May 17, 2010

Beauty…

…and the Beast

I’m not sure why I titled today’s post “Beauty and the Beast,” but when I was uploading pictures from the camera today, I was struck by the contrasting feelings of these two photos. The first was taken on our last walk of the day (with Alice) where we were posed on the steps of a beautiful garden…

…and Gretchen found the orange poppies extraordinarily stunning…

I have to admit, the garden was particularly spectacular. In Alice’s new neighborhood there are lots of magnificent gardens and some pretty amazing houses.

But these poppies kind of captured our eyes.

And they were everywhere. It was as if every house in the neighborhood had poppies growing in the front or side garden.

Maybe the seeds traveled. It’s hard to say, but whatever the reason, they were out in full bloom today and simply gorgeous.

Don’t you think? Well, Alice was too. Kind of her own puppy poppy, if you will.

But earlier in the day, the walk right before Alice’s, was a completely different story. It wasn’t about beauty at all, but about romping! And the photo of Saber and his silly face exemplify so perfectly.

Of course, Monty and I were there to keep things a bit more serious!

Okay, so maybe that last photo isn’t so serious. We played at the different tennis courts today — the ones without benches — so Monty had to find somewhere to hang out and he chose the backpack.

And since we’re moving backwards through the day, I’ll tell you about Gemma. She practices being beauty today…

Beauty kind of implies patience and today Gemma didn’t have too much of it. Gretchen was lucky to capture her in her more sedate phases — ready to play and posing with Monty — but Gemma was her usual vim and vigor today. But so was Monty for that matter. He did tire out, though, a bit quicker than Ms. Gemma. Hey, even I tired out before she did!

Of course, before Gemma came to visit us, she’d been out with the boys next door – Oshi and Perrito. Gretchen took them over to the big, big field by the school and was hoping to photograph them running and playing. Only Oshi rarely runs and Perrito, while he’ll chase after a ball, just flops down on top of it…much to Gemma’s frustration.

The real beast today was Gretchen. She’s just starting her report cards, which is a deadly process for everyone involved (well, except the students). She has to write two pages for every student, explaining their strengths and weaknesses (though I think they call them challenges). It takes her a good hour to write one and with 22 students, she’s feeling like she’s climbing a mountain.

She’s not that fun to be around right now, but don’t tell her I told you so.

Rosie and Tyson didn’t seem to notice though. They were beauties and beasts all in one play session today…

Beauties…

Tyson begged to play fetch at the courts today, so Gretchen obliged him. He’s very serious about his game of fetch, but today was particularly warm (despite some scattered showers) so the pups wore out pretty quickly.

I mean, it’s rare that Tyson pants and shows his tongue, but after some vigorous fetch he was one smiling happy dog.

Though no one can smile like Rosie. Of course, it’s hard for Tyson to show his beautiful smile with a ball in his mouth and trust me, today he really wanted that ball in his big, big mouth!

Still, they had some fun “beast” shots as well…

I guess you can’t be beautiful every day, though Gretchen tells me I’m just as beautiful when I’m beastly. Ah, shucks!

Until tomorrow,

Rubin

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