I’ve voted, but tomorrow many will go cast their ballot in what feels like the most contentious battle for President yet.  I know this is not the case, but it sure feels that way when I turn on the news, look at social media, or talk to anyone.  It is all that is on our minds.

I decided after I voted that I didn’t need to listen to any of this noise which was only causing me stress.  Pretty much everyone has made up their minds already – and yes, I do know people voting for both sides, and nothing I could say or do would change minds at this point.

In one of my stressed-out moments, I found myself scrolling Instagram and discovered that one of my favorite IG pages @chalkpondretrievers was expecting puppies.   For the past week and a half, I’ve been going on to IG simply to see if the puppies had been born.   They arrived on 10/31 and were fittingly an all-black litter.  I know I’m partial to black labrador retrievers because our dog is a black lab, but anyone I’ve told about this page has become quickly obsessed.   Is there anything cuter than puppies?   I think not.

The breeder jokingly said this morning that she was thinking of putting up a live stream camera of the puppies with her other phone.  Yes please, I thought!  What a good way to get my mind off the election!

It has been an education for me.  I never knew that the dog gestation period is around 65 days.  I had no idea that puppies were born blind, deaf, and needed their mom to stimulate their digestive systems to go the bathroom.   I never knew that they made such cute little squeaking sounds for the first few weeks of their lives.  Who knows what I’ll learn about puppies when I sign on later.   I do know that I’d have a hard time being a breeder because I don’t think I could part with any of those puppies.  None of this information is remotely helpful in my day-to-day life, but then again, the puppy cuteness overload has been a balm in an otherwise overwhelmingly stressful time.  Thank you @chalkpondretrievers and Harlee for your beautiful puppy distraction.