day 13: a fictional book

growing up, we had a cocker spaniel named sophie.

r.i.p.

i hate to speak ill of the dead, but sophie was probably the least intelligent dog of all time. poor girl. she didn't understand commands (aside from "gimme five," which she mastered for some reason), never quite got the hang of house training, often got her upper lip stuck in an elvis-curl, and had the same hairdo as george stephanopoulus.

she also liked to eat. favorite delicacies included eyeglasses, expensive video game controllers and pencil erasers, which she hoarded en masse under my bed. sophie got in trouble a lot.

after years of yelling, my parents decided maybe we would try a new discipline. we would shame her. when sophie did something bad, we'd look down, shake our heads, and say "shame on sophie. shaaaaaame on sophie. baaaad girl." all calm-and-disappointed-like.

my little brother, who was probably about 10 at the time, didn't quite get it. when sophie committed a transgression on his watch, he'd scream bloody murder "SHAME!!! SHAAAAME!!! SHAAAAAAAAME!!!!" completely defeating the purpose of the shame technique. surprisingly, neither method was effective.

the point of this story is shaaaame on lauren for taking a week-long vacation from work and neglecting blogging duties, then being on deadline after vacation and failing to blog some more. shame. shaaame. shaaaaaaaame.

so. here's a fictional book. one that i failed to mention in the last post on favorite books. this one's for you dad!


this was my favorite book from before i was old enough to remember what my favorite book was. according to legend, i was making the "hush" sound to the "old lady whispering hush" part at like 6 months or something. because i was obviously a genius.

but seriously, who doesn't love this book?