When Paul Ferney last offered slots in The Commission Project, I bought one and picked this photo to be turned into a 5×7″ oil painting in Ferney’s pretty, impressionist style.

Only one living figure was was allowed in the painting for the discounted price, so I chose Tino. Of all three dogs, he was the most rejected and downtrodden when we found him.

You remember the story. It was 2007 and we were on a tour bus in Puerto Rico that stopped at a beach. I wandered away from everyone and heard a crying noise over by some trucks. When I saw what was making all the racket, my stomach flipped over, and even though I didn’t realize it at the time, nothing was ever the same again.

Years later, I still think about what I saw; often it promts me to scoop Tino up into my chest and nuzzle my nose on the top of his fuzzy head. If I think about it too long, I start dripping tears down his ears and snout.

Someone had broken his back, and his hind legs were completely paralyzed and laid out behind him, useless. He was dirty, skinny, starving and dehydrated. We gave him a water bottle out of cupped hands, which was all we had, and asked around about him. A few locals shrugged.

“He’s been there for five days.” they said. “No one really cares.”

I became a whole other, stronger person that day as I jumped through hoops and endured a disheartening level of scorn from family to get him rescued, fixed up, and sent to live with us.

Today, he is the worst-behaved and least-loved* of our three dogs. He’s wary around strangers, barks crazily at strange dogs, and bites anyone who dares attempt to pet him (Rob and I can, but no one else.)

But he can’t help it. He tries to be a good dog, I can see it in his body language. He’ll cuddle with a few of our more trusted (and mostly female) friends, and as long as they keep hands off, he’ll fall asleep with his chin on their knees. That was something we never thought we’d see when we first got him. He learned a few tricks, too, and despite how frustrating he can be sometimes, I’m enormously proud of him and how far he’s come.

I know it sounds a little ridiculous, and Tino doesn’t understand, but I thought he deserved this anyway. A throw-away dog turned into a cherished oil painting is a good happy ending.

*By others, of course. I’m not allowed to have favorites!

Apropos of nothing, here are Rob and Tino in our back garden, enjoying the setting sunlight.

My poor blog has gotten slow! It’s too hot! And, really, I’ve been thinking about only boring things these days: business stuff. It’s hard to picture now, but the sunny weather is going to go away sooner than we’re quite ready for, and with it, a lot of my business; most people want their family photoshoots on warm, sunny days. So I’m dreaming up ways to keep from going stagnant.

You want to hear what I have so far? Because, honestly, it’s all that’s on my mind, and also, that whole “don’t share business ideas with the world because someone might steal them” is overly-paranoid.

Focusing more on maternity and new baby shoots. Because people are constantly getting knocked up and having babies; that’s not seasonal.

Doing more studio shoots with people. This one is tough – I have a setup with a backdrop for headshots – one person – and fancy umbrella lights are being shipped to my house now (yay!) but I’m brainstorming ways to get an entire group in my setup. It involves rearranging the office, which I think will make Rob get woozy. (Sorry, hon!)

More retail shoots. As much as I love working with people, doing retail shoots in-studio is really exciting for me.

Building traditional freelance contacts and booking jobs. I have dreams of working with publications like Real Simple and Martha Stewart one day, as well as smaller indie magazines like Rue, Sweet Paul, and Kinfolk (have you seen this one yet? It’s new, and DREAMY!)

So, there it is – this is what has been rattling around in my brain these days. What are YOU thinking about?

It’s morning, around 5, and I hear our apartment door open.

“Rob!” I whisper, poking him awake. “I hear something!” In the movies, it’s always the lady that wakes up first when there’s a strange noise in the house, and that’s no stereotype. We lay tense in the dark, listening, doing that thing where you’re pretty sure what you’re hearing is not really someone walking around your apartment, waiting for the moment it becomes obvious it’s just a neighbor coming home late and brushing against your door, waiting for the moment you can laugh, roll over, and fall back to sleep.

Our our key sets hang together in the living room; they start to jingle, a totally distinct sound that makes it REALLY clear that someone is, in fact, in our apartment… and touching our keys.

Rob springs up, wooden baseball bat in hand and runs to the living room while I fumble for my glasses. The light in the living room slams on, and something INSANE happens to Rob’s voice. It goes mad, and deep, and LOUD, and really fucking scary.

“YOU DO NOT LIVE HERE. GET OUT.”

I think “Well, duh.” Of course the burglar knows he doesn’t live here. I reach for my own bat and curl my fingers around its handle, ready to be backup in case Rob goes down, because the fact that this person might have a gun has not occurred to either of us. I sneak to the doorway, but Matty is faster, brushing by me to see our new friend. (The other two never bother to get out of their dog beds. All three are useless.)

The purp, all 15 years and 80 pounds of him, was wobbling and incoherent. I’m living room now, bat in hand, pumped up and itching to go one-two with Rob in a mega beat-down. Rob’s words suddenly make sense: this kid doesn’t know his own name let alone where he is. The smell of sugar and alcohol is heavy in the air and he’s stumbling, slurring, slumping.

We shoved him out into the hall, assuming he lives elsewhere in the building; maybe a friend of the teenager on the fourth floor, even though that doesn’t make sense: our neighbor is a nice kid, respectful, and this doesn’t seem like the kind of company he would keep. We get back into bed and a minute later hear yelling above us; two minutes later the police are on our doorstep. He had made it to the fourth floor and got into our neighbor’s house, then ran back out and onto the street. By the time the cops got there, he was gone.

“You just left your door unlocked? That’s really dangerous!” NYPD doesn’t so much admonish you as bitch you out. She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Crazy, man.”

And it is. We totally spaced on bolting the door.

We go back to bed again and tuck every part of my body I can around Rob, clinging to him like a baby monkey.

All is quiet until 6:30 when the door rattles, softly (having been properly secured); it’s the same kid again.

I dial 911, Rob does more yelling and eventually the police come back and tell him, “dude, you’re in the wrong apartment building, and also, how old are you again? And you were drinking?” This is when I find out how old he is, that he is named Christian, and that he is going to be in a LOT of trouble. Our neighbors put a note on the door asking everyone to please remember to keep the door locked. I’m fine, but I think Rob is still jittery.

Can I just say a word about NYPD? They are PROMPT. I wasn’t even off the the phone with 911 before they were knocking on our door. And they’re so diverse! A Puerto Rican lady (the one that bitched us out) came, flipping from English to Spanish getting the story from our neighbors and us. She was with one of those “Fuggedaboutdit!” Brooklyn guys, a darker, Italian guy with muscles like crazy, and a black cop with corn rows. It was kind of the best thing ever.

Comments are just flat out not showing up on my blog today. Grrr…

Lucky for me, I can pay my tech guy in hand jobs. Stand by.

Matty used his nose to nudge open the bathroom door.

“Um, dude…”

He sat there with his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth, and his tail wagged so hard he thumped the wall with it. He was utterly delighted to have found me.  I put down my magazine and sighed.

“Can Mommy poop in peace?”

In response, he sat down in front of me and rested his chin on my bare knee.

Mommy cannot.

The summer is so hot; we are all so hot.

I’m left with two choices: the jet-engine noise of the air conditioner or sleeping in swampy, stuffy conditions. It sucks either way.

I slept at my grandmother’s house the other night, and it was one of the most terrifying nights of sleep ever. I had nightmare after nightmare, and didn’t fall asleep properly until 5:30 am. I don’t know why; I’ve slept there before just fine. Hell, I lived there for years not so long ago. But I’ve gotten used to sleeping with three dogs and Rob in the room with me, and it just wasn’t the same without the usual chorus of snoring, the large hairy arm flung over my face suddenly in the middle of the night, and the more-often-than-not sneaking into bed of certain small dogs who like to curl in the nooks of my body and snooze.

Speaking of certain dogs: the other day Leeloo was coming around the side of my desk while I was unhooking my camera from the USB cable attaching it to the computer. She caught it across her chest and pulled it from my hands, and it crashed and broke. Actually, the camera is fine but my favorite lens broke, hopelessly. I’d buy a new lens, but I’m weeks away from upgrading my camera to full-frame anyway, so that seems foolish. I’m now upgrading sooner than I thought, but not quite yet, so I’m currently camera-less. It seems that now the universe has put a number of Amazing Photographic Opportunities in my path. I’m sure they were all there before, too, I’m just feeling quite annoyed. But not at Leeloo. How could I be when she has a face like this:

Matty was walking around this morning shaking his head, and I sighed.

“Come here,” I said, “and let me see that ear!”

He trotted over and I lifted one up of his floppy ears to peer inside. It was too easy, so I went for the other one. He immediately tried to run away from me, and we got into a bit of a power struggle. Matty is extremely polite and mild-mannered, so rather than growling and snapping he headbutts and wiggles.

“Yeah, no, I really don’t like this… *headbutt*… so maybe you can *headbutt* stop now. Maybe? Please? *headbutt*” We both have headaches now.

When I finally got him in place by use of a sleeper hold, he went all gloomy and resigned and I was able to take a look.

Guh-ROSS! His ear canal is filled with dark maroon goo – an unholy mixture of dried blood and ear wax. Maybe some mite shit in there, if there are mites, which is likely. Oh, sorry, maybe you should put down the sandwich you were eating.

I cleaned it out with some witch hazel. Our old vet recommended this treatment before moving on to medications, a solution I like because it’s both better for the dog and better for my wallet. We’ll keep an eye on it for the next few days, and it seemed to help immediately, too, since he stopped fussing so much. Right now he’s sleeping off the trauma.

Poor buddy.

Rob and Tino, last night at midnight, just before bed. Our horrible, angry dog is now a hard-core snuggler. Win.

I also updated my photo blog with photos of my ridiculously hot friend Nina.

Have a nice weekend!

Nicole challenged me to find seven red things in my house and photograph them.

This is a cake topper from Bake it Pretty.*  Sadly, it has never actually topped a cake.

Here is Matty saying, “Howdy, Pard’ner!  Care to join me for nap?”

This is best little garlic chopping knife ever, and it’s only ten bucks!

This is a throw I got from a thrift store years ago for $4.  I will never tire of it.

This calendar is from Linda and Harriett.

In my house, even the shoes have dog hair on.

This is a telephone.

*I would like to note that Bake it Pretty didn’t send me this topper with the handle bars so messily glued – I made that mess myself.

Robitussin and Tylenol.  Doctors orders.

Watching the sun rise and set behind the curtain.  This is my straight-ahead view from bed, and even though it’s lovely (and those shadows of bars make it so-very-Brooklyn), I’m tired of it.  There’s only so much of mid-day bed lounging I can take before I feel like a slob.

Watching TiVoed episodes of Peoples Court.  Here, she’s saying one of her famous lines: “You know what we say in Spanish? ‘Ni tu mismo te lo crees.’ You know what that means? Not even you believe your own lies!”

Snobby tissues.  There are a lot of these.

Tea.  I was drinking chamomile but switched to orange when I started to come around.

Leeloo, my constant companion.  She is wonderful.