Best Intentions

I know I promised to post frequently and wittily. I also promised to lose fifteen pounds, straighten out my bedroom closet and clean the basement. I have done none of these. I'm sorry.
But I did add to my menagerie. We got a Moluccan cockatoo. His name is Sammy and he is sweet and adorable and had been owned by a little old man, who had gotten too sick to care for him. The l.o.m. was of Puerto Rican descent, so Sammy favors rice and beans and yells "Hola!" whenever he wants to greet you, which i think is very amusing. He joins my African Grey parrot, two cats, two dogs and two half dogs (will explain later), a canary and a guinea pig. Not to mention three horses. It's a full house, but it's exactly the way i like it.

Okay, I have to explain the math on the dogs.
Our first full dog is a Boston terrier, Jean-Luc, who was a rescue. He's a tad big for a Boston T., about forty-five pounds big, and my vet has a sneaking suspicion that he might have had a pit bull grandma or something. But he is very sweet, even if he is one of the dumbest dogs i have ever owned. It took him a whole year to learn to sit, and he still hasn't learned that the kitchen floor is slick, so he races into the kitchen and does the water slide, like the scene in "Risky Business", crashing into the wall on the other side of the room. At least once a day.
Our second full dog is a toy poodle, light red, named Lola. She is the polar opposite of J-L, and has not only learned to sit, but stays, lays down, makes my morning coffee and toast, and dances on her toes, for our entertainment. The two half-dogs are "tea cup" shih tzus. Mimsy is full grown, topping out at four pounds and is so utterly adorable (and untrainable) that we ran right back to the breeder and snapped up her half sister, whom we named Sadie Petunia. Sadie, named for my grandmother, weighs two and half pounds at three months old, and looks like an ewok. In fact, that is what we tell people when they ask us what breed she is. Ewok. Let them figure it out.
It is snowing right now, and i am sitting in my office and trying to write my next book, and the dogs are all wrestling, and the parrot is yelling hello, and the cockatoo is answering Hola! and the phone rings., and it is my mother, who thinks i am certifiable for owning all these creatures. She has called to tell me that it is snowing outside and that she misses Phoenix, from which she moved only a week ago, and that she is unpacking and can't find her make up. I can hardly hear her over the noise.
Perfect.