Chili Dawg is still a young puppy, so he mouths and chews EVERYTHING: furniture, walls, baskets and worst of all, our body.  Right now I am on a mission to find appropriate things for Chili to chew.

Chili has a drawer full of toys, but this lamb that I purchased at Target is his favorite.  The toy makes a “baa” sound and at first Chili Dawg used to whine whenever it made noise; it was so funny!

Another favorite toy isn’t a toy at all, but a small clothing hamper that I bought in Target’s Dollar Spot.  He loves to put toys in the hamper and also get in there himself.  

These are rawhide chews.  They can be bought plenty much anywhere dog products are sold, but I got these from Whole Foods.  Rawhides can be dangerous if swallowed, so we have to really watch Chili when he’s chewing one of these.

These bully sticks that I bought at Highland Pet Supply are an alternative to rawhide and are supposed to be healthier as they are totally digestible.  Rawhides are the hides from a cow, but bully sticks come from a bull/steer.   A part of the bull that is shaped like a stick.  Remember that a bull is a male animal.  Did you get it yet?  Yes, you can be grossed out; I am.

If you didn’t know what it was, then you wouldn’t be so grossed out over the bully sticks because they really aren’t that identifiable.  That’s not the case with this cow’s tendon I bought at Iman Park Pet Works….it looks exactly like a tendon; ewww!

It smells awful too, but look how much Chili Dawg loves it.  The tendon also kept him quiet and occupied for a good hour, so that was golden, but I don’t know if I can take the smell.  Chili Dawg’s breath was kicking something terrible for days afterward and that just won’t do because I like to hug him.  

Call me a food snob, crunchy or crazy but I care about what I put in my body and that of family.  Whenever possible we eat organic fruit and vegetables, free-range/hormone free meat and I try to limit dyes, additives and refined food as much as possible.   But of course it is not always possible and just like everyone else sometimes we eat fast food–but only Chik-fil-A and NEVER McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell or anyplace else.  Today I broke that rule and was reminded to never do it again.

We were coming home from a day of hanging in the sun and needed to quickly grab dinner.   Someone suggested that we try Kentucky Fried Chicken’s new grilled chicken; not a place that I frequent often (I think I last ate there about 6 years ago), but I was intrigued by all the latest media hype.   Our nearest KFC is not in our neighborhood, but in the hood.  And here’s the first bad news: they didn’t sell the grilled chicken because the store has yet to have the necessary renovations.   What do you want to bet that the KFC’s in the burbs are first on the list for renovations?  Because I’m sure that KFC thinks that people in the hood don’t care about eating healthy anyway.  It’s just another ploy by the man to keep the disenfranchised pumped full of fat and grease and therefore not energetic enough to stage a revolution!  

Anyway, by now we were really hungry so we ordered a bucket of original recipe chicken, mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese.   I admit that the chicken was good (I tried not to think about the hormones), but the macaroni and cheese was not even edible.  Not only did it taste disgusting, it was a neon florescent orange that I have never seen in the natural world.  My daughter took a look and said, “Wow, that looks like it has lots of dye in it!”   

The photo doesn’t even do it justice; it is the color of a crossing guard’s vest.

Kentucky Fried Chicken, if you ever read this, please know that I am OFFENDED by the nasty slop that you are trying to pass off as macaroni and cheese.  You ought to be ashamed!  I know that you are trying to provide an economic meal, but can you PRETEND to serve quality food?  How can you advertise grilled chicken–a supposed healthy alternative to fried–but yet continue to sell a side item as unhealthy as that couldn’t-possibly-be-real-cheese crap?  My daughter said, “It looked fake and tasted like someone didn’t care about their customers.”  

Yes, baby, that’s exactly right.

Chili Dawg, at 16 weeks old is finally vaccinated enough to be taken into the world and our first order of business was to find a groomer.  True to my nature, I obsessed over finding the right groomer; I read countless reviews on Yelp and Kudzu, got recommendations from neighbors and called each establishment personally.  Initially I had an appointment booked at a chi-chi Buckhead salon way across town, but then against my better judgement I took my obsessiveness down a couple of notches and made an appointment at a neighbor-recommended groomer closer to home.   Upon meeting the groomer this morning I had a long conversation with her, specifying that I wanted scissors used, not clippers.  We seemed to be on the same page.  Still I was very nervous about leaving him there.

This is what he looked like before leaving home today.  We wanted to keep him scruffy looking, but clearly he needed to be able to see better.

And this is what he looks like now; I didn’t even recognize him!  His face was shaved down too much.

Yes, he can see better, but the essence of Chili Dawg is gone; his expression is totally different now!  Waah!  It’s an outrage, a scandal!  

The next time he gets groomed (not at the same place!), I am going to be the crazy stage mom telling the groomer exactly what to do.  I will have these photos with me to show an example of what NOT to do.   As God as my witness,  nobody will ever give my puppy a bad hair day again!

After I made him throw away yet another pair of ripped and torn Converse sneakers, my son finally got around to using his Nike gift card from Christmas and made these very sweet kicks on NIKEiD.  I have to say that they are pretty fly.  My husband, who is a total sneaker-head (I mean like out of control, crazy) loves them too and wants to make himself a pair now.  If you can’t tell from the photo, they are purple patent leather, hot pink and the sides are made of a really cool gray silk wrinkled fabric.  One shoe says “Topsy” and the other shoe says “Turvy”.  Sometimes I have to veto his choice of shoe-wear if he’s hanging out with me, but with these shoes we are in complete agreement.

*This is a repost of well-received blog post that I wrote in October of 2008.  I can add that we have had more peculiar Southern moments since then, most notably driving to Royston, Georgia where we got our puppy, Chili Dawg.  We were deep in the country and out of our element for sure.  When we turned onto the dirt road and wild turkeys crossed our path, my husband stopped the car and refused to drive anymore until I called the breeder to make sure that we were going the right way.   Turns out that we were headed in the right direction, but I understood my husband’s concern; trespassing on someone’s property on a Southern country road was not something that we wanted to do!  

Every region has its stereotypes. West Coasters are hippies, flighty and materialistic.  Mid-westerners are frumpy, stodgy and practical-minded.  Northeasterners are chic, in-your-face and matter-of-fact.  I have lived in all of these places and must say that the stereotypes are true to some degree.  Each region has its own particular flavor that makes it unique.   The blessing about living so many places in my short life is that I can roll anywhere and feel comfortable with anybody. 

The South?  Well, that’s whole other world.  Southerners truly love the South and wouldn’t possibly think of living anywhere else.   And if they happen to find themselves moving out of the South, it is only their body that moves, not their heart.   I actually admire that about Southerners, their fierce loyalty and complete surrender to their beloved roots.   And that steel magnolia thing that the Southern women have?  So true; these women are smart, beautiful and savvy.  Never underestimate a Southern woman.

I am not unfamiliar with the South; while growing up in the Mid-West I spent almost every summer in Alabama with my grandparents.  But living here is another thing.  When I first moved to Atlanta, there was no Ikea, no Trader Joe’s and Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom had just opened.  My first thought was,WHERE THE HELL AM I??  But soon I was able to appreciate the particular charms of living here.  And of course it helps that they eventually got an Ikea and Trader Joe’s.

Things I like about The South:

• sweet tea
• grits: they can be ordered almost anywhere
• trees
• warm weather
• the word “y’all” (much more charming than “yous guys” up in New Jersey)

Things I hate about The South:

• the confederate flag
• “yes ma’am”
• palmetto bugs:  huge mutant cockroaches that fly

Atlanta is a big city and mostly it feels like any other city.  I live in the city, not the suburbs, not the country, so many people I encounter are like city people everywhere.  But sometimes I have one of those“Hello!–You’re in the south!” moments.  Two incidents in particular come to mind. 

The first one happened last spring at my son’s basketball game.  We were outside the city limits at a small private school.  It was 4:00 p.m. on a workday, so usually at these games we just see the parents of the players.  Well, this school gym was packed with all the local folks.   Apparently 8th grade basketball was the entertainment highlight of the week.  Their team was killing us and clearly they were going to win the game.  Still this lady (rooting for the other team) sitting behind my husband, daughter and I screamed in our ear the entire game:

“Git ‘em, Tyler!”

“Here he come!”

“You know what he gonna do!”

“Git ‘em!”

Oh. My. God.  My daughter was frightened and it was all my husband and I could do to keep a straight face.  We were all dang near deaf by the end of the game.

See, that is another casualty of living here; you start using words like “dang” and “mighty” in your everyday conversation.

The other incident happened this past weekend at the Ritz Carlton Reynolds Plantation resort at Lake Oconee, about 1 ½ hours drive from Atlanta.  Since my kids were on fall break we went there for a few days.   We had been there before and loved it (hence our return) and over-all had another fabulous vacation.   But this time we were more heightened to the Southern-ness of the other guests and that we were in Greensboro, Georgia. 

Maybe it was the gaggle of Sarah Palin button-wearers converging at breakfast.  Rolling through the lobby with our Barack Obama shirts and dreadlocks, I’m sure that we looked like straight up gangsters.  

Or perhaps it was the men in their orange University of Tennessee Dockers; UGA whipped their butts that day in Athens and a huge crowd decided to nurse their wounds in the luxury of the Ritz.    Only loyal Southern football fans would wear those pants. 

Maybe it because every kid at the resort was called by their first and middle names: Riley Jean, Emma Ray, Bass Lee.  All the above is indeed more Southern-ness that we have ever encountered in our eclectic Atlanta neighborhood.

But, really the clincher was when we were at the pool with the other resort children (the Riley Jeans and Emma Rays) and they asked my daughter “why is your hair like that?”  Lord help them, these children clearly hadn’t been around any little black girls before.  Not only were they ignorant, they were also bad-assed kids rude (not very Southern, I might add; Southerners are usually big on manners); the same children were doing cannonballs into the hot tub and later loudly commenting on a lady’s red hair.

For sure, this incident is not a Southern thing per se; it could have happened anywhere in America where kids do not ever see people that look differently than they do, but when you are at a place with plantationin its name, you can’t help but to make some connection.

So, it is with a jaundiced eye that I view my new home.  I love the drawl, rocking chairs and iced tea, but not the horrific history that is still quite visible in celebrated landmarks and icons.  I must say, living here feels mighty peculiar.  ;-)