Slush Day

We have a Slush Day today. It's a lot warmer than a snow day, but not nearly as pretty. That 7.5 inches of snow seems to be all trying to go away at once, so the air is full of something white and liquid. This is what the front yard looks like, and I can actually see fog rolling up the driveway out to the street. It's pretty serious fog, too.


So the warm weather doesn't mean it's a good day for working outside, since the entire yard is a snowy and muddy mess. But, the fog makes for a beautiful soft sunlight - a perfect day for a photo shoot, right?

I'd come up with a clever idea for valentines...since I have a handy supply of cute dogs, why not set up a cheerful Valentine backdrop and take pictures of the dogs? A little time with Photoshop, a little work with a color printer, and I'm done. It seemed like such an easy idea.

So first I broke out the colored paper, and cut out a whole bunch of hearts, which got dog-related candy heart sayings. I was so proud of myself - I used up stuff we had lying around, and didn't buy any more paper for this project. Everything seemed good.


But there's an old saying in show business - never work with animals or children. I think it applies here, too. First, I had way more help than I needed when trying to cut out festive Valentine bandannas for the dogs.

If Max had been the one doing this, I would have suspected deliberate sabotage in order to avoid wearing the bandannas. But I don't think Oscar's that clever.


Then, it turns out that dog toys which sit unnoticed for weeks are suddenly very interesting when someone's trying to take pictures of them. Max got in on this harassment effort, too, but fled before I could take his picture...he was probably afraid of the bandanna.


Then, it turned out that the dogs were only willing to pose one at a time on my carefully-arranged Valentine backdrop. And while "pose," to me, means "sit still and look cute," to dogs it means "run around and step on the hearts to see if you can crumple them up, and while you're at it, pull the blanket off the chair and start fights with each other." Bribery didn't even work to get them to sit quietly together.


At least not at first. Upping the bribery ante to whole dog biscuits - and perhaps having a longer attention span than the dogs - eventually won me a handful of photos. There were a lot more little hearts when I started, but I'm not sure I can afford to be picky. I suspect dealing with computer programs will turn out to be the easy part of this Valentine's Day project!