Good morning Everyone!
I took a mini-vacation from this blog (three days – Friday, Monday and Tuesday) but it seems like forever since I last was here. I’m glad to be back with all of you!
Not that kind of vacation - I would still be there!
Yesterday morning, December 27th, brought great joy to our household. Was it due to Christmas? No, we had that celebration Sunday. Was it because it was my birthday? No, but it was my birthday and we did celebrate it. Was it because Kayla decided to spontaneously clean her room and throw out all of her junk and put all of the good stuff back neatly just for the fun of it? Wrong again – I think that would fall under the classification of miracle.
No, the event that brought such joy was the arrival of the post-Christmas trash pickup. Christmas was, as you know, on Sunday, and Mark spent Monday cleaning out the garage, so by the time trash pickup day got here, our dumpster had floweth over and there were four good size boxes full of trash beside it. However, just like Santa or the tooth fairy (although with just a bit more noise – the dogs sometimes hear the truck and bark), sometime early in the morning the trashmen came and emptied our dumpster and relieved us of our trash.
This may seem a rather mundane thing to celebrate, but we no longer take trash collection over the holiday season for granted – the first and second years we were in this house, we went without trash collection for two weeks between Christmas and New Years! Kayla was five and six at the time, and we had even more Christmas left-overs than we have now, so we were in dire straits. I was considering wandering the streets of our town asking complete strangers at Wal-Mart “Brother, can you spare a trashcan?” By the time the garbage truck toodled its way down our street that third week, we literally chased it down, and talked to the driver and assistant as fast as we could to keep them there while we deposited trash bags into the truck at rapid speed. They had originally intended just to empty our dumpster and move on!
That was, however, a different waste disposal company and a different time (our neighborhood was relatively new and we were one of only two houses in it, so I think the replacement/holiday driver just didn’t know we were here), but ever since then we are quite grateful when our trash gets picked up Christmas week!
Mandy
Monday afternoon late, Kayla was outside playing on the porch and the dogs were in the back yard for a while. Suddenly Kayla opened the door to announce that Mandy, sometimes known as “Bad Dog”, had spent some time rolling in…well, the polite term would be, I think, biological waste products, probably her own. I was writing at the time, so I told Kayla to wipe it off of Mandy with some paper towels. I saw Kayla walk out with some paper towels, and then she came back in to say it wasn’t working very well. I absent-mindedly mumbled that perhaps she should use more water (I had a 14,000 word article on depression I was trying to finish for a client) and didn’t really notice the grim-faced ten year old hauling the long but short white dog across the den into the bathroom. I did hear the water start running, but since I had also suggested at some point that it would be a good idea for Kayla to take a bath, I thought that was what was happening.
Boy was I wrong! About fifteen minutes later, the door opened and a clean, wet but not drenched Mandy came tearing out of the bathroom. When Mark and I asked what happened, Kayla told us that she had given Mandy a shower! She was very proud of herself for doing so, too. (In her defense, the house rule is “Do not drag the dog into the bathtub with you because you want a friend to take a bath with.” Since she was forcing a dog into the bathtub to clean her, I guess she didn’t technically break the rule.) She said that she had to pop Mandy once on the rear to get her to finish going into the tub, but once she did, Mandy sat down in the bathtub and took her shower with good grace. Kayla used Dove to clean her off, which I’m pretty sure is not a dog registered product but hopefully just one time won’t do Mandy’s coat any harm. Kayla even cleaned the tub and shower out afterwards without being told. Mandy has viewed Kayla with a new respect since then!
Pardon me; I just had to take a break for a minute to retrieve a ball of black yarn from Darwin, which he was tossing around trying to unstring, which brings me to another post-holiday joy – saving Darwin from the batteries.
Darwin
Darwin, also known by the alias “No-No”, loves things that roll that he can chase around the house at will. Unbeknownst to any of us, he decided to pluck a package of AAA batteries off of the coffee table. Since the package was open already, 8 triple AAA batteries went rolling off in many directions, and Darwin was in puppy Nirvana. I did look up once to see him pawing at something under the couch, but, silly me, I thought it was one of his balls or other toys that roll that he was playing with. It wasn’t until I heard unusual chewing sounds that I went around the corner to discover Darwin happily munching on a AAA battery. While I have discovered that there are many things that dogs can eat, such as a complete tube of Neosporin, and not suffer any harm, I am pretty sure that AAA batteries are not one of them. Kayla and I had a fun adventure tracking down all 8 of the batteries to be sure that he hadn’t punctured or ingested any of them. We found two with teeth marks on them at various places in the house, but fortunately he hadn’t broken the casing, and then found the other six under different objects – one under the love seat, two under the ottoman, one under the coach and two that had rolled underneath dog beds. We heaved a sigh of relief after we found the last one. Darwin thought the group participation aspect of the battery play was the best part!
Well, I think I have written more than enough to make up for the three days I missed, so I better stop before I have written the equivalent of a full length novel! I hope each of you had a very Merry Christmas and post-Christmas adventures at least as exciting as mine!
Have a great day!
Nancy
Tales from the Mom-Side 