Definition of Obsequious: See Our Dog

The submissive peeing thing is a little more under control these days. However, Poe still remains armed and ready at the slightest provocation, just to remind us that her psyche is fragile and that we must handle her with the utmost care lest we experience another urinous breakdown.

She is still the epitome of submission, especially with Dave. He makes her melt, literally. This evening he was giving her some leftover steak, and much to Dave’s consternation, Poe immediately assumes the pee pose. I said she was offering up her obsequiousness to him as an explanation of her behavior. Or, as we have come to call it, obpeequiousness.

The Messiah Hath Cometh

Conversation between my husband and his son:

"So, Vaughn, do you know whose birthday is on Christmas Day?"

"No...MINE?!"

Leave it to my son to believe he is the Savior of all Mankind, aka, Jesus Christ.

There are two rather pathetic observations to be made here: (1) My son has almost reached the ripe old age of 6 under the impression that Christmas is nothing more than an opportunity to con a fat old dude in a red suit out of more toys to add to his already burdensome collection and (2)that every national holiday is somehow related to his day of birth because he manages to finagle a gift or two out of it. Well, maybe three pathetic observations: He's almost 6, and he doesn't know the date of his birth.

Now, despite his seeming ignorance of the meaning of Christmas (this after having spent 2 years in Christian preschools complete with Christmas pageants where he learned the infamous Baby Jesus Boogie and having more than a little smattering of religious exposure from the occasional church attendance with either us or relatives), I refuse to conclude that my child is that dense. Rather I have chosen to presume from this exchange between father and son that my 5-year-old is an 80-year-old in disguise in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's. This has not been the first occasion in which I have questioned my child's mental clarity. If put to the test, Vaughn would not be able to pass the recent and remote memory test on a senior mental examination--remembering 3 objects in 5 minutes. He would be hard put to remember 1 object right after you pointed it out to him. He most certainly would fail the orientation part, given he asks me multiple times in the day what day it is. For example: After a day of school, he'll come home and ask me, "Was today a school day?" He also confuses the time of day, concluding that early morning is "almost night" and pitch black is a fine time for a bike ride or a walk to the park. He evidently never got off that "newborn" clock.

Any day now I fully expect him to turn to me and say, "And you are?" He's already prone to wandering directionless and needing help dressing and feeding himself, not to mention flushing the toilet. I wonder if Alzheimer facilities have an age limit--no one under the age of 10?

Vet Schmet

So today it was off to the vet, with Pogisa sans diaper. I decided to take my chances and stuffed a roll of paper towels into my purse like a good Girl Scout, preparing for the inevitable. I just couldn’t bring myself to sit through 4 or more hours of humiliation, to say nothing of the diapered dog’s.

It was really unnecessary to begin explaining the reason for our visit because Poe, ever accommodating, illustrated the problem the minute the vet greeted her by promptly flipping onto her back, assuming the position, and spewing forth her liquid offering of submission. The vet came to the same conclusion I did--Pogisa is neurotic and has a self-esteem problem. In an effort to ferret out solutions for this, it was concluded that I need to brush up Poe’s resume and get her a job. Evidently, having a job is quite an image elevator for dogs. (I guess being a stay-at-home pet just isn’t fulfilling enough.) This in addition to spending untold amounts of money on agility or clicker training so she can flaunt her newly acquired skills in front of her peers, and lastly, I am also to have her listen to self-hypnosis tapes every night that tell her she’s good enough, smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like her. (Okay, that last bit might just be an elaboration on my part.) The absolutely worst thing we can do is punish, yell, demean, shame, reproach, abase or otherwise call attention to The Dog’s “little accidents,” to which Dave’s response was, “But it makes me feel better,” and I had to agree. Instead, we are to avoid eye contact, quietly mop up the puddle or trail of pee, whichever the situation may require, and tell her she’s looking very pretty today.

As a very last resort, we would have to put her on an antidepressant or benzo.

To be honest, none of this was a revelation to me. I was frankly just hoping the doctor could give her doggy Detrol and send us on our way. I mean what are doctors for anyway but dispensing those life altering substances that we all know and love? Cause goodness knows that the majority of the time everything they tell me I’ve already figured out from WebMD (or in this case the multitude of dog advice sites on the World Wide Web). I’m just too lazy and impatient to do the self-treatment and await the results. Like any good American, I would much rather pop a pill and be on my way. Worthless quacks.

Now, excuse me while I go search Monster.com for positions for puppies.

Doggie Depends

(By the way, Morgans, this is what our kitchen floor looked like after we ripped it up. This is the original linoleum.)

I have decided to do what I do best and procrastinate. Since it’s the weekend, and therefore, I’m working, and since the job of sitting in the vet’s waiting area for hours on end falls under the category of Mommy Duties, I’m waiting until Monday. In the interim, in one last ditch effort to prolong Pogisa's life span, I had Dave go out and purchase her some doggy diapers. We now have 2 living beings in our home that wear diapers (at least Vaughn's is just at night). This is truly desperation.

I remember seeing these diapers before we got the dog while we were shopping for puppy paraphernalia in preparing our nest for the arrival of our bouncy bundle of fur. They were in the "house training" section of Petco, and needless to say, these are what sprang into my mind last night in between death fantasies of Poe. (These fantasies ranged from the more humane just encouraging her to run away scenario, which wouldn’t work because she’s microchipped and forever bound to us by association, to playing ball on the busy boulevard that’s adjacent to our street, but then that would force me into the whole death controversy again with Vaughn.)

Dave bought the largest sized diapers Petco had (which look like preemie size), but we still had to add diaper pins in an effort to keep the things on because evidently large dogs don't have incontinence problems. I'm trying not to think about what a nut job I'm going to look like sitting with my diapered dog in the waiting area of the vet's office on Monday. (I wonder if these come in black, or maybe a leopard print.) I'm not sure who will be more embarrassed, me or the dog. She seems to have an unusually heightened sense of self-awareness and now walks around the house, diapered bum in tow, head hanging, looking like we have humiliated her beyond repair. I think it’s a good bet that this is not what the Dog Whisperer would recommend, and the minute he’s willing to come over and clean my floors, I’m all ears.

Code Yellow

Okay, this incontinence problem of The Dog's has reached crisis proportions. We can't even look at her sideways now without a stream of urine springing forth. Our house has been doused with Nature's Miracle from ceiling to floor. I have run out of paper towels and any other absorbent materials, short of sacrificing our toilet paper. An inordinate amount of my day is being spent absorbing pee puddles and their attendant pee trails that inevitably follow. The remaining amount of my free time is spent laundering pee soaked cloths and towels.

Through Internet searching (what else?), I understand this is what is called submissive peeing and that yelling or otherwise becoming upset with the dog only makes the situation worse, which is what has evidently happened, but I would have to have the patience of Mother Teresa to endure this onslaught of urine that I am now encountering multiple times a day (to be precise, anytime I look, glance, or pass by The Dog) without having the uncontrollable desire to perform puppy's last rites.

It now seems that whatever free time I have this next week after cleaning up, no doubt, more puppy eliminations, will be spent at the vet's to see if perhaps we can put her on doggy Detrol. "Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go right now..."

The Pee Saga Continues

In continuing to analyze Poe’s incontinence problem, there is one interesting observation I have made: There is something about the male voice, or just the male appearance in general, that particularly intimidates Poe. Dave especially seems to be able to elicit Poe's urinary reflex. This is peculiar given that he is her biggest advocate and has very little to do with training her.

The following is a perfect example of him trying to get her to go for a quick van ride:

First, he calls her. “Come on, Poe. Let’s go for a ride!” She pees.

He's wiping it up, naively thinking the worst is over (I mean, how much urine can one dog’s bladder contain?), and calls her again.

From my position on the bed upstairs, I then hear:

"Poe, come on. Let's go, come on....OH, GEE WIZZ...Come on, Poe. Come on. Don't cha wanna go for a ride? Come on...OH, GEE WIZZ. Come on, girl, let’s go for a ride. That’s it!...OH, GEE WIZZ, each of the gee wizzes preceded by Poe letting forth a seemingly endless fountain of pee as she makes her journey from the upstairs to the downstairs.

To give Poe the benefit of the doubt, wizz is a euphemism for pee, so perhaps she was just following commands.

Lethal Weapon

Poe in Armed and Ready Position.

When do a dog's assets continue to outweigh their pissets? I fear The Dog's are coming dangerously close to an end, drowned by an uncontrollable flood of pee. This seems to be yet another consequence of our vacation--our dog has come back from her respite at my parents' with a heightened neuroses.

As I have explained previously, our dog does not have the best understanding of what it means to be house-trained, but it had become better, at least in terms of the peeing. She seemed to have been developing more control and being able to hold it for longer periods of time, but since coming back from my parents', her self-esteem (which was nebulous to begin with), appears to have been shaken. I don't know if she thinks we sent her away as a punishment and so now she is even more submissive in an effort to please us or what, but it's manifesting as some kind of urinating defensiveness.

Take this morning, for instance. I catch her down in the basement committing one of her few acts of disobedience, sneaking cat contraband. Anytime she gets the opportunity, she sneaks down to the cat dishes and inhales whatever food is there, and I mean inhale. It is truly a feat of nature the speed at which she commits this act. One minute she is standing there with two full bowls of cat food in front of her, you blink, and the bowls are completely licked clean, with Poe barely uttering a doggy belch. So, it was I caught her, bowls empty, and I yell. Now, yes, the yelling may not be adding to her self-confidence, but she knows she's done something verboten, and she is trying to flee the scene the minute she hears my feet on the steps. I tell her to go to her room, which, normally, she does, but this time...

I go upstairs, expecting her to be in her bed. She's not there, so I start searching the house for her, calling her. No dog. Okayee… Fortunately, we don't have a large house, so I cover the downstairs in a short period of time. I then head upstairs and see a darker than usual blob underneath the bed. Now, I'm in a tricky situation. I have to call her out from under the bed in an upbeat enough tone that she's not going to wet the carpet, having already relieved herself on the basement stairs when I first reprimanded her. I call. Nothing. Oh crap. This means I'm going to have to somehow drag her out from under the bed, again as positively as possible, in an effort to avoid more doggy waste contribution to our already stained carpet. I manage to coax her out enough to where she has cleared enough of the bottom of the bed to flip onto her back, readying herself in the piss position, and...we have pee...I grab her tail (because I have read this somewhere in all the doggy manuals I have loaned from the library) and pull it up over the offending orifice. This is supposed to make them stop peeing/pooping, as I recall. Another myth debunked. Well, not entirely, it did seem to stem the flow while I dragged her by the collar on her back, while still holding her tail modestly over her doggy bits, up to the point of the stairs. This was not all in one movement. I did make one pit stop on the other side of the bed, grabbing some of Vaughn's "burp rags," (cloth diapers that we still haven't gotten around to getting rid of), and placed one over her still flowing stream of pee. All this time, she has this helpless look on her face, still maintaining her position of submission, belly up, paws resting on her chest, while I appear as if I'm trying to diaper her, which, at this point, seems like a very good idea indeed.

I manage to reassure her enough to get her on all fours, and she heads down the stairs, presumably, finally, to her room. But what's this? That's not the way to her room. She has evidently decided at this point to take a piss tour of the house, like a little Doggy Appleseed, leaving a trail of urine throughout the house, later to grow into an everlasting impenetrable stink. First stop--the kitchen, a puddle or two there and then a beeline for the living room. I'm hot on her heels--by this time, caution thrown to the wind, screaming at her, calling her all manner of dog obscenities, and watching helplessly, as she now heads for Vaughn's room and his, up to this point, virgin carpet. New strategy. I stand at the doorway, and once again, in my sweetest tone, try to persuade her to come to me piss-free. Fortunately, she makes it all the way to the doorjamb before she plants another puddle. By this time, I have lost it, screeching like a harpy, I nearly strangle the dog as I drag/choke her into her room.

And this is how I spent my day while Vaughn was in kindergarten.

Reflecting on this now, I'm sure I have done nothing to build up Poe's self-esteem, and she will probably need a few years of doggy therapy to recover. Maybe we can get a group discount for her and Vaughn, as I'm sure he'll need it, too, if he doesn't already.

In Sickness and In Health

There are a myriad of reasons I abhor having a sick child, specifically, my sick child.

I especially hate those times when they're not so sick as to not annoy you and be blissfully semiconscious in their bed in a feverish state, watching their favorite movie for the umpteenth time, but they are exhibiting too obviously the signs of sickness for any parent in good conscience to take them out in public, exposing other children, and consequently, those children's parents, to a possible future excruciating existence of being housebound with a restless and bored child. Ironically, children are most contagious before you even have a clue of what's in store for the next week or more, but we parents still do the polite thing of keeping our children quarantined well past the time of contagion to ease the sensibilities of healthy children's parents and give them the false security that they will not be subjected to this viral abyss.

Vaughn has been seriously sick for the last few days, starting with the stuffies on Friday, peaking with a fever and severe crankiness, and fading out with the sniffies and wet cough today. Unfortunately, it was Dave's days to watch him during the worst part of it, and I'm not saying unfortunately for him, but for me. On the days that I worked, Dave got the fading in and out of consciousness part of the sickness and (oh can it be true?) the truly miraculous development of laryngitis, of all things. It was pure bliss for about 2 days, where the loudest sound Vaughn could utter was a barely audible raspy squeak. It especially came in handy when he was whisper screaming a good part of Saturday night due to a combination of dropping a 10-pound weight on his foot and just the general crappiness he was feeling as a consequence of his illness.

Now lest I come off as a stone cold b---h, let me explain a critical characteristic of Vaughn's. He loathes (and I cannot use that word strongly enough) medicine in any form, fashion, consistency, viscosity, or viscidity. (This is one reason why I spent over $400 to have him knocked out to get his cavities filled--another story for another day.) When I posed this little problem to his pediatrician (and evidently I must have minimized it because she didn't seem to grasp the scope of the situation), she said putting medicine in chocolate syrup always works, and just kind of shrugged her shoulders like--"Yeah, so what? Kids don't like medicine. Everybody knows that," and so has been the general reaction when I have brought this up to other mothers. It's common knowledge kids don't like medicine, but you put up with the resistance, overcome it, and it's over and done. Ah, if only it could be that simple. Among other lamentable qualities my son has inherited from me is my acute sense of taste and smell. It doesn't matter how we disguise the medicine--chocolate syrup, lemonade, ice cream, crack--with the first sniff, he detects it, takes a lick or sip, and then looks at us suspiciously as we lamely try to explain that things just taste different when you're sick. He then refuses to eat, drink, or otherwise consume the fare, requesting something else and hypervigilantly supervising our food preparation from there on.

Now, you might say, "Why don't you just make him take it?" And I would reply, "Are you familiar with the saying you can take a horse to water but..." If you are, I don't need to finish, and if you're not, well, you've lived too sheltered of a life and I'm sorry to add to your confusion. We have wrestled him to the floor, sat on him, pried his mouth open, and poured the offending substance down his gullet, only to have him promptly and ferociously spew it back up, with now the offending substance (which was less than a teaspoon), within seconds multiplied to over a gallon of syrupy sticky liquid blanketing him, the floor, us, and the neighboring furniture and walls. We have cajoled, bribed, threatened, begged, pleaded, bargained, but instead, we end up with a child that is so sick he is screaming and moaning and begging us to help him, but refusing to allow us to put anything in him or on him or close to him that would actually ease his suffering. You can imagine how this makes for a very fun evening. Luckily, this time, his screams were muted by his laryngitis, but being a mother, I could still hear him.

So you see, I am not so sensitive that I'm above trying to mask my child's illness by drugging him and then subjecting him to unsuspecting victims. It's that I am unable to, and consequently, will be spending the rest of my day in this pathogenic limbo, until Vaughn has the appearance of being healthy enough to go back to school--sans medication.

Paging Dr. Vaughn

"Mom, I have a cold."

"You do?"

"Yep, but I stuck a spoon in my mouth, and there was no blood, so I'm going to be okay."

Thank God.

Ode to Dorothy

Dorothy

March 2005-October 2007--a casualty of our family vacation.

When Vaughn's friend, E., Party Girl's daughter, had her 3rd birthday bash, the party favor was a tiny little comet goldfish in a miniature fishbowl. As usual, Party Girl had outdone herself in finding a way to send the little party goers out the door, satisfied, with a unique and inexpensive parting gift. When we got our little treasure home, I immediately got on the Internet and started researching just how one properly cares for a goldfish, figuring I'd get the usual stick them in a bowl and feed occasionally. Instead, I was convinced by the cyber goldfish enthusiasts to follow the more humane path of caring for our little darling, who had been christened by Vaughn as Dorothy because she bore a striking resemblance to Elmo's goldfish. (What are the odds?)

Suffice it to say that when all was said and done, I ended up with a party favor that cost me a little over $100, initially. She was probably the only 1 cm common comet goldfish ever to be set up with her own 10-gallon aquarium, complete with all aquarium accoutrement. In the meantime, everyone thought I was completely nuts for not just plopping her into the nearest bowl-shaped container, like every other parent does, and letting nature take its course. Dorothy, I'm sure, thought she had been returned to the ocean or lake or pond or wherever the heck goldfish come from as she swam the great expanse of her gargantuan home.

For the first year-and-a-half, Dorothy received exquisite care, water changes every few days, a complete cleaning every week, a variety of foods every day, new little ornaments to keep things interesting (because "goldfish become bored if their environment isn't changed every so often"). Then we got the kitten. Dorothy didn't get filter and water changes quite as often, but was still a very doted upon goldfish. Then came the dog, at which time, poor Dorothy's care got to the point of virtual neglect. Algae was thriving, and Dorothy got fed maybe every other day. Now, this isn't to say that I didn't feel extreme guilt over this. Every time I chanced to pass her aquarium and heard the filter crashing water like a mini-waterfall because the water level had become dangerously low, I'd promise to clean her tank...soon. Dave kept reassuring me that she still received the best care a goldfish could hope for, despite the fact that it was becoming more and more difficult to see her through the green film covering the aquarium walls. But Dorothy looked as healthy and spunky as ever and seemed to be as content as a goldfish can be. Party Girl later informed me that the first year after the birthday party she had replaced their goldfish thrice over and that she thought my goldfish was the only surviving member of the original ill-fated fish favors; so, despite the fact that she derived endless amusement from thinking that I was such a sucker to have nurtured a 5-cent carp, I took pride in the fact that Dorothy was a thriving, healthy and happy 2-1/2-year-old goldfish.

Then we went on our 10-day vacation. I bought a couple of those pellet feeders that are supposed to dissolve, I guess, over time or the fish pick at it (I don't know the exact principle on which they work), but the solution of how she would be fed was solved, and since she was still alive when we returned, I was content that all was well. I gave her a good feeding over the next couple of days, which generally occurred as an afterthought after I'd put Vaughn to bed and the lights were off. The next day, Vaughn tells me Dorothy is acting funny. She's on the bottom of the tank. Uh-oh. I went in to check on her, and sure enough, Dorothy was laying on the bottom of the tank on her side, with her tail curled around her, but not dead--yet. Over the next 3 days, there was a desperate rescue attempt on my part to save Dorothy's life. Back to the Internet to 1) try and figure out what the heck was wrong with her and 2) what I could do about it. One source suggested that you could take the goldfish to the vet and have them x-rayed to see if their swim bladder was the problem. For a moment, I pictured putting our 3-inch goldfish into a fish carrier and waiting for 3+ hours in the waiting room at the vet's office, and then paying a ridiculous amount of money to have her x-rayed, confirming that, indeed, she couldn't swim. Yeah, I have not reached that kind of insanity yet. The most likely scenario, as I learned later, was that she had overeaten. Evidently, goldfish can go for as long as a week or more without food, eating the algae (which she had plenty of) off the rocks. She looked perfectly healthy, other than looking like she was going to kick the bucket at any moment, so I had to conclude that she binged, got constipated, and that in turn had affected her swim bladder. There was hope.

I fasted her over the next few days, cleaned the aquarium, religiously changed the water every day, administered medication, and was just about to go all out and start asking for some expert help--well, have Dave ask for some expert help--when Dave informed me that he believed she was no longer with us. Now, the day previously I had declared her dead prematurely. Vaughn was there when I broke the news, and he proceeded to start in on a mournful wail, only for us to see her take a big gasp of breath and flutter her fins. Dave advised me not to make any more death pronouncements in front of "a certain someone" until we were absolutely certain she was gone. (He never did explain how we were to confirm this--using our mini-fish stethoscope, evidently.) However, this seemed to have brought closure for Vaughn because from then on he started harassing me about getting another fish and asking when we were going to replace Dorothy before poor Dorothy's body was even warm. (What do you expect from a child that was ready to give up his dog for a hermit crab?)

As it turned out, the fact that Dorothy had passed on was actually a relief because she had begun to look so bad the day of her death that I was considering euthanizing her (which can humanely be done with clover oil. Another Internet tidbit) because I couldn't stand to think of her languishing for several more days. Of course, this is a little absurd considering what I allowed Vaughn to put the carcasses of his victims through after his little fishing expedition. Granted, they were dead, but...Note to self: I need to get those things out of the freezer.

Dorothy's body was left in the fish tank in Vaughn's room over a period of about a day. I promised myself that I would clear out the fish tank and prep Dorothy's body for burial while Vaughn was at school, and then when he came home, we would lay her to rest somewhere in the back yard, after performing a proper fish funeral. However, being the slacker mom that I am, in the end Dorothy ended up with the traditional city sewer farewell just before I went to pick up Vaughn from school, with the empty fish tank still in his room.

Later that evening:

"Where's Dorothy?" I had wondered how long it would take before he would realize there was no fish in the aquarium. I was actually surprised that he hadn't realized he'd had a dead fish in the tank over the last day, but I guess he had grown accustomed to Dorothy's inert body hovering over the bottom of the tank.

"Oh, Honey, she's gone. Dorothy is in goldfish heaven now, playing with a bunch of other goldfish and eating all kinds of yummy food. She's happy now."

"Where's the dust?" examining the bottom of the fish tank.

"What dust?"

"You know, the dust?" continuing to scrutinize the empty tank.

"What?"

"Mammaw says that when you die you turn to dust."

And did she also explain that when Jesus comes in the Clouds of Glory at the End of Times all the goldfish will rise up from their graves to greet Him?

"Well, Sweetie, you don't turn to dust right away. That takes a lot of time." (Especially in the water--it's more like mud.)

Interestingly, he didn't ask where the missing fish corpse went. I believe he probably is under the false impression that when you die you mysteriously disappear, since that's what happened with the first goldfish casualty, Peepee, Dorothy's former companion, or actually former victim. She largely spent her time tirelessly chasing the poor beleaguered fancy Goldfish all over the tank. I think secretly Dorothy was a bigot and thought Peepee was just a little too fancy, but it's just a theory. When Peepee (again, named by Vaughn) died, I discreetly disposed of him before Vaughn discovered his bobbing, lifeless body floating on top of the water. Vaughn was only 3 at the time, and I wasn't prepared to get into a discussion of life and death at that point. I mistakenly figured he wouldn't notice. Fortunately, the simple statement that Peepee was "gone" and had "passed on" was a sufficient enough explanation for the missing fish. Fish missing--fish "gone" and "passed on." Makes sense.

On a side note: I do wonder what kind of dust Vaughn was expecting--the common household variety of which our home has a preponderance or some goldfish-colored, sparkly, pixie dust, which I suspect was probably more the case. If only we could go out like that, how pretty death would be--a shimmering, magical cloud of dust. *Poof*

Goodbye, Dorothy. We'll miss you. You were a good and loyal (?) fish.

Breast Fiend

I am now suffering my 3rd, count it t-h-i-r-d, that's right, episode (quaint way of saying ninth circle of Hell) of mastitis, and no, I am not one of those weirdos who still breastfeeds their 5-year-old. He may still spend time in the bathroom with me, but I am not quite that perverted. Evidently, after my body experienced the 2 episodes of mastitis when I was breastfeeding, it liked it so much it decided to set out on a sentimental journey to experience it again. Ah, memories. The infection has evidently been lurking for the last 2 months, but like a true procrastinator and phobic of doctors, I thought if I just utilized the tried and true therapy of ignoring it, it would go away. Instead, it decided to rear it's full ugly nippled head while we were on our one family vacation of the year. Fortunately, I had procrastinated my usual "female" appointment and it just happened to be scheduled for the day after we came back from vacation. By that time, I had a lovely red and swollen B cup on one side and my pathetically healthy A (well, almost) cup on the other. Conversation during OB exam:

Doctor: "I hadn't noticed your breasts were so..."

Me: "Big?" Grinning..

Doctor: Frowning and looking at me quizzically like the infection had now migrated to my brain, "No. Asymmetrical."

Humphf. You say potatoes, I say...

Anyway, after much poking and prodding, it was concluded that I had a lump, ooo, possibly even an abscess, and that the rest of my day would be spent at the clinic for further poking and prodding and a photo session scheduled for my breast at the radiologist's office. At least, it wasn't for a mammogram. Fortunately, since the slightest touch of said lump would send me airborne, off the exam table, screaming obscenities (in my mind anyway), a mammogram was completely out of the question, and besides, I'm not 40 YET. Which has given me an idea: I think around the time I am scheduled for my first mammogram I will do whatever I did this time to get this infection and I'll get out of the pancaking of my AA's and have a comfortable, cozy, bosom-friendly ultrasound instead. Yeah. That's what I'll do, for the next 40 years or so. By that time, on the heels of 80, if there were the possibility of breast cancer, I'd want comfort measures only, so no point in mammograms. Let the disease eat away at my floppy, deflated fun bags while I dine on a morphine cocktail. Okay sorry, went a little into the dark side there. I don't mean to make light of breast cancer. I'm just saying...I hate mammograms, at least my idea of what a mammogram will be like.

I digress... The radiologist confirmed that I had mastitis, or in her words, "Well, you definitely have some inflammation." Your first year student and now you had to crush your seemingly sharp little doohickey (medical jargon) all over the expanse of my generous breast for the last 30 minutes to conclude this? The radiologist also said that I had a lump (again, stating the obvious. This, my friend, is why you go to a specialist) and said, "Shall we proceed to the next suite to stick an unnaturally long needle into your excessively painful boob and slurp out whatever goodies we might find in there?" or something like that.

Next stop, Ultrasound-Guided Needle Aspiration. (Yet another thing I like about medical transcription--sometimes I get to experience first-hand the things I transcribe. My dream is to one day undergo a maze procedure, just because it sounds so mysterious.) I agreed to the UGNA under the assumption that I had an abscess and draining it would give me some relief, or so I was told anyway. Do I smell lawsuit? Maybe I could get some implants out of this. I'm kidding.

Many people are afraid of needles--normal-sized needles. This needle did not fit in that category or the next 5 categories. Myself, I make a point of never looking at the needles. Blood draws: I stare intently on the water stain on the opposite wall while making friendly conversation with the vampiric phlebotomist, "So, do you come here often?" "Enjoy your work?" "What do you do for fun?" "Does it look like the room is spinning to you?" IVs: Again, friendly conversation while trying to make out what the spot on the ceiling looks like--cow, owl, horse...blood? Epidural: Well, my back was turned. Ha! However, very often it isn't the needle that terrorizes me so much as the operator. I'm generally holding my friendly conversations through clenched teeth, punctuated with a "That's okay" "No problem" "No worries," as they stab me again and again in an effort to find an amicable vein. I evidently have the blood veins of a junkie but without the fun history to go with it. I hold a special place in my heart for phlebotomists. Now, they are a worthwhile specialist.

With this procedure, fortunately, they had the monitor conveniently located in such a way that if I twisted my neck just so and thusly and so forth I could barely see it. The minute I got myself into the proper contortion, I fixated on the black and white boob tube. There was my breast, or at least I think so. Frankly, I was able to see Vaughn's penis on his 6-month-old intrauterine ultrasound easier than I could make out my breast on its 39-year-old ultrasound. I intently watched my immobile mamilla in fascination, waiting for the action that we all paid to see. Even as I saw the needle make its appearance onto the screen, I tried not to notice the insane length of it and instead pictured the long skinny white projectile as a friendly little alien finger probing and exploring the black space that is my breast. The little alien reaches its destination, the black hole, and starts sucking its contents out, receives its fill, and then starts back on its journey home. Goodbye, little alien. Goodbye! and then the radiologist says, "Huh. That's interesting," withdraws the needle and gives it another go. I don't know about you, but generally speaking, when someone is manipulating my breast, the last thing I want to hear is "Huh. That's interesting," no matter what the circumstances.

It turns out what they sucked out was pus and then the cavity refilled itself. They sucked out more pus, and it refilled itself again, like those damned restaurants with refillable drinks with overzealous waiters--That's my 5th cup. I think I've had enough now. Thanks. I didn't have an abscess after all, and consequently, no fluid to suck out; ergo, no immediate relief. It's a cyst, which is "totally normal to have" in breasts, happens all the time. Mine just, I guess, coincidentally, appeared at the same time as the mastitis. Cysts, I am told, are very hospitable to bacteria (mine being of the common staph variety) and this one was, evidently, the Martha Stewart of cysts and was entertaining guests, and it wasn't with her K-mart crap, either. Oh, no. This one used the "Living" line--the good stuff. I was on a broad-spectrum antibiotic for 5 days, still feeling like crap, when the culture results returned, and they switched me to a new antibiotic that Martha wasn't as fond of. Par-tay over, Marth.

As harmless as cysts are, they are still doing a cytology--again, radiologist "Yeah. I definitely want to do a cytology on this. We definitely did the right thing." But my PCP assures me that "I don't expect to find anything." I'm going with the PCP on this.

This is as exciting as my life gets.

It's Magic!

Vaughn often likes to provide me with bathroom entertainment whenever I venture to answer the call of Mother Nature. He evidently feels it is his sonly duty to keep me company whenever I use the toilet, because God forbid a mother should ever be left alone to "do her thing."

"Watch this."

While I sat on my front-row throne, he proceeded to perform a kind of Kindergartner version of self-mutilation, taking his excessively long fingernail (because I am so pro-hygiene that way. I barely get my own nails clipped, much less his) and scraped his fading tanned skin so that a long white line appeared in the nail's wake.

"_____________ (unintelligible or senile hearing or a combination) the person who sits next to me at school."

"What? The person who sits next to you does that to you at school?!" My mind starts formulating all the horrendous acts that my son is enduring at the Abu Ghraib that is his kindergarten class.

"No. I show that to her, the person who sits next to me."

"You do that for the girl who sits next to you?"

"Yeah. See?" He juts out his fat little arm to show me the white line has disappeared. "Ta-Da!" He beams.

"Wow, lucky girl."

Boys are so weird.

Puppy Potty Train Derailment

Our puppy is potty-train proof. I'm convinced she will never be potty trained in the conventional sense. No, it will be more the 1950s style potty training in which you take them (them in the 1950s referring to an actual child) to go potty on a schedule every 45 minutes or so. We have become confident enough in her bladder muscles that we have started giving her more and more freedom in the house, but it always comes back to the critical issue of her leaving it up to us to tell her when she needs to go outside to do her business. She seems to be completely incapable of alerting us as to when she has the urge.

Take this morning for instance. I'm sitting on the bed, writing on the laptop, when I get a whiff of Odeur de Poop, and I stupidly think, "Huh, that's smells suspiciously like poop, but that's impossible! Oh WAIT..." I had forgotten that Poe had been running loose in the house all morning long. I catch out of the corner of my eye a shadowy figure and look down to see this black menace curled up in the Hunchback of Notre-Dame pooping posture. Immediately, I jump up, flailing appendages frantically, screaming unintelligible monosyllabic sounds, gracefully executing the "No! No! Stop shitting on the carpet!" dance. Of course, soon after this I realize that she chose where I was sitting as the end of her crap journey and that there is a whole trail of treats preceding her. After I get her out the door, I start planning my poop scooping strategies. I can't believe a part of my day is actual spent in planning how I'm going to pick up excrement. This incident requires more creativity than usual because we have run out of paper towels. (We haven't made our Costco pilgrimage this month and, again, too cheap to buy them anywhere else.) After I've spent a little time, appropriately, in the bathroom, devising my battle plan, I make it back to the scene of the crime with Nature's Miracle (nature's miracle indeed) in one hand and napkins and plastic bag in the other. Dave has already beaten me to it. It's interesting to see how our minds work. His weapons of choice are handy wipes and paper plates cut up into makeshift shovels. (Evidently, I was in the bathroom for a while.)

Vaughn has been blissfully unaware of the whole event, in his room (if you must know, watching TV), and trots upstairs after we've finished our cleanup job, the evidence of the whole distasteful experience having been promptly eliminated. Unfortunately, the air in the room has been permeated with the potent Odeau de Poop, what with the whole bottle having been spilled on the floor. Of course, leave it to Vaughn to state the obvious with his power of observation in his ever so delicate manner, "Something smells stinky up here."

It baffles me that Poe is now 8 months old and the ability to notify us to let her go outside to potty still eludes her. The closest she comes to it is doggy charades in which she sits on her haunches and goes through a series of paw signals and earnest eye contact, puppy sign language for "Pardon me, but I do believe I need to use the facilities." Unfortunately, you have to actually be looking at her to grasp this cryptic communication because she would never be so crass as to actually interrupt you with a bark or nip to get your attention. It's the equivalent of a mime trying to alert someone that a bomb is about to go off.

I have also concluded that I not a very good potty trainer. I started before Vaughn was 2, and it wasn't until he was well over 3 that he was potty trained in the conventional sense. (I was biting my nails, fearing that he wasn't going to be trained by preschool. As a matter of fact, I think I was still covertly putting him in Pull-ups for that first year, just as a matter of insurance, of course.) He's still in diapers at bedtime, and frankly, I am retiring from my potty trainer duties, taking the advice of the pediatrician that "It'll happen. Give it time," and if that means eventually switching over to Depends, so be it. After my ordeal with Poe, I am at peace with the fact that it's me, not them. I will never make it to the potty training big leagues, and honestly, I'm okay with that.

Bob the Brainwasher

Vaughn woke up at an obscenely early hour this morning. (I think it was 8 or something like that, which is obscene considering he didn't actually fall asleep until 10 p.m. or so the night before.) We do try to get him in bed at a reasonable hour most of the time (8 p.m.), but he manages to keep himself distracted and awake until 10 or thereabouts. His techniques range anywhere from repeatedly slamming his head or various other body parts against his bed's headboard and the surrounding walls to enlisting our participation in a sudden epiphany or invention or creation of the moment. His greatest inspirations seem to come after the hours of 9 p.m. Last night he slithered his way up the stairs to the foot of our bed at around 9:30 and covertly handed me a "card" he had just made. I guess all this undercover action was in an effort to keep from alerting Dave to his presence. I'm afraid Dave was already wise to him, though, because Vaughn had to slither his way past the side of the bed where Dave was perched, watching TV, to get to me, and then, ever so sneakily, slither his way back past Dave, back down the stairs to feign sleep in his equally sneaky manner.

Anyway, I put on OPB this morning and let him watch it in our bed so Mommy could get some more "rest." I think I mentioned that my New Year's resolution this year was to be the best mediocre mom, and in working towards that goal I do liberally use the TV as my nanny 24/7. In the background I start to hear the pithy theme song of Bob the Builder.

"What day is today?"

"Wednesday."

"So Bob is on Sundays and Wednesdays." Vaughn says this like he's figured out some complex math problem. Hey, he may not be able to read, but I'll have my own live-in human TV Guide. Unfortunately, it will only have the listings for PBS kids programming, but I can work with that.

Twenty-five minutes later, Bob is wrapping up his program with his usual meaningful life lesson--something about trees and recycling or some other environmental crap. I really liked Bob when he was an actual builder and cut trees down, sawed them up, and used them to expand the growing metropolis of Bobville, but then the Powers That Be decided the show needed a little refreshing. This involved, among other things, a new British character in the form of a quad bike (because a construction site isn't complete without one of those, and if a quad bike could talk, you know it would have a British accent) and a new, more gay, voice for Bob. Bob didn't have the most masculine voice to begin with, but evidently, it was too butch for the new theme of "Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle." Yes that is a very common refrain on new construction sites everywhere as they're bulldozing down acres of old growth, herds of little helpless forest creatures scampering frantically ahead of them, snatching a last desperate glance back at what used to be their home.

Bob now spends more of his time..well...reducing, reusing, and recycling, waiting for old trees to succumb to Mother Nature before building anything, and scrounging around in his neighbor's garbage for other building materials. Because of this new politically correct Bob, I haven't been as keen on Vaughn watching it. Frankly, it gives me the creeps, and this morning's episode did nothing to reassure me.

Bob: That's right, Lofty. Remember what I always say, "Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle." (They repeat this ad nauseam in every episode, just in case the little kiddies don't get it the first time.)
Beside me, I hear a quiet monotone child's voice: "Reduce, reuse, recycle. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Reduce, reuse, recycle..." I turn and Vaughn is staring, unblinking, at the TV monitor, rocking back and forth, repeating this mantra again and again as if his life depended on it. Okay, now that is just creepy.

Don't misunderstand. I don't have a problem with recycling as a concept. We recycle, but not obsessively and more out of practicality than because we actually "love our Mother" (Earth). We get more mileage out of our allowance of 1 garbage can a week if we recycle. If we didn't recycle, we'd have mountains of refuse heaped in our backyard because we're too cheap to pay for the extra garbage can. We finally had some professionals come in to finish our deck. One of the carpenters, evidently environmental inclined, admired the fact that Dave had used a pail handle as part of the deck's cement foundation--part of that whole reuse motto. What he didn't know is that Dave didn't use it to re-use it. He used it because it was within arm's reach at the time and it didn't cost him anything.

No, I don't have a problem with the general concept of reduce, reuse, recycle. I have a problem with burdening 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds with the idea that they need to police the waste disposing activities of their homes. I was raised with the 3 R's, only at the time I just thought I had a cheap dad. I was taught the 3 R's often and regularly. For example, I didn't learn to ride a bike without training wheels until I was 12. I wasn't developmentally delayed or anything. It's just that it wasn't until then that my feet could actually hit the ground while sitting on my bike. You see, I graduated from my tricycle straight to an adult bike, complete with fatherly fashioned training wheels, neither of which hit the ground unless I was dangerously tilted to one side or the other. My dad figured: Why buy her an age appropriate bike when we know she still has a good 10 or so years of growth in her? That's a waste. (Reduce) Why buy and get rid of 2 or more cheap bikes in the next 10 years when we could just buy 1 cheap bike now that she can take with her when she moves out of the house? And furthermore, (my dad's a Planner), why buy training wheels from a thrift shop that she's eventually not going to need when we have perfectly good metal laying around and a welder that is just itching to be used? I'm sure the wheels came from my trike (Reuse), and he probably melted my trike down for the metal (Recycle).

Ah, sweet, sweet memories. Aw, I love you, Dad. *muh*

Some of the Coolest Series of Photos Ever

I'd give credit where credit is due if I knew who the photographer was.

Toilette Etiquette

These are my 5-year-old son's rules of conduct for the disposal of human waste:

1. If you pee, there is no need to flush.
2. If you poop, theoretically, you should flush, if you remember (and in his case, he rarely does because the majority of the time he is peeing and, therefore, not getting into the habit of flushing).

First thing this morning we had an argument about flushing the toilet after he peed.

"You know, Vaughn, you should flush the toilet every time you go to the bathroom, even when you pee."

Vaughn crosses his arms and settles into a defiant stance, stocky little legs hip width apart, brow furrowed, bottom lip Angie Jolie'esqe.

"Vaughn, go flush the toilet."

"No."

"Go flush the toilet."

"No."

"GO FLUSH THE TOILET!"

"No."

Good Lord, I can't believe he's choosing this to rebel against.

"Do you need a time out?"

"No."

"Then go flush the toilet."

"Hrmph!" Off he goes to do the evidently distasteful deed of flushing his pee.

Is this some kind of Freudian thing, some marking of territory or something? As I recall my nephews were the same way. In their whole childhood years, I don't recall ever seeing a "fresh bowl" when they visited us, the concept of clear toilet water evidently being abhorrent to them.

To his credit, though, I have managed, for the most part, to train Vaughn to put the seat down, so at least then when I go to the bathroom I don't fall butt first into the disintegrating, unusually large turd floating in the toilet bowl that he forgot to flush, not to mention the leftover pee he, by principle, didn't flush. His future wife can thank me later.

Want to Drink Something Weird?

(click on link for recipe. Trust me. It is really good.)

Our friend The Analyst likes to constantly challenge his palate with unusual tastes and textures. So it was that Vaughn was introduced to the avocado shake. Dave, Vaughn, and The Analyst went out to eat and ordered this drink, which, surprisingly, Vaughn evidently asked to sample, and even more surprising, actually liked. As disgusting as this drink sounded, Dave said it didn't taste anything like avocado.

I am not fond of avocados, staying true to my dad's assertion that I hate anything green, a little factoid he insisted on sharing, to my utter mortification, every time we were guests at someone's house. Of course, he waited until we were sitting at the table with a dish load of peas in front of us before he delicately (and, in his mind, humorously) informed our hosts of this. Nothing like a good guffaw at the expense of your children.

Despite my aversion to the Californian mascot, I, like a good mother, smashed avocados up with bananas and stuffed this into my unsuspecting 6-month-old's mouth. According to my make-your-own-baby-food-for-absolutely-no-logical-reason-because-regardless-of-what-you-feed-them-at-1-when-your-child-turns-3-they-will-only-want-to-eat-hotdogs-and-gummybears book, avocadoes are an excellent source of all kinds of vitamins and healthy fats--"something that is essential to your child's growth now because once they get a taste of cupcakes at preschool, they will preternaturally detect and refuse to eat anything with a trace of nutrients forever after." Once my brother David saw me smashing up this concoction of avocado and banana and shared his disgust at what an unnatural combination this was.

"You're going to give him that?!"

"Hey, he doesn't know any different; he's a baby! He'll eat anything. He has nothing to compare it to." Oh to live those days again. I, of course, never did taste test this seemingly mutant mix because--I hate anything green, especially avocados...and peas...and limabeans...and asparagus...and uncooked tomatoes (even though they're not green), black-eyed peas (largely because it contains the word peas. I have a particular psychological aversion to peas), etc.

Anyway, much to my delight, the last time we were at the store, Vaughn suggested we buy some avocados. Since he's been anti-anything-healthy for the last 2 years or so, I had not been buying avocados. I know that's not an excuse, but...I can't come up with anything better. In my persistent goal to better myself and heal some of the psychological scars of my childhood, I thought it wouldn't hurt to try making an avocado shake and trying it. It could be one less green thing that I didn't hate. Well, one more vegetable/fruit that carries a caveat: Must be eaten in the form of a shake. I still hate guacamole.

I started searching the Internet for the perfect avocado shake recipe and found a Brazilian version and an Indonesian version. Indonesia gets points for having chocolate milk in it, so "Alpokat" it is.

Vaughn was very excited about the whole idea and couldn't wait for the final product. This I did taste test, and I admit, it was amazingly scrumptious. I proudly presented my creation to Vaughn, who looked at it suspciously, took a sniff, and declared, "Ewwwwwww."

What?

"What do you mean 'ewwww?' You haven't even taken a taste."

(in whinese) "It has chocolate."

"Yes, so...? That makes it that much better. You like chocolate and you like avocados. It's a win-win!"

"I don't like it."

"You haven't even tasted it! Take a taste. It's reeallyyyy goooood. If you don't drink it, I will. Taste it!"

Takes the minutest of sips. "Ewwwww. I don't like it." Then cheerily, "You can have it!"

Now I am morally outraged. "You said you liked avocado shakes!"

"It didn't have chocolate in it." Evidently, there are some things that my son thinks don't go good with chocolate. I, however, am not of the same opinion. I think I might even eat peas if they were chocolate coated. (Make note: Search Internet for chocolate coated peas.)

"So, did it have like apples and bananas in it?" (the Brazilian version)

"Uh-huh. I want that shake. Make that shake." Yeah, in your dreams, Buddy. In...your...dreams.

I'm making the Brazilian avocado shake tomorrow.

Scarily Annoying

Vaughn is currently on this kick of "scaring" people. This generally involves jumping out of some undisclosed spot and screaming "Boo!" every 5 minutes or so. He then proceeds to interrogate his latest victim--"Did I scare ya?"

Now this is a tricky question. If I say, "No," which is generally the case--the heavy breathing and precipitant giggling are usually a dead give away, that and the fact that he's usually in plain sight--then I know he will be that much more determined to increase his efforts, which means this same scenario repeats itself over and over again every 3 minutes.

However, if I say, "Yes," he then becomes suspicious and questions my sincerity. (Evidently, he is not fully confident in his frightening abilities.) "Are you lying?" Suffice it to say, I now have the veracity of a crack whore when it comes to this subject--"Noooo. You really scared me." This at least carries with it the possibility that the next attempt will not be for another 5 minutes or so. Of course, often I am not convincing enough in my performance, at which point he screams, "You're lying!!!" and promptly starts searching for the site of his next attack.

For the Love of Dickens

I so long for a good book to read I could scream. I cannot believe the dearth of readable modern material. To be perfectly honest, though, I am judging this based on a narrow criteria: I must be able to get it from the library--now. I guess that's probably not a good guide as to the availability of fine literature. If I can get it from the library immediately, I suppose that by itself should indicate something, but I'm too cheap to go out and buy a recomended book, and based on my present experience, perhaps rightly so.

My latest fatality is "Jinx." Sounded promising for a summertime read. I finally manage to squirrel away some Vaughn-free time and hunker down to what I believe is going to be some good reading (which is mystifying given in the last 2 weeks I have returned 10 books, applying my 50-page rule, not finishing one. What can I say? I am an optomist. Despite what Dave says, damnit, I do have hope for the future, just not confidence in or great love of humanity.)

The first page is something like a very short poem, one of those poems that doesn't rhyme but is a stream of conciousness, or unconciousness, depending on how you look at it. I figure this is the prologue. However, the prologue then leads into 10 more "prologue poems," each from a different character's perspective, characters that I'm having a hard time keeping track of because they're only referred to in their poems. Now, I know I have short-term memory problems, but this is reaching "50-First-Dates" proportions when on page 6 (the average page being largely empty except for a 10-line widely margined paragraph) I'm already turning back to previous pages to try and figure out who Grace and Connie are. I have gotten far enough in the book, though, to be introduced to the obligatory gay character, who is Grace, Connie, Jen, or Serena--I can't remember which.

Gays are guessed to make up anywhere from 1-10% of society's population, yet this number is inversed in the literary world, with gays making up 99.9% of literary fictional society. Is there some kind of fictional quota that I'm unaware of? Is this something taught in Writing 101? You can't even win a "Children's Book Award" without having at least one major character who is gay. It's a wonder Harry Potter books are so successful. As far as I'm aware, no major character is gay. Maybe that's in the last book--Hermione ends up coming out of the closet. She is a witch, after all. I think you have to be a card-carrying Wiccan to be considered a lesbian, so she's just one step away. Wait...I bet it's Neville!!!

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is another book I'm too cheap to buy, even though after reading book 6 I was fantasizing flying to England and personally camping out on JK Rowling's lawn so I could rummage through her garbage, desparately seeking book 7's rough draft castoffs for my next fix.

Back to "Jinx," after reading the first 10 pages or so and feeling thoroughly disoriented, I decided to read the jacket synopsis to help ground me. I don't generally read book jackets because I like to be suprised or at least have a vague ignorance of the ending until I finish reading the book. Having read "Jinx's" book cover, I discover that "Jinx" is a "verse" novel for teens. Now, I get how a verse novel could be extremely popular with the "Y" generation, what with them having been weaned on MTV and videogames, possessing the attention span of a gnat, and the fact that 3/4 of them are virtually illiterate. Assuming they will actually sit down to read a book, once having done so, you have exactly 2.5 seconds to reach them before some sparkling object catches their attention.

But really, come on, "verse" novel??? Admittedly, I'm not an English grad, but isn't "verse" novel just a sophisticated way of saying the writer was just too darn lazy to actually outline a plot and develop characters, much less write a full page of dialogue? (Page 42 has exactly 11 words on it.) I want to sign with this publisher. Maybe I could write a "symbol" or emoticon novel. Each page would have one symbol. Something like this:

Page 1: :-)
Page 2: ;-D
Page 3: :'-(
Page 4: >:-[
Page 5: ?:o)
Page 6: <:-O

Notice the subtleties in character, the intense emotion. Why, I'm half done!

Oh, but you ask, aren't you afraid that you've just offended any potential Gen Y reader with your insensitive observations of their innate generational idiosyncrasies? Nah, they wandered off to text someone in the first paragraph.

Delimma Resolved

My in-laws have convinced me to sanitize my blog and delete any entries that might be offensive to certain relatives that might chance to stumble across it, or more likely someone that knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who might chance to alert a certain relative to the blog and the offensive material. I guess that answers the question as to how personal my public blog is going to be. Now what do I write about?

Conversations with a 5-year-old Fatalist

"Mommy, I have a scar."

"A scar from when you got in your accident and lost a tooth?"

"No. (whispering conspiratorially) I have a mental scar."

"Oh, from your accident?"

"No. From being put in time-out at school."

"From Ms. Eileen?"

"No. This is from kindergarten."

"But you haven't been in kindergarten."

"But I'm going to be."

My son the optimist.

Man's Best Friend. Woman's Worst Enemy.

I lazily decided to leave the dog out of her crate last night. I had personally witnessed a huge poop session out in the yard an hour or so before going to bed; so, I thought, how much poop can one puppy make? She's been doing good about not messing in her room. I'm safe. Big mistake. Huge mistake. MONUMENTAL mistake, and let me emphasize the MENTAL part because that's what I must have been when I made that decision. In hindsight, of course, I was being truly stupid because I had forgotten about her escapade earlier in the day.

I had let her out to, yes, go poop, and left her loose. (Hey, I'm PMSing. It must be the stupid hormone raging through my system right now, whichever one that might be.) I was keeping a relatively close eye on her. One second in the yard, next second not. I started yelling for her. (Here's where those obedience lessons pay off.) Repeatedly. Finally, she comes with one of those maniacal I-just-found-something-awesome! dog looks on her face, with a string of saliva encircling her snout. I bring her in the house to praise her profusely for coming on the 20th call, and I get this whiff that only one word can perfectly describe. Putrid. I declare she needs to be bathed immediately, which, of course, even though I'm working (you know the you're-working-but-you're-not-really-working-because-you-work-from-home! clause) this task falls to me. Never mind she has just left a cloud of putridness in her wake in the kitchen and it is following her "Pigpen"-like everywhere she goes in the house. No, I'm the one that ultimately wanted the dog, so all these lovely dog tasks fall to me. Dave is the first, of course, to pronounce her a "GREAT DOG," though, when I start fantasizing about a dog-free home. He irritatingly does the same about our child. Whatever.

Now, to be fair, Dave was willing to bathe her. However, first he was going to lock her up in her room with all her bedding and toys for an indeterminate amount of time to "season," evidently, in true procrastinator fashion. (Okay, he was tired from getting home from work at midnight, but still...)

So with the knowledge that our sweet, sweet puppy ate an indeterminate amount of an "unaccustomed diet," I'm thinking after a 10-minute long poop session in the yard that she's pooped out for the night and safe to uncrate??? Yeah. Damn hormones.

Fast forward to this morning, getting ready to microwave my coffee at 7. The microwave is in "her" room. This itself speaks volumes about us as people--that we live in a house with 3 bedrooms, one of which is the dog's.

Now, when I walk into the room, even before I turn on the lights, it's the smell that hits me first; however, I still put my coffee in the microwave and start it. Hey, whatever it is, I'm sure I'm going to need the coffee. I flip on the lights, and there IT is in all its glory, with the perpetrator guiltily looking out from her crate. Oh, now you're in your crate.

Oh the horror! The humanity! The shit on my slippers. Excrement everywhere. It looked like a monkeys' cage. It's like during the night she sat there thinking (and I hear this with an English accent for some reason), "Hmmm. What special surprise can I cook up for Mummy tonight? What lovely display could I put on for her to wake up to? I'm thinking a lovely poop pastoral. A symphony of shit, only for the eyes and nose! A fecal Fantasia! Let's see, I'll use my tail for a brush and start poop painting!"

Now, I know from all the puppy books I've read that dogs never really do these things on purpose. That I'm sure she felt just as bad about it as I did. Yeah. Right. I think I saw a smirk on her little fluffy face as my body was convulsing, gagging back vomit. Let's see how Animal World/National Geographic/Jane Goodall you're feeling when YOU wake up to that. I'm sure if the gorillas had left a little surprise poop party in Jane's tent, she wouldn't have been feeling too generous with the bananas.

I should have taken Vaughn up on trading the dog in for a hermit crab. *sigh* Hey, maybe he's still interested!

Wine Appreciation 101 for 5 year olds

Vaughn is now in his second session of Tae Kwon Do, begrudgingly, with the carrot of Legos being dangled in front of him once again to entice him to behave himself and grin and bear it. These classes are costing me on average about $60 for 6 classes, figuring in the cost of Legos. Oh, but one day he'll say, "Mom, Dad, now that I'm Tae Kwon Do World Champion, I am so grateful to you for insisting that I stick with it, even though I hated every minute of it. I love you." Yeah, well, something like that. We finally forced him to wear the uniform. He looks wicked cute in it, but as he puts it "It embarrasses me." It isn't quite up to his fussy fashion standards. "It looks stupid." Yes, unlike the Spiderman goggle/mask and flipper hands you wear around the playground when you're not even swimming. Tres chic.

Anyway, this time he's the experienced one in the class for once, with the rest being filled with newbies. Evidently, there are 5 others besides him, 4 of those lemonade aficionados and 1 alky. Allow me to elucidate: The teacher demonstrates the knife cut (I believe it is officially called???), and while the hand is in the extended position, one should be able to place a cup on the palm and then, of course, drink from it. Ummm. Teacher has lemonade in his cup. Vaughn, what do you have? "Ooo, I have lemonade, too," and so follow the rest of the class, until we come to our resident preschool alcoholic in pajamas coming late to class (evidently hungover) yelling enthusiastically, "I have wine!"

I guess he'll hit the hard stuff in kindergarten.

My Crab "Dog"

"Mommy, I've decided what pet we're going to trade for a hermit crab."

"Oh?" This is news to me. Since when did he want a hermit crab?

"Yeah. Rainbow."

Okay. I'll play. Now, in my mommy wisdom I think if he wants to trade a pet, we're going to trade one that actually doesn't run the other direction when it sees him. That'll make him face reality.

"No, if we're going to get rid of a pet, it's going to be the dog."

"Pogisa? Okay."

Darn. Foiled again. Let's keep trying.

"I'll put an add on Craig's list right now. I'm sure there's another little boy who'd just love to have Pogisa."

"Okay! I can't wait to get a hermit crab!"

And the rest of the morning continues with him saying goodbye to the dog. Okay. You want to play that way. I'm going to teach this little ingrate a lesson--Mommystyle. I clandestinely call my cell phone with our home phone.

"Hello? Yes. Yes. She's about 7-8 months old. A really good dog. Uh-huh. Part Lab, part Whippet, part Shitzu. Black. Yes. She's been fixed and has all her shots. Today? Sure. I have to drop my son off at a class, but when I get back, you can pick her up around 1:45. Oh your little boy is going to love her. Really? Oh, his friends are going to be envious! Yep. We have a dog crate, bowls, leashes, the works! Thanks a lot. See you soon. Bye." Give that girl a Grammy!

"Mommy, who was that?"

"Oh, that was someone who's going to come get the dog."

"Today?"

Snap. Oh yeah.

"Yes. Today. When you come home, (dramatic pause) she'll be gone." Okay, ready the violins.

"They have a little boy?"

"Yes, and he's very excited to have a dog. He can't wait to get her."

"Is he coming?"

"Oh yes." Here it comes. Wait for it. Wait for it...

Dripping with disappointment "Ooooooo, why don't I get to see him? Why can't I be here to see the little boy." *in full whine mode*

What?!

"Because that's what works for them. THE DOG WILL BE GONE WHEN YOU GET HOME."

Whimpering, "Well, make sure you show him my room. Okay? And tell him my name."

"Yeah. Whatever." Okay. Did not see that coming. Obviously, I'm going to have to take this further. In the meantime...

"I'm going to miss you, girl, but we're getting a hermit crab! I can't wait to get a hermit crab. Mommy, can I get one or more? I'll keep it in a plastic bag at night in my bed, so it can sleep with me."

A la trouts. Now, I'm starting to get annoyed.

"Vaughn, you can't keep a hermit crab in a plastic bag in your bed."

"Why not?"


"Because it will suffocate and die. You can't sleep with hermit crabs. You can't pet hermit crabs, either."

"You can too! You can hold them and pet them."


"That's not petting. That's...touching. It's different." Blood pressure rising. "They're not a pet!"


"Well, I'd better play with you, girl, because after my class I won't be able to. Awww, girl. We're going to get a hermit crab! I can't wait. Mommy, when can be go to get the crab? After class?"

And so it continues. Meanwhile my blood is reaching the boiling point thinking how cavalierly my son is ready to trade in an animal we've had for all of 5 months, spent hundreds of dollars on, tons of time, and cleaned up millions of messes, all for a damn crustacean. I wrack my brain on ways I could arrange for the dog to temporarily disappear so the reality hits him when he comes back from his class, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay more money on doggy daycare so Vaughn can learn a valuable lesson, and it's for this simple reason: I know in my heart that the only reaction I'd get after going through all my machinations is the minute Vaughn sees the dog gone the first words out of his mouth are going to be:

"Can we go get the hermit crab now?"

One point Vaughn. Zero for Mommy. I don't understand it. It always worked for the Bradys.

Fine Finned Friends

For Father's Day, Dave planned with his brother to take Vaughn fishing for the first time.

Now, it was some frustrated fisherman's bright inspiration to create these things called trout farms where little impatient kiddies could get their first taste of "real" fishing. The fish are practically jumping out of the water and landing in the boat, they are so easy to catch.

I remember the days when I'd go with my brothers, riding for hours in the backseat of a Bug on long windy roads, only to spend more hours "enjoying nature," waiting for the minutest of tugs on the line and then (only after it was pitch black. My brother is truly an optimist) to go home empty handed, with the exception of the multitude of mosquito bites as mementos of my Grand Fishing Adventure. *sigh* Those were the days.

Anyway, Vaughn was all excited about bringing the little trophies home to live because, you see, he was going to bring them back alive! None of this distasteful violent business of bashing in little fishie heads. No. He generously was volunteering to bring home these little orphan trouts to live in our 10-gallon fish tank, company for the goldfish. Thankfully, it is against state law to leave the fish farm with live catch (thank you State of Oregon!), but the fish farm does the distasteful business of executing the little buggers for you. They were also willing to clean, gut and behead them (Yes! Yes! So Mommies everywhere don't have to do this. Bless you.), but Dave decided it was a good compromise to leave the tail and head on for a more realistic effect. Since Vaughn couldn't bring them home alive, at least they'd look alive, except for the unblinking eyes that constantly stare at you accusingly--"Murderer!"

So it was that a very proud Vaughn came home after 15 minutes (okay that's an exaggeration, but not much) of fishing with 5 little trout in a gallon size Ziplock bag. Oh, they looked tasty. Little did I know that the trout saga had only begun. While I was planning recipes for these fresh juicy farmed fish, Vaughn was going to get his entertainment's worth out of these little guys. Fishing was only the beginning. We managed to initially wrest them out of his grubby little hands and deposit them in the freezer for frying the next day. However, not 20 minutes later, Vaughn is swinging them around, fish faces pressed tightly against the plastic, eyes bulging, telling me goodbye as he heads out to eat with Daddy and other assorted Hogues.

"Daddy said I can take them with me to the restaurant to show everybody!"

Say what?

"He did, did he?" Okay, this is the digital age. We could take a picture. This parenting thing would be so much easier if there were just one of us, and I'm volunteering to concede my role.

My mind is conjuring up images of half-frozen fish, basting in the warm sun in the van for untold hours while little microscopic anaerobes are multiplying at the rate of a hundred horny rabbits. So much for the fish feast.

"Okay. Whatever."

The next day...

"Where are my fish? I want to say good morning to them."

"They're in the freezer, but... Oh, forget it." Dave had still been holding out hope that the fish were still edible, so they had returned to their rightful place in the freezer. When it comes to food, that man is willing to literally risk his life.

Vaughn takes out what is now a great big fish ice cube. Oh, that's a problem.

"I want to hold one." Again?

"Well, they would have to be thawed out first."

"How do you do that?"

"You leave them out of the freezer and wait." I say this with clenched fists, eyes squeezed tight, teeth grinding, hoping against hope that this isn't that important and he'll decide to go torture the dog instead.

"Okay!" he chirps, and away he goes, spending the rest of the morning gallivanting around the house with the poor beleaguered fishcicle, happily showing it to the goldfish, the cats, the dog, waving his new found finned friends tauntingly in front of the animals' hungry eyes. Later adventures planned for the scaly chums were a "swim" in his kiddie pool (to speed the thawing process), followed by a good mud mask and consequent washing off in the bathroom sink. Vaughn was busying himself with all this fish recreation while I was outside, distracted with planting. I didn't fully realize what he was up to until I saw him happily trotting in and out of the house, conspicuously with fish in hand.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm washing the fish off. They're dirty. See? Look! They came apart."

It is at this point I realize he has successfully thawed the fish, and I seriously contemplate whether or not I should divulge this information to Dave before refreezing them. After all, he started this ride.

"You took those fish inside?"

"Yeah." Now, at this point the fish are starting to smell, well, fishy--that overpowering odor you get when passing the "iced" seafood section of your local discount grocery store.

I run in to see a lone trout laying, soaking on the bathroom sink counter. You can virtually see those little squiggly lines in cartoons wafting up from its bloated little body.

"Okay. No more fish in the house! They stay out here. FOREVER!"

Based on the look on Vaughn's face that followed, you would think I had just told him I don't love him, I've never loved him, and I'm dropping him off at the nearest foster home.

"But...*gulp*...how...*hiccup*...will...*tears*..they...*more tears*...get...*snort*...clean?" Now we're in full-on-heart-wrenching bawling mode. "They need to be clean!"

Now, I'm not sure when my son developed this obsessive-compulsive need for cleanliness, but this is the first time it's manifested itself, believe me.

In the end, the fish were cleaned, with the hose--outside. They then found their final resting place in the freezer, where they are to this day until enough time has passed that I can safely dispose of them without the topic rearing its stinky little fish head.