I haven't been in the writing mood lately.  Thankfully this happened and got me off my ass.

A few weeks ago was Hannukah.  My family has embraced this modern age and we have taken to Skype video chatting so that we can more intimately light candles together while physically apart.  Video chat is a significant improvement in many respects to our past ritual of singing the prayers over the phone.  Besides the obvious advantage of being able to see my parents and their menorah, i ALSO now get to hear them.

Because cell phones work on the whole "one person talks while one person listens, then switch" principle, they are not designed to both transmit and receive sound simultaneously.  Therefore, when we would sing to each other over speakerphone, inevitably, the speakers would eject fragments of my parents voice, dotted like morse code.  I can only imagine that my parents also received dots and dashes of my voice, though they never mentioned it.  In any case, video chat seems to be here to stay.

After the candles were lit, mol, grover, and i settled in for a chat with my parents.  My mother loves grover.  loves him.  This is not to say that my father doesn't, but my mom grew up with pets and i believe still harbors a secret desire to have a fuzzy companion of her own.  My dad has no problem in the slightest with that scenario, as long as he is deceased.  And so, my mom loves grover a lot.

She loves him so much, that inevitably at some point in the conversation she will announce, "Ok, let me see my grandpuppy!  Where is my grandpuppy at!?"  And, because i love her loving our dog, we lower the screen and show her grover, groggy and affable as always, curled up on the couch.

"Where is he?" my mom says.

She wants some eye contact.  Some face time.  Since grover really doesn't care how you arrange him, i pull him onto my lap and facing the camera.

Then . . . i see . . . a flash.

I realize that my mother is taking pictures of her computer screen in order to have more images of the dog.  Multiple photos.  Not only is she photographing the picture of the dog on her computer screen (i may literally blow her mind when i show her how easy taking a screenshot is), she then proceeds to show me the picture she took of grover on her computer screen to me by putting the screen of her digital camera up to her computer.  Now try to keep up with this:  I was being asked to evaluate the image of my dog on my lap on my mom's computer taken by a digital camera and then relayed back to me.  Pretty friggin meta.

I was laughing entirely to hard to comment on the photo itself.  i'm pretty sure the actual dog on my lap appeared more crisp and "lifelike," but i loved the enthusiasm.

I can only imagine whats going to happen when she meets the new puppy . . .

(to be continued!!!!!!!!!!!!  cliffhanger!!!!!)

will matt and mol be getting a new puppy?  is this just a ploy to get people re-engaged with the blog?  is this couple going to keep getting new puppies each year until they show up on Hoarders: Animal Edition?   The answers to there questions and more in the next installment!