You may remember the dishwasher was broken the other day by one or more of my dogs and/or cats, so there are a few dishes sitting around in the kitchen waiting to be washed. Those dishes include two cookie sheets which were sitting on the stove.

Notice I say 'were.' I was not-so-pleasantly awoken by them crashing onto to the floor yesterday morning. Lucky, one of my dogs, was happily licking one of the baking sheets when I arrived in the kitchen... that is, until she took one look at my face and went slinking off into the other room.

I live in a madhouse. It's a good thing the puppies and kitties are cute, or I'd have to do something drastic, like... um... well, I can't think of anything, but it would be dastardly, indeed. Oh, hell, who am I kidding? If an animal needs a home, it comes here. That's how I ended up with four dogs, four cats, and a part-time which turned into a full-time guinea pig. It's pathetic. I'm pathetic.

In related pathetic news, Tango the Wonder Kitty has a new hobby. Frequent readers may recall my theory that Tango had been mellowing with age... growing up, if you will. Alas, I do believe my theory was complete and utter crap. He's taken up the fun and frequent pastime of unraveling the paper towels from the dispenser in the kitchen. That means I get to engage in the fun and frequent pastime of picking up mass amounts of paper towels on a multi-daily basis.

This makes me opine for the days when he'd spent many happy minutes unraveling the toilet paper in the bathroom. It's cheaper to replace. But, no, Tango has moved on to bigger and better things. But he's also been quite snuggly lately, which makes it really, really hard to stay mad at him.

I am the biggest sucker in the world, aren't I? I blame genetics, quite frankly. Everyone in my family, with the exception of my father (, has the same love of animals. Even my father has a dog, and he doesn't even like dogs... well, except his. He named it Mortie, for no reason anyone can discern, including him. One of my brothers has a veritable zoo, with dogs, cats, rats, a guinea pig, a bird, lizards, fish, etc... he even bought a horse not too long ago. Fortunately he keeps the horse housed at a stable. He (my brother, not the horse) used to have a pygmy goat, too. The goat eventually went to go live on a farm with other pygmy goats, where she has a boyfriend named Michael who loves her even though she head butts him on a regular basis. Or maybe it's because she does that. I don't know.

Anyway, as you can plainly see, I was born with a love of animals and there's no changing that now. It's so very not my fault I'm this way. It's also not my fault I bawl my head off every time I watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and I have never been able to watch Bambi. I couldn't even watch Air Bud when it got to the part where the kid tried to send the dog away. I had to leave the room.

I'm truly hopeless... in so many ways.

Christmas music recommendation

Kathy Mattea has a spiffy new Christmas CD called Joy for Christmas Day. She's technically classified as a country artist, but she's the kind of artist who defies any classification, especially with this CD. If you liked her first Christmas album, Good News, you'll love this one.

While I'm at this who recommending thing, The Blenders, a nifty a cappella group, has two Christmas CDs -- When It Snows, and Nog. Go get them, right now. They're beyond cool.

Now, if you'll excuse me, there's a guinea pig banging her water dispenser, so I must go feed her before that banging makes me go berserk.