"Letters to my brother...in jail"

I’m sure that the Big Bend trip will unfold in such profuse layers of hilarity and awesomeness that I simply need to just send pictures and let you interpret for yourself.

And now I’m ready for a warm vacation. I’ve been poking about online, on the lookout for some ridiculously cheap tickets to Mexico…you know ( to go visit the tequila…) except someone has recently removed most of the awesomeness from Mexico and put it somewhere else for a while (think drug lords -- hapless tourists caught in the middle-- gang wars) There are international warnings to travelers considering Mexico now. Especially with Spring Break coming on. Which sucks about as much as anything could suck, I suppose. I must remember to warn Kris to stay the hell out of Mexico.

Life is good back home, though. I’m sipping on my favorite morning beverage: A piping-hot coffee, dark-black roast. This is all that I require at the moment. I’m smiling. I feel like Oprah today, minus the millions of course. (Golf claps all around.)

I am at the peaceful point in my life that my kids have outgrown the need to have me go places and watch them do sh*t – and I absolutely love it. I am now (seriously) pondering things such as 26-yr-old men, mammograms and bone density tests. Nain’t funny either.

Dakota, my precious little one, is staring at me through double-paned glass. She has been left outside this morning, which means she’s not been in her rightful place MY LAP during my morning ritual of dark-black roast and bone density ponderings. Her frantic barks at my back door translate into… OMGWTF?OMGWTF?OMGWTF?OMGWTF?OMGWTF?OMGWTF???!

Dakota is obviously stressed/spoiled. Her little eyes are crusted over. She’s had a sleepless night. EVERY SINGLE night she wedges her little body up under MY ASS in my king-sized bed. If I need to move, stretch or shake out body parts that have fallen asleep, she growls at me fiercely and lunges blindly at me with her little teeth for waking her up.

Don’t hate-on Dakota. Obviously she has it way better than all you poor doods in jail. There are now psychologists, hotels, spas, play and focus groups, bakeries, bookstores and couture boutiques dedicated to DOGS! They’re everywhere, I tell you. The world has moved on, Shane. I swear, if the Apocalypse happens tomorrow, and renders this planet into a barren, windswept Thunderdome, the dogs will be eating us. You can write that down.