Your Highness

So now Preston and I have left my Mom's house (otherwise known as the dog brothel), and I have had FOUR STRAIGHT DAYS in which I have neither scooped puppy poop, made puppy mush, or gotten chewed up/scratched by puppy teeth/nails. I've even showered. On a REGULAR basis. And worn big kid clothes, because I haven't been holding puppies whose favorite place to pee in the whole wide world was on my shirt. And it has been pretty magnificent. Except that now I'm kind of starting to miss those puppies. With their cuteness and their puppy breath and their wrinkled faces. So, without further ado, I introduce you to our new puppy (!), Ness.

Short for, not Loch Ness (as we told my very conservative Southern grandmother), but Guinness. And yes, I know that Guinness doesn't really seem like a fitting name for a female yellow lab, but whatever. Pres and I both love the beer, I loved that we could shorten the name to Ness (and since we already had Callie, I didn't want another name that ended with an -ie/-ee sound. Because ew.), and this is (hopefully) the last dog we'll get before we have kids. Which means that it is the LAST time we can name a pet after alcohol. SO obviously, Guinness it was. Or, really, Ness, it is. We'll never call her Guinness (just like we never call Callie by her given name, Calliope-the muse of epic poetry. That's right. We're BIG nerds. But you knew that).

We were with her all last week, and I think that Ness fits her well. Other fitting names might have included: "What the hell are you chewing on now?" "How does so much poop come out of something so small?" "No DON'T eat your sister," "Freshly applied mascara is not for licking," or "You might want to stop whining, lovebug. Your future includes LOTS of crate training (and ham and pepperoni, but that's beside the point)." But none of those could be shortened to anything nearly as cute as NESS.

My Mom will bring her up when she comes up to run the Philly Half Marathon with me on September 21st. I HAVE in fact started training for said marathon, and I think I'll be ok. If we run REALLY REALLY OH MY GOSH so slowly. But anyways, we can't wait to introduce Ness to our Bryn Mawr world. After we've done some SERIOUS puppy proofing. I like our $2,000 Restoration Hardware bed just the way it is (without any scratches and bite marks), thank you very much. And I'm so so so excited for Callie to have a playmate. I think she's less excited, but oh well. Here she and Ness are at their first meeting:

Callie approached this first meeting with all the enthusiasm of a recently sedated dental patient. Ah well. In time. And even though we have this new little puppy (whom, annoyingly/fittingly, it will always sound that we're addressing as "Highness" when we say "Hi Ness!"), Callie will always, always be the queen.

Callie and I at the overlook during our first week at Wintergreen.