You might be a lousy housekeeper...

if a day of serious housework scares your dog. Poor Sophie didn't know what was going on yesterday. I was feeling out of sorts and like I needed to get my environment under control. I walked in the front door the day before, and was struck by how I'd managed to strew work stuff and catalogs and magazines on every horizontal surface. The dining room table was cluttered with work related stuff, the counters were full of catalogs and junk mail, the furniture was covered in cat hair and the carpet needed vacuuming. It was just all grubby and in disarray. I can tolerate a mess for a while, but eventually it reaches critical mass. I know it also puts me in a foul mood, and I was IN a foul mood. I'd spent several days in a row hunched over the MLS and in various webinars, and I was sick of sitting at the computer and very, very irritable. I needed ACTION.

So I launched a day of REAL cleaning - not just my usual quickie "pick up the clutter and run the vacuum" style cleaning. I dusted and polished furniture, spot-cleaned carpet, vacuumed, mopped, scrubbed, organized paper and trashed junk, and felt my stress level drop. I even cleaned out the fridge.

But while I worked like a madwoman I grew concerned about Sophie, and worried that she was getting sick. She refused to go for walks when invited, and would only go as far as the nearest patch of grass to take care of business, then turned and headed for the house. She didn't finish her dinner. Mostly she just watched me with a distinctly morose expression. I finally figured out that she saw this burst of activity and was worried, because obviously Something was Up, and she didn't know what. I spent the evening giving her reassurance and love, and today she's her happy little self again. But it does say something about my housekeeping that an old fashioned day of serious cleaning made the dog freak out.

I also picked up the New Camera and snapped some random pictures. All of these pictures were taken in basic point 'n shoot mode, indoors in natural light, without flash. I do love this camera.

I've had a Zappos box in the corner of the bedroom for a couple of months now - I saved it to ship Supergirl's Blankie 2.0 (which still isn't completely assembled, mea culpa). Higgins didn't notice it until I moved it, then of course he had to check it for cat-worthiness.

NO, I didn't grab the tape and seal and ship him. But the thought did cross my mind.

Murphy's old harness got to be too big on him - he's THAT tiny now - so he's sporting a spiffy new x-small chihuahua-sized harness. He appears to be feeling fine despite his shrinkage, but he does seem to need the prednisolone all the time lately.

And here's some shots of my tidy and de-cluttered house.

This is just a random shot of the moon rising over the golf course at dusk - taken through the balcony screen, obviously.

This camera can do so much more than I am capable of doing with it yet, I really need to just carry it around with me for a few weeks and mess with it.

Oh, and it's a good thing I took a few pictures of my fresh and immaculate home, because Higgins walked in and noticed it was looking too tidy, and threw up on the carpet this morning.