Miss Bailey Is Ten, originally uploaded by blondemom.

We have two four-legged children in our house and although they don’t speak, their wagging tails, soulful eyes, and nails excitedly clicking on our hardwood floors speak volumes.

Miss Bailey turns 10 today. Only we don’t know that today is truly her birthday. But it’s been 10 years since we adopted our first girl and rescued her from the Humane Association, which we jokingly call the Bastille. She is, after all, of royal descent, being part Corgi, part German Shepherd.

I will never forget the day we got Bailey. We had been married for a few months and couldn’t stop talking about how we longed for a dog…a furry friend to take to the park and play ball with (and try to house break for months upon frustrating to the point of ripping your hair out months, but of course you don’t think about those things when you have puppy lust and romanticize dog ownership as nothing but tail wagging and ear scratching…for the dog, not the owners.)

The hubby and I both agreed that adopting a dog from our local animal shelter was the route we wanted to take. No pedigreed pooch for us. No sir. We wanted a dog truly in need of a home. The hubby called me one day at work, ten years ago this fall, and said he had found a sweet puppy with huge ears that really needed a home. They called her Punkin. We called her Bailey. They said she liked to eat potato chips in the break room. We took her for a walk around the shelter parking lot. She was skittish and jumpy. Mostly she was starved for affection and love and needed reassurance that no one would harm her ever again. She’d been removed from her home as an abuse case and her front right leg was crooked from a break.

Bailey still has issues, but she has come a long way. When we first brought her home she was terrified to be walked on a leash. She’d plant her paws firmly on to the asphalt and cower with fear. Now she loves to go for walks in our neighborhood, although age is creeping up on her and it was difficult for her to make the usual one mile round in the heat of the summer. She gets scared during thunderstorms and hides under furniture. When I got pregnant in 2001 with Miss C I was determined to break her habit of sneaking under the covers with us. But if I start to feel sorry for her I remember that she has it luckier than most dogs. You see, she has her choice of sleeping on not one, but two, sofas in our home.

Earlier this year I worried myself over an odd growth on Bailey’s side, and convinced myself she had some sort of terminal doggy cancer. The hubby took her to the vet and broke the news to me. It was a fat roll.

Tonight Bailey will have white cake with strawberry icing and pastel sprinkles and if Miss C has her way, we will be going to the store to buy Bailey a Disney Princess collar.

Happy Birthday Old Girl. Thank you for all the love you have given us over the past 10 years.

And on the third day God said, “Let there be chipmunk cheeks.”

The nurse at my oral surgeon’s office told me if I was going to swell it would be on the third day and, unfortunately, she was right. I’m also not feeling as good as I thought I would by now. I’m sure the pain medication I’ve been taking has tricked me into thinking I’m just fine (la la la, tripping on pain meds, la la la). I treated myself to an Angel Food Cake smoothie from Smoothie King yesterday and I managed to eat a baked potato for dinner (and no I did not take pain medication and drive, I save the hard stuff for night…mwaa ha ha ha). I’m hoping I’ll be nearly 100 percent by Monday or I may start throwing solid food in a blender. OK, enough about my wisdom teeth saga…on to some links.

Zen Habits is my latest cool blog find of the non-mommy blog variety. Here’s a great post about 20 tools to keep your life organized.

Shop Red Envelope’s Think Pink selection now through October and 10% of the proceeds will go to the Entertainment Industry Foundation’s Women’s Cancer Research Fund.

Here’s a must watch gem of hilarity from YouTube called “PachelBed.” This dad is brilliant! Favorite line, “My mind’s a wreck. I keep hearing songs from Shrek.” Hat tip, Busy Mom.

Secret Agent Josephine designs beautiful alphabet flash cards available to download and print. Hat Tip, Parent Dish.

Embrace your inner June Cleaver with the fun mama aprons and the cute cupcake kiddy aprons from Modern June. Check out the oilcloth market totes. Suddenly I feel the need to go to the Farmer’s Market and pick out a ton of fresh produce. Hat tip, Shauna at O Pish Posh.

Give Simple is launching their fall bags line. Order now through September 15 and enter the code BLONDEMOM for 15% off your order! I love the giraffe and zebra print totes.

Have a great weekend! I’m going to go gum some lunch.

I survived Molargate 2007 without a hitch, although I do have a slight case of chipmunk cheeks, my right jaw is pretty sore, and I haven’t had anything but liquids to eat for the past 24 hours. And no alcohol allowed, missy! I had a smoothie for breakfast and I’m about to chow down on some Easy Mac.

As Anne told me in an e-mail a few weeks ago, I felt silly for being so nervous when it was all over and done with. I mean I’ve had two c-sections. Can anything be quite as surreal as having your uterus tugged out of your body while you are fully conscious?

The anticipation and dread of the actual wisdom tooth extraction was much much worse than the outcome. The nurse was awesome and I barely have so much as a blip on my arm where she inserted the IV tubing. I hate needles, so the numbing solution and the IV both made me cringe. She covered me in a big velvety blue blanket and I couldn’t help but notice that Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds was playing on a CD player above me. I also noticed that the room was void of any scary dental looking drills, bits, or jack hammers. I’m sure they whisked them in on a cart as soon as I was in la la land.

The last thing I remember was the nurse telling me she was giving me something similar to Valium in my IV and then I foggily recall her helping me walk to the hubby’s car and telling me not to look down. The rest is a blurry haze of slurping on soup and a biting down on two wads of gauze and sleeping on the couch and bed and talking to my mom on the phone. By 8:30 last night I was reading to Miss C and feeling pretty good.

When the nurse came out to the lobby to tell the hubby that everything went well and they were prepping me to come home she commented that she could tell I liked to be in control. Apparently they had to give me an extra shot of “happy juice.” Yes, even under anesthesia I’m a control freak.

I’ve been putting off having my top wisdom teeth extracted for years. I’ve either been pregnant or nursing a baby off and on for the past six years so whenever my dentist would look over my charts with concern and begin the wisdom teeth extraction sales pitch, I’d adamantly resist being zonked out on pain pills for any amount of time.

The time has come. I’ve run out of excuses. Today is the day of the molar…the third molar, that is.

My top right wisdom tooth has come through my gums at a wonky angle and since I don’t want to be toothless by 50, it needs to come out. While they’re in there chiseling and pulling away they’re going to remove the top left wisdom tooth. My bottom wisdom teeth are apparently very cozy down in my gums and are also close to the neighboring nerves, so my oral surgeon said they need to stay put. And I’m definitely not going to argue with him.

My sister-in-law put my mind at ease when she told me that after having all four of her wisdom teeth extracted two years ago that she felt like going to WalMart late that same day. In fact, it occurred to me that being on pain medication might actually make a trip to WalHell more tolerable, although I’m planning on sleeping my anesthesia off all afternoon and night. Miss A is spending the night with my mom tonight as she’s at that age where mama, or pretty much any living, breathing thing lying down is an invitation to practice her awesome trampoline skills!

Like most things in life, I have to look at the humorous side and I know I lucked up because my oral surgeon is afraid of the dentist. That’s right. I have been referred to quite possibly the only oral surgeon in the nation who wholeheartedly admits to being terrified of going to the dentist. When he was 5 he had a bad dental experience, and ever since then he has to be sedated to endure even a routine cleaning. He recommended that I get knocked out via IV for my procedure so I’ll wake up sore and drooling, but I won’t remember a thing

I’m kind of looking forward to having an excuse to sleep all day and slurp all the frozen yogurt and jello and pudding I can handle over the next 48 hours. I just need to look at this as a spa treatment, with pain meds.

My mom surprised the girls with temporary butterfly tattoos on Saturday when we stopped by her house for lunch. The girls were thrilled and I was once again reminded how easily enamored they are with a bit of bling. The accessorizing gene is a dominant one!

I can now say that I have inked up my mama’s ankle, albeit with a very dainty and elegant butterfly temporary tattoo. I had to tease her because she was visiting a new church on Sunday. “Mama this butterfly tattoo will look really nice tomorrow at church!” Well, she decided to wash it off the next morning. I’m not sure she wanted to promote the fact that she is a tattoo toting grandma. Sometimes Southern Baptists can be so darn impressionable.

On the other hand the girls proudly wore their butterfly tattoos Sunday morning. Nothing says Sunday best like a little fresh ink for Jesus. We attend a very rockin’ contemporary church where blue jeans and flip flops are welcome so I knew no one would even bat an eye at a few tattoos, but Miss C had her sights set on more royal accessories.

As we were about to walk out the back door Sunday for the 8 millionth time before one of the girls was distracted by some random thing they must have or the world would fling itself off its axis (lip gloss, a kitty cat purse, a necklace, apple juice, a baggie of Cheerios) Miss C shouted, “Mommy, wait! I need to get two crowns…one for you and one for me.” She ran down the hall to her room to retrieve a jeweled play crown. I told her that I didn’t really need to wear a crown, but yelled for her to QUICKLY (I was running out of patience) pick a crown out for herself. She wore the crown in the car and was wearing it when I walked her into her new “big kids’” classroom in the church basement for only the second time. A little girl coloring at one of the tables exclaimed, in awe, “She’s GOT A CROWN!” like Miss C had just ridden in on a sparkly unicorn with a rainbow mane pulling a cart full of free ice cream with extra sprinkles.

Sometimes I wish I could wear a crown in public. It would certainly help break the ice in a lot of situations.

It was the summer of 1986 (I said 1987 but meant 1986…GAH). I was 16. And I worked at Wendy’s on the main drag in my small hometown.

This was on the heels of the Where’s the Beef? era and back when Wendy’s employees still wore hideously goofy hats and striped zip front smocks and the tables where covered in that old time newspaper ad motif. I remember my navy blue polyester blend work pants smelling like a greasy blend of cooking oil, ketchup, and Frostys. You wouldn’t want to light up a cigarette near me as I might spontaneously combust in a blazing grease fire.

Oh, the free Frostys. Now that was a perk.

My friend Susan was a senior and worked at Wendy’s part time. She had been an 8th grade cheerleader and rated fairly high on my cool-o-meter so I figured it couldn’t be all that bad.

But it really was. First of all, I was terrified of working the drive thru cash register. All those cars lining up outside and all the buttons on the cash register and the handling of change made me a nervous wreck. For some reason I could handle the pressure of the dining room cash register much better. Maybe because I could face the enemy up close and personal. Of course there was the time that the entire high school boys’ soccer team came in to eat and I was completely mortified because a boy I had a crush on saw me in my zip front smock. Oh, the horrors! He even sauntered up to the cash register and asked, “Where’s the beef?,” flashing his braces. I could have crawled under the fryer and cried. Of course I would have been pelted mercilessly with hot burning grease but that would have been OK.

The fry that broke the camel’s back, though, was when I had to clean both the men’s and women’s bathrooms one weekend. That pretty much sealed my hatred for my summer job and my manager, Jeff. I think I lasted all of about 12 weeks at the job and I never worked in fast food again. The rest of my part-time summer job resume was retail all the way baby. I was always more of a mall girl any way. In college I landed a couple of cool internships: one for a local weekly newspaper and one for the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, which sounded glamorous but actually translated into me assembling a lot of media kits and cutting out picture slide labels with an X-Acto knife.

So, in honor of Labor Day, what was your worst summer job?

I thought I would devote today’s links to all things Katrina.

Like so many, I have traveled to the Gulf Coast to enjoy the culture and beauty, the music and art, the food and drink (sometimes a little bit too much drink.) I have had one too many Hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s and called the hubby (at that time the boyfriend) from a pay phone to tell him how much I missed him. I’ve danced barefoot at Jazz Fest. I’ve sipped chicory coffee and eaten hot beignets at Cafe du Monde. I’ve traveled for business twice to New Orleans, anxious to slip away from the official agenda to walk the streets and immerse myself in the unique sounds, sights, and smells. We have a painting in our entry by New Orleans artist James Michalopoulos. It was a steal that I snatched at a local artist’s yard sale, anxious to claim a piece of New Orleans for our home.

The city has taken me under her grand, eccentric arm and shown me a good time more than once, so perhaps in some small way I can help spread some positive vibes for all who were, and still are, affected by Katrina.

Jess at Oh, the Joys linked to two volunteer organizations this week: Hands on Gulf Coast and Hands on New Orleans.

Yahoo News has some suggestions for ways to help, including the Volunteer Match organization.

You can purchase music to benefit New Orleans or even buy limited edition vodka to benefit the city.

The people of New Orleans say thank you and share stories of faith and kindness.

An incredible Jazz Centre has been proposed for downtown New Orleans.

This commentary on NPR by Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose is very inspiring.

Velveteen Mind wrote eloquently about her family’s experience on the Mississippi coast.

Have a great three-day weekend. See you on the flip side!