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September 7, 2011, at 10:06 am
 I knew Evan would do okay for his first day of school, I’ve been taking him to his school for their drop-in daycare program just to get him used to the facility, but I was still wary of how he would do in a more structured environment.
One of the things my dad repeatedly said to me while I was growing up was that his job as a parent was to make himself expendable – his job was to give me the life skills so I could survive on my own.
Evan’s young enough that I haven’t really had a chance to impart those kinds of skills on him. He can put his sandals and his fire truck boots on by himself, he can use a fork and a spoon (although a cup has proven to be a bit tricky), but that’s pretty much it. Or so I thought.
When Evan walked into his first day of school this morning, we found his friend Ryden crying for his mom. Evan wasn’t even worried about me leaving or about giving me a hug and a kiss good-bye, he kept saying “It’s okay Ryden. It’s okay Ryden. Why are you crying?” The second his teacher opened the gate to let him in he made a beeline for Ryden and I heard his sweet little voice say “It’s okay Ryden, you don’t need to cry.” Evan grabbed Ryden’s hand, Ryden stopped crying, and Evan led him over to the toys. I’ve never been more proud in my life.
As far as life skills go, I’d say that’s a pretty good one.
August 26, 2011, at 4:11 pm
I just about shat myself when Brad and I pulled up to our local thrift store to donate some of our used stuff and found this sign. I went into a long-winded rant about stupidity and how common sense just isn’t common anymore and how scared I am for Evan to have to live in this world and that no human in their right mind could possibly be stupid enough to drop off an extra kidney at their local thrift shop.
Brad just looked at me and said, “Um, Jess, I think they’re talking about electric pianos.”
August 22, 2011, at 10:56 pm
2 days ago I left 3 kiwis on the counter.
We left the house and came home to 2 kiwis on the counter.
“Did you already throw one of these away?” Brad asked.
“I can’t remember. Maybe I threw it down the sink,” I told him, not really worried about it. I have bigger things than kiwis to think about.
The next day we left and came back to 1 kiwi sitting on the counter.
“Did you throw another one of these out?” Brad asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said, looking at the only possible culprit in the house.
But there were no remains of kiwi to be found anywhere. Surely Callie wouldn’t have eaten it skin and all. There had to at least be some stickiness somewhere on the floor as she played with it – some amount of evidence of the moments before she got past the hairy outside and to the sweet center.
I looked at Callie again.
She looked back at me as innocent as can be.
I looked at the remaining kiwi and curiosity got the better of me.
I handed Callie the kiwi.
She ate it in one gulp.
“You realize you just rewarded her for getting up on the counter again,” Brad said.
For a dog I suspect is mildly retarded, she’s proving to be a lot smarter than me.
July 26, 2011, at 12:15 pm
You’ve got to wonder what kind of day it’s going to be when you look up mid-shower to find a gigantic bird shit splatter on your sky light. 
July 12, 2011, at 12:14 pm
 Sometimes I envision myself a wealthy woman, traveling to Paris, staying in the nicest hotel, ordering up the best espresso to my balcony room, and sitting back, relaxing, reading the newspaper, and when the time comes, shitting in silence.
One of the requirements for living in this house is you must have an overly developed sixth sense for my intestinal state of affairs. You must have an internal homing beacon for my bowel activity. And you must need me at the most inappropriate times. And when I say need, I mean it must be the most trivial of things that suddenly takes on the importance of DEFCON 1. You must suddenly, when you haven’t played golf in five years, need to know where those golf clubs are. The location of these golf clubs cannot wait five minutes. This is important. Or you must need more juice with a thirst of someone who has walked through the Sahara. Or, if you’re a dog, you must be desperately convinced there’s a secret portal in the bathroom from which I will escape to the park without you and eat dog treats and sniff butts like nobody’s business.
All I want is to poop in peace.
June 27, 2011, at 3:38 pm
Never send a man to do a woman’s job.
Sometimes delegating is necessary. Other times, it’s best to just do it your damn self.
I recently learned the hard way that my child’s haircut is a task best not left to my husband.
I sent Brad to the place Evan usually gets his hair cut. It was a relatively safe delegation. This girl has always done a great job, and there’s even a little note in the computer that specifically says not to take direction from my husband.
Apparently this time the note was overlooked. Brad added his two cents as he saw fit – telling her to cut a little here, a little there… by the time he was done, Evan walked out looking like Jim Carey from Dumb and Dumber. 
June 23, 2011, at 12:59 pm
Today, I didn’t have time to Callie-proof the house before I left so I did the only thing that made sense at the time. I brought her with me. One day after she pilfers grapes from the counter and I reward her by letting her come with us when I know damn well the reason she terrorizes our house is to punish us for leaving in the first place. So the bitch won.
I walked Evan into school and when I came back to the car, she was gone. Gone. She’s a 70 pound lab. My window was cracked 6 inches. Maybe 8. How she got out is beyond me. I was actually so convinced that she couldn’t possibly have fit out my window that I opened all the doors and SEARCHED for her. I don’t know where I thought a 70 pound dog could go. But I was positive there was a bigger chance of her hiding under a pile of clothes for Goodwill than fitting out that open window.
Evan’s school is on a pretty busy street, sandwiched in between even busier streets, surrounded by the freeway and some train tracks. I ran around the parking lot calling Callie’s name. Nothing. I got into my car and rolled down the window, prepared to drive around calling her name in what is certainly a bigger driving distraction than texting on my cell phone while drinking a hot coffee and applying lipstick. With a monkey in the front seat. Throwing poo at me. Of all people to call me at that instant, my husband called. I debated not answering. The last thing I wanted to do was tell him I lost his dog. Especially while she’s still missing.
Against everything I had in me, I answered anyway.
“I can’t talk right now,” I said between screams for Callie.
“Jess. Are you at Evan’s school?”
“Yes. But I can’t – ”
“Turn around.”
“Listen, I really don’t have time for this,” I said, turning around.
“Is there a Banner Bank right next to you?”
“Yeah.”
“Callie’s in there.”
“What.”
“Callie’s inside the bank. They just called me.”
At the time, it seemed like a good idea to put Brad as the contact number on Callie’s tag. In hindsight, who really has a bigger probability of losing her? We put the same thing I’ve always put on my dogs’ collars; a phone number followed by REWARD. After this, I’m thinking about scratching in a NO in front of the REWARD on Callie’s collar.
I went into Banner Bank to find Callie running wild. They didn’t have her locked up in an office or hog tied with a scarf. Not even a ”bad dog” shaved into her forehead. Instead, she had full reign of the place and she was in Heaven, running around from desk to desk, slobbering everywhere and being told how cute she was. You see, Banner Bank is a dog friendly bank and there are many a treat to be had there. Which means not only did my dog get rewarded for eating grapes off the counter by getting to come with me today, she got rewarded for jumping out my car window with tons of treats and attention.
Bitch.
June 22, 2011, at 10:58 pm
Not many people know this, but grapes are actually really bad for dogs. It has something to do with their kidneys or their liver, or whatever – that’s not important. What is important, is dogs shouldn’t eat grapes and I know this. So when we got Callie, I put the grapes we had on the counter into the freezer. (If you haven’t had frozen grapes, you’re missing out.)
The other day we actually had a day of sun, so to celebrate, I put the grapes in the food processor and made grape sorbet.
Before I continue, there are a few things you should know:
1.) We have some cups that were my husband’s grandmother’s that I absolutely adore.
2.) I’ve really been feeling a burden about the amount of waste we create and I’ve been making a huge effort to do more than just recycle and use cloth bags. I try to make sure anything and everything that can compost goes in the yard waste container. This means I often pile things like banana peels, orange peels, the ends of zucchini, etc on the counter until I have a chance to run it outside.
Back to the sorbet. Brad put his sorbet in one of the cups from his grandma and then stuck it into the freezer and I was worried the cold would break it. So I put it on the counter to defrost, not in the sink, where I knew it would be dumped out and wouldn’t make it to the yard waste.
Enter Callie.
I know she’s a counter bandit. We’ve dealt with it from day one. It was on her adoption papers. So far, she’s gotten a stick of butter, a loaf of bread, two bunches of bananas, a bag of protein powder, a bag of flour, my paint brushes, Evan’s vitamins – and those are just the things we know of. I’m not a complete idiot. When we left for the day, I shoved the sorbet to the farthest part of the counter and left, sure she couldn’t reach it. 
 No, she's not a drug addict, she's a flour thief Part of me wonders if she’s actually leaping onto the counter with all fours. Sometimes it’s the only explanation I can possibly think of.
Either way, she ate the grape sorbet.
I don’t know why we love this dog, but we do. So I rushed her to the emergency vet where they gave her charcoal to absorb the toxins and then induced vomiting. I left feeling pretty good with myself. After all, having charcoal shoved down her throat and then enduring medically induced vomiting is a better punishment than anything I could do to her.
I smugly picked her up late that night, thinking her lesson was learned and I, the human, was the victor.
The second we got home she ran to her water dish, sucked the whole thing down and then calmly walked into the living room and projectile vomited black charcoal all over my new carpet.
Now, to know just how horrible this was, you have to know a little bit about me and my carpet. I love my carpet. We have a strick no shoes in the house policy. I want to wrestle on the floor with Evan and not have to worry about rolling around in germs from a public bathroom – which, by the way, is on the bottom of all our shoes. Just think about that for a minute. Think about a nasty gas station bathroom and all the disgusting germs that reside there, and then invite all of them over to your house for an extended stay, transportation provided courtesy of your shoes. Ew.
So I’m a freak about my carpet. And along with not wanting to roll around on nasty public bathroom germs, I also don’t want to roll around in dog puke. Call me crazy. But that’s just me.
So Callie puked on my carpet. It hurt me. A little tiny piece of me died inside.
And then she went upstairs and puked on the carpet again.
That night we went to bed, believing the worst was behind us, sleeping in a cocoon of false security. In the middle of the night, I woke up to Callie on my side of the bed, looking at me expectantly.
“I’m not feeding you,” I told her, and rolled back over.
A slight whine from her and I was up and running with her towards the back door, but I was too late. We hit the linoleum and in what will most likely remain a medical mystery til the day I die, every ounce of water she drank when she got home came rushing out full force. I’m not talking about a stream of pee. It was as if her bladder exploded on my kitchen floor. I swear, I heard a splash as it hit the ground.
I let her outside and cleaned up the mess, brought her back in, walked back upstairs with her, past Evan’s bedroom, where she projectile vomited on my carpet. Again. 
June 13, 2011, at 9:19 pm
When The Universe wants to give you a swift kick to the ego, it gives you this in your fortune cookie…
June 1, 2011, at 9:54 pm
Sometimes it’s the last thing I want to do. Sometimes I just want to get in the shower shampoo once, and cover my entire body with conditioner so I can skip the lotion when I get out. Or better yet, skip the shower completely and grow dreads so thick I have to cut them out.
Technically the directions on the shampoo bottle never tell you when to stop. How many times do I rinse and repeat? Once? Twice? Twenty? I could spend the rest of my life rinsing and repeating.
Writing can be a bit like this. Sometimes I don’t want to rinse and repeat. I just want to be done.
I’ve been working on this book for longer than I care to admit. The problem? I don’t know when to stop rinsing and repeating. Non-writers ask me what’s taking so long, when am I going to be done…
My answer? When I’m done rinsing and repeating.
Is my story cleaner for it? Absolutely.
But at what point am I stripping my story of the necessary ingredients? At what point am I rendering it lifeless. With each rinse and repeat more hair falls out, and maybe soon both my story and I will be bald.
But for now I rinse.
And I repeat.
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IF YOU’RE READING A NEW POST, I’VE GONE AWOL I should be working. Not on this blog; on my book. I should be, but, obviously, I’m not. I’ve decided to allow this little indulgence because I’ve somehow convinced myself it’s an exercise in creativity. What it really is, is an exercise in self-deluded procrastination, but for now, I blog…
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