I've also heard they can have horrific health problems due to the elongated back. Similar to how pugs can have horrific breathing issues.

Yeah, mostly you don't want them jumping up on things because that can hurt their backs.

This is mostly not a problem for Oz since he just whines and looks at me with those expectant doe eyes and I pick him up and put him where he wants to be. We're talking when he wants back in the bed at 3 in the morning.

Ok - please to remember who works for the company that MANAGES THE BUILDING. Doof.

As if her new Great Danes couldn't chew through a door.

DAMMIT!!

I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for that meddling employer and that cursed pair of DOGS!!

Guess I'll just have to go back to the "haunted" amusement park and plan my next property acquisition caper...

You, Aimee, one of the best things about Great Danes is you can get them in a kind of "camel" color.

ION, I have a friend who is having one of those pregnancies where it looks as though she may be on complete bedrest for oh - 6 months. What would be fun for her to have to occupy herself? (I'm thinking that an itunes gift card might be cool. She could have the fiance download the stuff and then she could have new books/stories to listen to.)

Scooby-Doo killed the thread.

Maybe we should do the happy ending...

Brr-dee brr-dee brr-dee

"Aimee! Your dogs' album, 'Fuck, Off and Fly', just made No. 1 with a bullet on the Billboard charts! Casey Kasem wants you to take over his show! Paramount just sent over the preliminary contracts for a movie based on you and your dogs' life-stories and Steven Spielberg is so hot to direct that he says he'll have your baby!"

Now that's an ending I can get behind!!

As long as you toss in Rob Lowe getting stip searched still.

As long as you toss in Rob Lowe getting stip searched still.

Just for you, baby. Merry Christmas.

Hey, sorry I didn't answer the phone - talking to boss at the time. Left you a vm.

sumi, iTunes or Netflix is good. If there's a magazine she likes but hasn't subscribed to, that's also good.

Other stuff... how total is her bed rest? Completely horizontal for all 6 months? A few hours a day sitting up? A little bit of up and about, but no housework or errands?

She said completely horizontal. (I hope that this is something that will improve.)

As much as I love my bed, and I really, really do...6 months horizontal is way less fun than it sounds, I betcha.

I concur with all of JZ's recommendations and the gift card idea...and will raise you a knitting video and project pieces. If she was into it at all, she could knit (or crochet, yourcraftmayvary) an entire nursery in that amount of time...layette, christening gown, Serenity, uterus doll, etc. Somebody, somewhere has probably knit a house!

t huge sigh of relief

Many thanks to EVERYBODY for good thoughts and advice.

I just came upstairs and declared, DANG, that stuff I teach other people really works! The thought replacement phrase for today ended up being: Silence is your friend.

I went downstairs, handed the Llord my rent check and gave him back the letter saying, "I've given it a lot of thought and I just can't sustain a 20% increase right now. I suspect that, in the middle of next year things will be very different for me, but for right now, I just can't do it."

There was some other dialog, including his litany of the tight spot he's in and my reconfirmation that, while I understand his position, at this point it is a matter of rent or eat. At that, his eyes flew open and he said, "Well! I can certainly understand that. Um. Well, let me think about it...and you think about it."

"T, I've been doing nothing BUT think about it and I just can't do it. If you can negotiate something...but right now, I just can't do it."

Then I fell silent. Just looked at him peacefully.

"Well, okay. Um. Let me think about it and we'll see what we can do."

The fact is, he might come back and say 'get out.' In which case, I will deal. And it will be okay.

But more than anything, I'm getting the feeling that the purpose of this whole affair was for me to peacefully and somewhat without fear, take a stand.

So thanks Buffunity. Thank you for hearing me out, for offering advice and for thinking good thoughts. I'm much obliged.