I have a confession: I haven't been doodling lately. My computer has been on the fritz and I've been terribly busy with the Villa and watching Grey's Anatomy and not playing with the dogs although they're desperate and lonely and wish I would chase them around the couch a few times (my friend would say I'm projecting human feelings on our dogs--well, yeah, and so?) and the moon has not been in the second house and the sun, well, it's been coming out lately, which has really been throwing off my internal body clock. I mean, this is Seattle and after not seeing the big yellow glowy thing in the sky for six months, it's difficult to reacquaint myself with it.

To my litany of excuses I can now add a legitimate one: Button ate my pen. When we leave the dogs in the Castle for the day, we lock them in the kitchen and laundry area. (Soon they'll be locked in the dog room in the Villa.) While I would love them to roam the house, we can't trust them: Ziggy tends to pee on things, and Button, well, Button eats everything. We've also discovered that she may be able to fly. While we haven't caught her in the act yet, stuff that's way out of her reach (and the reach of most non-mutant humans) somehow ends up chewed and scattered around the house. I plan to invest in a wireless webcam for the new dog room so we can document this and make lots of money parading her around the various mutant carnivals as the Flying Dog.

Getting back to the kitchen, besides the gate to the dining room, the kitchen also leads to the computer room, which we are careful to close before leaving. We left it open a few inches on Tuesday, and Button and Ziggy managed to sneak in while we were away. Once in, Button proceeded to find every lose paper, memory card, and plastic thingy and throw it around the kitchen. She likely flew onto the chair or desk, and then reached over and grabbed my fancy Cintiq pen that was in its fancy pen holder. She brought her prize into the kitchen and spent the rest of the day chewing the two ends.

I ordered a new one yesterday. It will be the first delivery in the Villa (besides the furniture, of course). I'll continue to work through my dwindling queue of doodles, and hope once we set up our new fancy two-desk study, I'll get a-doodling again. I have a couple of anime doodles I need to draw, and I'm sure depression will hit as soon as I realize how much money the Villa will cost. Doolies hasn't told me yet. Ignorance is a wonderful thing.