We got all bundled up today and headed to the dog park, which was cold and snowy and not very full. But the dogs loved playing in the snow and chasing each other back and forth.

I fiddled around with the camera and the lighting a while for today's 365 and the dogs didn't get to run around much while I did that. After a bit, Olive got pretty cold despite her sweater and boots and wanted picked up. Mitzi loves being outside in the winter, even if her feet did get a little cold.

"I see no reason to not make a self-portrait each day," the photographer says. "I'm always around and always free. It's kind of like going to the gym--it flexes your muscles and keeps you in shape."

I completely love this. He talks about how tempting it is to just take a photo on your couch every day and call it good, but instead he's been challenged to go out and find interesting things.

Very inspiring since I, too, fall into that temptation of 11:30pm must-take-a-photo-or-else mindset.

Read more about Jeff and his self-portraits or see the entire project at his website.

This has always been a struggle for me (see previously), to get up from my desk and go somewhere else and do something that isn't work related. Most of the time I bring my lunch to work and eat it at my desk - sometimes I don't even go to the break room to reheat it and have discovered which leftovers work fine cold (risotto, stuffed pasta shells) and which ones don't (pork sauerkraut stew, taco meat).

While I'm sitting there eating my probably cold lunch, emails arrive and my phone rings and my manager knows I'm sitting there so she asks some questions and the next thing I know it's 3:30pm and I haven't gotten up from my chair to so much as pee all day.

So I have declared that the year of our Lord 2012 will be The Year Of The Lunch Breaks For Serious, amen.

Here's how the first week of this new goal has gone:

• January 2: No work, spent most of the day in my PJs
• January 3: Went to Kaladi Brothers downtown and spent an hour doing some studio work.
• January 4: I was on my way out the door when my phone rang and I knew it was important so I spent the first half of my lunch "break" speaking with my counterpart in the Juneau office. By then it was too late to really go anywhere, but instead of calling it a wash and sitting back down at my computer I sat in one of my guest chairs and worked on paying some bills. I didn't look at email or even answer my phone the next time it rang.
• January 5: Had lunch at Humpy's with a friend April and ate too many french fries.
• January 6: I did get away from my desk, but it was for a work-related luncheon. I still think it counts because I wasn't stuck to my desk and my computer.

The vet is by far her least favorite place, but the lady we've been seeing is fantastic with her and Olive stops being a butt as soon as they go in the back.

Once they were in the back to obtain a urine sample (with the aid of ultrasound, thankfully no catheter involved), she noticed that they have a BIRD in the back. And the bird SQUAKED at her and so she barked back. And while she and the bird had some WORDS the vet was able to quickly and easily obtain a urine sample without Olive even noticing she was on her back in a sling because OMG BIRD.

As soon as they were done she promptly emptied her bowels and then laid on the floor at Steve's feet ready to go home.

The vet is a very stressful place.

All this to say that Olive has a UTI and is taking gigantic (for her) antibiotics twice a day and is pretty all around miserable.

We had a mostly uneventful drive back home from Homer today despite the mounds of snowing done over the weekend and a Department of Transportation warning that the driving would be DIFFICULT and we should BE PREPARED FOR WINTER DRIVING as though it could be any other way in December in Alaska.

The only difficulty we experienced was Mitzi getting into some of the Christmas chocolate while we were stopped in Soldotna for a bite of lunch. It thankfully wasn't much chocolate so she didn't get sick at all.

We celebrated our return home with pizza pickets, a few loads of laundry, and hot cocoa from scratch.

Heat 1c milk and 1c heavy cream in a saucepan with a few cinnamon sticks.
Add a 1/2 c semisweet chocolate chips and stir until melted.
Sip with your sweetie on the couch.

We've been meaning to give the dogs baths for weeks because they are awfully smelly. And tonight was their lucky night. Clean dogs make for clean photos.

Olive is so used to these photoshoots that she couldn't even be bothered to sit up through the whole thing. In fact she didn't want to leave when it was Mitzi's turn.

Mitzi, however, was very excited at being allowed on the furniture, even though she couldn't fit her whole body on the ottoman. Oh and being the center of attention was really nice too.

I didn't even have to bribe her with any treats like I used to do with Olive. Even while I was shooting Olive's portrait Mitzi lied right on the floor between Olive and me. She's so calm and loyal, basically the complete opposite of Olive.

She did really great sitting for photos although she didn't care for her hat. She will learn.

I used to have a fake Christmas tree when I lived in Fairbanks and was pretty broke - the tree was a gift from a friend, well used and smelling of cigarette smoke - so on the other hand at least the trees I buy from Lowes smell like real tree with real sap that get all over my fingers and real needles that the dogs like to eat.

Once we get the tree home we always trim the bottom of it and remove some of the lower limbs to even things up and insure the tree sits straight(ish) in the stand. I hate to let these wonderful boughs go to waste, so this year I turned them into a wreath for our front door.

1. Start with a bunch of random boughs cut from your pretty and fragrant (purchased or free-range) Christmas tree.

2. Look around your garage furtively for an appropriate tool like pruning shears and fail. Grab a large set of bolt cutters instead and trim the boughs into smaller, manageable and pretty sections.

3. Toss the ugly parts aside and stack the smaller sections up nice and neat on the floor of your garage. Make sure you're wearing your husband's zippered hoodie while doing this because you don't want needles poking into your small and feminine sweaters. Roll up the sleeves of the hoodie so it fits you better.

4. Pull out the rest of your tools: an 18" wreath frame that you couldn't find at the craft store and almost pitched a hissy fit that you'd have to make do with a stupid puny 12" wreath frame until your 6'2" husband arrived to fend off any and all hissy fits and noticed they were all on the very top of the aisle instead of hanging where they were supposed to be; a spool of floral wire; and a small pair of pliers.

5. Lay the boughs out on the wreath frame one at a time and wire them down, using the pliers to insure the wire is tight.

6. Move around the frame, overlaying each new bough over the others and wiring each down until the entire frame is covered. Pick up the frame and check for any drooping spots - then wire those suckers down too. Fill in any thin spots. You're aiming for a nice roundish yet natural shape that's pretty secure.

7. Once you're happy with the shape and density, lay out some decorations. I selected some "scented" pine cones (supposedly cinnamon, but they hardly smelled like anything other than pine cone) and some fake red poinsettia flowers. Wrap some wire around them and secure those suckers down.

8. Display the wreath to your family and dogs. Son: "Nice." Husband: "Hey that's way nicer than I expected!" Dogs: *attempt to eat the fake flowers* Hang that sucker on the door as a notice to the whole neighborhood that you have the Christmas spirit, dammit.

9. Forget to unroll your husband's zippered hoodie sleeves, resulting in a comical moment the next time he tries to put it on and doesn't know whether to blame the son, you or the shitty Twitter app.

• I showered and did my hair and makeup just fine, but didn't finish my mascara because I had left it by the front door. Then I left without grabbing it. I'm hoping that the glasses I'm wearing will be distraction enough for no one to notice.
• On my way out the door I grabbed my workout clothes intending to hit the gym after work. Usually when I do this I forget to grab socks and debate all day whether I should workout without socks anyway even though that's kind of gross. But this morning I forgot my sports bra and that's not even a debate.
• I brought my camera to work because last night's blizzard left a whole lot of wet and heavy snow weighing down all of the trees and it's really beautiful outside and I haven't taken my camera for a lunchtime walk in ages. But the battery in my camera is mostly dead and the second battery in my bag is also dead and I don't have a charger. And I don't have a hat or gloves or a scarf because it's 35 degrees and who needs winter gear when it's so warm? but I forgot about the wind and the wet snow. Plus the amount of wet snow on the sidewalks means I should have brought my boots instead of relying on my sneakers for that kind of walking.
• I also forgot to grab the milk that I bought for work (I usually eat cereal at my desk around 9.30), so my breakfast options are now: 1. eat dry cereal, 2. walk the two blocks in lots of slushy snow in the wind to Kaladi Brothers where I can get a hot and yummy mocha and muffin for approximately 5 million calories, 3. badger a coworker into going out for donuts. I'm banking on option 3 at the moment.

But I'm here, even if only 90%.

Me: Hey what do you think about doing an advent this year?
Steve: What, with chocolates?
Me: No more like fun things for us to do together as a family.
Steve: ...
Me: But not as stuffy and boring as that sounds.

And so I made a list. Of fun things to do together as a family that aren't boring AT ALL.

And then I got out the ruler and the glue stick and the paper and pulled out my best impression of my mother and went all crafty on this advent's ass.

The plan was to hang a paper chain in the house and clip little numbered envelopes on it, and inside the envelopes would be the day's activity. I printed a couple of alternate activities in case we couldn't do one for whatever reason (weather, crisis, laziness, this-is-dumbness).

Have you ever made your own envelopes? I find them super fun but then I'm the kind of person who finds math and rulers pretty darn fun. Here's what I did.

First I created a template (see: math and rulers, above) and traced it out onto my colored paper.

Then I cut along the lines and used a ruler (again with the ruler! it's ridiculous!) to press the flaps in along a straight line.

With all of the flaps creased in, I glued those suckers down.

And then I repeated the process 29 more times until my hands were cramping and I cursed at the ruler and wondered if glue stick these days tastes as good as it used to.

I printed out all of the activities (and the alternates) and slipped them into each of the envelopes, numbering them as I went.

Tonight we all sat around the dining table and strung together a paper chain for the advent and Donovan clipped the envelopes on.

Donovan: That wasn't as boring as I thought it would be!

Advent day 1: Make a paper chain and clip the envelopes to it.

So if they are quiet, either one of them has succeeded in killing the other, or they found something more interesting than each other to destroy.

See: curtains; toilet paper roll; bathroom trash; cables and wires behind our computers.

But instead of finding mayhem when we went looking for the dogs, we discovered that they had put themselves to bed.

Mitzi turns five months next week and has plateaued at 36 pounds. I know she weighs 36 pounds because yesterday I weighed her on the bathroom scale and she farted the entire time I held her. Continuous farting. I reassured her that a bathroom scale is a source of anxiety for a lot of people.