Damn You, Sarah McLachlan

Just over a year ago, the universe colluded with a youtube clip, and my poor heart, still bruised from losing my previous dogs, started to feel like it could stand another foray into pet ownership.

What has happened since, is a love affair with this animal, which is just this side of legally reportable.

I swear I only LOOK like the spawn of Dog-Satan.

Example 1:

(Just getting out of shower, and discovering the dog had one of his stuffed animals…)

Liam (yelling): “Sully, you get back here! You better give me that!”

Liam (muttering to himself): “I’m going to go put on some underwear, so he takes me seriously.”

Example 2:

Me: “Hey, I think the dog isn’t as freaked out by grown men anymore! He totally stopped barking at this one guy, after just a minute, and then he even licked sweat off his forehead.”

Tracy: “Um…why is a guy sweating in your house?”

Me: “He was a mover, pervert.”

Tracy: “Maybe he only likes sweaty men?”

Me: “Maybe he only likes men that take shit from our house.”

Example 3:

Caolinn: “I think the dog relates to me.”

Me: “The dog spends half his day drinking from the toilet and trying to eat pads out of the garbage.”

Caolinn: “Well…aside from that.”

Why Does the Dog’s Butt Smell Like Listerine?

Miracles don’t just happen on tortillas, folks.

Every night, after I tuck her in, my daughter wants me to lay down with her, which inevitably results in the dog (Sully) jumping in the bed, as well.

Me: “Yeah, there’s nothing more relaxing than listening to the dulcet tones of Sully, licking himself.  Yeah, that’s it, boy…really get on in there.”

Caolinn: “Hey, he likes to keep himself clean.”

Me: “If he likes to be clean, you’d think he wouldn’t hate baths so much.  You’d think he’d be all, ‘Hey, there’s one less day I have to lick my own ass.'”

*moving to get up and go to my own bed*

Caolinn: “You cannot leave on that note.  Lay back down and start talking about something that doesn’t involve the dog’s anus.”

*long pause*

Me: “I got nothing.”

Caolinn: *sigh*

I Need To Stop Writing About Toileting Issues (and, shut up, spell check, it is to spelled that way! wait…to or too? nothing looks right…awww fuck it)

One of my largest conflicts in parenthood, has been in toeing that thick, fat line that lies between hovering over my children like some sort of demented helicopter, and flinging those little suckers out of the nest, while screaming, “Fly, you little bastards, fly!” Sometimes, I walk the line artfully…but, usually, it’s more drunken sailor than Wallenda Brother.

One of the areas in which I have struggled the most, was in letting them use public restrooms alone. Try as I might, I cannot get past the idea that, behind every men’s room door, lies a mustachioed creeper, just waiting to offer my sons candy, but on the flip side, my sons were definitely heading into their own gray area, where they were leaving the “Oh, aren’t they cute,” stage, and rapidly heading into “Why are those man-children in the women’s lavatory?”.

By the time they were eight, my resolve on the issue vacillated, depending on the sketchiness of the bathroom in question. Nice restaurant…no problem! Inner-city Costco…no fucking way on this Earth. Finally, there came a day in which my sons hit a tipping point, where they were no longer Ladies’ Lounge appropriate.

Liam: “Mooooom, the machine took my penny!”
Me (washing my hands): “What machine?”
Liam: “The one that sells tampons. And I didn’t get a tampon, and it took my penny! What IS a tampon anyway?”

“Fly, you little bastards, fly!”

Justifiable Who-i-cide.

In a text conversation with my teenaged daughter, from the other room…while she watches Dr. Who on Netflix.

C: Ugh, that moment when Dr. Who is saving a group of people, and there is a smart*** in the group and you’re waiting for them to die, cuz you know they’re gonna go first…

Me: LOL

C: You better watch yourself smart***, you’ve made four remarks…if you make five, you’re dead.  Them’s the rules.

Me: There is something wrong with you, but I love you.

C: I know, Love you, too.  HE MADE FIVE!  HE’S GONNA DIE!

Me: Aren’t you tired, yet?

C: No.  SEVEN!  He’s made seven comments, and he’s not dead yet! NOOOO!  They killed the sweet guy instead, what are they doing!  Don’t they know how this works!?  He better have a horrible death, or Imma be pissed!

Me: I suggest that you write a strongly worded letter.

C: Oh…I will, and it will involve clever word play, so the message REALLY gets across.  I’m not having this.

Me: What season is this episode?

C: Second.

Me: And what season is that show currently on?

C: Oh…yeah…I see what you did there.  Damn it.

When I’m about to remove my pants, It’s not a good time to try and make me solve your fucking riddles, Dan Brown.

Okay, here’s the deal.  I really am (SWEAR!) a reasonably intelligent human being.  I graduated from college with honors, and I, like, read and shit.  Furthermore, I have a really good sense of humor (SWEAR!), and I can laugh at just about anything (maybe that just makes me easy?).  That having been said, I have zero intelligence or humor when it comes to taking a public piss.

Okay, so, yes, I am not a superfan of dropping my pants in public (shaddup those of you who have seen me drunk), and touching flesh to porcelain without 5 layers of tissue between my tender haunches and the seat of ten-thousand asses.  And, yes, I do always flush with my feet (Hey, if you’re touching that thing after me, you’re the idiot, for a variety of reasons.), and turn on the faucets with one piece of paper towel, and then open the door to leave with a different one.  And, YES, I do usually follow this up with some sanitizer from my purse, but that stuff saves lives AND smells good.

Christ, now that I’m reading this…I need serious help.  Anyhoooo…

My real argument with public restrooms is when some joint, usually a restaurant, decides to cutely label their bathrooms with something other than “Men” and “Women”.  For reasons that are beyond me, and that completely refute any claims I make on being either smart and/or a good-time-girl, this shit completely freaks me out.

It doesn’t matter that I lived in friggin’ Germany, I will stand in the restroom hallway, panicked, second guessing myself like a motherfucker about whether I am, in fact, a Damen or Herren, and wondering why in the hell I wanted to eat schnitzel in the first place.  I don’t even care if they’ve included a picture of an actual senorita, with a Senorita sign, I will enter that room, slowly as all hell, eyes peeled for a urinal.

Worse…the VERY WORST…are the pithy, bullshit signs, usually at theme restaurants, that aren’t as obvious, and then I’m in a full-blown panic, trying to guess whether I’m a “Captain” or a “First Mate”, and whether they’re assessing me for gender or for actual leadership capacity, and all I wanted to do was fucking pee.  And who said I can’t be a “Caballero”?  I like horses…I’m good with a sword…frankly, this is Goddamned 2013, and if I want to defend Mexico or my hacienda, I think I should be afforded the same opportunity as any other person.

I think at this point, the best bet would be if someone just posted a sign that said, “Hey…you…yeah, the one with the red hair…this is the one you’re looking for,” but let’s be honest, even if they did…that would freak me out for completely different reasons.  *sigh*

My dog sucks at physics.

Here’s the thing…my dog is a smooth motherfucker.  From the time he was rescued as a puppy, he has been as close to perfect an animal as you get.  It has taken little to no effort to get him potty trained, crate trained, command trained, and he even goes leash-free when we feel like it, because he’s that badass.  Aside from a rather rampant obsession with tissues, and who doesn’t love a good used tissue, he chews on nothing.  When he has to puke, he even deliberately runs and does it on the tile, so he doesn’t mess up the carpet.  Seriously…best dog ever.

The one thing…the ONE THING that I need this dog to learn is that two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time, so if anyone knows a good physicist/dog trainer, please drop me a line, so my daughter can ride to the dog park without looking like this.

Pauli Principle? Whaaaaa?

Children’s Literature is clearly being written by perverts and weirdos. How do I get in on this? Seriously…I’m a natural.

So there I was…minding my own business, when I randomly found the following book, sitting on top of a shelf.

Fanstastic, yes?  At the time, I posted it to Facebook, asking friends and family (most of whom would probably deny me three times, even without fear of execution) what they thought the possible secret could be.  I mean…come on…it’s a cat.  If they were people they would openly kill with such guile, that authorities would have very little want to even bother prosecuting them for it.  (Although…I have heard of a lawyer who would totally take that case.)  I, personally, was holding out that the cat in question had two separate families,  being that I had recently read this horrifying article, that showed those little bastards were  like traveling salesmen in the sixties, and had a family on every block: http://www.kittycams.uga.edu/research.html.  Another friend was holding out hope that the cat in question was about to come out of the closet (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but I think he was just misled by the rainbow lettering on the front cover.

In the end, the truth was finally revealed…

Yes, that’s right…an out-of-wedlock, youthful pregnancy, in which the shame of her condition caused her to birth her babies in solitude.  I like to picture her biting on a leather belt, to keep the mewling to a minimum.  Apparently, in this scenario, the birth of unwanted, fatherless kittens is a great birthday present.  Because nothing, and I do mean NOTHING, is a better present than some afterbirth getting on your favorite sweater.

Most alarming, perhaps, is how the cat got into that drawer in the first place.  Apparently, in this tale of shame and woe…they’ve also grown thumbs.  Which begs the question, if they have thumbs, then why no condoms?  Super irresponsible, Tabby.