The Janesville Renaissance Faire and the Disabled Guy

Remember how the Disabled Guy made a treasure chest for my sea captains? Well, last weekend, I was able to give them the treasure chest. They were properly impressed, they couldn't stop raving about it, all the blocks fit absolutely perfectly, and there was room on top of the blocks because of the shape of the lid.

And, they used it- as a box to tote the blocks, as a table, and as a bench. They loved it.

And then it broke. Not badly, just some nails came out and DG blamed himself for not "making it properly". So, he came out to the Janesville Faire with me on Sunday. He didn't "go" to faire, he merely came out with some tools to fix the treasure chest properly. The faire let him set up in the "green room" (where the cast and crew could go to take breaks and eat lunch and so on), so he got to meet a lot of people. I introduced him to as many people as I could and a ton more made their way into meet him on their own (he was there about two hours). And, I accomplished one of my goals- I introduced the Disabled Guy to Jane the Phoole. AND I HAVE A PHOTO OF IT!!

I don't remember what she said, but he was trying not to laugh.



Since I wasn't in the room with him the whole time (I did have to go out and take a few photos of the faire, of course), I have no idea how many people actually greeted him. I do know some of them waited till I was there to have me introduce them, but a lot just said "good morning" or "hi" to him. And everyone was very glad to meet him.

When he was done fixing the treasure chest, I told him he had to pose for a couple photos, then I'd let him go. He was a very good sport about it, because he hates to have his photo taken. But, I managed to get two shots with the sea captains and the treasure chest.

I had them all cross their arms and look "stern" because that's how DG poses for photos when he doesn't want his paralyzed side to be obvious.



Then I told the sea captains to pose however they wanted, because I knew DG wouldn't move. And he didn't.




So, I finally got the Disabled Guy TO the faire on a faire day (as opposed to pre-season at Bristol). I introduced him to as many of my people as I could (he can't remember all of them) and despite wanting to take photos of him with everyone, I didn't. But hey, the photos I got were awesome.

Oh, and the funniest part (at least to me) was as we were walking out to this grassy area- with Frobisher and Hawkyns carrying the chest- I pointed at the other Towers game box (which was set up with the Guild of St. George). I said: "That's the original box, the 'coffin' I said you could make."  The Disabled Guy looked at it and made a scoff-sound with his laugh and said: "Yeah, right."

Because of course he'd never make anything so lame. Sea captains need a treasure chest.

Long time, no updates part forty-seven-fifty-two...

I just made that number up. I have no idea how many times I've taken this long of a break. There have been some small updates, in the Facebook group- but other than that, not many long conversations. At least, nothing I'd consider long enough for a blog post.

But that brings us to today.

We have dogs. You all know that. We have a lot of dogs. Five Chihuahuas and a German Shepherd. So, technically, we have three dogs, tops. And, in order of them joining our family, we have: Gypsy (German Shepherd), Luna (Taco Bell Chi), Jasper (Teacup chi), Bruno (result of Luna and Jasper), Gregg (The girl dog with a boy name) and Beefy (the chi who went to someone else and then had to come back).

I put a lot of thought into their names- except Gregg and Beefy. I had no hand in naming them. Beefy's name was Tempest for a bit, but Beefy is the name that stuck. And I'd rather call her Houdini, because she's an escape artist.

But I digress.

Today, while we were eating dinner, The Disabled Guy motioned to Jasper and Luna, sleeping on the floor, near him. "You better watch it, I'll sic my beasts on you."

Me: "Beasts? Really?  Beasts?"

He nodded toward Gregg, who was burrowed under the blankets on the sofa. "I got one over here, too. I call her The Sleeper."

Me: "The Sleeper?"

DG: "Yeah. And that's The Mouth."

I pointed out another: "What about that one?"

DG: "That one? That's the Bouncer."  I pointed at another and he said: "That's the Squiggler." And the last one: "That's the Instigator."

So, I now introduce you to the apparent Canine Mafia that lives in our house.


Gregg, aka: The Sleeper.



Jasper, aka: The Mouth.



Bruno, aka: The Bouncer.



Luna, aka: The Squiggler.



Beefy Houdini, aka: The Instigator.



And last, but not least, Gypsy, aka: The Ears.




EDITED TO ADD:

DG just said: "Gypsy is the Boss. She tells everyone what to do. And Jasper, The Mouth, he always gets into arguments. You know that's true. Never shuts up."

Me: "What about The Bouncer? What's he do? And The Squiggler, what's her thing? The Sleeper?"

After a pause he relied: "I don't know, but when you wake up with a horse's head in bed, you'll know the Mafia was there."

Textually Speaking 2013 (and, long time, no update...)

DG is down in North Carolina again. We all know that he's got some communication issues. He has trouble expressing his own thoughts and, obviously the basis of this blog, sometimes he'll blurt the absolute wrong word or phrase, resulting in hilarity (mostly). Now, we're closing in on eighteen years since he had his stroke. It is what it is and it isn't going to get better.

That said... his mother talks fast. Really fast. I'm not exaggerating when I compare her to an auctioneer. And, being from North Carolina, she's got a Southern accent. Really fast. Really Southern. She makes almost no effort to change her speaking rate or whatnot when she's talking to DG. Granted, she doesn't live with him like we do, but when he's visiting for an extended period of time, one would think that an effort would be made. (this is actual fact, she also knows this, so it isn't like I'm being a big meanie to point this out).

This is a text conversation that happened yesterday. (all spelling errors are as they are in the text because in texts, he spells phonetically)

DG: "Mom wants a updayed pics of the kids & us."

Me: "Okay. What size?"

[long delay in the reply, partly because he doesn't have a QWERTY keyboard on his phone]

DG: "She would like 1 big pic all 3 kids, 5x7 single the kids & 8x10 of us"

Me: "What about 5x7 of Jason and his girlfriend? Kat and Tyler?" (Jase has been with his girlfriend for over a year now and Kat and Tyler have been together for, I don't know, fifteen years? Three years?).

DG: "Yess she said she would love that."

So, I start looking through my Flickr account because I have a folder there of just "the kids" and I back up most of my stuff there as well as my backup hard drive. I have no recent photos of Kat and Tyler, no recent "studio" shots of the three kids, but I have Jason and his girlfriend and a shot of Christine- from December- and the shot of us from October. So, I tell him this in a text: "Got no recent of Kat and T, none of Kat or Jase alone, no recent group shot of the kids."

Ten minutes later, my phone rings. Fuck that noise, he's calling. Texting ain't gonna happen. He tells me: "Hey, Mom says..." and his voice trails off as his mother talks in the background. Before I could even utter that he should give her the phone, he says: "Here, talk to her yourself."

So, his mom gets on the phone and starts talking. And talking. We work out that I'll upload the photos I do have to Walgreen's and arrange for pickup in their town in North Carolina. I'm not overly thrilled with that, because the one-hour Walgreen's only offers the option of "glossy" finish. Plus, they're hugely overpriced compared to the website I get my photos from now (Adoramapix-dot-com). For example, on Walgreen's website, it costs $1.99 for a glossy 5x7 and it doesn't specify what type of paper they use. At Adoramapix, I can get a Kodak Professional Supra Endura in matte, lustre, glossy, or metallic. And I'm extremely fond of the metallic prints (not to be confused with their Metallic prints, which are actually on metal) because they look bloody sharp. And, I can get a 5x7 in the metallic finish for 84¢. That's CENTS. BUT, I digress...

After I made the proper verbal arrangements with his mom, DG got back on the phone and he did a short, slightly nervous chuckle. "You get all that?"

I replied, "Of course."

DG: "I wasn't gonna be able to text that whole thing."

Me: "I know. It's okay. I got it."

DG: "Crazy."

Me: "A little."

In the time I was talking to his mother, I found the current photos I had and told him of what I did and didn't have, to make sure he knew I didn't have ALL the photos. And we hung up. I then uploaded the four photos I had (one of me and him, one of Jase and his girlfriend, one with Jase, girlfriend, and her daughter[no public photo], and one of Christine- cropped slightly), and texted DG with the pickup time info. When he replied "okay", I told him how pricey Walgreen's was compared to the Adoramapix prices.

DG: "Really? That's stupid."

Me: "I know. I'm glad this isn't one of my art photos."

DG: "They don't like art."

Me: "I know."

DG: "Mom has a coupon."

They ended up getting the $10-something photos for $7-something. So the coupon did come in handy. Even though my photos are bleh on some unknown paper with glossy finish. And as luck would have it, I was able to wrangle the three kids together for a photo shoot on March 26th. And I've got it arranged for Kat and Tyler on the 24th. BUT, since I'm going to need prints for myself and my dad, I'm just going to order them at Adoramapix on good quality paper with a nice finish. Because dammit, my kids deserve pretty pictures.

After it was all over, I asked: "She still doesn't slow down for you?"

DG: "Nope."

Me: "Doesn't even try?"

DG: "Nope."

Me: "How do you listen to her?"

DG: "I don't. lol."

Rebuilding the deck and such...

Years ago... years and years... I'd say, 2003? I'm not sure exactly, but it was before Shawn came to visit in 2004... but back then, DG built the deck on the back of the house. A few years later (after 2006- I know this because I have photos), he added an extension to the deck because "the swing was tearing up" the grass. It wasn't the swing, it was the kids' feet, but back to the moment at hand.

I must warn you now. I'm going to show some photos. In a few of these photos, DG is shirtless. Please, contain yourselves.

Here are some photos of DG building the deck. These were mostly taken with a webcam, because that's all I had back then. So it HAD to be around 2003.







And here, he's almost done.



The finished deck.



And, after a few years, he built the swing. And that's when he had to put the extension onto the deck. I asked him why he didn't just make the second part of the deck the same height and he can't answer me. Seriously, I just asked him. He said, "I dunno... the deck with the two levels... *mumble-mumble*... kinda cool... I wasn't thinking..." and he trailed off (see, NASCAR is on, he's distracted).

Some of these were done with a better-than-webcam camera, because by then, one of my online friends had given me a Polaroid digital camera.











So, you see the deck and how he built it all by himself. It's a damn fine deck too. Great place for photo set-ups and we don't use it nearly enough. Well, it's old now. Almost ten years old. And he never treated it with anything, so he's just going to rebuild the whole thing. And he decided he would build the whole deck, all one height. So I had some questions.

Obviously, I wanted to know why he was going to leave the steps in the same spot.

He said because he didn't want to build a new brick walkway, and he'd have to move a bunch of shrubbery.

Very well then.

If you look at the photo of the deck, you can see how only a small corner matches up to a small corner of the other part of the deck. Why not just extend the upper deck a little and make the whole thing one big deck at that end?

He said because he'd have to dig up six or seven shrubs and "find new places" for them. He doesn't want to do this. He just now tried to tell me he'd have to get more shrubs. Or he'd need less and would have leftover shrubs. So, I used an Australian Cadbury bar to represent the deck against the house and a greeting card to represent the extended part and explained it to him. But for you, I'll show you in MS Paint. The black part represents the deck (for the most part, I didn't add the part that goes around the corner to our door). The green part- those are the shrubs... the number is approximate. The red square indicates what I think he should do for the deck, moving those shrubs to the outer edge of it.



So, I asked him- why not do this? I showed him several times, using my props and explaining how it would just be all one open deck at the end instead of a whole separate room-like thing. And he can keep the steps where they are (his original plan).

He said, "But it won't work." And I showed him again. "I'd need more shrubs!" then it was, "I'd have extra shrubs."

So I said, "You don't want to do it that way because it'd be more work?"

DG: "Yes! NO! Stop it!"

Me: "Stop what?"

DG: "Making sense. We'll have to talk about it later!" and he was quiet for a moment. "Stop trying to fuse me with logic."

Me: "Fuse you?"

DG: "Yeah. Stop trying to infuse your logic on me! It won't work!"

But it looks like when he rebuilds the deck, he's going to extend it about five feet and join the two levels into one deck. Now, the reason he's not just going to make one giant deck, in one huge rectangle is- we have that shrubbery, but also, some flowers. AND, he parks his truck at an angle there. A full rectangle in that size would make us lose one of our parking spaces.

Speaking of parking spaces, before this discussion of the extension and such, I asked him why he didn't put the steps by the door, actually by the door. They're sort of off-center. His excuse was because of how we park our vehicles now. We have a single-wide driveway and six years ago, we put gravel up to the house so we could park there too. His excuse for the steps was because of this. I said, "But we didn't all drive back then. In fact, till two years ago, it was just you and me."

So he said, "I didn't want to walk out the door and BOOM right into the steps!"

Except that's how it was before. Literally. We opened the door and the three steps down were RIGHT there.

He told me I needed to stop showing my brain and using all this logic on him. Because it's a bad thing.

In completely unrelated news, I opened an etsy shop to continue to sell my photos. We still have thirteen birdhouses leftover from the etsy shop for the NYC trip. If you want one, let me know, we can do a paypal kind of thing without the etsy involvement. Here's the link to "Pahz Photography" on etsy.

The sofa conversation-

Full disclosure, this was actually an argument. It got seriously out of hand and he ended up screaming at me, then acting like a child by not replying to anything I said, at all, for hours. When I finally got him to answer me, he was short and still shout-y. But, after a few hours, he stopped behaving like a child and listened to what I had to say... and it worked. Because 90% of the time, when something doesn't work, my suggestion is the logical solution that is... well, the solution. Also, this is really long. Really long because of the backstory. But there are pictures!

About a year after building the sofa of awesome, DG decided it wasn't comfortable. More than one person has said that the sofa was not entirely comfortable. It was a little too upright and it slanted slightly to the front, so the sitter felt as if they were sliding forward. Plus, under the cushions was a slab of plywood- while firm- was too firm. So, he finally built a new one, using the springs from the old sofa (the one that the new one replaced, not the handmade one). First, he tried to put the springs into the currently-made sofa, but they wouldn't fit. It was too much of a gap to be able to rig in any way, so he said he'd build a whole new sofa.

He finally finished it and it looked lovely. It is slightly different than the current handmade one. The arms aren't as wide, the whole thing overall was a bit sleeker and more modern. (not quite so "heavy 1970s style three-piece sofa set"). Except it was too high. If I sat on it straight, my feet didn't touch the floor. I'm not incredibly tall at a whopping five feet, four-and-a-half inches, but I was wearing my Docs, which give me another inch-and-a-half. Everything else about the sofa was fine- the springs added a nice bit of smush to the cushions and he had a bit of a tilt in the back part that made it more comfortable to sit in... so, I suggested he just cut the legs down an inch or so.

Guess what...

Custom handmade carpentry doesn't work that way. Turns out, it wasn't that the legs were too long, it was that he put the cushion-holding area up too high. And being that it was custom-made, he couldn't just take that out, move it down, and bolt it in place. He'd have to start over from scratch. Honestly, he didn't look too upset about it in the least.

There was a cold snap for a few days and when his shop doesn't warm up, he doesn't like working out there (I don't blame him). He decided to rearrange the living room. Our living room is small. The person who designed this house was a lunatic. I'm not kidding. We have one bathroom (and it's upstairs!) and the door opens out into the hallway. The kitchen, before we had it remodeled, had two spaces of countertop, the oven was blocking two drawers and two cabinets. The fridge was blocking a large pantry cabinet. (when we moved in, we had an electric oven, so we disconnected the gas one and moved the fridge to the porch and put the oven near where the fridge had been. So we had two extra drawers and cabinets, plus we could use the pantry cabinet and the fridge was only three extra steps away). Also, to show some of this lunacy... the side of the house with the row of pine trees is? Yeah, the person put a staircase there. The side of the house where the driveway is? That's where the living room window looks out on. Yeah. Not the golf course and pine trees. The driveway and the neighbor's driveway.

But I digress... the living room is small. The entry door is right in the middle, with a window on each side of the door. But not right next to the door, there's a gap of wall space. Then there's another window (overlooking the driveway) and the wide-open archway for the dining room (which is larger than the living room and where I currently sit). At the other side is that staircase. So we have one workable corner and only one wall that is significantly large enough to use for anything. Our furniture was arranged the same way for years, not because we liked it, but because it was a necessity.

A while ago, DG made this huge TV cabinet with a DVD cabinet. His original plan was to put them together into one giant wall unit. Except that doing so would block the one and only window I had access to open in warmer weather. The other is blocked by the loveseat and another was blocked by the fish tank (cabinet he built). So, he left them separate. As pictured below.

As you can see, the window is still half-covered. But, I could open it, block that area with a pet gate (Gypsy likes to bark at people) and we'd get a cross-breeze.



And a reminder of the DVD cabinet in all its glory.





So, DG's idea during that cold snap, was to rearrange the furniture in expectation of the new-new sofa. Oh, speaking of the new sofa- the one that was too high- here are some photos of that...







By comparison, here is the old-current sofa and the new too-tall sofa's armrests.



I'm not sure if you can see the difference, but the arms are narrower and sleeker overall.



Anyway, I begged him not to rearrange the furniture. It would be too much work. Don't do it. He did it anyway. He moved the fish tank to where a bookcase was and moved the bookcase (and completely messing up the order of my books) to where the dog bed was. BUT, it freed up that window the fish tank had been blocking. Then he removed all the DVDs from the giant DVD cabinet. We have more than a thousand by now. We stopped counting at around 800.

Here is a photo of most of the DVDs (there were more on the loveseat).



Then, he took a spacer he built of matching wood, connected the two pieces into the giant cabinet... except by then, I'd gone to bed. It took him all day to do just this little bit of work. (he refused help offered and would only ask for it when it came to moving the real heavy stuff). What I awoke to was an atrocity that any housewife would have freaked out over. The giant cabinet was taking up the whole wall (blocking an entire window). The sofa was moved over to the stairs- which is fine- and the loveseat was in front of the sofa. It was against the wall, but blocking half of the sofa. Anybody sitting on the loveseat would be partially blocking the TV view for who would be seated on the sofa. Plus, it was right there- I could put my feet on the loveseat from the sofa. The arm of the loveseat was an arm's length from the sofa. I really wish I had taken a photo. It was awful. I don't even remember where the chair was anymore.

Hours later, DG is up and I ask him what the hell he was thinking. I mean, if this was a temporary solution for the night, fine, but it damn sure wasn't staying this way. Now, the giant cabinet, while facing it (from the sofa view) was TV on the left, DVD cabinet on the right. I asked why he put the loveseat where it was, blocking the sofa. And he went off on me. Yelling at me that it would be fine to leave it there, it wasn't bothering anyone, I'm the only one complaining about it and I should just shut the fuck up about it as I "never" sit in the living room anyway (not entirely true).

I said, "Whoa! What the fuck are you yelling at me for? I just asked a goddamn question!"

And I can't recall all the words he was yelling at me, but he was swearing and gesturing wildly about the cabinet. "The fucking doors won't open if the loveseat is there and its fucked up! It will stay here because it FITS HERE!" and his voice kept raising. And I'm a bitch... you can't out-bitch a bitch. So, I yelled back. I admit it.

I asked, in a raised voice, why the DVD cabinet was on the right instead of the left- as was originally planned. "BECAUSE I ALREADY DID IT THIS WAY! IT WENT THIS WAY FOR A REASON!" and there was some swearing in the screaming.

I took a breath, I tried not to totally lose it. "But when you did this originally, you had it on the other side. Why isn't it on the other side?"

"BECAUSE I PUT THE SPACER THERE! RIGHT FUCKING THERE!"

Me: "But why isn't it on the other side? I don't get why-"

DG: "ARE YOU FUCKING STUPID?" (say what? like I'm gonna let that go?) "I PUT THE FUCKING SPACER THERE!"

It went back and forth like this for a few moments, including him getting up, opening the DVD cabinet to show me how the doors wouldn't open with the loveseat there. And each time, he wouldn't answer my question about why. Why that side?

I got him to stop yelling long enough to listen to me ask: "Why didn't you put the spacer on the other side?"

DG: (after a pause) "BECAUSE I DIDN'T THINK ABOUT IT!" Finally! A Disabled Guy answer.

So, I asked why he couldn't change it. The yelling resumed about the spacer and how he cut it at the bottom to accommodate the bottom of the DVD cabinet. Except it wasn't quite as well-put as that. He was screaming about it and using a condescending tone, as if I were a child. He dropped that "are you fucking stupid" line a couple more times. So I got up. And I acted just as immature as he was. I gestured the same way he was, at that spacer thing, and asked, "WHY COULDN'T YOU BUILD ANOTHER ONE FOR THE OTHER FUCKING SIDE THEN? HOW MUCH FUCKING WOOD COULD THIS TAKE?" (the problem with the Disabled Guy is if you present him with a two-part question without giving him time to answer, he loses the plot and forgets what he was trying to say, but I was tired of his yelling and calling me stupid).

So, he sat down and crossed his arms. "I'm done! I'm fucking done! I'm not talking about it any fucking more!" and that was it. He turned his head away from me even.

When Ceej asked me a question about the other sofa- which I couldn't answer- I asked him (it was a basic question, not related to anything we'd just argued about). He refused to answer. Even looked away. I said, "You can stop being a fucking dick and answer the goddamn question."

So he did, with two words. I asked a follow-up question. Again, no answer. So I said, "I'm not talking about your precious cabinet of doom, you can answer the fucking question."

It went on like this for a while. And when Ceej dared to ask why the loveseat was blocking half the sofa, he went off again: "FINE! I'LL PUT IT THE FUCK BACK! EVERYBODY CAN SHUT UP ABOUT IT BECAUSE I'LL PUT IT BACK!" and he stomped around for a bit.

Now, we don't know what set him off. We have no idea why he was so pissed off about the whole thing. Normally, he only gets like this if I'm picking at him and I won't stop. Not nagging, but close. But that day, he just totally lost his shit for nothing. As I'm typing this, I'm deep into my nightly pain meds, so I'm sure I'm leaving some stuff out and forgetting the sequence a bit, but that's how this all went down. I don't remember where I had to go, but I left for about forty-five minutes and when I got back, he'd gotten all the DVDs out of the cabinet and was removing the spacer (he'd been working for longer than forty-five minutes, that's just how long I was gone). When he got the spacer out, he paused and looked at. Then he turned it and looked at it again.

I stepped over and I said, "Don't let your cheese slide off your cracker, but listen..."

He listened. "Why can't you just flip this over and use it on the other side?" I asked. I even showed him. "You've got scrap wood you can use and fix this- [I pointed to the groove he was talking about] and you can just flip the cabinets."

He said, "That won't work! It'll look like shit."

I replied, "Who is gonna see it at the bottom of the cabinet?"

A few minutes later, after I sat back down, I said, "Can't you just take off that piece of wood and put it on the other side?"

After all this... after him screaming at me, this is what I got:

I got a fibro flareup that caused my skin to start itching so bad it made my eyes water and I got a half-hearted mumbled, "I'm sorry" for the screaming freak out he had.

But, I also have a whole window I can open up, an almost-finished new-new sofa, and a giant mega-cabinet that takes up one whole wall and blocks a window that used to be blocked by a loveseat. (which is to the right of this photo).



These DVDs don't count the bunch Ceej and Jase have in their rooms or the handful Kat has in her apartment in the town where she lives. Also, there are two shelves in the bottom of the TV cabinet that are full.



The Disabled Guy-ism in all this is when I ask him now what the fuck flew up his ass that day, he tells me: "I was possessed."

I ask: "By what?"

DG: "An asshole who can't rearrange furniture."

Me: "If he comes back, I'll sic the blankets on him. Then he'll be sorry." (The Killer Blanket Story)

We had another discussion last night about how the blankets attack him in his sleep. Which is why he's constantly piling them onto me. Apparently, with my two arms, I can better fight them off than he can.

Also, the Disabled Guy realizes his eyesight is getting worse. From the sofa, he can't see the TV so well. Good thing he has that chair to sit in that's closer.

Spoiled dogs and a baked potato

The Disabled Guy spoils the little dogs. We all know of his special baby-talk that he has for them and the conversations he has with them. And I've shared photos of the Chis with him and without him. This is about one Chi in particular- Bruno. Bruno is the first offspring from Luna and Jasper. That whole incident took place while I was in the hospital recovering from a total knee replacement. Had I been home, I would have noticed the signs and been able to separate them (as in, sending one of them to my friend's house). But at the time, I'd been in the hospital for almost two weeks. Also, we stupidly assumed that Jasper wasn't old enough at the time (he was barely nine months old). Anyway, the result is Bruno. Bruno is a beast. He was the only puppy in the litter. A litter of one. And he was normal Chihuahua puppy-sized when he was born.



We decided to keep him because he was the only pup in the litter and he's a tri-color merle. He grew.



And grew.



And grew.



Yeah.



This conversation has happened before and I thought I had shared it, but it doesn't seem that I did.

Bruno ended up not only large in comparison to his parents, he ended up large by general Chihuahua standards. The last time he was weighed, he was around fourteen pounds. He's not just fat, he's all-around BIG!

I was informed today that the reason Bruno is so big is that he ate his siblings. That's right, he ate the other puppies in his litter while he was inside Luna. And in eating those other puppies, he gained their power. An unwanted side-effect of gaining their power was the overall largeness of Bruno's physical body.

DG: "Its not his fault. He ate them and got big and strong. Too big. Poor guy. He didn't know eating his brothers and sisters would be such a bad thing and now here he is, Giant Bruno with no brothers and sisters." (he has siblings, they're just not from his litter- the litter of one).

Me: "Why did he eat the other puppies?"

DG: "So he could be- to be- so he could have power! Super Chihuahua power! To fly! And fight crime! But now he's just too damn big and can't fly. So he stays with us because he's safe. Safe from the bad guys!" Of course, when he spoke of flying, he did the hand gesture and made the "schwoooosh" sound effect.

On another note altogether, DG was rambling on about something and walked away from me while he was speaking. I called out, "What'd you say?"

DG replied, "NOTHING!"

Me: "SOMETHING! What'd you say, I can't hear you from in there." (the kitchen, on my deaf ear side).

DG: *sing-song* "If you can't HEAR it, you can't WRITE about it! AND its ALLLLLLLL MIIIIINE!"

Me: "I'm putting that in the blog."

DG: "Dammit! Foiled! Like a baked potato!"