Saturday morning, I got up, filled with hope that it would be a good day. Not. Even. Close.
Tim is addicted to Starbucks coffee (okay, I am too, but I settle for the home brew, his highness has to have the real McCoy), so since he is recovering from knee surgery, I decided to raise his spirits by running out and getting a couple of ventis.
As I headed down the steps into the garage, I half-turned to talk to the dog (I know, I know, but these days, she is the only one who will listen to me whine) and slipped down the last two steps, landing right on my butt on the 2x4 that makes up the one side of the stairs. Not. Good.
As I sat astride the plank, educating Chloe to every swear word I know and wishing that I spoke another language so I could teach her even more swear words, all I could think was: Unless Chloe can carry me into the house or dial 911, I am going to die here. In the garage. Sitting on the steps. In my PJ top, sweats and Tim's jacket (hey, it's a look), while Tim mummifies up in the bed, just steps away from the phone he can't reach.
Days from now, someone will say,"Whatever happened to the Sinclairs?" and then a neighbor will call about a bad smell and an unusual amount of flies swarming around the house.
I began to wonder if I could teach Chloe how to bark, "My mom has fallen and she can't get up" in Morse Code, but then I realized I didn't have any treats, so...that wasn't going to happen. Besides, I don't actually know Morse code, so it probably wouldn't have worked anyway.
As I moved on to more positive scenarios in my head of Tim and I side by side in bed (like Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber), splitting a bag of ice and alternating the use of the heating pad, competing over who can do more leg lifts in PT, battling for control of the remote, fighting over whose turn it was to use the walker, and duking it out over the last Percoset, I realized that I was not only going to survive, but that I could actually walk again.
I grudgingly decided to forge ahead with my mission, and drove to Starbucks where I ordered three ventis. (Hey, I not only needed two, I deserved them at this point). The woman poured one , plunked it down on the counter and walked away while the other woman rang it up.
"Venti?" she said.
Duh. A. You were standing six inches away when I ordered it, B. If you work here and don't know which cup is a venti, then you are probably too stupid to even be breathing, and C. (this I said aloud) "Yes. Three."
I even held up three fingers which she ignored while she blithely rang up the one.
"Twelve thousand dollars," she announced (This was Starbucks, after all)
"I need three," I reiterated, but made the mistake of handing her the money for all of them.
"Oh. Uh." She looked from the money to the register as though I had handed her a Rubik's cube and asked her to solve it while simultaneously explaining Einstein's theory of relativity in German.
"Why don't you just charge me for the one, then ring up two more," I suggested, almost, but not quite able to stop rolling my eyes.
"Um..."
Apparently, my suggestion was not computing in her razor-sharp mind, but like a dog with a bone, she was not going to give up. (If I wave a white flag, will you do the same? Pretty please with cream and sugar on top? How about if I just cry?)
Fifteen excruciatingly painful minutes later, I stumbled out of the Starbucks with my three ventis, and maybe the correct change, but I couldn't see past the tears in my eyes to count it as I wept for the future.
Thinking that taking the dog for a nice long walk would clear my mind and help me shake off the morning's events, I grabbed her leash and we headed out. (Okay, I actually thought that crawling back into bed and pulling the covers over my head would help, but I was guilted into the walk by a pair of big, brown eyes and a cute little button nose).
We got exactly halfway around the block when nature called and Chloe squatted in some leaves. I leaned down with my little baggie at the ready, but couldn't find anything...because it was stuck to her furry little backside. Eewww.
And to make the experience even better and more memorable, she plopped her little butt down on the pavement before I could stop her and I had a poopy puppy.
Somehow, yelling "NO!" For all that is holy STOP!!" after the fact seemed a bit useless, so I settled for pounding my head against the pavement and ripping out significant chunks of hair.
After carrying her the rest of the way home in order to limit the damage (to her, but apparently not my sweatshirt), I plunked her in the tub to try and scrub off eight pounds of dog poo (Seriously, how can something that small poop out that much?). I had barely begun when the phone rang.
"Can you get that?" Tim yelled in to me.
Some days, it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.
Showing posts with label dog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dog. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Car Trouble
If Tim could, he would totally get a new car every year, or maybe even every six months. His idea of fun is spending hour upon hour trolling car dealerships, reverently patting shiny new bumpers and stroking soft, supple leather seats.
Myself, I would rather run naked through a brier patch filled with poison ivy while being chased by a rabid dog than shop for a new car.
And that is why we make a perfect couple. After almost eight years, it was time for me to get a new car, and, rather than endure the whining, pouting and snarky comments that bringing me car shopping elicits, Tim pored over car magazines and the internet, and narrowed my choices down to two, I picked one, and we both drove off the lot happy as little clams.
The bubble of happiness lasted exactly two weeks before it burst.
I was actually enjoying my new car, specifically the "keyless entry" feature before it all went south. No more digging for keys in my purse like I was trying to tunnel to the center of the earth. No more patting myself down looking for the keys as though I was in a Macarana dance off. Now, I simply had to have my keys and with one touch of the door handle, beep--unlock. Beep, beep--lock. It was....magic.
So last Monday, I stuffed my keys into my pocket, grabbed the dry cleaning with one arm, the dog with the other, my purse with my elbow, and my reusable shopping bags with my teeth and headed out to run errands.
Bank? Beep. Beep, beep. Dry cleaners? Beep. Beep,beep. Christmas wreath? Beep. Beep, beep. Dog park? ----Hmm. No beep. Perplexed, I shifted the dog to the other arm and tried again. ----Uh oh. Not good.
I checked all the doors, but they were securely closed. I double-checked the trunk where I had put my purse. Firmly shut. I brushed my fingers across the handle yet again. No beep. I tried another handle. No beep. Another hand. No beep. My knuckles. No beep. An elbow, nose, chin, knee and big toe. Nothing. Chloe's paw, her tail, her nose, the tips of her ears. No beep.
Aggravated, I got back into the car, pushed the button and it started up just fine. Huh. That was strange.
I got back out and tried my touching routine all over again, except this time, I included the five basic ballet positions, a downward dog, part of a pussycat doll routine and a few moves I once saw at the Cirque du Soliel. Still no beep beep. Not even a beeee.
By now, I was starting to draw a small crowd and Chloe was looking at me the way I looked at my mom when I was 12 and she danced the hustle at a relative's wedding; equal parts horror, fascination and alarm.
I gave one last valiant effort by removing the actual key from the electronic "key", but even that wouldn't lock the car. Okay, so now even and old-fashioned, unsophisticated key wouldn't work? How does that happen?
Since the dealership was less than a mile away, I decided to head over there before one of the people watching decided to call either the men in white coats or the police to take me away (Honest, officer, I swear it's my car.).
As I pulled into the lot, the salesman just happened to be there with another customer.
"Hey! How's it going?" Big, broad smile.
"Not so good. My key stopped working."
"Let me see," he performed the same voodoo rituals I had done, to no avail. "Oh dear." Not such a big smile now. Meanwhile, his customer suddenly remembered elective brain surgery he had been putting off and fled, er, I mean left. "Take it around to the service bay."
When I arrived, the mechanic was waiting for me.
"Let's see what we can do," he declared jovially.
Yeah. You're smiling now. We all start out that way. But you won't be smiling for long.
He took the key from me and...beep. Beep, beep.
No way. Uh uh. That did not just happen.
But then he got cocky and tried to show off by making it happen again. This time though, silence...
Frowning, he tried again, and again. No beep.
"Give me a few minutes," he said, walking away and shaking his head.
I decided to take the dog for a little walk while he was gone and returned to find him writing me a voucher for a cab home.
"It's the strangest thing," he scratched his head, "the computer is saying the car doesn't even recognize the key. Do you have the spare key with you?"
Uh. No. I don't usually need two keys to run errands. "Sorry," I shook my head.
"We'll send you home in a cab and call you first thing in the morning. Do you need anything out of your car? Because it's locked and we can't get in, and if I use the actual key, the alarm will go off and we can't turn it off."
A. Of course I need the stuff in my car, but apparently I can't get it, so why bother to even ask, other than to torture me and
B. What do you mean the alarm will go off?!!? You mean that would have happened to me at the park? Perhaps that is a little detail you should tell people when they buy the car? "Oh, don't ever use your key because that will cause the alarm so sound, deafening you and everyone else within a twelve block radius, but the upside is, there is no way to stop it."
As we walked by the car on the way out, it suddenly unlocked. Beep.
We looked at each other, startled, then tried a handle again. Beep, beep.
"Are you sure you don't have the other key?" the guy asked me.
Suddenly, it came to me, a hazy memory of dropping a key in my purse the previous week.
Oops. My bad. Chagrined, I reached into my purse and pulled out the key. Apparently, they key only locks the car from outside, not from in the trunk, and the key I thought was for my car was actually for Tim's.
"Maybe you could put a colored sticker on the keys to tell them apart," the car guy suggested, somehow managing not to laugh outright in my face.
Meanwhile, I was busy trying to figure out how I could blame the whole thing on Tim and wondering where I was going to get my car serviced from now on.
Myself, I would rather run naked through a brier patch filled with poison ivy while being chased by a rabid dog than shop for a new car.
And that is why we make a perfect couple. After almost eight years, it was time for me to get a new car, and, rather than endure the whining, pouting and snarky comments that bringing me car shopping elicits, Tim pored over car magazines and the internet, and narrowed my choices down to two, I picked one, and we both drove off the lot happy as little clams.
The bubble of happiness lasted exactly two weeks before it burst.
I was actually enjoying my new car, specifically the "keyless entry" feature before it all went south. No more digging for keys in my purse like I was trying to tunnel to the center of the earth. No more patting myself down looking for the keys as though I was in a Macarana dance off. Now, I simply had to have my keys and with one touch of the door handle, beep--unlock. Beep, beep--lock. It was....magic.
So last Monday, I stuffed my keys into my pocket, grabbed the dry cleaning with one arm, the dog with the other, my purse with my elbow, and my reusable shopping bags with my teeth and headed out to run errands.
Bank? Beep. Beep, beep. Dry cleaners? Beep. Beep,beep. Christmas wreath? Beep. Beep, beep. Dog park? ----Hmm. No beep. Perplexed, I shifted the dog to the other arm and tried again. ----Uh oh. Not good.
I checked all the doors, but they were securely closed. I double-checked the trunk where I had put my purse. Firmly shut. I brushed my fingers across the handle yet again. No beep. I tried another handle. No beep. Another hand. No beep. My knuckles. No beep. An elbow, nose, chin, knee and big toe. Nothing. Chloe's paw, her tail, her nose, the tips of her ears. No beep.
Aggravated, I got back into the car, pushed the button and it started up just fine. Huh. That was strange.
I got back out and tried my touching routine all over again, except this time, I included the five basic ballet positions, a downward dog, part of a pussycat doll routine and a few moves I once saw at the Cirque du Soliel. Still no beep beep. Not even a beeee.
By now, I was starting to draw a small crowd and Chloe was looking at me the way I looked at my mom when I was 12 and she danced the hustle at a relative's wedding; equal parts horror, fascination and alarm.
I gave one last valiant effort by removing the actual key from the electronic "key", but even that wouldn't lock the car. Okay, so now even and old-fashioned, unsophisticated key wouldn't work? How does that happen?
Since the dealership was less than a mile away, I decided to head over there before one of the people watching decided to call either the men in white coats or the police to take me away (Honest, officer, I swear it's my car.).
As I pulled into the lot, the salesman just happened to be there with another customer.
"Hey! How's it going?" Big, broad smile.
"Not so good. My key stopped working."
"Let me see," he performed the same voodoo rituals I had done, to no avail. "Oh dear." Not such a big smile now. Meanwhile, his customer suddenly remembered elective brain surgery he had been putting off and fled, er, I mean left. "Take it around to the service bay."
When I arrived, the mechanic was waiting for me.
"Let's see what we can do," he declared jovially.
Yeah. You're smiling now. We all start out that way. But you won't be smiling for long.
He took the key from me and...beep. Beep, beep.
No way. Uh uh. That did not just happen.
But then he got cocky and tried to show off by making it happen again. This time though, silence...
Frowning, he tried again, and again. No beep.
"Give me a few minutes," he said, walking away and shaking his head.
I decided to take the dog for a little walk while he was gone and returned to find him writing me a voucher for a cab home.
"It's the strangest thing," he scratched his head, "the computer is saying the car doesn't even recognize the key. Do you have the spare key with you?"
Uh. No. I don't usually need two keys to run errands. "Sorry," I shook my head.
"We'll send you home in a cab and call you first thing in the morning. Do you need anything out of your car? Because it's locked and we can't get in, and if I use the actual key, the alarm will go off and we can't turn it off."
A. Of course I need the stuff in my car, but apparently I can't get it, so why bother to even ask, other than to torture me and
B. What do you mean the alarm will go off?!!? You mean that would have happened to me at the park? Perhaps that is a little detail you should tell people when they buy the car? "Oh, don't ever use your key because that will cause the alarm so sound, deafening you and everyone else within a twelve block radius, but the upside is, there is no way to stop it."
As we walked by the car on the way out, it suddenly unlocked. Beep.
We looked at each other, startled, then tried a handle again. Beep, beep.
"Are you sure you don't have the other key?" the guy asked me.
Suddenly, it came to me, a hazy memory of dropping a key in my purse the previous week.
Oops. My bad. Chagrined, I reached into my purse and pulled out the key. Apparently, they key only locks the car from outside, not from in the trunk, and the key I thought was for my car was actually for Tim's.
"Maybe you could put a colored sticker on the keys to tell them apart," the car guy suggested, somehow managing not to laugh outright in my face.
Meanwhile, I was busy trying to figure out how I could blame the whole thing on Tim and wondering where I was going to get my car serviced from now on.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Who's Training Who?
I have decided that I am not cut out to be a dog trainer. And the dog knows it.
The problem is, I grew up with cats. You call a cat and they walk away. You tell them to sit, and they walk away. You offer food, and they walk away. To be fair, there are some exceptions to those rules, such as: 1. the cat doesn't feel like walking away. In that case,they will curl up with their back to you and yawn. 2. They have a use for you. They may need an itch scratched or a warm, comfy place to sit, and 3. you offer something really good to eat like shrimp, fresh Maine lobster or ahi tuna, lightly seared. They actually may deign to sample it, if the presentation is up to their standards.
I loved my cats, but I accepted early on that I merely existed to serve their every whim and never tried to train them. Period.
But a dog? They are supposed to be trained. They want to be trained. They beg to be trained. And it's a piece of cake, right? Yeah.
Based on these totally erroneous assumptions fostered by doggie propaganda films like Benji, Lassie, and Rin Tin Tin, I decided to give it a shot.
The first thing I did was buy every book I saw. I got Dog Training for Idiots, Dog Training for Dummies, Dog Training for People Who Are Too Stupid to be Idiots or Dummies. I watched all those training shows on the dog TV channel: AKC Training, How to Train Your Puppy, How to Train Your Dragon, The Dog Whisperer, The Horse Whisperer, and The Ghost Whisperer. Anything that I thought might help. And what a colossal waste of time and money that was.
You see, the problem was, all those things are for training perfect dogs who live in fantasy land.
Make the dog walk on your left, at your heel. Don't let them pull ahead, they tell you. Uh huh. That is supposing your dog will walk AT ALL!
Unlike every dog these people worked with, our dog would go approximately five feet, then throw herself down on the street as though she had just trekked across the Sahara, pulling a covered wagon loaded with bricks.
Firmly tugging on the leash and using a firm, commanding voice elicited a look of utter contempt from the dog and sympathy from passerby who were surreptitiously googling "animal abuse hotline" on their smart phones.
Training her to use her crate as a "safe place" went equally well. Throw in some treats, they all said. Get her comfortable with the door open, then close it and she'll be in "home sweet home" and happy as a clam. Snort (I don't know how to write this sound, but it is the only one I can think of to adequately describe my reaction to this faulty bit of reasoning).
I threw in her favorite treats. Chloe, who will eat leaves, the carpet pad and rabbit poo as though they were the latest offerings of a five-star master chef, looked at me like: I hope you don't think I'm going in after that because I know it is a trap. Not only am I cuter than you, I am also waay smarter.
Alternatively, she would approach the crate as though it held a rabid rattler, brace her back feet against the open door and stretch her neck as though she was that slinky dog to grab the treat and then run like crazy with her prize as far as she could go.
As far as using treats to train her to follow simple commands? Yeah. That went great...as long as we were in the privacy of our own home where no one could observe her caving in and actually doing something I said. Oh, and as long as I had a fist full of treats.
First we worked on sit. Sit. Treat. Sit. Treat. By day two, she would see the treat bag and automatically sit before I could say anything. I guess I was too slow with the treats, so she figured she'd just cut to the chase.
By week five, she knew sit, down, stay, heel, off, out and leave it. If she even suspected I might possibly have a treat, she would run through the list like an olympic athlete sprinting for the finish line. She would flip, flop, hop, skip, jump and then throw herself down before I could even clear my throat. She seemed to think that since she had done it all, I should just dump the whole pile of treats all at once and stop wasting both our time.
Take her outside and give her the same commands? Not only did I have to show her the treat, I had to offer it up for approval before she would consider entertaining my request. Sit? For a carrot? Whaddya have rocks in your head mom? I will sit, but I want a hot dog or at least some chicken. I also don't feel like staying, unless you want me to walk, in which case, I will be happy to jump up and down in a complete frenzy before throwing myself in the middle of the road and then rolling over on my back and going limp when you try to pick me up.
And so we got a trainer.
Sit, said the trainer, and she sat.
Heel, said the trainer, and she heeled.
Walk, said the trainer, and she walked.
Then we went home.
Sit, I said. She rolled her eyes.
Heel, I said. She sat.
Walk, I said.
Look, she said, you are not the trainer, so get it out of your head that I'm going to listen to you. Unless you have something really, really tasty for me. Now, where did you put those hot dogs?
The problem is, I grew up with cats. You call a cat and they walk away. You tell them to sit, and they walk away. You offer food, and they walk away. To be fair, there are some exceptions to those rules, such as: 1. the cat doesn't feel like walking away. In that case,they will curl up with their back to you and yawn. 2. They have a use for you. They may need an itch scratched or a warm, comfy place to sit, and 3. you offer something really good to eat like shrimp, fresh Maine lobster or ahi tuna, lightly seared. They actually may deign to sample it, if the presentation is up to their standards.
I loved my cats, but I accepted early on that I merely existed to serve their every whim and never tried to train them. Period.
But a dog? They are supposed to be trained. They want to be trained. They beg to be trained. And it's a piece of cake, right? Yeah.
Based on these totally erroneous assumptions fostered by doggie propaganda films like Benji, Lassie, and Rin Tin Tin, I decided to give it a shot.
The first thing I did was buy every book I saw. I got Dog Training for Idiots, Dog Training for Dummies, Dog Training for People Who Are Too Stupid to be Idiots or Dummies. I watched all those training shows on the dog TV channel: AKC Training, How to Train Your Puppy, How to Train Your Dragon, The Dog Whisperer, The Horse Whisperer, and The Ghost Whisperer. Anything that I thought might help. And what a colossal waste of time and money that was.
You see, the problem was, all those things are for training perfect dogs who live in fantasy land.
Make the dog walk on your left, at your heel. Don't let them pull ahead, they tell you. Uh huh. That is supposing your dog will walk AT ALL!
Unlike every dog these people worked with, our dog would go approximately five feet, then throw herself down on the street as though she had just trekked across the Sahara, pulling a covered wagon loaded with bricks.
Firmly tugging on the leash and using a firm, commanding voice elicited a look of utter contempt from the dog and sympathy from passerby who were surreptitiously googling "animal abuse hotline" on their smart phones.
Training her to use her crate as a "safe place" went equally well. Throw in some treats, they all said. Get her comfortable with the door open, then close it and she'll be in "home sweet home" and happy as a clam. Snort (I don't know how to write this sound, but it is the only one I can think of to adequately describe my reaction to this faulty bit of reasoning).
I threw in her favorite treats. Chloe, who will eat leaves, the carpet pad and rabbit poo as though they were the latest offerings of a five-star master chef, looked at me like: I hope you don't think I'm going in after that because I know it is a trap. Not only am I cuter than you, I am also waay smarter.
Alternatively, she would approach the crate as though it held a rabid rattler, brace her back feet against the open door and stretch her neck as though she was that slinky dog to grab the treat and then run like crazy with her prize as far as she could go.
As far as using treats to train her to follow simple commands? Yeah. That went great...as long as we were in the privacy of our own home where no one could observe her caving in and actually doing something I said. Oh, and as long as I had a fist full of treats.
First we worked on sit. Sit. Treat. Sit. Treat. By day two, she would see the treat bag and automatically sit before I could say anything. I guess I was too slow with the treats, so she figured she'd just cut to the chase.
By week five, she knew sit, down, stay, heel, off, out and leave it. If she even suspected I might possibly have a treat, she would run through the list like an olympic athlete sprinting for the finish line. She would flip, flop, hop, skip, jump and then throw herself down before I could even clear my throat. She seemed to think that since she had done it all, I should just dump the whole pile of treats all at once and stop wasting both our time.
Take her outside and give her the same commands? Not only did I have to show her the treat, I had to offer it up for approval before she would consider entertaining my request. Sit? For a carrot? Whaddya have rocks in your head mom? I will sit, but I want a hot dog or at least some chicken. I also don't feel like staying, unless you want me to walk, in which case, I will be happy to jump up and down in a complete frenzy before throwing myself in the middle of the road and then rolling over on my back and going limp when you try to pick me up.
And so we got a trainer.
Sit, said the trainer, and she sat.
Heel, said the trainer, and she heeled.
Walk, said the trainer, and she walked.
Then we went home.
Sit, I said. She rolled her eyes.
Heel, I said. She sat.
Walk, I said.
Look, she said, you are not the trainer, so get it out of your head that I'm going to listen to you. Unless you have something really, really tasty for me. Now, where did you put those hot dogs?
Friday, November 4, 2011
Gremlins
Years ago, I had a car that had gremlins running around inside it. We'd be driving along, listening to the radio, when all of a sudden, the station would change, usually to something that made you want to drive over the edge of a cliff, like talk radio where the topic was "Foot Fungus: Friend or Foe" or the Lawrence Welk channel with special guest Hans the goat boy and his magic accordion.
No matter what buttons or pushed, or how hard you pushed them, the station would not change until those gremlins were good and ready to change it. Oh, and bonus! You couldn't turn the radio off either, so there was pretty much nothing you could do but slap both hands over your ears, drive with your elbows and knees and chant, "lalalalala, I can't hear you," until the station was switched back to something resembling modern music.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the doors would randomly lock and unlock. Running errands? Lock. Lost in a dicey section of town? Unlock. Driving down the highway? Lock, unlock, lock, unlock. Getting gas? Lock. On Tim. While he was pumping gas. With the keys inside.
And that was the end of that car.
Now, we apparently have some of those same gremlins running around our house.
Last week, I was watching TV as the dog snoozed behind the couch when, all of a sudden, one of the smoke detectors upstairs gave one long, loud beeeep, and one of the lights above the stairwell started flashing on and off, on and off.
Jumping up, I ran over to the stairs, only to find...nothing. No smoke, no fire. No reason why the lights should be flickering like in one of those horror movies where you're shouting, "Run, dummy, run!" to the ditsy girl who simply has to check it out when she knows full well that there is a revenge-seeking, mask-wearing, axe murderer on the loose and so far, nine out of her ten friends have been gruesomely killed in that same stairwell.
I turned the light off, then back on. Still flickering, but the other light on the switch was completely dead. I quickly checked the date. Nope. Not Friday the 13th. Whew. I pressed the switch again. Same result. I double checked our address. Okay, we did not live on Elm street. I went to the alarm panel. No alarm had registered. Hmmm. Curiouser and curiouser.
Suddenly, the dog went on high alert. Oh no, was it Freddy, Mike Meyers, Chucky or Dracula??? Nope. It was only Tim, no axe in sight, coming home from a dinner, and Chloe happily tripped over to welcome him.
I related the bizarre incident to Tim, and he also pushed the button (both lights were now dead), checked the alarm, looked under the bed, in the closet, behind the door, and shrugged, concluding that maybe we'd had a power surge or something. Meanwhile, I slept with one eye open that night, just in case.
Two days later, the gremlins struck again.
We had a friend over with her dog, and the three of us were laughing as we sat in the basement watching the dogs tumble around the floor. Suddenly, the alarm went off again. This time, it really went off, beeeeeeeppp!!! Tim ran upstairs to disarm it while I assured our friend that it was just our friendly little gremlin and it was not really a fire...probably. Maybe. Hopefully.
A few minutes later, the front doorbell rang. Assuming Tim would get it, I didn't bother to go upstairs, and kept chatting. About five or so minutes later, Tim appeared downstairs again.
"You really should answer the doorbell when it rings," he warned me.
"Didn't you get it?" I asked, raising a brow, because surely, he hadn't expected me to run up the stairs when he was, what, twenty feet from the door? Who was he, Archie Bunker?
"I was at the store," he informed me. "I went to get batteries for the smoke detector, since I thought changing the batteries might solve the problem."
Confused, I followed him up the stairs. "Then how do you know the bell rang? Was it you? Did you forget your key? Why wouldn't you call? And anyway, you're in, so what's the big deal?" The final words died on my lips as I saw the armed police officers standing in the kitchen.
Crap. Had the house actually been on fire or broken into? Did they have Chucky cuffed in the back of the cruiser? Was Freddy's blood splattered all over my living room walls? What had I missed???
And shouldn't the dog have heard something and barked? Lassie had always barked to warn Timmy just before the dope fell into the well...again. Couldn't Chloe have at least growled, sneezed or even burped to let me know my life was about to be snuffed out?
I glanced down at the adorable muppet at my feet who was doing her doggie best to smother the officers with kisses and hugs.
"Way to go Chloe," I congratulated her. "Next time, maybe you can lead the axe-wielding psychopath to the silver before he kills us."
The police assured me though that we actually had not been in danger. Apparently, the alarm had come from the "panic" button on one of the key fobs, so they had raced over, assuming the worst.
Tim had arrived back home to find lights flashing and guns drawn, and assumed the worst.
Meanwhile, our gremlin was having the last laugh, since, at the time the alarm went off, we were all downstairs and our keys were on the hall table, upstairs. Hmmm. I wonder if we can trade in our house like we did the car?
No matter what buttons or pushed, or how hard you pushed them, the station would not change until those gremlins were good and ready to change it. Oh, and bonus! You couldn't turn the radio off either, so there was pretty much nothing you could do but slap both hands over your ears, drive with your elbows and knees and chant, "lalalalala, I can't hear you," until the station was switched back to something resembling modern music.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the doors would randomly lock and unlock. Running errands? Lock. Lost in a dicey section of town? Unlock. Driving down the highway? Lock, unlock, lock, unlock. Getting gas? Lock. On Tim. While he was pumping gas. With the keys inside.
And that was the end of that car.
Now, we apparently have some of those same gremlins running around our house.
Last week, I was watching TV as the dog snoozed behind the couch when, all of a sudden, one of the smoke detectors upstairs gave one long, loud beeeep, and one of the lights above the stairwell started flashing on and off, on and off.
Jumping up, I ran over to the stairs, only to find...nothing. No smoke, no fire. No reason why the lights should be flickering like in one of those horror movies where you're shouting, "Run, dummy, run!" to the ditsy girl who simply has to check it out when she knows full well that there is a revenge-seeking, mask-wearing, axe murderer on the loose and so far, nine out of her ten friends have been gruesomely killed in that same stairwell.
I turned the light off, then back on. Still flickering, but the other light on the switch was completely dead. I quickly checked the date. Nope. Not Friday the 13th. Whew. I pressed the switch again. Same result. I double checked our address. Okay, we did not live on Elm street. I went to the alarm panel. No alarm had registered. Hmmm. Curiouser and curiouser.
Suddenly, the dog went on high alert. Oh no, was it Freddy, Mike Meyers, Chucky or Dracula??? Nope. It was only Tim, no axe in sight, coming home from a dinner, and Chloe happily tripped over to welcome him.
I related the bizarre incident to Tim, and he also pushed the button (both lights were now dead), checked the alarm, looked under the bed, in the closet, behind the door, and shrugged, concluding that maybe we'd had a power surge or something. Meanwhile, I slept with one eye open that night, just in case.
Two days later, the gremlins struck again.
We had a friend over with her dog, and the three of us were laughing as we sat in the basement watching the dogs tumble around the floor. Suddenly, the alarm went off again. This time, it really went off, beeeeeeeppp!!! Tim ran upstairs to disarm it while I assured our friend that it was just our friendly little gremlin and it was not really a fire...probably. Maybe. Hopefully.
A few minutes later, the front doorbell rang. Assuming Tim would get it, I didn't bother to go upstairs, and kept chatting. About five or so minutes later, Tim appeared downstairs again.
"You really should answer the doorbell when it rings," he warned me.
"Didn't you get it?" I asked, raising a brow, because surely, he hadn't expected me to run up the stairs when he was, what, twenty feet from the door? Who was he, Archie Bunker?
"I was at the store," he informed me. "I went to get batteries for the smoke detector, since I thought changing the batteries might solve the problem."
Confused, I followed him up the stairs. "Then how do you know the bell rang? Was it you? Did you forget your key? Why wouldn't you call? And anyway, you're in, so what's the big deal?" The final words died on my lips as I saw the armed police officers standing in the kitchen.
Crap. Had the house actually been on fire or broken into? Did they have Chucky cuffed in the back of the cruiser? Was Freddy's blood splattered all over my living room walls? What had I missed???
And shouldn't the dog have heard something and barked? Lassie had always barked to warn Timmy just before the dope fell into the well...again. Couldn't Chloe have at least growled, sneezed or even burped to let me know my life was about to be snuffed out?
I glanced down at the adorable muppet at my feet who was doing her doggie best to smother the officers with kisses and hugs.
"Way to go Chloe," I congratulated her. "Next time, maybe you can lead the axe-wielding psychopath to the silver before he kills us."
The police assured me though that we actually had not been in danger. Apparently, the alarm had come from the "panic" button on one of the key fobs, so they had raced over, assuming the worst.
Tim had arrived back home to find lights flashing and guns drawn, and assumed the worst.
Meanwhile, our gremlin was having the last laugh, since, at the time the alarm went off, we were all downstairs and our keys were on the hall table, upstairs. Hmmm. I wonder if we can trade in our house like we did the car?
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
You Want Me To Do What ?
Graceful, I am not. Not even close. In fact, anything that requires more than a minimal amount of coordination is totally beyond my abilities, like, say, walking and chewing gum, or talking and working out.
After watching me try (and fail) for the umpteenth time to complete an exercise as she had demonstrated it, my trainer asked me if I would ever consider being on Dancing With The Stars . (If I were a celebrity, a quasi-celebrity, or someone who had more than five hits on You Tube.)
I started to answer, then realized what she had really meant was: Would you do it, knowing that you would be voted off before the first episode even aired?
For three years, Jess has come twice a week to torture, er, I mean train me, and I still can't follow basic moves.
"Okay, you're going to take a weight in each hand, stand like this and move your arms like this," she will demonstrate, raising her arms up from the side above her head, rotating her wrists and bringing her arms down in front of her, as I mimic her in the mirror sans weights.
"Got it," I always claim, taking the weights from her, both of us knowing full well that it will take at least fifty or sixty reps before I can do anything even close to what she did.
"Okay," she'll stop me, "you're inventing a new exercise again that is working out your toenails, and we were going after shoulders and arms. Watch." And she will repeat the exercise.
"Wasn't I doing that?" I'll ask, and sadly I am not faking it in order to get out of doing all fifty thousand reps she has decided is necessary to suck the joy out of my life.
"No, you were doing this," and she'll flail her arms around in a move that is a cross between the chicken dance and that bird pose the Karate Kid did.
"Oh. There's a difference?"
Heaven forbid, she tries to give me a multi-step routine.
"First," she'll say, "you're going to do forward lunges, holding weights, then backward lunges, then jump squats with a push-up in between, and finally side lunges with a squat."
"Huh? Wait. What came after you said first?"
And if something interesting comes on the TV or I decide to try and talk at the same time I'm doing a crunch while holding a medicine ball (well, okay, I am always talking)? Pffft. I might as well be trying to calculate the amount of thrust needed to lift Shamu into outer space using a hand-held fan and a go-cart engine. I mean, c'mon. I'm supposed to remember whether or not to raise bent knees or keep them straight as I simultaneously hoist the equivalent of a small child over my head and sit up while keeping up to date on Lindsay Lohan? Never gonna happen.
None of this is new to Jess. She knows that I will forget to bend my back knee in a lunge, lose count of the reps by the time I hit five and confuse a squat thrust with a push-up jump-out thingy. After all, we've only done them five million times.
The dog trainer is learning all of this the hard way. Come to think of it, so is the dog. She had gotten pretty agile from dodging my two left feet.
"Get her in front of you, then step back with your left foot while bringing your left arm back, then forward, so Chloe follows the treat and 'heels'," the trainer showed me the routine...sixteen times.
"That was a good try," she encouraged me, while at the same time keeping the poor dog from being garroted by the leash.
"Watch again," and she performed the maneuver flawlessly.
Little did she realize that she could do it four thousand more times and I would still believe that I was matching her moves exactly instead of looking like I was reeling in a 200 pound fish who wasn't going down without a fight.
"You're actually pulling her around," she gently took the lead away from me after several more failed attempts, when the dog gave her a look that said,"Help me!" "Maybe you should practice without the lead."
Maybe she should realize that moving my leg and arm at the same time while guiding the dog and offering a treat was beyond my capabilities.
"Let's go out in the other room, I'll bring in my dog and you can 1. let Chloe greet her, 2. call Chloe away, 3. back up towards the door, 4. get her in front of you and 5. make her heel."
Sure. No problem. And then I'll perform Swan Lake. Did you miss the part where I got tangled in the lead taking one step back?
"Oh, and remember to use your voice to indicate good from bad actions on her part."
Really? You're going to add yet another thing? Even the dog looked at her skeptically.
Eventually, she, like Jess, ended up rolling her eyes and accepting the fact that not only am I in no danger of ever winning America's Got Talent I am in no danger of being able to walk down the street without tripping over my own feet.
Now all I have to do is wait for them to stop trying to change that, and let me go back to being clumsy and lazy.
After watching me try (and fail) for the umpteenth time to complete an exercise as she had demonstrated it, my trainer asked me if I would ever consider being on Dancing With The Stars . (If I were a celebrity, a quasi-celebrity, or someone who had more than five hits on You Tube.)
I started to answer, then realized what she had really meant was: Would you do it, knowing that you would be voted off before the first episode even aired?
For three years, Jess has come twice a week to torture, er, I mean train me, and I still can't follow basic moves.
"Okay, you're going to take a weight in each hand, stand like this and move your arms like this," she will demonstrate, raising her arms up from the side above her head, rotating her wrists and bringing her arms down in front of her, as I mimic her in the mirror sans weights.
"Got it," I always claim, taking the weights from her, both of us knowing full well that it will take at least fifty or sixty reps before I can do anything even close to what she did.
"Okay," she'll stop me, "you're inventing a new exercise again that is working out your toenails, and we were going after shoulders and arms. Watch." And she will repeat the exercise.
"Wasn't I doing that?" I'll ask, and sadly I am not faking it in order to get out of doing all fifty thousand reps she has decided is necessary to suck the joy out of my life.
"No, you were doing this," and she'll flail her arms around in a move that is a cross between the chicken dance and that bird pose the Karate Kid did.
"Oh. There's a difference?"
Heaven forbid, she tries to give me a multi-step routine.
"First," she'll say, "you're going to do forward lunges, holding weights, then backward lunges, then jump squats with a push-up in between, and finally side lunges with a squat."
"Huh? Wait. What came after you said first?"
And if something interesting comes on the TV or I decide to try and talk at the same time I'm doing a crunch while holding a medicine ball (well, okay, I am always talking)? Pffft. I might as well be trying to calculate the amount of thrust needed to lift Shamu into outer space using a hand-held fan and a go-cart engine. I mean, c'mon. I'm supposed to remember whether or not to raise bent knees or keep them straight as I simultaneously hoist the equivalent of a small child over my head and sit up while keeping up to date on Lindsay Lohan? Never gonna happen.
None of this is new to Jess. She knows that I will forget to bend my back knee in a lunge, lose count of the reps by the time I hit five and confuse a squat thrust with a push-up jump-out thingy. After all, we've only done them five million times.
The dog trainer is learning all of this the hard way. Come to think of it, so is the dog. She had gotten pretty agile from dodging my two left feet.
"Get her in front of you, then step back with your left foot while bringing your left arm back, then forward, so Chloe follows the treat and 'heels'," the trainer showed me the routine...sixteen times.
"That was a good try," she encouraged me, while at the same time keeping the poor dog from being garroted by the leash.
"Watch again," and she performed the maneuver flawlessly.
Little did she realize that she could do it four thousand more times and I would still believe that I was matching her moves exactly instead of looking like I was reeling in a 200 pound fish who wasn't going down without a fight.
"You're actually pulling her around," she gently took the lead away from me after several more failed attempts, when the dog gave her a look that said,"Help me!" "Maybe you should practice without the lead."
Maybe she should realize that moving my leg and arm at the same time while guiding the dog and offering a treat was beyond my capabilities.
"Let's go out in the other room, I'll bring in my dog and you can 1. let Chloe greet her, 2. call Chloe away, 3. back up towards the door, 4. get her in front of you and 5. make her heel."
Sure. No problem. And then I'll perform Swan Lake. Did you miss the part where I got tangled in the lead taking one step back?
"Oh, and remember to use your voice to indicate good from bad actions on her part."
Really? You're going to add yet another thing? Even the dog looked at her skeptically.
Eventually, she, like Jess, ended up rolling her eyes and accepting the fact that not only am I in no danger of ever winning America's Got Talent I am in no danger of being able to walk down the street without tripping over my own feet.
Now all I have to do is wait for them to stop trying to change that, and let me go back to being clumsy and lazy.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Just Another Manic Monday
Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.
Sunday night, I was brushing and flossing before bed when I guess I got a little too vigorous with the floss and...pop! Out came a crown. Super way to start a week. I love looking like I am the mayor of Dogpatch.
So, first thing in the morning, I called the dentist while I tried to suck my coffee through a straw in order to avoid scaring Tim and Chloe by screaming every time the hot coffee met the exposed nerve (I probably could've skipped the coffee, but that just would have led to a really ugly incident when Tim spoke to me, breathed too loud, or entered my line of sight. Believe me, the straw was the way to go to avoid massive bloodshed.)
Naturally, I got the dentist's voicemail, so I left a message and then proceeded to have my usual Monday fun cleaning and doing laundry. Yea Monday.
Somewhere around 10:30 or so, the dentist called back to say he could see me at 12 or...hmmm, nope, noon was pretty much my only option. Great. I guess unless I want to pick up some cement at the hardware store and have a go at it myself, I'll see you in an hour!?!? Yikes! I think the wicked witch had more warning that a house was going to fall on her.
Now normally, this wouldn't have been an issue, but at that point, I had made some poor choices.
First, I had decided to try my hairdresser's advice and put rollers in my hair instead of blow-drying it, since standing out in the yard with the dog eight thousand times a day had reduced my hair to a flat, yet frizzy mess due to the humidity/constant rain (when did I move to Seattle?)
Chanting, "I think I can, I think I can", like the little engine that could (ha! What did he know, he only had to climb a lousy hill!), I began ripping rollers from my hair, flinging them hither and yon around the bathroom, only to discover that I had solved the pesky flat-hair problem by giving myself a bouffant! Aack!!! Unless I wanted to break out the pearls, memorize Harvey Fierstein's songs and join a local production of Hairspray, I needed to do something fast.
Frantically, I grabbed at my head with both hands trying in vain to deflate the hairdo from H@**, while eyeing the spray bottle of water I was using to train the dog. Hmmm. Big hair or flat, frizzy hair? So many decisions, so little time.
Catching sight of the clock, I realized I was running out of time, so option A it was.
The second mistake I had made was to let the dog crawl under the bed for a little snooze instead of running her outside fifteen minutes earlier. So now I had to quickly dig her out and take her for a potty call or else I would return home from my trip to find Lake Superior in my living room.
"Chloe, Chloe," I called in my 'happy voice', trying to coax her out.
Unimpressed, she yawned, stretched and rolled over, burying her head under her tail.
"Come on, girl. Let's go outside." I clapped my hands and fake-ran toward the stairs.
Nothing. Not so much as an eyelash flickered.
"Chloeee," I begged desperately, dangling a toy in front of the bed, even while I silently acknowledged the utter futility of such actions.
"Come to mama." I made kissy noises and rubbed my fingers together like I had a treat.
Sadly for me, the little dickens is as smart as she is cute, so all my efforts came to nothing. Finally, with precious seconds ticking away, I had to resort to running down the stairs and pretending to go outside to stir the little monster...er, I mean darling, into action.
So back up the stairs I dashed, grabbed her majesty, and tore outside, depositing her in the "potty" spot. Standing over her, I invoked the magic words, "Hurry up!" and waited. And waited.
Hey was that a squirrel? "Hurry up!"
Oooh, is a person walking by? "Hurry up!"
A doggie! A doggie! I wanna play! "Hurry up!!!"
Finally, when she had nothing better to do, she obliged me, but not before the humidity and done it's job and I no longer looked like a refugee from the sixties, but more like a home perm experiment gone horribly, horribly wrong. Super great.
With the clock ticking, I jumped in the car and took off, keeping my fingers crossed that I would get a parking space. At lunch hour. In a shopping plaza located near the courthouse and multiple businesses.
I do believe in miracles. I do. I do. And I also believe in an invisible six-foot rabbit named Harvey (old Jimmy Stewart movie).
And all of this was before I chose a route with construction. And drivers who had apparently failed their test sixteen times in a row. And...Ahh. I love Monday.
Sunday night, I was brushing and flossing before bed when I guess I got a little too vigorous with the floss and...pop! Out came a crown. Super way to start a week. I love looking like I am the mayor of Dogpatch.
So, first thing in the morning, I called the dentist while I tried to suck my coffee through a straw in order to avoid scaring Tim and Chloe by screaming every time the hot coffee met the exposed nerve (I probably could've skipped the coffee, but that just would have led to a really ugly incident when Tim spoke to me, breathed too loud, or entered my line of sight. Believe me, the straw was the way to go to avoid massive bloodshed.)
Naturally, I got the dentist's voicemail, so I left a message and then proceeded to have my usual Monday fun cleaning and doing laundry. Yea Monday.
Somewhere around 10:30 or so, the dentist called back to say he could see me at 12 or...hmmm, nope, noon was pretty much my only option. Great. I guess unless I want to pick up some cement at the hardware store and have a go at it myself, I'll see you in an hour!?!? Yikes! I think the wicked witch had more warning that a house was going to fall on her.
Now normally, this wouldn't have been an issue, but at that point, I had made some poor choices.
First, I had decided to try my hairdresser's advice and put rollers in my hair instead of blow-drying it, since standing out in the yard with the dog eight thousand times a day had reduced my hair to a flat, yet frizzy mess due to the humidity/constant rain (when did I move to Seattle?)
Chanting, "I think I can, I think I can", like the little engine that could (ha! What did he know, he only had to climb a lousy hill!), I began ripping rollers from my hair, flinging them hither and yon around the bathroom, only to discover that I had solved the pesky flat-hair problem by giving myself a bouffant! Aack!!! Unless I wanted to break out the pearls, memorize Harvey Fierstein's songs and join a local production of Hairspray, I needed to do something fast.
Frantically, I grabbed at my head with both hands trying in vain to deflate the hairdo from H@**, while eyeing the spray bottle of water I was using to train the dog. Hmmm. Big hair or flat, frizzy hair? So many decisions, so little time.
Catching sight of the clock, I realized I was running out of time, so option A it was.
The second mistake I had made was to let the dog crawl under the bed for a little snooze instead of running her outside fifteen minutes earlier. So now I had to quickly dig her out and take her for a potty call or else I would return home from my trip to find Lake Superior in my living room.
"Chloe, Chloe," I called in my 'happy voice', trying to coax her out.
Unimpressed, she yawned, stretched and rolled over, burying her head under her tail.
"Come on, girl. Let's go outside." I clapped my hands and fake-ran toward the stairs.
Nothing. Not so much as an eyelash flickered.
"Chloeee," I begged desperately, dangling a toy in front of the bed, even while I silently acknowledged the utter futility of such actions.
"Come to mama." I made kissy noises and rubbed my fingers together like I had a treat.
Sadly for me, the little dickens is as smart as she is cute, so all my efforts came to nothing. Finally, with precious seconds ticking away, I had to resort to running down the stairs and pretending to go outside to stir the little monster...er, I mean darling, into action.
So back up the stairs I dashed, grabbed her majesty, and tore outside, depositing her in the "potty" spot. Standing over her, I invoked the magic words, "Hurry up!" and waited. And waited.
Hey was that a squirrel? "Hurry up!"
Oooh, is a person walking by? "Hurry up!"
A doggie! A doggie! I wanna play! "Hurry up!!!"
Finally, when she had nothing better to do, she obliged me, but not before the humidity and done it's job and I no longer looked like a refugee from the sixties, but more like a home perm experiment gone horribly, horribly wrong. Super great.
With the clock ticking, I jumped in the car and took off, keeping my fingers crossed that I would get a parking space. At lunch hour. In a shopping plaza located near the courthouse and multiple businesses.
I do believe in miracles. I do. I do. And I also believe in an invisible six-foot rabbit named Harvey (old Jimmy Stewart movie).
And all of this was before I chose a route with construction. And drivers who had apparently failed their test sixteen times in a row. And...Ahh. I love Monday.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
We Should Have Called Her Houdini
Our dog, Chloe, is crate trained...more or less. Less than more.
Every night she goes contentedly into her crate (okay, we put it on the edge of the bed where she can't get a toehold, duck her head, tuck in her paws and try to shove her into it while she somehow manages to grow eight more legs and cover herself in grease. Imagine trying to stuff a giant squid into a thimble and you're halfway there.
"I was framed, I'm telling you. I'm innocent," she protests vehemently.
Every day, her first order of business is to liberate every item in her crate. "Run and be free," she tells Bedtime Bear and Mr. Winkles as she tosses them hither and yon around the bedroom. "Quick, everyone over the wall!"
Oddly enough though, given her feelings regarding anyplace with walls and a door, she allows herself to be put in her playpen during the day with nary a peep (okay, so we have to leave treats, toys, the TV remote, phone, laptop and gold Am Ex card). Which is why I was excited to find a travel version made of canvas and mesh. No need to worry about our precious bundle of hair frying herself on a lamp wire or ingesting a couch, bed or other tempting and tasty hotel room paraphernalia that they have for the sole purpose of luring good little puppies down the wicked path of ruin.
Chloe was not quite as excited about it as I.
Where I saw a safe and familiar environment, she saw a network game show challenge. It was like watching Win It In A Minute as she charged the sides, teeth, hair and paws flying about in a frenzy while she hurled all six pounds of herself repeatedly at the sides until it resembled a No. 2 pencil instead of an octagon.
She proudly looked up at me from atop the mound of pee pads, dishes, toys and bed crammed into a six-inch space at one end as I surveyed the damage that hurricane Chloe had caused.
"Look what I did, mom," she panted excitedly. "And for my next trick, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!"
Believing myself able to outsmart the dog, I wedged the playpen between the bed, nightstand, ottoman, four chairs, eight maids amilking, seven swans aswimming and a partridge in a pear tree. Satisfied that would hold her, Tim and I went out to dinner.
Upon our return, I put my finger to my lips and shushed Tim as we silently crept back into the room and peered down into the playpen...to see nothing!
"Chloe, Chloeeeee," we called imagining masked marauders dog napping our precious baby and holding her for a ransom. Quick, where was the number for the navy seals, the green berets or the A-Team?
Suddenly,we were hit from behind by a small, fuzzy projectile of joy. "Aren't you proud of me? See, I escaped! Watching all those David Copperfield specials really paid off, huh?"
Incredulous, we examined the playpen, looking for the escape hatch. It seemed improbable that she had scaled the four foot sides, and the zippered door was still firmly zippered shut, but upon closer inspection, we discovered that one of the velcro straps joining the sides had been opened. What we still can't figure out is how, since it was closed on the outside of the playpen with a buckle! Like any good magician though, she refuses to share her secrets.
Still thinking I was maybe at least as smart as she, I brought the playpen with me to visit my parents two weeks ago. This time, I not only surrounded it with massive pieces of furniture, I sprayed all the velcro closures with a bitter apple dog deterrent. Ha! I win!
Yeah. For about five minutes.
I should have just dunked the whole pen in bitter apple, because when she found she couldn't push the sides or bite the velcro, she simply latched her sharp little puppy teeth onto the mesh and pulled. Faster than you can say origami, she had twisted the shape into something beyond all recognition containing about four inches of real estate.
"Help! Help!" she yipped, looking balefully at me as though this were all my fault (the mother always gets blamed)."Maybe I should have said bibbidy bobbidy boo instead of abracadabra."
Totally defeated, I was investigating other options like crying, calling Tim up and whining, calling the Super-Nanny and whining, or sending a note up the chimney for Mary Poppins to find, when my father declared he could contain Chloe. Foolish, foolish man.
"We'll close the baby gate to the family room(which is at the back of the house)" he rubbed his hands together like a mad scientist, "unfold the pen, brace it against a few chairs, the bookcase, velcro it to the floor and tie it off. There. That ought to hold her." He stepped back, overly pleased with himself.
"I don't know..." I shook my head. He clearly didn't understand who he was up against.
"She's a dog," he scorned. "If she can figure out how to get out of there, I'll shake her paw tonight."
She met us at the front door when we returned, paw extended, head cocked to one side, superior little smile on her lips. I just wish we had bet some money on it.
So now the challenge was on. Chloe vs my father. They each took it as a personal challenge to thwart the other. It was kind of like watching Wile E Coyote trying to outsmart the Roadrunner. You just knew that whatever he's ordered from Acme is going to blow up in his face. I kept warning my dad that he was outgunned, but he was nothing if not determined.
In the end though, my father did win. He only had to rearrange the family room furniture, add the kitchen chairs, table, stove and refrigerator as reinforcements, tie off the playpen with kitchen twine, put the lock on the baby gate, and bolt a few things down to the floor. Chloe was finally safe, and trapped in her playpen.
Victory came at a price though,which was that while she couldn't get out of the family room, we couldn't get in. No family room. No TV. His system made Fort Knox look like it was was secured with a flimsy latch and a battered "Beware of Dog" sign.
Even though she was well and truly trapped, somehow, I think that putting him to so much trouble might have been Chloe's next trick all along.
Every night she goes contentedly into her crate (okay, we put it on the edge of the bed where she can't get a toehold, duck her head, tuck in her paws and try to shove her into it while she somehow manages to grow eight more legs and cover herself in grease. Imagine trying to stuff a giant squid into a thimble and you're halfway there.
"I was framed, I'm telling you. I'm innocent," she protests vehemently.
Every day, her first order of business is to liberate every item in her crate. "Run and be free," she tells Bedtime Bear and Mr. Winkles as she tosses them hither and yon around the bedroom. "Quick, everyone over the wall!"
Oddly enough though, given her feelings regarding anyplace with walls and a door, she allows herself to be put in her playpen during the day with nary a peep (okay, so we have to leave treats, toys, the TV remote, phone, laptop and gold Am Ex card). Which is why I was excited to find a travel version made of canvas and mesh. No need to worry about our precious bundle of hair frying herself on a lamp wire or ingesting a couch, bed or other tempting and tasty hotel room paraphernalia that they have for the sole purpose of luring good little puppies down the wicked path of ruin.
Chloe was not quite as excited about it as I.
Where I saw a safe and familiar environment, she saw a network game show challenge. It was like watching Win It In A Minute as she charged the sides, teeth, hair and paws flying about in a frenzy while she hurled all six pounds of herself repeatedly at the sides until it resembled a No. 2 pencil instead of an octagon.
She proudly looked up at me from atop the mound of pee pads, dishes, toys and bed crammed into a six-inch space at one end as I surveyed the damage that hurricane Chloe had caused.
"Look what I did, mom," she panted excitedly. "And for my next trick, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!"
Believing myself able to outsmart the dog, I wedged the playpen between the bed, nightstand, ottoman, four chairs, eight maids amilking, seven swans aswimming and a partridge in a pear tree. Satisfied that would hold her, Tim and I went out to dinner.
Upon our return, I put my finger to my lips and shushed Tim as we silently crept back into the room and peered down into the playpen...to see nothing!
"Chloe, Chloeeeee," we called imagining masked marauders dog napping our precious baby and holding her for a ransom. Quick, where was the number for the navy seals, the green berets or the A-Team?
Suddenly,we were hit from behind by a small, fuzzy projectile of joy. "Aren't you proud of me? See, I escaped! Watching all those David Copperfield specials really paid off, huh?"
Incredulous, we examined the playpen, looking for the escape hatch. It seemed improbable that she had scaled the four foot sides, and the zippered door was still firmly zippered shut, but upon closer inspection, we discovered that one of the velcro straps joining the sides had been opened. What we still can't figure out is how, since it was closed on the outside of the playpen with a buckle! Like any good magician though, she refuses to share her secrets.
Still thinking I was maybe at least as smart as she, I brought the playpen with me to visit my parents two weeks ago. This time, I not only surrounded it with massive pieces of furniture, I sprayed all the velcro closures with a bitter apple dog deterrent. Ha! I win!
Yeah. For about five minutes.
I should have just dunked the whole pen in bitter apple, because when she found she couldn't push the sides or bite the velcro, she simply latched her sharp little puppy teeth onto the mesh and pulled. Faster than you can say origami, she had twisted the shape into something beyond all recognition containing about four inches of real estate.
"Help! Help!" she yipped, looking balefully at me as though this were all my fault (the mother always gets blamed)."Maybe I should have said bibbidy bobbidy boo instead of abracadabra."
Totally defeated, I was investigating other options like crying, calling Tim up and whining, calling the Super-Nanny and whining, or sending a note up the chimney for Mary Poppins to find, when my father declared he could contain Chloe. Foolish, foolish man.
"We'll close the baby gate to the family room(which is at the back of the house)" he rubbed his hands together like a mad scientist, "unfold the pen, brace it against a few chairs, the bookcase, velcro it to the floor and tie it off. There. That ought to hold her." He stepped back, overly pleased with himself.
"I don't know..." I shook my head. He clearly didn't understand who he was up against.
"She's a dog," he scorned. "If she can figure out how to get out of there, I'll shake her paw tonight."
She met us at the front door when we returned, paw extended, head cocked to one side, superior little smile on her lips. I just wish we had bet some money on it.
So now the challenge was on. Chloe vs my father. They each took it as a personal challenge to thwart the other. It was kind of like watching Wile E Coyote trying to outsmart the Roadrunner. You just knew that whatever he's ordered from Acme is going to blow up in his face. I kept warning my dad that he was outgunned, but he was nothing if not determined.
In the end though, my father did win. He only had to rearrange the family room furniture, add the kitchen chairs, table, stove and refrigerator as reinforcements, tie off the playpen with kitchen twine, put the lock on the baby gate, and bolt a few things down to the floor. Chloe was finally safe, and trapped in her playpen.
Victory came at a price though,which was that while she couldn't get out of the family room, we couldn't get in. No family room. No TV. His system made Fort Knox look like it was was secured with a flimsy latch and a battered "Beware of Dog" sign.
Even though she was well and truly trapped, somehow, I think that putting him to so much trouble might have been Chloe's next trick all along.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
So We Had A Bad Day...Or Two...Or Four
Friday morning, we woke up to no hot water...again. So I went down to the basement and tried everything to get the heater working. I unplugged, plugged, pressed buttons and flipped switches. I flipped the machine off. No hot water. Not one drop.
Faced with the prospect of a cold shower on a hair wash day, I panicked and called the plumber who informed me that he could maybe squeeze me in on Tuesday.
Tuesday?! As in five days away? As in five days of cold showers? As in washing my hands in cold water after I've cleaned up after the dog for five days? Oh, and perhaps we can just lick our dishes and pots and pans clean for the next five days. Thanks, but I'll try somebody else.
Two hours, twenty gazillion googles and a dozen phone calls later, I got someone to come out...between 12 and 4. Fine. Except they didn't come until 5. Fine. Except they couldn't figure out what was wrong with the heater, but they did get it working again. Fine. Except they knew it wouldn't last, so they'd have to come back...Tuesday. Really?
Was this some kind of plumbing conspiracy? You don't know what's wrong with it today, but you'll know Tuesday? Was the solution going to magically come to them over the three-day weekend? Would it come to them in a dream, or perhaps they could visit a fortune-teller or call the psychic hot line. And how do you temporarily fix something when you don't even know what's wrong with it?
As if suggesting Tuesday wasn't pushing it far enough, (I guess my body language was making my feelings a bit unclear. Folded arms, scowl, bared teeth and lows growls emitting from my throat must have indicated I was happy with the way things were going.), the guy started talking to me about different kinds of heaters and how the Super-Duper-Jiffy-Heater worked better than ours.
Wow. So let me get this straight. You are standing in my kitchen, a room equipped with knives--sharp knives--and trying to sell me a new heater instead of fixing mine which is less than two years old? One of us here must be stupid or have a death wish. Did you miss the part when I explained that I had had a cold shower this morning and it was a hair wash day? Do you think that put me in the happy zone?
And following your logic, if you can't fix something, just replace it? I'm glad you're not my mechanic, because when my car breaks down, I suppose you would recommend just leaving it on the side of the road and buying new. And thank goodness you weren't my husband's surgeon last month when he had broken disks in his back. I am guessing your solution would have been to just get a new guy. "Sorry about your husband, but here's an application for Match.com."
Restraining myself (I didn't have enough hot water at that point to do a good job cleaning blood off the walls), I sent him on his way and called someone else who said they could come...Tuesday. Okay, so it was a conspiracy, but at least we had a temporary fix, and besides, as it turned out, we were leaving the next day and coming back Monday, so it would all work out.
Or not. Saturday morning...no hot water... again. Definitely a conspiracy going on here.
Biting the bullet (cursing, yelling and pounding on the heater didn't seem to be working), we shivered through cold showers and comforted ourselves with the thought that we could take a nice hot shower at the hotel before meeting colleagues of Tim's for dinner.
Arriving at the hotel at 3:30, we found that our room wasn't ready yet. Twenty minutes, they promised. Fine. Thirty minutes later, they assured us that our room was their top priority and housekeeping was in there even as we were speaking. Fine. One hour later, we were still wandering, homeless and showerless around the lobby. Now it was not so fine.
So did you lie about housekeeping being in there or do you just have the sloooowest peeeeople ooon the plaaaanet woooorking for youuuu? Perhaps they are using a tweezer to clean the carpet and a toothbrush for the bathroom? Did they have to take the bedding down to the river and beat it on the rocks to clean it?
But the best part of the wait was not being able to go anywhere but the lobby because it was 4000 degrees outside, and between the puppy and Tim still recovering from back surgery, we were pretty much stuck. To say it wasn't pretty would be like saying Medusa was a supermodel.
One the one side, I had a sixteen week old puppy who thought we had moved into a great big, new home with lots and lots of cool friends for her to meet and greet. And those friends got her soooo very excited that she peed...a lot...many times...but not outside. Oh no, the heat must have addled her fuzzy little brain because she decided the grassy area wasn't really up to her standards, and she much preferred the nice tile in the lobby as her potty spot. Guess who got to clean it up? Yippee. My new favorite way to spend a Saturday.
On the other side was Tim, who thought that somehow he was unhappier about the state of affairs than I was. Hmmm. Let's compare. You've been talking to people about food and wine, swapping notes on restaurants and beaches, and I've been scrubbing the floors with paper towels and Nature's Miracle while simultaneously trying to keep the puppy from jumping and nibbling on everyone and anyone who comes within ten feet of her, looks her way, or looks like they might possibly even be thinking of looking her way.
Oh, and the little trip to the shopping arcade off the lobby where you looked at the merchandise? Yeah. I was pretty occupied trying to explain to six pounds of wiggly fur that Gucci shoes and Louis Vuitton bags were not must-have chewable accessories for a dog.
Finally, we did get into our room, but without time for a hot shower before we had to leave for dinner. However, I consoled myself with the fact that tomorrow would be a better day. Until the next day when I smashed my head on a glass table and gave myself a giant goose-egg on my forehead, and we came home to no hot water...again. And the showerhead in our bathroom stopped working...completely.
Oh yeah, a conspiracy is totally at work here.
Faced with the prospect of a cold shower on a hair wash day, I panicked and called the plumber who informed me that he could maybe squeeze me in on Tuesday.
Tuesday?! As in five days away? As in five days of cold showers? As in washing my hands in cold water after I've cleaned up after the dog for five days? Oh, and perhaps we can just lick our dishes and pots and pans clean for the next five days. Thanks, but I'll try somebody else.
Two hours, twenty gazillion googles and a dozen phone calls later, I got someone to come out...between 12 and 4. Fine. Except they didn't come until 5. Fine. Except they couldn't figure out what was wrong with the heater, but they did get it working again. Fine. Except they knew it wouldn't last, so they'd have to come back...Tuesday. Really?
Was this some kind of plumbing conspiracy? You don't know what's wrong with it today, but you'll know Tuesday? Was the solution going to magically come to them over the three-day weekend? Would it come to them in a dream, or perhaps they could visit a fortune-teller or call the psychic hot line. And how do you temporarily fix something when you don't even know what's wrong with it?
As if suggesting Tuesday wasn't pushing it far enough, (I guess my body language was making my feelings a bit unclear. Folded arms, scowl, bared teeth and lows growls emitting from my throat must have indicated I was happy with the way things were going.), the guy started talking to me about different kinds of heaters and how the Super-Duper-Jiffy-Heater worked better than ours.
Wow. So let me get this straight. You are standing in my kitchen, a room equipped with knives--sharp knives--and trying to sell me a new heater instead of fixing mine which is less than two years old? One of us here must be stupid or have a death wish. Did you miss the part when I explained that I had had a cold shower this morning and it was a hair wash day? Do you think that put me in the happy zone?
And following your logic, if you can't fix something, just replace it? I'm glad you're not my mechanic, because when my car breaks down, I suppose you would recommend just leaving it on the side of the road and buying new. And thank goodness you weren't my husband's surgeon last month when he had broken disks in his back. I am guessing your solution would have been to just get a new guy. "Sorry about your husband, but here's an application for Match.com."
Restraining myself (I didn't have enough hot water at that point to do a good job cleaning blood off the walls), I sent him on his way and called someone else who said they could come...Tuesday. Okay, so it was a conspiracy, but at least we had a temporary fix, and besides, as it turned out, we were leaving the next day and coming back Monday, so it would all work out.
Or not. Saturday morning...no hot water... again. Definitely a conspiracy going on here.
Biting the bullet (cursing, yelling and pounding on the heater didn't seem to be working), we shivered through cold showers and comforted ourselves with the thought that we could take a nice hot shower at the hotel before meeting colleagues of Tim's for dinner.
Arriving at the hotel at 3:30, we found that our room wasn't ready yet. Twenty minutes, they promised. Fine. Thirty minutes later, they assured us that our room was their top priority and housekeeping was in there even as we were speaking. Fine. One hour later, we were still wandering, homeless and showerless around the lobby. Now it was not so fine.
So did you lie about housekeeping being in there or do you just have the sloooowest peeeeople ooon the plaaaanet woooorking for youuuu? Perhaps they are using a tweezer to clean the carpet and a toothbrush for the bathroom? Did they have to take the bedding down to the river and beat it on the rocks to clean it?
But the best part of the wait was not being able to go anywhere but the lobby because it was 4000 degrees outside, and between the puppy and Tim still recovering from back surgery, we were pretty much stuck. To say it wasn't pretty would be like saying Medusa was a supermodel.
One the one side, I had a sixteen week old puppy who thought we had moved into a great big, new home with lots and lots of cool friends for her to meet and greet. And those friends got her soooo very excited that she peed...a lot...many times...but not outside. Oh no, the heat must have addled her fuzzy little brain because she decided the grassy area wasn't really up to her standards, and she much preferred the nice tile in the lobby as her potty spot. Guess who got to clean it up? Yippee. My new favorite way to spend a Saturday.
On the other side was Tim, who thought that somehow he was unhappier about the state of affairs than I was. Hmmm. Let's compare. You've been talking to people about food and wine, swapping notes on restaurants and beaches, and I've been scrubbing the floors with paper towels and Nature's Miracle while simultaneously trying to keep the puppy from jumping and nibbling on everyone and anyone who comes within ten feet of her, looks her way, or looks like they might possibly even be thinking of looking her way.
Oh, and the little trip to the shopping arcade off the lobby where you looked at the merchandise? Yeah. I was pretty occupied trying to explain to six pounds of wiggly fur that Gucci shoes and Louis Vuitton bags were not must-have chewable accessories for a dog.
Finally, we did get into our room, but without time for a hot shower before we had to leave for dinner. However, I consoled myself with the fact that tomorrow would be a better day. Until the next day when I smashed my head on a glass table and gave myself a giant goose-egg on my forehead, and we came home to no hot water...again. And the showerhead in our bathroom stopped working...completely.
Oh yeah, a conspiracy is totally at work here.
Friday, July 15, 2011
There's a Potty Going on Right Here
I am obsessed with potty training the dog. It is now my full-time occupation, and I have pretty much cornered the market in paper towel, pee pads and those little plastic doggie poop bags. I need to get an actual life.
Before we even got the dog, people were flooding us with advice.
"Praise her when she goes outside. Use positive reinforcement." So did you think I would use negative reinforcement for going potty outside? I mean, I'm no expert, but even I know that smacking her on the nose for pottying outside is probably not the way to go.
"Have a special cue you use to get her to go quickly." So having a bladder the size of a gnat and drinking a super gulp won't do it alone? Maybe saying pretty please with Beggin' Strips on top will help?
"Learn her schedule and get her outside before she has to go." I'm thinking I probably could have figured that one out myself the first time she peed on my carpet.
All of this advice was well-intentioned and seemed pretty much basic knowledge, which I foolishly imagined the dog would know too. I could not have been more wrong.
Positive reinforcement? For kids, a simple "good job", or a thumbs-up seems to work. For the dog? Every tinkle earns a party complete with hats, streamers and kazoos. If she makes number two? Well then, we set off fireworks, strike up the band and erupt into a full-on Broadway showstopper number. And, being only a puppy, she still sometimes decides to pee on my carpet. Yea team!
As I understand it, my mother potty trained me by telling me not to use the potty. I believe she threatened dire consequences if I even thought of using it. Training done. To this day, I have never gone anywhere but the potty and I am not scarred for life (well, I am, but that's another blog about my mother).
However, my child, being a dog, I've been advised that this is most likely not the way to go, and if I fail to perform my bizarre little happy, happy, yea, yea, rah, rah ritual, she will feel the need to forever decorate my floors with brown and yellow until they resemble a really gross inkblot test.
On to the next bit of advice. Special cue? Hmmm. Inside it seems the special cue is her being awake, unless she is sitting on a pee pad. Then, her bladder expands to the size of Texas. Surely I don't want her to pee there? What is she an animal?
Outside, she has to sniff every blade of grass, piece of mulch, patch of dirt and section of blacktop in order to find the perfect place to do her business. I'm convinced that, instead of being concerned about what the writings of Nostradamus might tell us regarding the end of the world, we'd be better off worrying about the dog being forced to potty on the wrong side of the driveway. Life as we know it would come to a screeching halt. It would be Armageddon!
And while she is determining the fate of the world? I am standing on the sidelines like a demented cheerleader chirping, "Hurry up! Hurry up!" It's demeaning to both of us, but only I seem to realize it.
As for the last bit of advice regarding her schedule? Yeah. Eat. Potty. Drink. Potty. Sleep. Potty. Play. Potty. Blink. Potty. Breathe. Potty. It's not so much a schedule as it is a sprint for the door eighty-two thousand times a day with poop bags in one hand, the dog in the other and the bottle of Nature's Miracle clenched between my teeth. You don't want to know where the paper towels are.
We had several people suggest "bell training", where you hang a strand of jingle bells on the door and ring them every time you take the dog out to potty. The theory is that the dog will eventually learn to ring them herself whenever she has to go out and...voila!...no more messes inside.
We were pleasantly surprised that this actually seemed to be working, but before we could break our arms patting ourselves on our own backs, we realized that what was working was the theory, not necessarily the actual bells.
While the bells meant "potty" to us, they apparently meant, "Hey, I really feel like seeing what's going on outside" to the dog.
Jingle, jingle, jingle. I want to eat grass.
Jingle, jingle, jingle. Hey, is that a bird out there that I need to try and catch?
Jingle, jingle, jingle. Is it cold out, warm out, raining?
Jingle, jingle, jingle. Is the sun still shining like it was fifteen seconds ago when I was last out?
Jingle, jingle, jingle. I know I've done this sixty-seven times in a row while you are trying to do something else and I didn't have to potty, but this time I actually have to. Honest.
Jingle, jingle, jingle. It's freakin' Christmas every day at our house. Yeah, the bells are working all right, but I think the dog is training us. We actually both flinch now when someone even mentions Christmas or Santa.
I know that all of this is probably good advice and that eventually the dog will be potty trained, but at this point, I'm not sure that will happen before the bells "accidentally" get run over by a steamroller and I fit the dog with a diaper. Or perhaps I should just replace my carpets with topsoil, mulch and grass.
Before we even got the dog, people were flooding us with advice.
"Praise her when she goes outside. Use positive reinforcement." So did you think I would use negative reinforcement for going potty outside? I mean, I'm no expert, but even I know that smacking her on the nose for pottying outside is probably not the way to go.
"Have a special cue you use to get her to go quickly." So having a bladder the size of a gnat and drinking a super gulp won't do it alone? Maybe saying pretty please with Beggin' Strips on top will help?
"Learn her schedule and get her outside before she has to go." I'm thinking I probably could have figured that one out myself the first time she peed on my carpet.
All of this advice was well-intentioned and seemed pretty much basic knowledge, which I foolishly imagined the dog would know too. I could not have been more wrong.
Positive reinforcement? For kids, a simple "good job", or a thumbs-up seems to work. For the dog? Every tinkle earns a party complete with hats, streamers and kazoos. If she makes number two? Well then, we set off fireworks, strike up the band and erupt into a full-on Broadway showstopper number. And, being only a puppy, she still sometimes decides to pee on my carpet. Yea team!
As I understand it, my mother potty trained me by telling me not to use the potty. I believe she threatened dire consequences if I even thought of using it. Training done. To this day, I have never gone anywhere but the potty and I am not scarred for life (well, I am, but that's another blog about my mother).
However, my child, being a dog, I've been advised that this is most likely not the way to go, and if I fail to perform my bizarre little happy, happy, yea, yea, rah, rah ritual, she will feel the need to forever decorate my floors with brown and yellow until they resemble a really gross inkblot test.
On to the next bit of advice. Special cue? Hmmm. Inside it seems the special cue is her being awake, unless she is sitting on a pee pad. Then, her bladder expands to the size of Texas. Surely I don't want her to pee there? What is she an animal?
Outside, she has to sniff every blade of grass, piece of mulch, patch of dirt and section of blacktop in order to find the perfect place to do her business. I'm convinced that, instead of being concerned about what the writings of Nostradamus might tell us regarding the end of the world, we'd be better off worrying about the dog being forced to potty on the wrong side of the driveway. Life as we know it would come to a screeching halt. It would be Armageddon!
And while she is determining the fate of the world? I am standing on the sidelines like a demented cheerleader chirping, "Hurry up! Hurry up!" It's demeaning to both of us, but only I seem to realize it.
As for the last bit of advice regarding her schedule? Yeah. Eat. Potty. Drink. Potty. Sleep. Potty. Play. Potty. Blink. Potty. Breathe. Potty. It's not so much a schedule as it is a sprint for the door eighty-two thousand times a day with poop bags in one hand, the dog in the other and the bottle of Nature's Miracle clenched between my teeth. You don't want to know where the paper towels are.
We had several people suggest "bell training", where you hang a strand of jingle bells on the door and ring them every time you take the dog out to potty. The theory is that the dog will eventually learn to ring them herself whenever she has to go out and...voila!...no more messes inside.
We were pleasantly surprised that this actually seemed to be working, but before we could break our arms patting ourselves on our own backs, we realized that what was working was the theory, not necessarily the actual bells.
While the bells meant "potty" to us, they apparently meant, "Hey, I really feel like seeing what's going on outside" to the dog.
Jingle, jingle, jingle. I want to eat grass.
Jingle, jingle, jingle. Hey, is that a bird out there that I need to try and catch?
Jingle, jingle, jingle. Is it cold out, warm out, raining?
Jingle, jingle, jingle. Is the sun still shining like it was fifteen seconds ago when I was last out?
Jingle, jingle, jingle. I know I've done this sixty-seven times in a row while you are trying to do something else and I didn't have to potty, but this time I actually have to. Honest.
Jingle, jingle, jingle. It's freakin' Christmas every day at our house. Yeah, the bells are working all right, but I think the dog is training us. We actually both flinch now when someone even mentions Christmas or Santa.
I know that all of this is probably good advice and that eventually the dog will be potty trained, but at this point, I'm not sure that will happen before the bells "accidentally" get run over by a steamroller and I fit the dog with a diaper. Or perhaps I should just replace my carpets with topsoil, mulch and grass.
Friday, July 1, 2011
Buy the Book
I adore books. Fact or fiction, doesn't matter, I buy them all. The only kind of book that I have never bought is one on owning a pet. I mean, seriously, instinct and common sense are all you need, right? After all, you never see a monkey at the library or a lion browsing the child-rearing section at Barnes and Noble. And if elephants don't stress about something as big as potty training, then who should?
So when we got our dog, I wasn't too worried about raising her. How hard could it be? I'd had about ten gazillion cats and they were easy to deal with as long as you understood the ground rules: 1. They are in charge and 2. You live to serve them. Give them what they want, and nobody gets hurt, see? Train a cat? Sure. And then for your encore, you can walk on water and bring about world peace.
But a dog? They live to serve you, right? Common sense says to walk them, feed them, give them a nice, comfy little doggie bed to call their own and you have a devoted friend for life. Yup.
So, naively, we started with a walk. Well, I started with a walk, the dog made it about three feet before she decided our lawn was a wonderful smorgasbord of tasty delights: grass, mulch, leaves, dirt, bugs, acorns, trees, worms, and, hey, was that a scrumptious-looking bit of bird poop on the driveway? Yuuummmy!
Now, call me crazy, but instinct told me this was bad. Normal dogs do not eat something that has passed through the intestinal tract of another animal and come out of an opening marked "exit only". My dog had to be a freak.
And so I spent our first "walk" looming over her like a vulture over roadkill pulling dead, dying, moldering, slimy things that I wouldn't even normally step on while wearing heavy-duty work boots and hip-waders out of her mouth with my bare fingers. Eeewww. So much for walking.
Feeding? Well, after grazing in our yard like a competitive eater at an all-you-can-eat $1.99 buffet, how could she possibly be hungry? Common sense would say that she should be full, so, on to the bed.
By night, our little darling ambles happily into her comfy little crate and snoozes the hours away while dreaming of eating the poop and the bird. Finally. Something that was making sense!
Ah, but it turns out she was only lulling me into a false sense of security, because by the light of day, the mere prospect of a half hour in that cozy haven suddenly sent her into paroxysms of yowling, howling, yipping, yapping, crying, whining and sobbing panic.
The crate had become puppy prison. A horrible torture chamber to be avoided at all costs. Treats, toys and other enticements are placed there to lure poor, unsuspecting puppies into an evil vortex from which they may never return. And mommy? She makes Cruella DeVille look like Glenda the good witch. Do not under any circumstances trust her if you even suspect there is a crate somewhere in the vicinity.
So we decided to let her use the doggie bed someone had given her as a gift. Common sense. It is open, airy, plush. She will love it. Wrong again.
She has peed in it, tried to eat it, kicked it, punched it, tossed it, ripped it, trampled it and cussed it out with what I'm sure is wildly inappropriate language more suitable to some large, burly man with tattoos of skulls on his biceps.
Nap in the bed? Fat chance. She don't need no stinkin' nap. But if she absolutely, positively cannot keep her eyes open, then the best place for a nap is under a bed, table, couch, chair, or any other small, inaccessible spot where she can peer out with utter contempt while at the same time managing to smile smugly. Oh, and by the way, the carpet pad is waaaay tastier than anything I have to give her.
Well, since common sense and instinct did not seem to be working too well for me, I decided it couldn't hurt to maybe look up a few general guidelines on the Internet. Just purely as a matter of interest. So I maybe browsed a few thousand web sites. And then I may have taken a trip to the bookstore and bought a book or two. Okay, maybe three or four. And I may have highlighted and bookmarked a few dozen little tidbits, just to show Tim, poor guy, since he seemed a bit clueless.
I found out that it all comes down to this: Puppies are little bundles of energy who have no common sense and their instinct is to eat everything they see. Walking? Don't hold your breath. You might as well try to juggle jello. And finally, like kids, the box is always better than what came in it. Deal with it and nobody gets hurt, see? At least that is what the book says.
So when we got our dog, I wasn't too worried about raising her. How hard could it be? I'd had about ten gazillion cats and they were easy to deal with as long as you understood the ground rules: 1. They are in charge and 2. You live to serve them. Give them what they want, and nobody gets hurt, see? Train a cat? Sure. And then for your encore, you can walk on water and bring about world peace.
But a dog? They live to serve you, right? Common sense says to walk them, feed them, give them a nice, comfy little doggie bed to call their own and you have a devoted friend for life. Yup.
So, naively, we started with a walk. Well, I started with a walk, the dog made it about three feet before she decided our lawn was a wonderful smorgasbord of tasty delights: grass, mulch, leaves, dirt, bugs, acorns, trees, worms, and, hey, was that a scrumptious-looking bit of bird poop on the driveway? Yuuummmy!
Now, call me crazy, but instinct told me this was bad. Normal dogs do not eat something that has passed through the intestinal tract of another animal and come out of an opening marked "exit only". My dog had to be a freak.
And so I spent our first "walk" looming over her like a vulture over roadkill pulling dead, dying, moldering, slimy things that I wouldn't even normally step on while wearing heavy-duty work boots and hip-waders out of her mouth with my bare fingers. Eeewww. So much for walking.
Feeding? Well, after grazing in our yard like a competitive eater at an all-you-can-eat $1.99 buffet, how could she possibly be hungry? Common sense would say that she should be full, so, on to the bed.
By night, our little darling ambles happily into her comfy little crate and snoozes the hours away while dreaming of eating the poop and the bird. Finally. Something that was making sense!
Ah, but it turns out she was only lulling me into a false sense of security, because by the light of day, the mere prospect of a half hour in that cozy haven suddenly sent her into paroxysms of yowling, howling, yipping, yapping, crying, whining and sobbing panic.
The crate had become puppy prison. A horrible torture chamber to be avoided at all costs. Treats, toys and other enticements are placed there to lure poor, unsuspecting puppies into an evil vortex from which they may never return. And mommy? She makes Cruella DeVille look like Glenda the good witch. Do not under any circumstances trust her if you even suspect there is a crate somewhere in the vicinity.
So we decided to let her use the doggie bed someone had given her as a gift. Common sense. It is open, airy, plush. She will love it. Wrong again.
She has peed in it, tried to eat it, kicked it, punched it, tossed it, ripped it, trampled it and cussed it out with what I'm sure is wildly inappropriate language more suitable to some large, burly man with tattoos of skulls on his biceps.
Nap in the bed? Fat chance. She don't need no stinkin' nap. But if she absolutely, positively cannot keep her eyes open, then the best place for a nap is under a bed, table, couch, chair, or any other small, inaccessible spot where she can peer out with utter contempt while at the same time managing to smile smugly. Oh, and by the way, the carpet pad is waaaay tastier than anything I have to give her.
Well, since common sense and instinct did not seem to be working too well for me, I decided it couldn't hurt to maybe look up a few general guidelines on the Internet. Just purely as a matter of interest. So I maybe browsed a few thousand web sites. And then I may have taken a trip to the bookstore and bought a book or two. Okay, maybe three or four. And I may have highlighted and bookmarked a few dozen little tidbits, just to show Tim, poor guy, since he seemed a bit clueless.
I found out that it all comes down to this: Puppies are little bundles of energy who have no common sense and their instinct is to eat everything they see. Walking? Don't hold your breath. You might as well try to juggle jello. And finally, like kids, the box is always better than what came in it. Deal with it and nobody gets hurt, see? At least that is what the book says.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Stress? What Stress???
I am living in the 7th circle of Dante's Inferno.
Oh, yeah. But I'm not at all stressed.
Since my last blog, I have moved, had part of my new house destroyed by snow (not to mention the time spent on researching if I could sue Irving Berlin's estate for him wishing me that White Christmas!), survived rebuilding (barely) and hosted both of our families for Christmas and Thanksgiving.
Stressed out??? Nah. I've always had that bald spot, twitch and rash.
And just when things were starting to get back to normal (I actually stopped diving under the sofa, curling into a fetal position and sucking my thumb everytime a serviceperson rang the bell), I lost my toehold in the 1st circle and slipped all the way back to the 7th.
It all began innocently enough. Tim wanted a dog.
No.
Please??? I'll take care of her, take her for walks, clean up after her. I promise. (Yeah, like he even knows where I to find one cleaning product in this house).
No.
Aww. Come on. Look at this picture. Soooo cute. I'll do everything. I promise.
No.
He enlisted our niece in the battle. Please, please, please. I'll come over and help. You won't have to do anything.
No.
He enlisted friends, acquaintences, former grade school teachers, long lost cousins, celebrity spokespersons, total strangers. You need a dog. Mine is my best friend. They are great companions, smart. They can do tricks, like sit, fetch, stay, cook dinner, pay the bills, reorganize your closets.
Hmmm. No.
Three weeks ago, we got a dog. A puppy. And six days later, Tim had emergency back surgery. 7th circle.
But stress? Not here. Nope. Not a bit. I've always eaten Valium like they're M&Ms, talked to myself and burst into hysterical tears for no reason six times a day.
My day? Stress free.
5:00-5:30 Wake up to the sound of whimpering. Roll over, give Tim another pill and take out the dog who is also whimpering.
6ish: come in, remind Tim he is not supposed to bend, twist, lift, sit, stand, llie or walk for longer than 20 minutes. Feed dog. Feed Tim. Carry half the contents of our bedroom and his office downstairs so he can work from home. Eat chocolate, drink coffee, wish I were in Fiji (or even Siberia!).
7:00-9:00 Entertain dog, clean up after dog, keep dog from suicidal tendencies like eating carpet and sticking tongue in electrical outlet.
Entertain Tim, clean up after Tim, keep Tim from suicidal tendencies like bending twisting or writing e-mails while on pain medication.
9:00-9:05 Shower, dress, apply spackle to hide dark circles and lines, grimace at what used to be a hairstyle and is now a frizzy bird's nest on top of my head due to all the time I spend standing outside waiting for the dog to go potty. Eat breakfast.
9:05-12:00 Stuff ears full of cotton, fill pockets with smelly dog treats, crate train dog, take dog outside every five minutes to potty. Beg dog to take a nap.
Pry computer from Tim's fingers every 20 minutes, fetch new ice pack every 30 minutes, administer pills as needed (Oh. Yeah. Give Tim some too.), lift dog up so Tim can get "puppy kisses". Um. Helloooo. Shouldn't the one doing the work be the one getting the kisses??? Beg Tim to nap.
12:00 Lunch. Beg dog to eat. Beg Tim to eat. Forget to eat (that's okay because I will eat many cookies later)
12:30-5:00 Repeat morning drill
5:00-7:00 Feed dog. Start dinner. Take dog out. Do more dinner prep. Take dog out. Try to finish dinner prep. Take dog out. Start cooking dinner. Take dog out. Keep part one of dinner warm as I cook part two. Take dog out.
7:00 Eat cold, undercooked/overcooked dinner. Take dog out. Do dishes. Take dog out.
8:00 Watch Tim sleep in chair while trying to keep dog from sleeping so she will sleep at night.
10:00 Take dog out for last time. Carry 4,562 of Tim's necessary items for home recovery back upstairs. Put dog to bed. Put Tim to bed. Administer pills. Watch chick flick on HBO when pills kick in but tell Tim he is watching a "guy" movie with guns and bombs.
Stress? No such thing here. Uh uh. I always scream into my pillow, sleepwalk and bite my own toenails.
Oh, yeah. But I'm not at all stressed.
Since my last blog, I have moved, had part of my new house destroyed by snow (not to mention the time spent on researching if I could sue Irving Berlin's estate for him wishing me that White Christmas!), survived rebuilding (barely) and hosted both of our families for Christmas and Thanksgiving.
Stressed out??? Nah. I've always had that bald spot, twitch and rash.
And just when things were starting to get back to normal (I actually stopped diving under the sofa, curling into a fetal position and sucking my thumb everytime a serviceperson rang the bell), I lost my toehold in the 1st circle and slipped all the way back to the 7th.
It all began innocently enough. Tim wanted a dog.
No.
Please??? I'll take care of her, take her for walks, clean up after her. I promise. (Yeah, like he even knows where I to find one cleaning product in this house).
No.
Aww. Come on. Look at this picture. Soooo cute. I'll do everything. I promise.
No.
He enlisted our niece in the battle. Please, please, please. I'll come over and help. You won't have to do anything.
No.
He enlisted friends, acquaintences, former grade school teachers, long lost cousins, celebrity spokespersons, total strangers. You need a dog. Mine is my best friend. They are great companions, smart. They can do tricks, like sit, fetch, stay, cook dinner, pay the bills, reorganize your closets.
Hmmm. No.
Three weeks ago, we got a dog. A puppy. And six days later, Tim had emergency back surgery. 7th circle.
But stress? Not here. Nope. Not a bit. I've always eaten Valium like they're M&Ms, talked to myself and burst into hysterical tears for no reason six times a day.
My day? Stress free.
5:00-5:30 Wake up to the sound of whimpering. Roll over, give Tim another pill and take out the dog who is also whimpering.
6ish: come in, remind Tim he is not supposed to bend, twist, lift, sit, stand, llie or walk for longer than 20 minutes. Feed dog. Feed Tim. Carry half the contents of our bedroom and his office downstairs so he can work from home. Eat chocolate, drink coffee, wish I were in Fiji (or even Siberia!).
7:00-9:00 Entertain dog, clean up after dog, keep dog from suicidal tendencies like eating carpet and sticking tongue in electrical outlet.
Entertain Tim, clean up after Tim, keep Tim from suicidal tendencies like bending twisting or writing e-mails while on pain medication.
9:00-9:05 Shower, dress, apply spackle to hide dark circles and lines, grimace at what used to be a hairstyle and is now a frizzy bird's nest on top of my head due to all the time I spend standing outside waiting for the dog to go potty. Eat breakfast.
9:05-12:00 Stuff ears full of cotton, fill pockets with smelly dog treats, crate train dog, take dog outside every five minutes to potty. Beg dog to take a nap.
Pry computer from Tim's fingers every 20 minutes, fetch new ice pack every 30 minutes, administer pills as needed (Oh. Yeah. Give Tim some too.), lift dog up so Tim can get "puppy kisses". Um. Helloooo. Shouldn't the one doing the work be the one getting the kisses??? Beg Tim to nap.
12:00 Lunch. Beg dog to eat. Beg Tim to eat. Forget to eat (that's okay because I will eat many cookies later)
12:30-5:00 Repeat morning drill
5:00-7:00 Feed dog. Start dinner. Take dog out. Do more dinner prep. Take dog out. Try to finish dinner prep. Take dog out. Start cooking dinner. Take dog out. Keep part one of dinner warm as I cook part two. Take dog out.
7:00 Eat cold, undercooked/overcooked dinner. Take dog out. Do dishes. Take dog out.
8:00 Watch Tim sleep in chair while trying to keep dog from sleeping so she will sleep at night.
10:00 Take dog out for last time. Carry 4,562 of Tim's necessary items for home recovery back upstairs. Put dog to bed. Put Tim to bed. Administer pills. Watch chick flick on HBO when pills kick in but tell Tim he is watching a "guy" movie with guns and bombs.
Stress? No such thing here. Uh uh. I always scream into my pillow, sleepwalk and bite my own toenails.
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