Charlie & His Gang of Tuffy Friends

Charlie has two really good friends: on the left you have Lobster, and on the right is Kang. They are Charlie's best buddies and he could run around with them for hours on end. The best part is that they are from the "Tuffy" brand of toys and they are just that: tough.

Since he's a bit of an aggressive chewer, Charlie can't be trusted with most toys as he will rip them to pieces. But he's had Kang for 7 months now and Lobster for 5 months and they're both still hanging in there.



See how much Charlie loves them? However, when he does get a little too rough and starts chewing, we say "kisses." This means stop what you're doing and give Lobster or Kang a little lick. Yes, this actually works.


In perusing Amazon recently, I checked out the full range of Tuffy toys. Both Kang and Lobster were purchases when we were on vacations (i.e. we paid double the price at fancy pet stores for them because I knew Charlie needed them). Turns out Amazon has a huge selection of the Tuffy line at about half the price.

I love this alien. I think he would be a great partner in crime for Kang. And, he would be so much easier for Charlie to carry around (Kang's big head tends to cause some problems for Charlie).

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I don't know about you and your dog, but what toy collection is complete without a sheep? This guy's name is Sherman. I'm sure Charlie would adore him.

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Or what about Bevo the Bull? Love him and Charlie would love to swing him around by his horns.

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Now, Tuffy has toys that fall into just about every category. But obviously I am obsessed with the barnyard line. And it doesn't get any better than Tallulah the Turkey! I can't even handle the cuteness, and I wonder how Charlie's life has been complete without having a turkey.

I vow that by the time Thanksgiving rolls around, Charlie will be the proud owner of a turkey. I hope to have video to share his completely bliss when Tallulah makes her way into his life.

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Because, seriously, how could you deprive this face of anything?!

Adventures in Lap Swimming

Let me preface this post by saying that I rarely - if ever - post about my complete and utter social awkwardness in certain aspects of my life. So, for the first time, welcome to my world of awkward and unfortunate events...

A couple of weeks ago, Steve got it into his head that we should start swimming laps at the gym. We are fortunate enough to belong to a city gym that has two lap pools that we've never used in the 2 1/2 years since we've been members. While I have always liked to swim, I haven't swum laps since I was a 7-year-old on the swim team.

At the beginning of last week, I knew Steve was serious when he started asking me what size bathing suit I wear. Ummm. I knew he wasn't going to give up on his dreams of us swimming laps side by side, so I conceded and I told him what size I thought I might be (editor's note: I do own plenty of bathing suits, but not a sporty one). He ordered me this one from Amazon:

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I didn't really think much of it - a suit's a suit, right? And I had him order a size up from what I thought I would wear just to be safe.

Three days later, the suit arrived and I tried it on. Let me just say that the model in that picture must have a 100% fake body. Because once I pulled that sucker on, I knew I was doomed. I had two options for how I could wear it:

1. Yanked up super high in the front so that I had a precarious case of camel toe and hip bones hanging out. Why would one do this? Oh yes, to cover up the immense amount of hip/back fat hanging out the back.
2. Worn semi-normally on the front which in turns causes the aforementioned back fat situation.

So, basically I would either scare people coming or going. I immediately knew I could NOT wear this in public. Steve, on the other hand, immediately reassured me that it looked great. Hmph.

Last Friday, the day after the "no way in Hell am I wearing this" debacle, Steve was still dead set on us swimming laps that night. I sucked it up (and in!) and finally agreed. However, once I reached the locker room the anxiety level began to rise. Since I never use the locker room, I don't have a standard 4-digit combination to use when locking my locking. This will come to bite me in the ass.

I revealed to the world (or at least the ladies in the locker room) my sorry suit, shoved my clothes in the locker, closed it up and punched in my 4-digit code. Immediately after it beeped at me that it was locked, I realized that I had no clue what combination I had entered, except that it started with a "1." Crap!

After punching in a million different possible combinations, I decided I just needed to walk away from the situation. Certainly I would remember my combination later. So I gathered up my goggles and miniature towel provided by the gym, and walked my sorry self over to the pool. Steve was already in there getting ready to swim, but since he was sharing a lane with someone else, I would have to share a lane with a fancy fast swimmer stranger. After standing there awkwardly in the water for awhile, fancy swimmer man made it to my end. Here's our conversation:

Fancy Man: Circle or side?
Me: Ummm..?
Fancy Man: Excuse me? I can't hear you.
Me: Umm, I don't care.
Fancy Man: Ok then...

Fancy Man swam away from me as fast as he could. Fortunately, Steve's lane freed up so I was able to join him. We swam our laps and quickly realized how exhausting of a workout it is.

Fast forward to 30 minutes later when I decided I was done. I grabbed my mini-towel and flip flops and plodded back to the locker room. After entering about 30 different 4-digit combinations, I knew I was in trouble. So I took my mini towel and wrapped it around my waist, fortunately covering up the back fat / camel toe situation and shamefully walked to the front desk. I'll be honest, I felt like I was in a dream where I showed up to school naked.

Finally, they sent someone back to open my locker. I threw my clothes on as quickly as possible, met Steve at the front and we headed home. Just when I was finally relaxed, I looked in the bathroom mirror.

Every day I wear pearl earrings that Steve gave me when we first started dating. Yep, one was definitely missing. So not only was I the anxiety-ridden, squeezed in her bathing suit like a sausage, combination-forgetting girl at the gym, I was also very obviously sporting just one big pearl earring.

Sigh. Some days, you just can't win.