We're doing an Instagram Story Takeover at Rover!

Hi friends! A little something exciting today for all of us at Piri's Place!

We were invited by Rover to do an Instagram story takeover and we said yes! You can view it right now over at @roverdotcom (if you are following them already, their stories update probably popped on top of your Instagram screen. If you aren't following them, you can head on over to their account and click on their profile picture to view our stories).

I hope you'll swing on by to meet some of our guest dogs, see a little or Piri, Bartles and Lady and get a little peek at some of the stuff we do around here!

Thank you!

Memory smells

There are mornings when I wake up and it's slightly chilly. Chilly meaning chilly considered for summer. And it's those mornings when I get an overwhelming sense of memory smells. Our first fall with Piri in our home. Those mornings with crisp leaves, wood burning and pumpkins too. And it makes me miss him so much more. So much more.

It's already been two years since Piri crossed the rainbow bridge and I haven't missed a day of saying his name every day since.

Sometimes I turn around and see spots around the house that was his favorite. My heart expects him to be there but my mind reminds me that he's no longer here.

I read somewhere that dogs are perfect. Their only fault really is that their time with us is limited.

Happy Friday

I wanted to take a few pictures of some of the yoga poses I've been practicing to see what my posture was like. I had some helpers in the process.

Happy Friday. Hope you have a wonderful weekend.

10 Things I love About Lady + the weekend and our upcoming trip

We woke up this morning to a couple of puddles on our bed. Lady had leaked. Twice. She hasn't leaked since coming back from Vermont and she has never leaked twice. Nothing really has changed with her bathroom or food routine so it left me kind of perplexed. I thought maybe it was her Proin pill that she takes at 3 pm. She gets half of a whole pill then but I had broken off the piece a little small.

Nonetheless I quickly got all the dogs out to the backyard at 6 in the morning and after feeding them I got to washing all our sheets. Thankfully our Casper mattress has a waterproof bedding cover accessory which we promptly got because we knew Lady had incontinence issues and it has been a lifesaver for us and our mattress the few times she leaked on our bed.

We never scold Lady when she leaks. But perhaps she is intuitive in a sense that she acts incredibly apologetic afterwards. Or maybe it's me putting my human thought process on her. But while outside in the backyard, Lady kind of hung out near the far fence, looking over at me from time to time. I thought she was just on the look out for rabbits. She is usually one of the first dogs done doing their thing but this morning she was the last of our bunch. I motioned for her to come over to the deck so I could wipe her feet and she gingerly trotted along, nudging and burying her head in my chest when she got near me. Perhaps her way of saying, "I'm sorry." As I did with Piri and Bartles, I talk to her. Often. And this time I said, "It's ok Ladybug. We got a new washer and dryer and they could use a little extra cycles to do their mean lean cleanin routine." I smiled too to let her know that all was good. And when I smile, she smiles. Or her tail does. I feel like it's her way of telling me that she understands. 

There are a lot of things I'm fond about Lady. But if I were to list 10, it would be: 

1. Her "drab... no rabbits this morning" face. She truly does look so bummed.

2. The way she hops around whenever she's excited. It's almost as if she can't contain all her joy and so her legs and tail and ears all go in different directions. 

3. Her folded lip whenever I have an incredibly tasty treat in my hand. She stays frozen that way so that she doesn't miss the most tiniest movement of the treat. She has it completely locked on.

4. The don't stop scratching my chin swipes.

5. Her upside down morning greeting.

6. The rare barks we hear every once in a blue moon. I almost want to record her barks because we hardly get to hear it. 

7. Her happy tail. Her happy "smiling" tail.

8. Her healthy and voracious appetite. After seeing Piri and Bartles have very little appetites when they were sick, it's so incredibly fulfilling to see her love food and eat so well, too.

9. How she stays by me always. Recently I have taken up yoga and she stays with me while I practice. Sometimes I catch her in positions that almost mimic certain poses like hands to heart, child's pose and of course, downward dog.

10. Her frosted face. There is just something so incredibly soothing and loving and sweet about frosted faces. Hers especially.

Well, it's finally Friday friends. What are you up to this weekend?

Yangkyu and I are going away at the end of August and it'll be our first trip without Lady. While we wish she was coming with us, the drive would've been incredibly long (36+ hours roundtrip) and I couldn't ask Yangkyu to take that on by himself because I don't drive. While we still hope to have that road trip out West with her, this time around we'll be headed out to Utah just the two of us, and Lady will get to hang out with Bartles' former foster mom and her adorable crew of cockers. I was so worried about finding a place to board Lady and wasn't going to go on this trip, but both Lady's former foster and Bartles' former foster moms reached out to me to let me know that they can watch her while we go away. We love them so much for their ever expanding hearts.

While in Utah, Yangkyu and I will be visiting my old childhood friend and her mom who has always been a second mom to me and also do a little hiking at Zion National Park and also get a taste of the Grand Canyon. We'll be glamping out under the night sky to stargaze, something Yangkyu always wanted to do with Piri, and hopefully getting some incredible views during the daytime as well. I've also decided to just take my Fujifilm x100T this time and not my bulky Canon and I hope this is the right choice (although I feel like I may change my mind last minute).

While Yangkyu and I hiked here and there, I have recently gotten really hooked and promptly bought our first pair of legit hiking shoes. There are a few other items that we purchased for this time (and for future hikes) like trekking poles, waterproof bag and socks, and so this weekend we'll be doing more planning for our trip, watching a couple more documentaries about Zion and National Parks in general and figuring out some Virginia and Washington D.C. based gifts we can bring for our friends. So far, this place look very promising.

Have a great weekend! 

Lately at Piri's Place + of course some rambling thoughts

Some friendly faces who came through our doors these past couple of months.

I have been feeling that feeling when you feel like you need a change and so the first thing you think of is getting a new haircut. But this feeling wasn't really about me but more the blog and so I was wondering what the equivalent of a hair cut would be for a blog and naturally it was a new template. But I wasn't able to find a new template that I liked so I did the next best thing which is to give it a new name.

You still with me?

Someone suggested after Piri passed that I change my Instagram handle to @pirisplace in his honor. I didn't because at the time I only associated Piri's Place to the dog sitting business I was running at home. Instead, I dabbled with new changes and ended up creating three different Instagram accounts - closing down the one I had since the very beginning of Instagram and making @windingridgelane, @ohmyfairladyyoo and @pirisplace. In hindsight, it wasn't a very good move.

I have since closed all those down and have reverted back to my original account, while feeling incredibly bad for making all our friends go back and forth between all these different accounts. It's like.. can I make up my mind already?

And even with my original account, I went back and forth with new names and finally settled on Piri's Place. Only, I can't change my handle (even though I deleted @pirisplace) because well, I guess the name is still too fresh on the delete market for me to take it. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is... I'm embracing Piri's Place to be more than just a dog sitting business. Piri's Place is our home (whether it's our current home or the one in the future), our life. I guess having everything that is us be associated with Piris' Place is really how we will always honor him for playing such a big part of our lives. And while Bartles and Lady too and all the dogs who will come into our lives in our future will play big roles too, there will always be something a bit more extra special with Piri. 

So, welcome to Piri's Place everybody. The dog sitting place and also our lives, too.

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Our blog is now titled Piri's Place and the url has changed from windingridgelane.blogspot.com to pirisplace.blogspot.com.

My Instagram is still @jaeun2 and I hope to switch it to @pirisplace when and if I can. Crossing my fingers that I will be able to take it soon.

Yoga, braces and other things around here

Guess what? 

My braces came off yesterday. For some reason I had thought that I still had a few more months to go and while my orthodontist hinted that they may come off on my next visit, I thought maybe she was just trying to keep my spirits up. 

But no, they came right off yesterday. The whole process was scary and slightly painful and my teeth felt incredibly slimy afterwards but I am so very happy that I can now eat whatever I like and not worry about spitting in people's faces while talking (you totally can't control that... and it's really embarassing). 

And I can wear lipstick again! And floss like a normal person and it won't take me 30 minutes to do it. 

The most dramatic change happened on my bottom teeth. They were incredibly crooked and so it's a little weird seeing them so straight. But they are super tender. My two bottom front teeth have been sensitive for the past several years but now that they are also tender, I worry a little wondering if this is all permanent. 

The only thing I have now left to do is picking up my retainer on Friday. Actually Yangkyu will go pick it up since I have guest dogs and I just have to make my way to the orthodontist office on Monday (thank goodness for that day off) just so they can see that my retainers fit properly.

Yippie!

Yoga.

I have been doing the 30 days of Yoga on Yoga with Adriene's Youtube channel and it's been fantastic.

I first tried yoga in 2006 (ages ago) and it was so hard to stick with it then. I think I did it for about 2 months before calling it quits. I have always enjoyed exercise that really gets the heart pumping and I love to sweat a ton. One of the hardest things about yoga back then was having patience and concentrating. 

But revisiting yoga now has been an incredible experience. I have since gotten stronger arms, legs and core and so the moves are not hard and even if I can't do them, it's not frustrating. I know I'll get there. I am more patient now and my concentration level has improved dramatically. I am completely blown away that I was able to stick to doing yoga (today is my 28th straight day) and I will continue to keep it in my life.

Our vegetable garden is coming along well but we have decided to no longer do it next year. Our lawn has taken a big hit with crabgrass and now grass burn from dog urine (I have never dealt with this before!) and so we're going to come up with a layout for our backyard that accommodates our dogs and also keeps our lawn healthy and green.  I am thinking something along the lines of a long stretch of gated area where dogs can pee and the rest of the area for them to play. Hence us parting with our vegetable garden bed since we need more grass area. Perhaps we'll continue to do some gardening containers... we'll see.

We're also playing with the idea of slowly renovating our home. For a long time we only thought of this home as a stepping stone to a bigger house and so we only updated big ticket items or ones we thought would most appeal to homebuyers. And I was always in a hurry to move. But my thought on that has shifted a little and while this home is still a stepping stone, we are no longer in rush to move. And so with the time that we have here, we decided to make it more ours. So that kitchen and bathrooms will all get updated to the way we like it. It's a big and long process as we plan on doing most of the work, but I am looking forward to the experience. 

First thing is first. We went and bought a new washer and dryer. It comes this weekend and I can't wait to start using it. Although the dryer probably won't get a lot of play time as I have been obsessed with air drying everything outside. I love when our towels get crisp and smell like the sun.

I hope all has been well with you.

Happy First Gotcha Day, Lady!

A couple of days ago on Sunday, July 8, we celebrated Lady's first Gotcha Day!

Just a year ago we met her at an adoption event at Petsmart and we were only going to meet her, not adopt her per say. But after a few licks and treats she was riding in the backseat of our car going to her forever home.

I remember at first Lady only hung out in the kitchen, didn't follow me upstairs and always slept on the floor and not in our bed. Now she still likes to hang out in the kitchen (because come on - that's where all the yummy foods are at), likes to follow me around everywhere and thinks that our bed is actually hers and she's sharing it with us every night because she has such a big heart.

Happy happy First Gotcha Day, Labybug. I'm so happy that you picked us to be your family.

Happy Friday

The other night, Yangkyu rushed home from work as fast as he could so that we could have time out as a family. It was my first night off from Piri's Place after caring for dogs for three weeks so it was a very much welcomed outing for me.

We went to Gravelly Point to see the planes land at National Airport. We came here years ago with Piri and since Lady likes to bark at the planes above, we thought maybe she would like to see them up close. She didn't bark and didn't seem all that interested but nonetheless it was a very enjoyable and relaxing evening.

In the past week, I have cried over Bartles' one year since his passing and laughed at all of Lady's antics. Such an emotional roller coaster of a week. But I had my family with me to see me through. The ones in this picture and the two across the rainbow bridge. I'm so very thankful for them and don't know what I would do without them. And I mean to truly and deeply. 

Have a wonderful weekend everybody.