Cookies, cats & unemployed malinois

I love the holidays, really, I do but things are a little insane right now. My work hours are all over the place and it seems like the hands on the clock are spinning double time. Things should settle after this weekend, at least where work is concerned.

Phoenix is disgruntled. Poor little dog. He's not getting any attention.

No. I take that back. He's getting plenty of attention (Give me that $#@!-ing sock!) but he's not getting any work. Seriously. He's getting trained about once a week whether he needs it or not and believe me, that's not enough. He's starting to invent jobs for himself. Anyone who lives with creative, intelligent, high-drive, easily bored dogs, you know what I'm talking about.

This morning I baked sugar cookies. Phoenix helped. He was in charge of anything that fell on the floor. He was very bored. I take sugar cookie security very seriously. So did he.


He helped me frost them, too. He sat by my chair, put his head on my leg and drooled. For 45 minutes. Really, a little malinois fur in the frosting adds that special, festive touch, don't you think?

Later in the morning, I went on the Amana Christmas Haus Tour to take photos for the paper. It was kind of fun. It really made me appreciate our house, warts and all. And it made me want to come home and clean and de-clutter. Some of the homes were so filled with "decor" I wonder if the people who live there actually LIVE there?

This is Jenise and her cat Walter. They were on the haus tour. Well, their haus was, they were hosts. Jenise used to work at the newspaper office with me, about a million years ago. Then she got smart and left. Now she and her husband have a business in Amana. They live above their shop, which is located in the ground floor of a 150-year old "küche haus" or "kitchen haus," from Amana's communal era.

Walter was very cool. He wore a Christmas tie for the occasion and thought he was all that. Check out his paws. He is a polydactyl cat. He has extra toes on each foot. Ernest Hemmingway had polydactyl cats. There. Now you've learned something new today. Walter is from northeast Iowa, however, not from the Florida Keys where Hemmingway's multi-toed cats are found. There's a story there, if Walter would ever like to tell it.