Righty-o. The holiday season is nearly upon us. Got your recipes in hand? Travel dates sewn up? Taking a little time off work? Because how much holiday cheer do your elves ned to start whipping up? We know what our priorities are. So here we go. Holiday preparations, off and ready! Border collie work ethic! Festive gourds abound!

Centerpieces. Who doesn’t want one of those? For thanksgiving, we plan to collect some rocks and sticks and fallen branches. Lovely table toppers, all of them. You know that part in the Blair Witch movie with the rock piles? And Josh moves the wrong one and the next thing you know, there’s ectoplasm and his bloody teeth? All downhill from there. Many soggy leaves. Is that a centerpiece?

Festive trees. We’re using the train stick thing this year. Here’s our tree. It’s not even a tree. What do you call the train stick? What does it do there, anyways? We see a lot of trees and for goshsake, why cut them down? One almost fell down on my head recently and I’m forever dragging branches off the path. Festive trees my ass. Just go enjoy a train stick.

Shining angel lights. North stars. Baby Jesus in the sky. Shiny star thing up on your train stick. Use the right camera angle with your phone, just point it up into the sun. Because who even has a camera anymore? Just stick your phone in somebody’s face and that’s called a selfie. Is it a selfie if I took it of Otterpop?

Silent night. Quiet, mystical night. Not really. It’s the trestle. But I did leave Otterpop at home with the other dogs the other night. Most people can do that, leave all the dogs at home. However, welcome to Otterpop. She used to scare baby Banksy with her barking and manic separation anxiety behavior so I just started bringing Otterpop with me, all the time. Really all the time. Banksy magically loves being left home with Ruby and Gustavo since that time. I have three lovely quiet dogs who you tell them you’re leaving and they understand you’ll be back.

Sure, they’d like to go along, too. But they get it. And they go to sleep.

Since Banksy is a grown up now, or at least as grown up as a 20 month old dog can be, I’ve tried leaving Otterpop at home occasionally. Ha. Not a silent night. Otterpop freaks out and scares the other dogs and I come home to a manic Otterpop out of her mind and a quaking everybody else, looking all shell shocked. So Otterpop comes along with me. If you’re wondering why, at the holiday gathering, I have an Otterpop stuffed into a purse.

Also, can you see the cave up there in the top right corner of the photo? Bonus if you made it this far. Gustavo says there’s an animal living in there. Secret little den. We’ll come look for it again. Do you see perhaps how my holidays go here?