So Much, So Soon

We've had Gizmo for more than two weeks now, and he's fitting in nicely. Jack and Giz have started friendly "sparring" as Pmo calls it, and I even caught them laying on the big dog bed together. For about thirty seconds. Then there was some tussle over a rope.

As I type this, Giz is laying underneath my chair.

He's always waiting for one of us to sit down so he can plant himself on a lap and snooze. We had one night in the beginning where he did not like being left alone in his cage, and I had to go sleep with him in the guest bed. But since then, we've somewhat trained him that it's "quiet time" when he's in there, and he's been pretty good about not yipping at night.

Now Giz is in my lap. If he sits still, he gets to stay.

His bathroom habits are peculiar. He's pretty much housebroken, but he can apparently hold it for awhile because he doesn't go near as often as Jack does or Bug did. If we're patient and take the extra time, he will eventually get around to it. But man, it takes him forever.

Gizmo's head is on my right wrist. Makes it hard to type.

He's had a few medical issues to take care of right off the bat. Nothing major. I've taken him to Parkdale twice, and we'll return at the end of this week for another checkup. His corneal ulcer seems to be healing nicely with some extra meds Dr. Saxon gave him. He's been scratching and biting himself a lot. Dr. Saxon thought he might have scabies, so we have a few doses of another med to give him every two weeks to take care of it.

Gizmo's head is now resting inside my left elbow. A little more manageable.

We've taken a few walks, the four of us and just me with the fur-kids. We've been to a few pet stores, tried on several soft harnesses and decided on one with purple trim that seemed to fit the best. An emo-looking kid at PetSmart told me in a Napoleon Dynamite voice, "I like your black pug." I let him pet him.

Now Giz is laying across my lap snoring. Which means I can't reach the stereo and skip this song.

He's met "Grandma" and "Grandpa" (Mom and Dad), other members of my family and he even got to see Grandpa Everett already. Everyone gets quite a kick out of him. We can't wait to take the boys to the cabin in the fall and on other excursions. Jack is a great, sweet, loving, gem of a dog, don't get me wrong. But something has definitely been missing in the past six months. I think we feel complete again.

It all seemed to fall into place with ideal circumstances. I happened to have some days off work when we brought Giz home, so I was better able to get him adjusted to a routine, or at least, our best version of a "routine" with my crazy sleep schedule. We have no big trips or plans in the coming months, so he can continue to settle in with us...

...and besides that, it was just time. Time to fill the void. Bug could never be replaced. We know that. We still miss him dearly and talk about him a lot. But Gizmo has filled our hearts back up so much, so soon. I'm so thrilled we could give this little guy a home, and all of my pug décor and accessories don't go to waste ;)

I think Giz just tooted on me. Time to get down.

Have Pug? Will Travel!

I've been sending Pmo pics of adoptable pugs for several weeks now. Many have been pug mixes, but we've been trying to hold out for a purebred. The regional rescue organization has plenty of pugs. Most are seniors though, and we were looking for a young adult. We considered starting fresh with a puppy from a breeder, but they cost an arm and a leg. Plus puppies are quite a handful.

One day, perusing Petfinder.com, I found a black pug who looked fairly young and was less than two hours away.  I sent a pic to Pmo. He liked him. I also found a fawn pug that was about the same distance away and probably close in age. They were from two different organizations so I applied to both.

I then started an email correspondence about the first pug. I found out that he was surrendered from a divorce, had a corneal ulcer that needed care, was housebroken and set to be neutered on Thursday. The humane society said someone else was interested in him, but they didn't want her to adopt him. I thought that was weird for them to tell me that, but I pressed on: submitted the application/references and explained that we took care of Bug's needs for several years in case they had any doubt about us taking care of his eye or anything else that came along.

Saturday morning, I'm waiting to get my hair done. I check my email and find out the humane society has written back, saying everything looked great and when can I pick him up? Naturally, I freaked out. Did they mean today? Next week? Next weekend? Could we even go today? OMG, we're getting a pug!

I called Pmo, then I called the shelter to see if they really meant to come that day. After a few phone calls back and forth with them and Pmo, I told my hair stylist I would take a raincheck and we were on the road to pug salvation.

His name is Gizmo. The vet thinks he's 1.5 years old. And he's a sweetheart. So far, Jack and Gizmo are getting along fairly well. Jack snipped at him early this morning, but they're still getting used to each other. Gizmo is scratching a lot, so I gave him a bath even though he already had one at shelter. Jack was also due for a bath anyway. Gizmo may also be irritated by his recent surgery. He didn't throw too much of a fit overnight when we crated him so we all got to sleep. He likes to take naps on our laps. And he's quick! Super fast. Pmo calls him "Go Go Gizmo".

We're going to get both dogs out today for a walk and see how that goes. We'll probably stop by the pet store for some more things. I'm also thinking about starting him in obedience training since I've never done that with any of my dogs. But so far, so good. Gizmo is putting smiles on our faces.

Oh, and the person the humane society didn't want to adopt Gizmo? Turns out she has adopted three dogs over the past few years: one got ran over, one was shot and one mysteriously disappeared. Thank goodness we got the Giz!

#blessedbutstressed

Sunday was my 10th anniversary at 14 WFIE. I didn't post anything on Facebook, because honestly, I wasn't feeling too good about the place. It's been a rough start to the year. There have been at least two occasions, fairly close together, where I have felt in over my head and desperate for help. Since I dwell on things, I let those events get me down.

There are good days and bad days in news. I'm sure it's that way in most jobs. But when the bad days start to pile up in a row, you start to rethink what you're doing, if you're any good at it and whether you want to do it anymore. My problem is I want to be able to handle everything, all at once. Know the answer to every question. Solve every problem. Right every wrong. And when I can't, I take it way too personally.

I explained these feelings to my friend the other day. I call it my #redneckblowout which my friend, in turn, also dubbed as a hairstyle. There are certain ways you are supposed to handle stressful situations; in a professional manner, don't be condescending, try not to accuse or point fingers, etc. I don't have that skill. I blurt out whatever I'm thinking or feeling at the time with #nofilter whatsoever. It's not necessarily that I'm yelling at everyone, at least I'd like to think I've gotten better at that. It's more like I'm airing my frustrations out loud, and there are people around who are forced to witness the hot mess which is myself. #peopleskills

However, I hope things are looking up. I think today was a pretty good work day for a change. Switching to a later schedule, doing more big picture planning and less tedious detailing should happen for me within the next few months. I keep telling myself that will help.

At home, we have some fun events coming up, but they feel so far away. We have Motley Crue tickets for an October show in Louisville. I'm seriously looking into flying us to Hawaii for Christmas now that the flight calendar has extended into the end of December.

I purposely haven't made any plans for us on weekends so that we can relax, get things done around the house and just be still for awhile. I may just have to arrange something for us to look forward to soon though. We get into the doldrums if there's nothing exciting on the horizon.

On the go or cabin fever, which is worse?

Plenty of things are worse actually. At least I have a job. I have my health. I have a home. I have friends. I have a family.

New hashtag: #blessedbutstressed

Movin' and a Shakin' Things Up

This past Friday marked my third anniversary as a vampire...I mean...the executive producer of 14 News Sunrise. Early next month, I will celebrate ten years at 14 WFIE. I can't believe I've been there that long. I'm extremely lucky to have had two other jobs and been employed steadily since college. But in my business, it's not normal to stay in one place for too long,  Every two years or so, you fly the coop if you want to move up. I never managed to spread my wings and get off the ground. I've said it before: I love my house, I like this area and I'm happy right where I am.

However, my role on Sunrise is about to change, and I'm very excited about it. We are getting another producer. The extra body/brain will allow me to fully come into my charge as EP. I can step back and look more at the big picture instead of being bogged down with the nitty gritty details of my hour of news. I've been in a hybrid role for the past three years. My hours will shift, too. Instead of coming in at midnight, I'll slip in a few hours later, like most of the rest of the crew, and have much more time after the show to take care of issues, brainstorm and get involved with the dayside element.

On the homefront, I recently invested in a Fitbit Flex wristband. One of the perks: it has a silent wake alarm so, hopefully, I won't be disturbing Pmo too much when my new schedule starts and I roll out of bed in the middle of the night. I've reduced the 10,000 daily step goal to 3,500 for now, with plans to increase it about 500 steps a week. I can't go from 0 to 60 in one day. But the Fitbit is pretty cool. It transfers my steps and sleep habits automatically via Bluetooth to my phone. I have to log other details like my weight, calorie intake and water consumption if I want, but so far it's kept me motivated to hit that daily step goal and feel the buzz on my wrist. Yesterday, I got buzzed at 1:00 p.m.! From the bracelet, not alcohol.

I prefer winter cleaning to spring cleaning, so I've started a mission to purge things from the house little by little. We took a small load to Goodwill yesterday. I've been doing some general rearranging as well. The spice rack above the microwave was a hot mess, so I repurposed another contraption we already had sitting on the counter and it seems to be working so far. We also trekked to Lowe's yesterday and replaced two light fixtures in the house. We haven't done a ton of remodeling or updating since we moved in five years ago, because the house was in good shape. Still, little updates like that go a long way and make you feel good. There are plenty of things we'd like to do in the future if we could just stop traveling.

On that note, I'm starting to think about planning our trips for this year. We've talked about going to Hawaii for Christmas, so our remaining vacation days may have to be spent as regional trips over four day weekends to offset the costs. Next weekend is our work Christmas party which was delayed from a winter storm early last month. I'm also going to one of my bi-annual "summits" with my college friends and sneaking in a brunch with another bestie. But besides the upcoming mega-party-weekend, I'm trying to keep things pretty low key right now. We had a jam-packed end to 2012 and I want to relax a bit.

We'll see ;)

MORRIS FAMILY YEAR-IN-REVIEW: 2013

JANUARY

The year began with a death in the family. My grandma, Dorothy, passed away. Perry’s granny died just a few months before. Our hearts were heavy.

FEBRUARY

Perry got a promotion. After more than 20 years of working for 14 WFIE in news production and assisting the sales department, he became a digital advertising designer for Raycom, our parent company. Perry still works at the station, but now he’s at the corporate level. I was accepted into the 2013 Raycom News Leadership Class and began a year-long quest to improve my management skills. I’ll celebrate my 10 year anniversary at 14 WFIE in February 2014.

MARCH

Perry and I saw P!nk and Bon Jovi in concert in Louisville. Mom came along to Bon Jovi, too, of course. I flew to Charlotte, NC for my first leadership class. This was one of two airplane rides I would take this year. The other was to Alabama in June for the 2^nd class. I drove to the 3^rd class in October, also in Alabama.

APRIL

Mom and I went to see Fleetwood Mac in Louisville. Perry and I returned to the Florida Keys and stayed in a little mom-and-pop resort on the bay. A few days after we returned home, Bug had a stroke. We didn’t think he was going to make it. His head cocked to the side and he had trouble walking in a straight line. He also started having accidents in the house and being picky about food. But he was still with us.

MAY

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers came to the Ford Center. I believe Perry, Mom and l all went to this one. My cousin Sarah’s wedding was in Indy and I did a reading during the ceremony. This was a very hard month at home with Bug. He became extremely difficult to take care of, testing our patience and strength. Vet visits increased, and so did the bills.

JUNE

More weddings! My cousin, Rachel, and my co-worker, Katy, got married on the same day. So we went to Rachel’s ceremony in Tell City and Katy’s reception in Gibson County. We spent our 4^th anniversary in the Leavenworth, IN area. We stayed at our first B&B and had lots of fun on a canoe trip, my first.

 

JULY

This was apparently a low key month. I couldn’t find anything exciting we did on Facebook (my record of all activities) except the annual fireworks show in Newburgh. FB showed me that I had a Blizzard from DQ and took Jack to the riverfront a few times. J

AUGUST

We planned a staycation that included a few days in Brown County, IN where we ziplined for the first time. We also enjoyed some of our favorite libations at Big Woods Brewery. Our friend, Chad, married his partner in Minnesota and we went to their reception at Aztar. Our neighbor, Judy, passed away and we went to her funeral at a local church.

SEPTEMBER

Bug hung in there for five months after his stroke, but one morning, it came time for him to go to the rainbow bridge. We buried him on a Friday on a hill at my mom and dad’s. We spent the weekend in tears and isolation. A week later, we attended the wedding of Perry’s friend, Ben.

OCTOBER

We look forward to our trip to the cabin in Georgia every year. This time, it was bittersweet because Bug would not be with us. Just the three of us packed up and headed south. Jack had a wonderful time on the trails and curled up with us at night by the fireplace. When we got back, it was time for “bar Halloween” and we dressed up as Wayne and Garth from “Wayne’s World” which was a big hit!

NOVEMBER

We celebrated Perry’s birthday weekend by going back to Brown County, IN and later in the month I got a pug cake for my special day. We also had a cookout at home for my co-workers. They were introduced to my mom and dad’s grilled chicken and creek fries, also a big hit!

DECEMBER

We went to our 2^nd ever Colts game and watched the boys win against the Titans at Lucas Oil Stadium. I also took Mom to see “Mamma Mia” at the Centre. Perry and I saw Bill Cosby there just a week earlier.

AND THEN…

I have 3 cousins who are getting ready to have babies next year. The Malone family continues to grow.  As for our little family, we plan to adopt…a pug next year. It’s only been three months since we lost Bug and we’re still healing. But we definitely think about it from time to time. We’ll also be visiting new places and stopping by our old favorites in 2014. One goal is to take Jack to the beach or maybe even spend the holidays in Hawaii. We’ll see. We’d also like to do a little home remodeling, but we’d have to stay in one place for a bit to do that. J

We hope you’ve had a great year and the next one is even better! -Perry, Mitzi and Jack Morris

Dream for an Insomniac

You can’t make this stuff up. That’s a phrase we often use in the news. The story is so outrageous, so stupid, so unbelievable...it can’t be true. But it is.

That’s how the dream I just had went down. So many people were in it. It was so weird and unexplainable at times. But it happened. And I had to write about it immediately or I would forget. It’s 4:30 in the morning, by the way.

Pmo and I were living in a house (not a van) on the bank of a river, with a considerable slope down to the water. Next to us was another house, but it was a houseboat. And not your typical houseboat. Picture a mobile home with the floor cut out and plopped down on the deck of a boat. I’ll call it butter dish boat. You can see it now, right?

This next-door butter-dish boat must have been floating on a man-made pool of water, like a casino boat that’s legal in Indiana but doesn’t actually sit on an existing waterway. There also had to be some sort of canal from this pool of water that led to the river below because of what happened later. I’ll get to that.

In our house, we were getting up to make breakfast and coffee because we had friends stay over: Rachel, Nick and Andrea. I couldn’t find the coffee cups, someone had moved them (I’m looking at you Pmo). I could only find huge cups you would get in a specialty shop. Like the cappuccino at the start of the movie “So I Married an Axe Murderer” if you’ve ever seen that.

I think I finally found the normal cups and was setting them out, but then I realized I needed something else, so I went outside. We had some things in storage right next to our neighbor's property. But at that point, I discovered our storage was actually on the neighbor’s land and not on ours. And when I say storage, I mean a pile of things lying on the ground. Like a pile of trash you would bury at the landfill or a mound of leaves you would set on fire. I suddenly had the urge to move everything back to our property: each item, one by one.  

There was a group of kids playing nearby: tag or flag football or something. They pretty much ignored me. Then I remembered I needed something else from another storage area, which was inside the butter dish boat. Again, why am I storing things at my neighbor’s place and then realizing I shouldn’t be doing that? And why are they letting me? So I left the pile and went to the butter dish.

Once inside the butter dish, I started to pick apart the new pile to move back to our house. For some reason, my boss was there, Scott. He had two brothers who looked just like him, but they had Duck Dynasty beards. Scott’s wife, Shelley, was there, too. They were all helping me get stuff out of the boat and back where it belonged.

All of a sudden, we started to move. And I realized the butter dish was now in the river. I panicked and went to find someone to stop the boat. But it was run by the military (what?) and they couldn’t stop until they arrived at their destination, wherever that was. There was another boat in front of us that was on the same trip. So I ran to the front of the butter dish (there was room to walk around the edge with a railing, in case you were wondering) and yelled at them to stop. They had a megaphone and yelled back for me to back off the front of the boat, or else.

There was a large group of African Americans inside the butter dish. It was either a really big family or some kind of church congregation. I'm leaning toward church because I vaguely remember some pews. Scott, his wife and brothers had disappeared. Instead, there was a little Caucasian girl with blond hair by my side who would not let go of my leg. She had been sitting along a wall with my aunt Betty. They found a phone for me and I called Pmo. I told him what happened: that I didn't have my phone, or money, or anything but the clothes on my back. Yes, I distinctly remember using that cliché. I figured Pmo would panic, too, but he was relatively calm. Almost too calm. 

We eventually pulled into to a town, a touristy place like Gatlinburg, TN. And when I say pulled in, I mean like Venice, where the roads are made of water and there are buildings on each side of you. I thought they were going to let me off the boat so I could get back home. But just as I asked somebody and was about to find out whether I would be free, I looked up at those buildings and woke up.

Where did all of that come from?

Rachel and Nick did spend the night with us last week, but I don’t know what Andrea had to do with anything, except that she was off work on Friday.

The pile of stuff outside? I do have a tendency to get obsessed with something like that and have to drop whatever else I'm doing and tackle the new disturbance right then and there. Last night before I went to bed, I was flipping through an Eddie Bauer magazine, saw a blouse/sweater combo, and immediately went to my closet to match up my sweaters and blouses. If I don't act on an idea in the here and now, I'll forget. Or at least write myself a note.

The pile of stuff in the butter dish? I still need to get my Christmas decorations down from the loft in the garage. That’s definitely been weighing on my mind. And it's sort of in an out-of-the-way place. Like the butter dish boat.

I've also felt an overwhelming need to purge things from this house lately. With our birthday presents from Mom (and the tons of stuff she gives us every time we see her in general), recent trips where we've brought back things, Christmas coming soon, etc., we have or will have quite a bit of clutter. It's not like hoarding where everything is out in the open and you can't find the toaster. Believe me, everything is tidy and put away in its place. But it still suffocates me because I know there are things lurking in a closet/drawer or under the bed that I really don't need and should give away. And valuable things I still need to sell.

The rest of the dream: Scott, Betty, the church group, the military, the little blond girl, Pmo not being too concerned, Gatlinburg…I have no clue. I’ll chalk it up to having a brain that is constantly in action and a sleep schedule that is forever out of whack. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a craving for some toast. With butter.

Holiday Hustle

It's about to get seven kinds of crazy at the Morris household.

'Tis a busy time of the year for us, not unlike most families across this nation of ours. Last weekend we celebrated a co-worker's new job in Mississippi and did a whole lotta leaf rakin'. This weekend, we'll take it easy and try to knock a few tasks off the immediate to-do list. But next week starts the holiday zipline toward New Year's Day and what I like to call, January boredom.

Next week:
Dad's birthday (technically it's Sunday but I'm counting it 'cause I need to go buy a present)
My birthday (35! I think we're going to dinner) followed by Thanksgiving at my cousin's, Thanksgiving with Pmo's family (just him going), baby shower (just me going), dinner and game night with our Folz and Lyman friends, overnight stay in Indy then a Colts game!
Thank God I have that next Monday off.

Looking ahead:
Christmas party at Burdette Park
Bill Cosby live at the Centre
Mamma Mia! also at the Centre
My cousin's birthday party
My friend's son's birthday party
Mom's birthday
Christmas gathering with Pmo's family (actually three separate events)
Christmas with my family
New Year's Eve shenanigans

Not to mention making a Christmas gift list, buying said gifts, wrapping them, putting up fall décor, getting out Christmas decorations, taking Dad's cooker back in the truck, giving Jack a haircut...

I'm tired just thinking about it. But like I said, then January will get here and we won't know what to do with ourselves. Besides getting ready for February sweeps. Oy.