Is there an allergist in the house?
Every so often I get an email asking me if we’ve finally resolved Chickadee’s skin issues and seeing a specialist, and my response is generally “Ummm… mumble mumble oh look, something shiny! She’s fine, thanks,” because—just like last year—as soon as the weather started to cool off, her skin healed up. Just like that.
And I’m left trying to figure out if if makes sense to go see a specialist while she’s perfectly fine. I do gesture a lot when I talk, so maybe I can convey the full horror of the height of the Creeping Crud days, but still. I just don’t know whether that’s the thing to do. But I also know that come next spring it’s going to start all over again, sooooo… yeah.
In the meantime, apparently life was not exciting enough. So I decided to have my own medical mystery. Except that I didn’t so much “decide” as I just “came down with.” read more…
Train me
I’m starting a training class tonight for Licorice, except that it’s really a class to train ME, which I know, but still strikes me as amusing. I mean, I’ve got this book all about training your pet and I’m still trying to decide if I want to train her to ring a bell to go outside, because it’s apparently a fairly easy thing to train and the idea cracks me up.
Not that I don’t totally enjoy her just dancing around and jumping on me when she remembers she has to pee….
Of course, the problem with the bell is that the dog may then ring just to go outside and play, which is fine and dandy, I suppose, except that right now she is Velcro Doggy and wants me with her all the time, and I don’t actually feel like going outside every ten minutes to eat grass.
Anyway, I shall start learning all about this and more, very soon. read more…
Lost in translation
You would think that—after nine and three-quarters year with the child—I would know certain things right off the bat, even those that require a bit of interpretation.
Like, say, that, “I may need a little help here” = “I just spilled an entire gallon of milk.”
Or that, “I had kind of a bad day today” = “Did the principal call yet?”
Or, in the case of this morning, that “My head hurts” = “I have a fever that puts my head at roughly the same temperature as the surface of the sun.”
Sorry it took me an hour to get you that Advil, kid. I really did think you were just thirsty when you said it the first time….
Sometimes love isn’t complicated
It’s been many, many years since I had a pet, and unfortunately a lot of my memories of the last dog I had are bound up in accusations from my ex that I didn’t really love him (the dog, though projection is a marvelous thing), and then, of course, the end of the dog’s tenure with me and the kids, when he (the dog, again) was pretty much crazy and wanted nothing more than to tear the UPS man limb from limb.
As much as I love my favorite humans, human relationships are anything but simple; we all have emotions and then opinions and loooong memories and before you know it, a discussion about who cleans up after dinner has blossomed into how you never let anyone have any fun ever. Not that I don’t love those sorts of things, too (um, love may be a strong word for that PARTICULAR interaction…), but it’s all just so laden with meaning, history, intention, selfhood struggles, etc.
But dogs. Dogs, man. The right dog is just love covered with fur. read more…
We need that money for dog food
Both of my children were very excited to bring home the paperwork pertaining to some gifted enrichment program available in connection with the university. Happy little geeklets that they are, the idea of spending even MORE time doing math sounded pretty awesometastic to them, and they were absolutely crushed when I told them we wouldn’t be enrolling.
The cost is $350 for three months. APIECE. So, $700 if I wanted to enroll both kids. I’m sure it’s a wonderful program, but I explained that I just don’t love them that much. And besides, they’re already in the (free) gifted program at school! They don’t want to wear out their giftedness before they even have a chance to take the SAT!
Finally I had to tell them to quit their whining and get their extra learning the old-fashioned way that God intended—playing computer games. I’m pretty sure there was some muttering after that, but I’d stopped listening. (Probably because I never got to go to expensive enrichment programs when I was a kid, and I have the attention span of a gnat.)
Violation of innocence
So I took Licorice to the new vet today. I wanted to get her checked out, establish care, and in general just make sure that my little snuzzy wuzzy snookums was doing okay.
Because Licorice came from a local rescue organization, she is “fully vetted” already, which means she’d been to their vet (who is fine, but is not the vet we chose) and dewormed and everything. Of course, AFTER I made her an appointment with the NEW vet, her foster mom mailed to say that, Oops! She needs another set of booster shots! And she can get those for free at the old vet, they will cover it!
After some consideration, I decided to just go ahead with the new vet appointment, even though I’d then be paying for something I could get for free. No on ever accused me of being the brightest bulb on the marquee.
But oh, poor Licorice. I had no idea what she was in for. read more…
Sweet as candy
I’ll tell you the truth: This past week I really began to despair of us ever finding the right dog. I mean, I knew it would happen, intellectually, but emotionally I was feeling like an unfit mother. (Thank goodness I’m not melodramatic or anything, right?) If only things had gone better with Super! If only the right dog hadn’t already been promised to someone else! If only I was just a better person!
Have I mentioned about how I’m a joy to live with…?
I kept telling the kids that when we found the right dog, we would all know it. So when a little 3-year-old shih tzu mix popped up on the page of a local rescue, there was a little tug on my heartstrings, a little quickening of my pulse, and then an immediate feeling of doom and gloom. “We’ll want her but someone else will get her,” I thought. “Or we’ll want her and they won’t pick us.” I filled out the application, but I tried not to get my hopes up. And I didn’t even tell the kids. read more…
Baby’s first F
Have I mentioned how much Chickadee loves middle school? Because she does, so much. She loves her teachers, she’s made a bunch of new friends, she’s enjoying the challenges, etc. It’s all been great.
Or, it was, until first quarter progress reports came home.
97, 100, 98, 96, 100, 100, 65. Sixty-five. SIXTY FIVE. As in, a big fat F.
But sure that 65 would be in some class she hates or in band or something else non-academic, right, on account of she’s got that big beautiful brain and she’s brilliant and all?
Nope. Her 65 is in… English. Too bad she doesn’t have a parent who’s a writer or anything…. read more…
Love tells the story
One of the last boxes I unpacked this weekend was clearly one that had lived in my last basment, half-unpacked, and then had a generous measure of “I’m nearly done packing but I don’t know where to put this stuff” items dumped in on top of it. I’m glad I took the time to go through it, because it did hold several items of sentimental value (“MAMA YOU ARE THE BEST MAMA LUV MONKYE MONKEY”) and a couple of things I’d assumed were lost forever. It also held Otto’s wedding gift to me and my ex.
My first wedding was in 1994. I was 12. (I slay me. And no, I never tire of that joke.) Despite having grown up on the east coast, we were in grad school in California and it seemed to make the most sense to get married locally, rather than trying to coordinate a wedding long-distance. As a result, not very many of our friends came. Actually, I take that back; not very many of MY friends came. My ex is a few years older and more of his friends were finished with school and had actual jobs.
Otto had a job, but not a particularly lucrative one, and I was surprised when he told me he would find a way to get to my wedding. read more…
Still searching
Me and Petfinder are BFFs right now. Except that we’re actually more like frenemies, because I spend hours with it, but really, Petfinder DRIVES ME INSANE. There don’t seem to be any sort of rules or regulations about what information people put out there about the animals. So while one listing will tell you that Riley is precisely two-and-three-quarters-years old and enjoys a nice chicken-smoked rawhide in the late afternoon after a cup of food at breakfast, a nice 47-minutes lunchtime walk (wherein he is a perfect gentleman on the leash) and an afternoon nap curled up in front of a television showing Spanish soap operas, another listing says that Sugar is a dog and she costs $200.
It’s maddening.
Add to that the fact that entering your zip code seems to have very little influence on how close to you any given listing is (Petfinder is POSITIVE I want to drive to South Carolina for a dog; I have no idea why), and you’ve got a situation where I spend a lot of time on their site, but also a lot of time muttering things that are less than complimentary. read more…