Cruisin toward possible disaster

Well, it happened. Neal hit his mid-life crisis. First, the Mustang convertible. Now, he has met a "lady" on the internet who has captured his heart.

Her name is Trixie and she's part german shepherd and part huskey. I'd like to say that I'm as fond of her as he is but her fur (which is white, thick, and very whispy) has saturated every square inch of the house. In fact, I have witnessed her hair floating through the air like snowflakes. She also has some less-than-desirable habits which have led me to nickname her "white trash."

However, she tolerates Trent well which is the most one can ask of a dog. It has been our experience that about four out of five dogs are terrified of Trent upon first sight and the rest are at least half-leary of him until they realize he's fairly harmless.

As usual, I have an uncanny ability to point out the negatives in every situation and didn't hold back with this household addition. So far, I have enumerated at least five of her bad habits. She drinks water from the toilet and then lets it drip out of her mouth, forming a trail that details her whereabouts since leaving the bathroom (that's technically two bad habits). She becomes incontinent when confronted with attention after having been left alone for an extended period of time. She invites herself onto the furniture. She has attempted a couple of escapes but her efforts were botched.

Then, there are the added complications of a second dog: double your vet bills, double your pet-sitting bills, double the fur tumbleweeds in the house. But on the flip side, there's double the wags, double the kisses, and double the companionship. That's a fair trade, I suppose.

I'm already dreading leaving the dogs for a week while we go on vacation for spring break. We finally broke down and booked a cruise since, from all accounts, we appear to be the last family on earth that has not cruised. It's almost a requirement these days. I can't communicate with certain people sometimes because I can't relate when they use a cruise simile in the conversation. For instance "That's a nice house but the master bath is like a cruise ship bathroom" (judging from the context and using my common sense, I can deduce that a cruise ship bathroom is tiny but I'd like to check it out firsthand). Or "That buffet is the best one since our cruise last summer!" (I'm so old-school I still use Vegas references when discussing the superlative in buffets but apparently cruise buffets are in contention for the ultimate prize).

I'm hoping and praying that I don't get kidnapped in any of our foreign destinations. Not just for the obvious reasons, but my passport photo is the absolute worst picture of me that has ever been captured digitally (I've had worse ones captured on film but between the two mediums, digital can at least be enhanced so there's really no excuse). I can just picture myself sitting with my captors in some dirty hut in Central America while they turn on their little TV and my passport photo is all over the screen. That's my idea of torture. The photo is so bad that people would probably just assume that my captors had already tortured me, forced me to read propoganda, and then snapped my photo to send to the media so that it's evident to everyone that these guys mean business. Maybe I'll dig up my Glamour Shots from thirteen years ago and put them somewhere that Neal can easily access them if I turn up missing. Unfortunately, I have aged since then and I don't make it a habit of wearing satiny green jackets and heavy makeup but at a minimum, I'd look nice and airbrushed. That's the image I'd like people to take away with them.

"It's too bad they never located that woman with the smooth, ideal complexion and the gorgeous shiny jacket!"