I have spent the last week of my life with exactly zero exciting things happening.

I have racked my brains, looked through my pictures, replayed the most mundane of all the days events and to no avail! It turns out when all you do is work and raise teenage hamsters not a lot of things are noteworthy.

I can tell you however that I am about ready to flea the country as long as it means that I get to leave my offspring behind!

The newest threat from Thing 1 who is now taller than I am BTW is that he is no longer going to eat. If he gets in trouble, if he has to turn off electronics, if he is asked to let the dog out. Really any and all things lead to this threat. Yesterday he laid his whole self out on the couch and refused his nightly sustenance. When I explained to him that if he is going to act like a 3 year old he is going to have to go to bed. His response was that he was clearly not a three-year-old because a 3-year-old was not courageous enough to miss all the meals provided him. In case you are wondering neither is he.

I suppose I should be grateful that this is his latest and greatest because at least hunger strikes are quiet. For the last couple of weeks, he has also taken to yelling at ear shattering levels. Then again, I probably don’t have to tell you this whereas you no doubt have heard him all the way over in Cal-I-for-ni-a! The things he yells are downright comedic. I mean at least they would be if I wasn’t worried that he was causing me to go deaf and all. I am making him go to trek which is apparently the same as torturing him. He got in the car after having to learn how to square dance and was then denied a treat because they ran out and told me that in no uncertain terms would he be going. He then informed me that he was going to eat soap and die and that would then teach me not to push things on him. I have also had him tell me that he is going to burn down my house, cut my car in half, and shatter all the windows in my house which has led me to wonder if I am raising the hulk. I would actually support any and all of those actions if I got to watch any of them transpire. I mean to tell you I have watched the kid try to light a candle and use 45 matches so I feel confident in saying that my house is safe.

Really though my favorite is when he tells me he is going to run away and then proceeds to try to slither all of his giant uncoordinated self out his bedroom window. It is a tall window but only 18 inches from the floor which is problem number one.  There is no real good way to attack hurling oneself from it. It also has a giant tree that sits approximately 3 feet from it so as soon as any body part exits the domain it runs smack dab into a trunk. The show is even more spectacular when he is trying to jump on his huffy bike and pedal away. I am telling you hormones are the best!

Today just as I was reorganizing my finances and seriously contemplating selling a kidney on the dark web to pay for boarding school because I can take no more something amazing happened. He came home from school and got his cleaning assignment and did it! He then went on to vacuum the living room floor and bring all of his laundry to the laundry room and unload the dishwasher. I thought about questioning things but it was so glorious that I decided not to jinx it. Then I was reminded that that same sulking angry boy is the one who made me a mom. The one who had giant blue eyes and an ET finger that pointed at all the things with wonderment. The kid who loved to be outside and ride his mach 5 which was just a ghetto trike from the 70’s. The boy whose greatest wish was to ride the bus to school and who thought I gave him the world when I talked my brother into giving him a tour of a bus compound when he didn’t qualify for school bus riding. The same kid who giggles at my jokes and tells me he loves me every night and still tries to climb on my lap even though his lap is officially bigger than mine. That is when I realized that I don’t need exciting, I don’t need adventures, I don’t need the world simply because I already have it. Even better I have it for eternity.

suns out guns out

Welp I don’t want to jinx it or anything but I think that spring may be starting to spring. Of course, now that I have said this out loud mother nature is going to recant the sunshine and send us back three spaces to snow.

I have been watching the weather like a hawk.  2 weeks ago, I made the comment to someone at work that there was no longer snow in the gutters which meant that I could finally go cycling. No sooner had that thought process escaped my lips did it start snowing. I was more than a little upset but continued to fix my bird eyes on the goal waiting and praying. This week the clouds parted and the old mercury stick showed a balmy 46 which I jumped at. I quickly called Kate and we both dusted off the old cycling shoes, threw some air in the tires and clipped in as fast as we could.

Honestly the sound of shoes clicking into place was one of the sweetest sounds I have ever heard and the whole first mile of our ride there was much happy screeching and fast pedaling. We went out with the intention of doing a 7-mile loop given that it was still not exactly perfect weather, we haven’t cycled in 5 months, and there is still a ton of gravel strewn about the roads in the country in the name of slick road prevention. We came to the fork in the road where we can turn left and venture further into no man’s land or turn right and head back into civilization. I asked Kate which way we were heading and she confidently announced that left was fine by her. We decided that we would cycle down to the river bottoms where the great crash of 2018 took place then head back in. What we forgot was that to get to the river bottoms is a 10-mile ride.

 We got to our spot and turned and that is when I felt the consequences of our decision settle in. We had luckily taken water because Kate is clever even though I figured we wouldn’t need it for such a short ride. Turns out I needed it a mere 2 miles in because my mouth was gaping open like a happy canine for the entirety of ride which makes a human mighty parched. What we didn’t take was any sort of nutrition and suddenly my legs were as heavy as though I was wearing cement shoes. I mentioned this to Kate who said oh I have some gels do you want some? I don’t particularly care for gels where as they have the exact same texture as scooping some Vaseline out of the container and I might argue the same flavor. I however was in no position to be choosy about such things and agreed to share one with her knowing full well my water levels were too low to try to wash an entire packet from my gob. It was only after I sucked it passed my beaver teeth that I realized they were from LAST season and were cast off flavors her brother had given her because the bike shop where he works can’t even convince people to purchase them. I made all sorts of heavenly bargains to actually swallow it and then my body being the jerk that it is decided that heavy legs were not a good enough reason to ingest such swill. I immediately started doing the back of mouth pukes. The kind where the offense item in question is not expelled but rather your flesh burns from the bile that leaked out in a half way attempt to clear the road. The bile in turn caused wicked heartburn and a flavor that again could not be washed out because I had a single water bottle not the 2 I needed so along I rode with heavy legs, a burning throat and heat from heartburn that could warm the souls of even the most black soul. I thought that eventually I would get my second wind but my body just laughed and laughed at that notion. By mile 16 I was so ready to be out of the saddle and I stood up to allow blood to flow to my sore extremities. It was a religious experience whereas I immediately knew my legs couldn’t hold me and I felt Lola swerve and I silently screamed out help me Jebus knowing I wouldn’t have the strength to unclip in time to prevent myself from becoming street meat.  I guess my prayers were answered because I didn’t die which was just a little sad since I knew I had more miles to go.

The next 4 miles ticked along and I knew that when it was time to turn for home that my inner endurance athlete wouldn’t allow me to leave the extra half mile on the table so with all that I had I continued to pedal so that we could round it out to 20. As we got to the stop sign in front of my house, I had Kate call the mileage and was mortified to hear 20.5 which meant we circled the block to get 21. We had accidently gone an additional 14 miles. Swinging my leg off the bike was tricky but the endorphins quelled the urge to black out. My boys brought oranges and blueberries as the lights danced in my head and suddenly all the leg fatigue and heartburn in the world didn’t hold a candle to the joy that is the first ride of the season.

I would like to pretend that my life is a fairy tale and that was the end of the story. Thing 2 reminded me that he had an all-area concert that night which meant my now sore body had to sit on bleachers at the middle school for 2 and a half hours! Today my tailbone is asking for a new home and my hip flexors have submitted their request for a weeks’ vacation. Jokes on them for tomorrow we ride again!

Who let the dogs out

Life continues to move along here in the frozen tundra. I have given up hope that words like spring, grass and sunshine actually mean anything given that all I see is dead, snow, and dirty heaps. For a moment there was a little bit of hope. In fact, it rained and exposed nearly 2 feet of dead grass covered in snow mold. But then mother nature wanted to make sure that we all knew exactly who was boss and it dumped 6 inches in one day shortly thereafter. This has become the new pattern. Wind and rain to carve out a little meltage followed promptly by a replacement snow.  It is getting really old really fast. Then I remembered that we are simply in second winter. I keep flapping my gums about second winter in the off season and everybody looks at me like I am a loon. Look whose is laughing now! In case you are wondering it is not me. We are in second winter for Pete’s sake. 

Things are getting serious though. The other day I took the wonder pup on a walk and I couldn’t figure out what was so different about the road we were on. It is a road in my subdivision and so I travel it with great regularity. I had to ponder on it for a moment. I thought that a tree had been ripped out, a house torn down or some other construction project. Much to my horror I realized that what was missing was the 14-foot snow pile that had been pushed there all winter long. It had melted or been pushed to some other location. Before you think that I have taken crazy pills I would like to inform you that there was a guy one street over in a bobcat pulling the snow berms from the front of his house out into the road and squishing them so as to expedite their melting process. This is how desperate we have all become. But perhaps no one is more desperate than I to see grass.

Simon has taken a great aversion to going outside to relieve himself. He was born in October and has never actually seen grass. I have been informed by the interwebs that going on grass in is an innate desire in dogs but I can’t confirm this due to our lack of said green stuff.  All he knows is that when his paws get cold it must be the spot to go. The boys are insistent that they take him into the basement which has epoxy that is, you guessed it, cold so if he wanders down to check out the latest smash bros session he will most likely have himself a little pit stop. The other day I was sitting in my office when I noticed that it smelled a little off. Much to my horror I looked over and spied with my little eyes a giant steaming dog poop. I got up and went upstairs to get the carpet cleaner and when I rounded the corner spied with my little eyes a second dog poop. If I was upset about the first one, I was angry about the second. I reminded myself that he is a puppy and can’t use people words and went about fetching my chemicals. He had stepped in one of his poops and walked it up the stairs so I knelt down to scrub it out. In case there was not enough fecal matter I went ahead and knelt smack dab in the center of a whiz puddle. It was enough to send me into a tizzy. I cleaned it up, went to the office to clean up the first mess and that is when I noticed that there were several dried pee stains throughout the living room floor. OF COURSE THERE WERE BECAUSE I LIVE WITH BOYS! I also noticed that both the things had cozied up in various parts of the basement and there were dirty socks, unmade guest beds, and stains on the carpets in the bedrooms. I stormed through the basement with a soaking went whiz knee picking up what felt like the aftermath of a drunken squirrel party all the while writing a fiery dissertation to my human offspring about the ramifications that were soon to follow. 

Naturally they were at the temple doing baptisms for the dead, prolly cuz Jesus knew this was the only thing that would save them so my strongly worded convictions had no ears to fall upon.

I decided that the root of all of my problems was the stupid Nintendo switch so with all my hulk smash strength I moved the entertainment center and removed all of its guts from the T.V.  put it in a box and hid it.  I then waited, stroking a hairless cat I borrowed in a chair for the victims to arrive. (okay that part is a lie but holy crap can you imagine if I had managed to pull that off?!?) I informed them when they returned that not only was the switch gone, but they were no longer welcome in my basement. The weeping and wailing that ensued was pretty intense but only fueled my angry fire. If their father had taken it away, he would have caved after two days.  My uterus gives me the ability to harness my anger and stay laser focused on doling out punishment so I did not. I have successfully used this learning moment to have them clean the basement, their bedrooms, and the playroom. I was still not ready to relinquish the basement back but I got duped.

Apparently, my son who is in the teacher’s quorum presidency planned an activity revolving around the stupid gaming system pre-maternal freak-out. I have had to dig the thing out for a one-day time out on the punishment and allow 8 stinky teenagers to come into my basement. Well played Karma well played. So help me Jebus, if I go downstairs and found additional weedle stains no amount of deity induced grace will save them!

So to sum it up, I need grass for my pupper, a fumigating machine for my basement after the 8 teenagers evacuate it this evening, and a rental agency that will loan me a hairless cat for my future endeavors.

Doggone crazy

This week I was forced to come to the realization that I have officially slipped over the edge and have become an insane dog lady. Full fledge talk to them, dress them up, and treat them as if they are a member of the family even if they are not even the same species level of crazy.

It all started when I went to the Dillard’s to look for new office clothes Old Man Myers. My father has graciously allowed him to become the warm body of the office for the remainder of tax season. This is the nice way to say that he does the crap work that no one else really wants to do. However, while he is doing the crap work, he is not allowed to look like crap so away we went.  Given that all the holidays are over stores are putting things on tremendous clearance which makes my soul incredibly happy. Of course, given that the whole store is practically on sale I wasn’t really going to sit and look at men’s socks and ties so I ventured off. Whilst alone I discovered candles and dog sweaters. You bet your bottom dollar I went ahead and picked me up both of those items. They only had the one sweater which was a blessing because I went a little hog wild and decided that if 1 candle on clearance was a good idea imagine how great 14 would be! Can you imagine how nuts it would be to own 14 sweaters !?!  I did eventually come to my senses and returned all but 2 of the candles, but the tags had already come off the sweater and it brings me much joy! He looks super fancy whereas it is a grey cable knit with a red collar. He also looks slightly embarrassed to be seen it which almost made me consider not taking him out in it. That’s when I realized that the crazy had started. I was considering the thoughts and feelings of a dog! The slope became steeper and I fell even further.

I am trying to convince the Wonderpup that he likes car rides. If I ever get to leave Rexburg again, I am going to need to take him with me and I can’t do that now given the way he chooses to ride. He sits in my lap and wiggles like he is trying to make shake and bake chicken for pete’s sakes! Eventually he wears himself out and then passes out which I am almost certain can not be good for him for a myriad of reasons. I have been taking him on small jaunts and on Saturday enlisted my niece to be the holder so that I could drive. I had to take Ma back to her car and thought it would be the perfect distance. Kate held him, sang in his ear, and almost demonstrated proper dog form by sticking her out the window but changed her mind when the frigid air hit her snout. All was going well when I remembered he was out of his water additive. It this stuff I put in his water that prevents plaque and keeps bad breath at bay. I also decided that I needed to buy him a dog harness to replace his leash. The instructions for measuring for those things is about as simple as solving all the mysteries of the universe so I thought taking my dog inside of a store and letting him try it on would remove all of the complications. They sell both the additive and the harnesses at the CAL ranch and I thought to myself that a store that caterers to animals would surely allow me to bring my animal into their establishment so away we went. It was only as I hit the parking lot that I realized that I didn’t have his leash but I couldn’t be bothered with small details such as that so against the better judgement of perhaps the whole world I took my pupper unleashed inside of a store.

I stopped and asked permission to let him try on the harness and the teenager told me of course with his mouth, but his eyes were screaming lady your dog is unleashed and you appear to be insane but you are also giant so proceed. We found the isle and the true adventure began. It turns out that there are at least a bagillion leashes, harnesses and vest on the market. I found one that I thought would fit and that is when I learned that if the instructions for measuring are vague and complicated the actual inserting of an animal into a harness is darn near impossible. There is no real way to tell which side goes on the belly and there are 3 holes instead of I don’t know say 4 which is how many legs a dog has. There is a combination of buckles, snaps, fasteners and loops that would make any souls head spin. The list looks even bigger to a soul who is holding a scared puppy who is trying to kamikaze from my death grip to meet his imminent doom on the tiles below. As if the combination of closures isn’t enough the use the most random breeds to indicate what size one needs to outfit their animal makes the problem even bigger. One of their really crappy “helpful” breed choices was terrier. Who on earth owns just a terrier? Are they not aware that there are at least 50 types? I might have made that number up, mainly because I did a quick google search to validate myself and it required reading and math to come up with the real number and aint nobody got time for that. Seriously though how in the devil am I supposed to know how big my dog is in relation to other dogs? At first Kate and I tried to just shove him into a few harnesses. It ended badly so then we upped the game and googled dogs of similar size. While I was trying to do scientific research, I set my dog down. He immediately started to lick the floor, and to add insult to injury google also didn’t have an answer to that question. I am beginning to think google can’t solve all of my problems after all but I digress. Realizing that wasn’t going to end well I sat on the filthy floor instead and put him in my lap.  I was in too deep to consider exactly how vile that floor was. I then tried to distract him with a toy. I figured it would add to the allure when another human bought it and gave it to their animal because now it would smell like another dog and don’t all dogs really want that instead of new toy smell? The only thing Simon wanted on the toy was the tag and I didn’t want to have to buy the toy after he destroyed the tag so I put it back. At this point a girl had wandered onto the isle and had very judgey eyes. I knew she didn’t need anything after exactly 2 seconds but was only there to witness the circus act currently in progress on aisle 9. I remained cool and didn’t screech Get outta here creep in hopes that karma would bless me. Thankfully it did, that or Kate is much better at technology than I am and she sussed out which size we would need and bless her little soul also figured out how to correctly get the dog in to boot. She got him in there and as a cosmic joke it was too large. She too was in too deep and decided that she would simply tighten it and using her teeth and sheer force of will got the sliding things to move to shrink it down. By this point the doggo was not having any of this and out of desperation I opened a treat and shoved it in his general direction. I was so desperate I didn’t even check to see if it was gluten free and decided that if it wasn’t it would be my penance for making bad decisions. I quickly explained to Kate that it was the exact same thing as giving jelly beans to a toddler in the grocery store which both justified my actions and placated her. By some miracle everything worked and I almost pushed my luck in trying to decide if I really wanted a different color. Kate quickly brought me back to the urgency of the situation and we made our way to checkout.

I figured we were home free but of course my treat didn’t have a bar code and the guy had to have a person go check the price. Some guy walked over and started to pet Simon telling us how he had a Boston Terrier as well and how he loved them all. All that validation was too much for my boy and he lost it and whizzed all down Kate’s shirt. While her luck had turned for the worse, I used the delay to realize that they had over charged me for the harness. She lost, I won which is about as an accurate description of life as I can see.

 Luckily, she loves me and not only forgave me instantly but also helped to wrangle my dog into his handsome sweater and new harness and came with me on a walk while her shirt was in the wash. I wonder if she will agree to go boot shopping for him next week? I will keep you posted. Until then here is a bonus picture.