inverted vulva causes her nearly constant pee to spray all over her sweet little legs.  I give her semi-baths a million times daily.  She is typically quite moist.  And me?  Can you say dishpan hands?  I know I can!

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Lily’s constant dripping in her bed and need of baths has led to several loads of towels daily.  Those light blue tubes at the sides of the washer?  Those are swimming noodles.  They help reduce vibrations from the machines, which shake the whole freaking cheaply built house.  Thunder shakes the house, too.  But that’s another story.

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Remember how I mentioned that I got new braces?  I got Invisaligns yesterday.  Here’s the box amidst miscellaneous rubble.  I have to wrestle the Invisaligns off my teeth every time I eat, then brush my teeth, then snap them back in.  Finding the opportunity to do this is difficult.  I am stressed and hungry.  So. Very. Hungry.  More on all that later.

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So yeah, lots of changes, all of which are uncomfortable as all get out.  WHY DO I PUT UP WITH THIS?!

Oh yeah, now I remember.  <3

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Meet our new puppy, Lily.  She’d melt our hearts if we weren’t constantly running her to the backyard potty and mopping up her accidents.

Getting a new puppy is like adopting a toddler who’s been raised by wolves.

Here’s  Lily by my foot for size reference.  She’s the size of a kitty. We have to walk around barefoot so we don’t squish her when we inadvertently step on the poor little thing.

Lily’s a light yellow labrador retriever, and she’s not quite 8 weeks old.  She was born on March 31, 2010.  She’s got the same birthday as Angus Young and Al Gore! Here’s a photo of her the day she was born:  She’s the puppy with the aqua collar. Yeah, she’s the cutest puppy in the litter.

We got her very unexpectedly. We’d researched lab puppies extensively, but every litter we found had already been reserved – like, a year before they were born. We figured we’d have LOADS of time to prepare for puppy.

THEN. We got a call from one of the breeders we’d called. She told us that one of her puppies had been REJECTED by the person who’d reserved her and could we buy her for half price – in two days?

Yes, I had two days to puppy-proof the house. This wouldn’t be a huge deal for a normal person, but this is ME we’re talking about. I can get a little obsessively carried away with the nesting process. But that’s another story.

Anyhoo, it seems little Aqua puppy has an inverted vulva, which causes her to pee all over her legs. She was to be a helper dog but I guess her original adopter didn’t want to have to help the puppy before the puppy helped someone else.

So Lily’s the best of all worlds, a special needs purebred!

She’ll either outgrow this condition on her own when she goes into heat or can be corrected with a simple nip & tuck surgery. In other words, we’ll be cleaning her up several times a day for a year.

She’s totally worth it. We already love her to bits.

But what about our first dog, the wonderful 5 1/2 year old Ria?

Ria’s moping. Her feelings are hurt. She’s predictably suffering from sibling rivalry. The good news? Ria loves to wrestle and so does little Lily. By the end of Summer, I predict they’ll be joyfully beating each other up.

Uh oh. Gotta go. Lily needs to pee. Again.

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