Life, the Universe, and Everything

Puppy poop

That said, here's a real post...

We have to get rid of some puppies. Remember how easy it was last time? It's nowhere near that easy this time. We've had the puppies for almost a year now and Audrey for 2. We got them when they were little puppies and now they're grown (a lot!). They have personalities.

Stinky is a tasmanian devil. He runs around like crazy and is dumb as a post, but he's so lovable. He just about shakes himself apart everytime you go out to see them. He nearly trips over his own feet, he's so happy to see you. He rarely remembers to sit until you push his butt down, and can hardly stay there once you do. He's too excited. He plays with the other dogs and hides in holes in the ground only to leap out and surprise another dog. (Well not so much anymore) Dirty lays down for belly rubs, and Stinky remembers how much he likes them and steps all over her to get his belly rubbed too, but wants so much to lick you that he can't lay still. He follows Audrey around like she's his hero and wouldn't leave her side after she got back form surgery. He's a spaz but that's not all bad. And he's Anya's dog.

Dirty is a thinker and a climber. She climbs to the top of the kids' slide and when she wants down, she slides on her front legs and her butt. She knows when she or another dog is doing soemthing they shouldn't. That doesn't stop her, but she wanders around til she can find a stick or something to put in her mouth. "What me? I wasn't barking. I was just chewing on this stick here." She climbed to the top of our patio table to lay down on it (and eat the umbrella, but let's not talk about that). She's calmer than Stinky, and we didn't get her fixed, because I thought it'd be neat to maybe breed her and let the kids be a part of watching puppies being born and playing with them afterward until they get adopted out. Ally picked her out and hangs all over her and she doesn't mind.

Rob picked Audrey out. She is a sweet, sweet dog. She's the calmest of all, and we've had her for 2 years now. She's settled down, and isn't the rowdy puppy that Stinky is. She actually never was. She would love to be an indoor dog. She got sent outside when she was chewing things, but could have come back in long ago if we didn't have the puppies outside. She sits and lays down, and hates to get in trouble. It makes her sad. She always looks like she's smiling. She played fetch and loved it (before those stupid puppies started casing her ball. How dare they?) She's awesome with the kids, and doesn't accidentally knock them over near as much as the puppies. She loves peanut butter. She sees us inside and whines at the door wanting to be with us.

And 3 dogs are killing our backyard. The yard stinks, even when it's been cleaned up. The grass isn't coming up. They've created a path through the yard where I'm not sure grass will ever come back. We have to hang the swings over the top of the swingset, so they won't get bored and chew them up (again). We can't send the kids out to play in the sandbox, because 3 dogs is too many to fend off when they want attention. They can't run through the yard, because 3 dogs will chase them happily and accidentally knock them over and/or step on them. 3 dogs poop too much. Our backyard is not ours anymore. It's the dogs'. Why was a backyard a requirement for buying a house, if we can't use it? We can't keep up with 3 dogs. We can't train 1 puppy when they other one is jumping on you (actually, they don't jump on us. They did get that training). You say "Sit Dirty" and when you try to show her by pushing her butt down, Stinky licks you in the face. Then Audrey gets jealous and sticks her nose in your ear. 3 is just too hard.

They're all good dogs, though, and we let the kids pick them out. So we've talked about it with them and they both agree that Stinky is the least trained, so they're not so attached to him. He's not as easy to hug. And Audrey is such a good dog, but they like Dirty the best. It's hard for Rob, but I think we've going to keep Dirty and find a home for the other 2. It's so hard this time. I don't like it. But I want my yard back. One dog, we can handle. And as much as I like Audrey, without the puppies around, I know she'd beg to be let in constnatly. She wants to be around people. If we keep Dirty, maybe we can still do the puppy thing someday. Can you tell I'm justifying this to myself?

 

Know anyone who wants a good dog or two?

Technical difficulties

It's getting harder to blog. My schedule is getting busier and busier, work is monitoring internet usage, so I stay off during the day. Since Ally started school, I have to work later, and thus come home later. I have at most 2.5 hours with the kids in the evening, and, god, it's not enough. I constantly feel like I'm shorting them in one way or another. They only get a bath every other day or so, because it's just not how I want to spend the time with them. We have dish now, and I feel guilty becasue Ally loves those nature shows, they're educational, that's one of the reasons why we got the dish in the first place, but she never has time to watch them. Supper takes forever, and it's getting nicer out, and there just always seems like there's too much to do. I want them to have friends to play with and play with the dogs and have time in the sandbox (my god, Ally used to love the sandbox! We could sit her in it for hours and sit on the deck soaking up the sun), and instead, she's sitting at after-care waiting for someone to come and get her (and playing on the playground, granted, but she's not at home) and Anya's at day care (also on the playground). They're getting fresh air and having time to play, but I'm missing it. And then we get home and I'm missing it anyway, because they're playing make-believe games on their own while I'm trying to sort and folr, and put away the 5 loads of laundry I managed (or Rob) to get washed, but is sitting in a pile in my room collecting cat hair until I manage to get something done iwth it.

So I give this up, and I think about how it will help free up some time, but then I hear Mom laughing because Ally is gullible and she knows that because I wrote about it. And I thnk about why I started this blog in the first place. I wanted to connect with my family. I wanted to have a closer tie to them than I did before. I wanted share the love I have for my kdis and the fun things they do. To celebrate my life. And then it turned into something more. I got to thinking about my relationship with my parents, and how I just took them for granted most of my life and never even considered them as people. I never considered the impact I was having on them. I want to make a note of the person I am, and the person I'm becoming because after having kids, and raising them day-to-day: the person I am is changing. I want to have something to remind me because you can't capture a moment later. If you don't do it now, it's gone, changed by the impressions future events leave and remembered imperfectly. I wanted to capture a snapshot of time, since you can't take pictures of feelings and conversations. And I don't want to give up writing.

But it gets harder. Kids get so much more complicated as they grow. It's no simple task to relate an encounter anymore. They get complicated and can actually have a conversation with you. There haven't been Conversations from a Car for so long, because those conversations are actually conversations. Not just little one-liners tidbits that I can jot down and move on. Half the time I forget what I wanted to blog about before I get a chance anyway.

And those things that are really seriously on my mind? Are too hard. How can I deal with the feelings of failure that come when one daughter can't manage to get her teeth brushed in less than 10 minutes? When I find myself yelling at her constantly, because it's the only way she'll hear me? And I wonder how much of it's my fault because I spent too much time doing things for her instead of giving her any responsibilities of her own. I wonder how I could have done things differently so that she could have some idea of authority and respect for older people. But I don't have respect myself for adults, just because they're adults. They still might be idiots. But the point is that she is 6 and not allowed to call them on it. How do you teach a 6 year old that and not reek of hypocrisy? So she gets in trouble and it's my fault.

How do you deal with the fact that there's something medically wrong with your 3 year old and you have no idea what it is? You stand by helplessly and listen to a bunch of crackpots and nurse practitioners (same things, right?) throw random theories at you and have to sort through to guess which one might be right? Which course of action might not affect her development negatively as a side affect? Decide whether the side effects of one medicine might be worse than the falling down itself? Give your daughter a pill twice a day and not break down every single time she takes it happily and thanks me for giving it to her in a spoon full of applesauce instead of making her try to swallow it without (Tip: if you have to convince a kid to take a pill, give it to them once and let them chew it up. They'll be thankful for not having to taste it forever after) one and not know if you've made the right decision. And then when she stops falling down, you cry because the pills treat a genetic mutation that is dominant and if the pill is working that means that this may never go away, and she and her children will have to deal with this forever. How do you deal with desperately hoping that the solution you've been dying for doesn't work?

Me? I deal with it by not writing. But it's not fair. This is me too. This is who I am today, and if I'm writing this blog as a record of who I am today, it's cheating to skip this stuff. This is just as much me as any of the rest of it, and I should keep a record of it too. But it's hard.

I'm not promising more updates. But I'm not quitting. That's something, right?

Surprisingy enough, the fun fair was actually, well... fun

Yesterday, was Ally's school's (Actually I think both elementary, and the intermediate school pitched in) fun fair. This was a first for us, so we had no idea what to expect. We'd been to the open house a couple of weeks ago, though and it was a madhouse. Wow. So I was prepared for craziness. In fact, I'd kinda planned on it.

I had volunteered to help set up. It was that or work the games during the fair. I figured that setting up would be less hectic and I wanted to be able to go with the kids to the fair. So Friday night I left work early and went to the school. I got put no cotton candy duty. Have you ever made cotton candy? I hadn't. It turns out that it's a gigantic mess. Go figure. I mean who would have thought that adding floss sugar to a little jar with holes in it and then spinning it around to fling the stuff everywhere making a fine web of sugary goodness would be messy? And then of course comes the good part. You have to stick your arm into the machine to twirl it up into a ball. We came away looking like we'd been extras in Arachnaphobia. And when you first start up the machine, it lets fly these fine little tendrils that escape the enclosure that's supposed to hold it all in and they go flying around the room everywhere. Of course the kddis helping out were thrilled. They were running around the room with their tongues hanging out staring up at pieces coming down and running into each other trying to be the first one there to catch it. Can you say sugar high? Anyway, we made around 350 bags of it.

To the fun fair...

It was set up all over the school. I was told that this was the first year they had done it that way, and I am sooo glad I wasn't there the other years. In the library, they had a magician (more on that later). In the hallway outside the library they had face painting. In the cafeteria, they had cotton candy, popcorn, pizza, slushies, nachos, chips, and a bake sale. in the hallway outside the office, they had tables (lots of tables) of silent auction stuff. Then there were more tables of raffle items that had been donated, too. In the gym they had a generic skeeball game, a baseball toss game, a beabag toss game, a putt-putt game, a plinko game, a balloon dart game, grand prize game game (Did anyone else watch that every morning religiously like me? I think it was on at 7:17 every weekday. I was so sure that I could have won that bike and $100 bill), and a big inflatable slide and inflatable obstacle course and probably more. Tickets were 4 for $1, and most games were 2 tickets. The inflatables were 1. Not too bad for a fair. Outside the gym, there were younger type games for 1 ticket. Outisde the Kindergarten rooms, there was a book fair set up. And just past it was a cake walk. I can't even imagine trying to shove all that in the cafeteria. I'm assuming it expanded quite a bit this year.

So the first thing we did was head to the magician. We got there about 10 minutes before his first show. Wait, that's not true. The first thing we did (meaning me) was to use the fun fair shamelessly to giad the children into cleaning their rooms. Ally even volunteered to vaccuum for me. God how I love extortion.

So anyway the magician. He was mostly a juggler but the kids loved him. He picked volunteers by haivng the kids make faces. He picked the funniest. Ally got the first one. She was all over that. So he got her in fornt of everybody and asked her name. he was shocked. That was his favorite girl name becuase it was his mother's name. He asked where she lived. Springfield? Oh my goodness. THAT was his father's name. Ha ha. Everybody had a good laugh, but Ally thought it was true. 6 year olds can be quite gulilble. He gave her a little foam ball and made her hold it tight in her hand. Then he took another one and made it invisible (Do you see the ball right here in my hand? No. oh, that's because I dropped it. How about now? no. why not? because it's invisible) Then he made it appear in her hand with the other one. She was delighted.

Luckily the kdis don't like face painting, so we didn't have to stand in line for that. We went for lunch. Ally discovered she had a loose tooth. And then all of a sudden, we had been there for an hour and not played a single game. So off to the gym we went. Anya doesn't like the fancy bounce things. She only likes the plain old flat ones you can run around in. So I gave Ally tickets and off she went. Anya and I played games. I doled out the tickets for Ally 3 or 4 at a time, so she had to keep coming back. She only managed to loose her shoes twice. I think she would have been thrilled just to play on the inflatables all day. Anya was a different story. She wanted to play those games and collect prize tickets. She had no idea what the prizes were, but they were PRIZES. I think that's all that matters. After all, that's the principle that keeps Chuck-E-Cheese in businesss, right?

After Anya had done a bunch of games and Ally had done a few and told everyone she knew and a few people she didn't about her loose tooth, we headed down the hall for more games. And then they discovered the cake walk. Except it was a bake walk, becuase there were no cakes. Just brownies and cookies and such. The kids were determined to win. They wasted their last tickets trying to get cookies, which was crazy because I had already promised them some of the cotton candy I had slaved over, but whatever. I got to sit down. And on the last try, one of Ally's friends won a plate of iced sugar cookies. And shared them. So all was well with the world.

We had only to redeem the prize tickets (For some crappy little eater egg shaped ball things that Anya loves, and a little book for Ally to read) and get our cotton candy and head out. Ally has figured out the eat-yours-quick-and-maybe-someone-will-share-theirs-with-you theory, and her cotton candy disappeared. Anya still has some left. And she'll probably share it with Ally.

But the best thing about the whole day is that there was no whining. The kdis were on their best behavior and weren't running away, and it wasn't nearly as crowded as I thought it was going to be (although it WAS crowded). And we just had a good time. It was awesome.

Guess who has a loose tooth