Wookie’s Play Date

Saturday we took Wookie to our friend K’s house to hang out with her two dogs. I had no plans on visiting for four hours but she took that long to warm up enough to not be glued to our sides. I really hope the more she sees them the quicker she will relax.

She vomited as soon as we arrived and Joe got her out of the car and then again in the car when we got home. Luckily the new car seat protector I purchased cleans up easily. I hope she grows out of that! I’m not sure whether it’s anxiety or motion sickness or a combo of the two but I want her to enjoy car rides.

I’m also going to sign us up for a puppy class at Petsmart even though I fear she’s going to spend the entire time too scared to interact. On the other hand it isn’t doing her any good to not introduce her to new situations so I might as well take the chance. It can’t hurt her now that her vaccinations are complete.

Weekend Recap

Friday 1/20

Made Philly Cheesesteak Sloppy Joes for dinner. Came out pretty good. Need to use more steak sauce next time than recipe dictates for more intense flavor.

Went to play Bingo with friend E at the church. Didn’t win squat, as usual, but had fun nonetheless being silly.

Saturday 1/21

Purchased a cute Nightmare Before Christmas purse from Hot Topic. Was BOGO so Joe got a Nightmare Before Christmas t-shirt.

Nightmare Before Christmas Bag

Had $10 of Kohl’s cash burning a hole in my pocket but couldn’t find anything I wanted the weekend before. Was about to give up when we came across dog beds on sale 50% off. So this CuddleDuds bed was under $13 when all was said and done.

CuddleDuds Dog Bed

Checked out the new Mariano’s. Super busy! Used coupon for a free reusable grocery tote. Bought some cheese and crackers after sampling it with pesto. New delicious combo we never thought of trying before.

Went to Petco to use $30 off 30 lb bag of dog food but they only make the puppy variety in a 15 lb bag. Employee said “let’s try the coupon anyway and see what happens” and it worked! So what was normally $40 was $10 plus tax and I used my $15 egift card so it was nothing out of pocket.

It was almost 60 degrees outside so we took Wookie for her first park visit. We used the new seat cover and seatbelt hardness I had purchased at Amazon and although she wasn’t quite sure how to sit at first, she was much calmer than when we put her in the crate. We chose Armstrong Park because it tends to be less crowded. We came across people on the path and she was more afraid of them than the dogs they were walking. As soon as they’d get close she’d stop hauling ass (we need to work on leash etiquette) and hide behind me. What a drama queen! One guy had his teacup Yorkie in the basket on his bike. He stopped to chat with us a bit. It’s funny how much friendlier people are when you have a dog. Got lots of “he’s so cute” comments when people walked by too. She definitely is a cutie! This is her after her walk with the wind blowing through her fur.

Wookie

We made sure to wipe down her paws when we got home so she wouldn’t pick up any diseases.

Joe took care of some stuff around the house:

  • Installed our new wireless doorbell I got off Amazon. We haven’t had a functioning doorbell in years and normally I wouldn’t care but it helps with package deliveries, especially on those rare occasions where they require a signature.
  • Replaced a pipe under the kitchen sink.
  • Took apart the dryer to see if he could determine why it doesn’t heat up consistently. We were hoping just taking it apart would get it working reliably but it isn’t so he’s going to order one of the parts it could be from Appliance Part Pros. They have a 365 day money back guarantee so if it’s not the correct part we can send it back and try another.

We planned on going to the Oswego Light Festival but felt too lazy to drive all that way so stayed in and watched Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates instead. I used my free birthday code from Redbox.

Sunday 1/22

We went to Drury Lane for a Home and Garden Show and ended up scheduling three estimates this week for replacing our patio door. I really hope they are affordable, otherwise Joe is going to do it himself.

After the show we walked around Oak Brook mall. It wasn’t bad considering it was under 50 degrees. We missed an entire section of stores, however, so I didn’t get to check out this Aritzia boutique I keep hearing some YouTubers fawning over. Maybe next time. We got all excited when we spotted a DMK Burger Bar there but it’s actually still under construction. I did find a black pair of sneakers for $22 at Sears – Fila Windstar 2 is the brand/model. I’ve been needing to replace my black Nikes for awhile (they are literally five years old because I really take care of my stuff) but didn’t want to spend $70+. They are running shoes but for me they are walking around and shopping shoes.

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We were pretty hungry but couldn’t think of any place good for lunch so I decided to make some tuna salad at home instead.

We also used the newer playpen (which Joe separated into two sections earlier in the week) to keep Wookie contained to the living room and put her crate, bed, water and food bowls, plus the pee pad, on the tile by the fireplace, and let her hang out with us all evening. She was really good (no accidents) and even played by herself and napped (although not as long as she usually does because she was probably worried about missing so much since she’s not used to be out that long). I hope we can do this more now that she’s older (she turned 4 months old on Saturday) because we were actually able to watch TV without her having a fit for once. Some nights we’d haul ass upstairs just to get a break from her since even though she can hear us up there if we turn off the lights downstairs she stays quiet.

Monday 1/23

Cleaned the upstairs, did laundry, went to Aldis for groceries, and kept an eye on Wookie. She has thrown up bile three times over the past few days. Initially we thought maybe it was the chew bone we gave her so we took it away. Now we’re not sure what it is but since it’s only once in a given day and she acts normally otherwise, we’re not sure whether we should be too concerned just yet. She wouldn’t eat lunch today and slept a lot, but her poop is normal. She kept refusing food unless I gave her just the hard food. Suddenly she doesn’t care for the wet food which she once loved. I’m a bit worried since the hard food might be upsetting her stomach but I guess we’ll see since that’s all she would eat all day.

Weekend Recap

Friday 1/13

Slept in until just before 8 am which would have been more restful had I not gone to bed around midnight! I always do that to myself, ugh!

Did some cleaning (vacuumed downstairs, cleaned the laundry room and guest bathroom, dusted downstairs, did some laundry, and emptied the dishwasher), paid some bills, and helped my dad with his computer. That was a frustrating hour and a half because his computer doesn’t like to update Adobe Flash so we ended up downloading Google Chrome but then he forgot his Yahoo Mail password so that took awhile to resolve. But now he should be good and flash will automatically update in the background through Chrome. I don’t know what happened to Firefox but it’s a completely shitty browser these days. I moved to Chrome probably a year ago after Firefox would get incredibly slow for no reason.

Wookie managed to knock the coat rack over and it fell on her but didn’t seem to hit her head. She was sleepy shortly afterwards so out of an abundance of caution I didn’t end up going to the library as planned so I could keep a watchful eye on her just in case. She’s quite the handful but I honestly love her so damn much.

I ended up making a chicken taco soup in the crockpot. I got the idea from Pinterest but didn’t use the exact ingredients in the recipe since I didn’t have them on hand but it still came out quite good.

When Joe got home from work we ran to Dairy Queen for BOGO Blizzards. I got cookie dough and he got Reese’s since they got rid of the Snickers flavor for some reason even though it’s a popular one.

Joe had grabbed a copy of Sully from the library on his way home from work so I finally got to watch it since I didn’t want to before our trip to Arizona. I thought it was done well but even knowing that everyone survived I felt incredibly anxious and teary-eyed during the flight scenes. It was very nice to see everyone come together to help one another once the plane was in the water.

Saturday 1/14

Joe had to work so I slept in until 7:30, started some laundry, and then played with Wookie while catching up on backing up and uploading all the videos I’ve taken over the past few months. I also starting cleaning up my backed up camera roll before I ran out of space.

Joe came home from work around noon so we went out for lunch at Potbelly’s. We haven’t been there in forever even though we always enjoy it. I had the skinny turkey without mayo to reduce some empty calorie consumption and it was still delicious. I wish I had gotten the multigrain bread instead of white but wasn’t sure until I tried Joe’s. Now I’ll know for next time.

Before lunch Joe needed to get gas and while I was waiting in the car I spotted the Petco and asked if we could stop in there to look at dog beds. We actually found one I really liked for $20 which isn’t too bad. I also grabbed a few inexpensive toys.

After lunch I spotted an Office Max and decided to look for a new wallet because I hate regular women’s wallets – they’re huge and never fit in the small section inside purses so I use a business card holder instead. Mine is several years old from Staples which no longer exists by us and is cracked along the top because I tend to overfill it, so I needed a new one. I found a Samsonite one for $10.

We also went to Walmart where we got more dog toys (is this girl spoiled or what?) and Target as well. Here’s Wookie’s loot:

Wookies New Stuff

The bed, purple ring, and red ball are from Petco and the other items are from Walmart. That three pack of balls was a waste even at less than $1 because she destroyed one in less than 10 minutes. It’s too bad because it really kept her occupied.

After dropping off our groceries we went to Aldi and then Nothing Bundt Cakes for my free birthday buntlett. I went with white chocolate raspberry and we also got a lemon one. Then we went across the street to Red Mango since they put 500 points in my account (which is worth $5). I got the Nutella and peanut butter swirl with fresh strawberries. I didn’t fill the cup up even half-way and Joe was teasing me that it wasn’t enough but those kind of places are so expensive that it came to $4.77 anyway so my credit covered it 100%.

After all that running around we came home to relax and play with Wookie. She ended up getting some soft poop on her butt so we had to throw her in the tub. I only wanted to wash her paws and butt but she freaked out running around the tub so much that she got wet all over. Then she was shaking and wouldn’t let us dry her so I let her run around the rat room to air dry. She used to be much better about baths but now that she’s comfortable here she acts like a brat. Hopefully she will calm down as she gets older.

Sunday 1/15

Joe had to work again so I slept until about 8 and then showered, fed and played with Wookie, and went to Savers when it opened at 10 am. Everything was 50% off which drew a decent crowd – there were a bunch of people waiting outside for them to open the doors. I just sat in my car until everyone was inside. I tried on several sweaters and a pair of fleece pajama pants but only bought one sweater for $4. I did, however, come home with not one, but two Vera Bradley wallets. I spotted the wallets when I exited the fitting room and decided to look since the business card holder I got at Office Max turned out not to be large enough to hold all my stuff. When I first came across both wallets I hesitated since I wasn’t sure if they’d work for me (and you can only do an exchange at Savers, not a refund) but both together only cost $4.50 so I figured it was worth the risk.

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I absolutely love the brown/purple one! It fits everything I need and I can even zip my phone in there if I need to. As for the other one, I’m using it now to hold all the extra gift cards we have since there’s too many for me to carry around on me all the time.

Joe got off work a little before 11 am so he was home shortly after I got home from Savers. We headed to the mall to look around and I ended up buying a Kipling bag (Pammie is the style name) from Macy’s. It’s black even though it appears as dark brown in the below photo.

Pammie Tote

The store is closing and it was 20% off which means it was still expensive ($111.97 to be exact) but I really needed something bigger for a carry-on when we travel and it fits the bill. The smaller Kipling backpack I had barely fit anything although quality-wise it’s still perfect after four years (got it on our trip to Boston).

We had lunch at Red Robin since I had a free birthday burger on my rewards account. We don’t normally get an appetizer but decided to try their $5 fried pickles which were delicious!

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We had the same waitress (Angela) we had last time we ate there who is a big Star Wars fan. I just so happened to be wearing my Star Wars hoodie which she immediately noticed and commented on liking. I was able to use up the small balances on two gift cards and paid the remaining amount due with a new gift card I recently got through Discover.

We browsed Kohl’s after lunch since I have $10 in Kohl’s cash but left empty-handed. We then swung by Costco for a couple of things and I got another set of wool socks since I can never have too many since my older ones have holes in them. Not 100% thrilled with the color combo but they were better than the brown ones they had since I don’t wear much brown.

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Our last stop was Office Max for me to return the business card holder. The rest of the evening was spent relaxing and playing with Wookie. We actually went upstairs sometime between 8 and 9 just so we could watch a movie in peace since if Wookie isn’t out playing and can hear us in the living room she starts barking. We finally got around to eating our Nothing Bundt Cakes as well. I still have my Blizzard to tackle at some point. I keep forgetting about it and the fact that we bought a box of Dilly Bars!

Monday 1/16

I got up with Joe at 6 am so my schedule isn’t completely off come Tuesday. I was up around 5 am anyway and couldn’t sleep.

I did some cleaning upstairs including Milo’s cage, ran to the grocery store, and then took Wookie to the vet at 1 pm for more vaccinations (distemper and rabies). I took advantage of her fear of the vet to clip her nails before the vet came in the room since she only sits still on my lap when she’s scared. I also scheduled her spay and microchipping for mid February.

Once we got back around 2 pm I started working on dinner which was Crockpot Thai Peanut Chicken. I hate when recipes state a prep time of 5 minutes when you have to cut up chicken and mix a bunch of ingredients. It’s so misleading. It took me an hour. Granted, I had to defrost the chicken in the microwave first but even so it would not take only 5 minutes to do all that! At least it was tasty, although not so much so that I’d make it again for a very long time.

Wookie has been doing pretty good with her potty pad but tonight she peed all over the rug (more pee than usual) and then peed again in her playpen right outside her crate. I have to wonder if it’s somehow related to the medication she got today. I sure hope so, since having her use the pee pad consistently is nice.

Petco Experience

Last month I had a frustrating Petco experience when they were holding a special sale. It was eating at me, so I decided to contact them about it last night to see if they’d make it right. Since they don’t have a known email address, I messaged them through Facebook. Below is what I wrote:

I’m writing to express how disappointed I am in Petco with their recent holiday sale. Back in December I was ready to submit my order at DrFosterandSmith.com when I learned that Petco was offering a $15 e-gift card with a $50 purchase so I decided to order from Petco instead. Imagine my surprise when I went to use my $15 and learned it had expired!

Now, I understand I should have read the email with the gift card more thoroughly, but I think it’s pretty misleading to call it a gift card when really it’s more like a coupon. People do not expect a gift card to expire in less than a month! And at the very least those restrictions should be laid out as part of the terms of the sale. The fine print on the website only indicated the gift card would be emailed by 12/19/16. I know this because I took a screenshot which I still have. So in essence you gave me less than two weeks to redeem it (since it expired on 12/31/16).

Needless to say I am wary to keep spending my money at Petco which would be a shame since I just adopted a puppy and I like to spoil her. If you could re-issue me a new $15 gift card that doesn’t expire in a short time frame I would reconsider boycotting Petco in the future.

Thank you.

They responded within minutes letting me know they escalated my concerns and they’d get back to me. This morning they reached out again to let me know I was given a $15 gift card and asked if there was anything else they could do. I promptly checked my email where there was a link to a $15 gift card (which doesn’t expire!) and printed it out to put in my purse. I then thanked them for making things right.

This experience demonstrates that complaining does work if you do it the right way.

And just for posterity below is the screenshot I took which I still had sitting on my desktop because the year before I had an issue with Petco.com where they had the same deal but it had expired even though the deal was still appearing on their website.

Petco Deal

Weekly Recap – Internet Outage & Left Eye Issues

My weekly recaps only cover three days because those are the days I work whereas my weekend recaps will be four days.

Tuesday 1/10 – Went to Buona Beef to pick up dinner since I had a birthday coupon for a free sandwich. Didn’t work, however, because I think the emails I get and my app are two different accounts on their site. But the manager gave me the free sandwich anyway and I will need to figure out how to tie the two accounts together. I got the chicken artichoke panini since I wasn’t in the mood for a burger. I didn’t care for it as much as I had hoped. It was way better cold the next day (I only ate half for dinner), though. So if I get it again I’ll have to get it a day before I actually want to eat it. LOL Joe got the avocado jack burger which I tasted and it was really good.

Wednesday 1/11 – My left eye was bugging the crap out of me all morning (dry and blurry even though I had put in a fresh pair of contacts that morning) so when I went home for lunch I switched to my glasses for some relief. Back at work around 2 pm I went to check on Wookie via the webcam we have set up in the kitchen and it was offline. Came home to learn the internet was down and it was a known area outage Comcast was working to resolve. Estimated time to restore service was 8:30 pm and since all our entertainment is internet-based, we watched Lilo & Stitch on DVD. When we went to bed the internet was still down.

Thursday 1/12 – Internet still wasn’t working when we got up so I called Comcast while I got ready for work. They “sent a signal” to the modem and if we hooked it up directly to the computer we’d get service but our router wasn’t giving us any WiFi. The rep gave us a $10 credit for the outage. Tried some more stuff that evening but nothing was working. What was weird was we couldn’t access the router page from the computer, but Joe could get it on his iPad. Eventually he just reset it to the factory default settings but that seemed to do nothing. Then about 15-20 minutes later it spontaneously started working again. I’m relieved the router wasn’t fried but perplexed what was wrong to begin with. I hope it doesn’t happen again! It’s just weird the outage triggered it to stop working. Also, I ended up wearing my glasses all day to give my eye a rest and we went to Qdoba to pick up dinner since I had a BOGO coupon for my birthday.