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?