Or lack thereof.

So we decided to can green beans tonight. Not ordinary green beans, but special ones that stick out of Bloody Marys on weekends. This would be a FABulous idea if I liked Bloody Marys. Or green beans, for that matter. But Derek has been inspired by Bonnie Moore (who we saw tonight, per chance, at Whole Foods, doing her personal shopping--she stopped to tell us we had a beautiful baby and I told her that my husband was stalking her via every class she teaches--just kidding, I figure she'll figure out the stalking on her own--really, if your husband's fantasy is an award-winning chef, how do you lose?), all due to a recent canning class at Sur La Table.

So we were outside snapping the green beans when I realized how intellectually-challenged Zinni truly is. Derek was snapping off the tops of the green beans and throwing them to Zin. He was catching EVERY SINGLE ONE, chewing on it for a sec, and then spitting it out. Since there were 2 1/2 pounds of green beans, you do the math.

Did he think that Derek was switching to steak every other bean? WTH? I watched him and thought about every single person that told me that Zinni was such a smart dog. And how very wrong every single person was.

Derek called it the actions of the eternal optimist. Spoken like the eternal optimist himself.