Feb 14 - 20

I am Italian. My mother and all of my grandparents came from the same little town in Tuscany. One of the ways we celebrate any special occasion is to buy a Panettone. It is like a fruit cake only so much better. Panettone comes in a big box and with a picture of the cake on the side of the box, and the funny thing is it is baked so that the cake actually sticks to the paper it comes in and I always think that is the best part.

Well, my wife got me one back in December for my birthday, but since I am trying to lose some weight I was holding on to it until I lost another 5 pounds. So the other night I go into the pantry to eat some nuts, when I see my Panettone there. So I decide to pick up the box for the hell of it. Funny thing is, the box is awfully light. I look down and there is my favorite paper sitting in the corner on the floornext to an empty, of all things, pineapple can.

Feb 7 - 13

Ok, so I think I have a created a problem. I have introduced Cooper to my daughter’s parakeet named Jake. They appear now to be fast friends. I am just not sure of Cooper’s intentions. Jake gets very thrilled when he gets near Cooper. I sometimes will hold Cooper up to Jake and let Jake peck at Cooper, and Cooper seems to really like Jake, I am just not sure if he wants to be friends or just eat him. Anyway, I got caught introducing them and threatened that if Jake gets eaten I will be sleeping in the goat barn the rest of my life. But now that I have put them together it is hard to separate them. I mean, I think they are in love, then again, I know Cooper is in love with pork chops too.

So today I got a letter at home from someone with two newspaper cartoons. In both cartoons there was a character named Frank. The odd thing was there was no return address on the envelope. Now who would send me cartoons at home? The only person I could think of who would send me these at home was my good friend Tom McGill. Oddly enough he died one year ago today.

Jan 31 - Feb 6

So lately Cooper has been thinking he is a farm dog. He runs around and herds the chickens like he was bred to do it. He then runs around the mini horses and stops to enjoy the things they drop around the yard. He then will run through the pond and come out all muddy, so when it is time to let him back inside my wife requires me to wash him off. So I will take him in the bathroom and use the shower head to spray him clean.

Today when I was finished rinsing him off I started looking for an old towel to dry him off. I opened up one drawer and what did I see, but an almost empty can of clam chowder. I went ahead and opened another drawer and found two completely empty pineapple cans. So I go to open the last drawer and find a half eaten well aged bowl of macaroni and cheese. I sat the bowl down on the floor by mistake when of course Cooper thought it was dinner. I thought well, if he likes horse droppings then why wouldn’t he like blue macaroni?