Dog Interpreter

When I was little, I once told my parents that I knew what my grandparent's dog was thinking. It wasn't earth shattering, I just told them the dog wanted to go out. They asked how I knew that and I said, "He said, ruff ruff, I want to go out."

They laughed and they laughed. And laughed. Still a funny story, 36 years later.

Yesterday I was wondering what I was thinking when I said that. Was I incredibly bored at my grandparents house and looking for something interesting to do? Could I actually read the dog's mind? Was I very precocious and adorable? A big fat liar?

And why was I contemplating this? Oh, just a little something Jack said,

"Mommy. Lucy says she wants to watch the Empire Stripes* Back. Right Lucy? Yeah, she says she does."


* Not a typo.

Dogs and Babies

Running out of ideas here for blogging into the future, so I am going to go with an old standby. Awww, Bean and Jack!


Aww, Lucy and Jack!
Aww, Luke and Bean!

Happy Birthday Lucy!

From 2010

This weekend is birthday-tastic! Today is Lucy's birthday, and she got some indoor dog toys for the special occasion!

Tomorrow, I am going snowboarding with Laura for her birthday, yea!!!

And Sunday I will be using my new mixer (YEA!) to prepare for Jack's birthday.

There's A Fox, A Chicken, and a Bag of Grain...

Know how to solve that riddle? Well you would need to if you were checking into a hotel with Jack and Lucy in the rain, parked in a mud puddle, with a car full of food. I'll spare you the details until later, when it's hilarious. For now, the picture will have to do.

Girl's Night(s)

Everyone has been asking what I plan to do with my free time with the boys gone. I wasn't really sure, but as soon as I was along in the house, I went to the bathroom without anyone coming in to talk to me, or asking if they could sit on my lap. After that all my dreams for my alone time were fulfilled and I wasn't sure what to do next.

So I figured... pedis! I dropped Lucy off at Laund R Mutt for a bath and a nail trim and I went to Poshe for a pedicure of my own. Then Lucy and I unpacked all the camping gear and cleaned out the van. As a reward for my hard work, I went to get a massage. Ahhh. Girls's weekend.

Today, the two of us are having a great time cleaning out a bunch of toys from the boys rooms. Won't they be so excited to come home and have so much more space? I decided it was time to call it quits when I found myself putting more than 2 seconds of thought into, "How many bouncy balls should I keep and how many should I give to charity?" (But really, how many?)

Actually, the real reason I just flew up the stairs in a frenzy, and then needed to decompress by writing a blog post was this: Skunk. I was in the basement, and I started to smell a bad smell, that was sort of like cigarette smoke. Then it got a little stronger and it smelled faintly skunky. By the time I started to notice Lucy whining, and I wondered if I had closed the back door, the smell had grown to a presence. I could see it, and feel it and I was scared. I booked up the stairs and headed for the door, which was open. Lucy was just standing in the middle of the room looking worried. I shut the door and decided I needed to face that smell. I walked right up to her and stuck my nose in her freshly bathed fur and breathed in. Sweet, sweet dog shampoo smell. Sweet relief. I think the problem was that I had the fan sucking in air from the backyard, and a skunk definitely sprayed something nearby. But thank GOD it wasn't Lucy. And I certainly don't keep a score in my head about who is a better dog in certain categories, (because that would be crazy) but if I did, I would have to give the point to Lucy over Bean in Avoiding Being Sprayed By A Skunk.

Now that I have had my spa day, and my getting rid of massive amounts of toys day, what could possibly be next for tomorrow? Not even I know.

Speaking of Sewing Projects: Revisited

There were some great suggestions that I just sew the zebra blanket onto the new bed, and I have to say that's a great idea! (Thanks Molly and FoW!) Of course, we had already implemented a MetaMegan style version of that idea.

Busted chewing on a shoe! It's come to the point that we wander the yard aimlessly searching for lost items before we bother looking in the house. Then we finally ask Jack where stuff is and he tells us.

In other news, today is the start of the big bike ride!!!! Once we finish working, packing, cleaning out the car, packing the car and whatever else, we are going to drop Dave off at the start of the Colorado trail. Good luck Dave!

Speaking of Sewing Projects

I haven't quit gotten around to making a dog bed, since all my energy for 2 days was focused on making a sleeping bag. Here is Lucy on the fabric and pillow that I purchased in January:

Long story short, she mostly ate that bed because I had never sewn it up. Or because she's a puppy. Thus began my long quest to find a cute dog bed. The thing is... most of the beds I had seen at Petco, Petsmart, Target, Costco, and the vast internet were, well, ugly. And even if I could convince myself to spend a lot of money on an expensive, but fabulous and modern dog bed, yeah, I'm not gonna do that. And those weren't exactly the cutest things ever. THEN I read that Martha Stewart is designing dog accessories for Petsmart. The cupcake was hard to resist. The robe, even harder. But the beds... Ugh. I mean, it was a beautiful color, and it looked delux. But I don't want to spend $45 on something that is going to get covered in dog hair. Don't get me wrong, if it came in Martha's minty green color, it would have been a different story.

Then I found an adorable bed for $14.99. Lucy loves it. See?

In Retrospect, This Could Have Been Avoided

Have you ever had one of those days, where everything went from totally perfect to perfectly horrible all of a sudden, and you thought, "Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee?????" And you shook your fist at the heavens and cursed and moaned and whined and cried? For example, if your house was beautifully, sparklingly clean (Thanks Rosa!) and then before you knew it, your white couch was covered in mud?

Why oh why oh why? The horror, etc.

Faced with the muddy couch and the muddy footprints, and the muddy dog, I decided to hose off the dog and then take her on a walk around the block to air dry. While we were walking, I had the following thoughts.

1.) A muddy couch is the worst thing in my life right now. I am very lucky.
2.) In retrospect, there are things I could have done to avoid this.

Read, learn, and avoid this same fate.

1.) When your 2 year old wants to water your garden, consider supervising.
This one is pretty self explanatory, but somewhat hard to follow advice. I mean, what if you are trying to cook dinner? It seemed like letting Jack water the strawberries would keep him out of my hair and out of trouble for 5 minutes. I was half right.
2.) When your 2 year old shows up at the back door, drenched, saying, "MOMMA! I got wet", consider investigating the cause.
If your first instinct is to get them out of wet clothes and into pajamas because dinner is almost ready, make a mental note to go back soon and figure out what happened. Or at least turn off the hose. In our case, Jack had partially unscrewed the nozzle from the hose. He got soaked, and dropped the hose on the ground and ran to the door. I just figured he squirted himself in the face, and didn't investigate any further.
3.) When you are eating your dinner on the patio, and you hear the puppy whine in a certain way that makes you think, "I should see what is going on" then, really, see what is going on.
Really, I can't emphasize this one enough. The hose was just creating a lake in the yard, that Lucy was turning into a mud puddle by digging and digging. And then she was running into the house, getting on the couch and running back out. And so on. I definitely thought something was going on, but I didn't look into it. Although it probably would have just ruined my dinner.

Safe From Sippy Cups

Part of MetaMegan 2.0 has to do with decreasing the amount of plastic in my life, and finding a substitute drinking "glass" made of something other than plastic that is also not going to break the first time it gets used. So far I haven't made any progress on that one. I think about it whenever a Crate and Barrel catalog graces my door. So, that's something.

This evening Lucy was looking out into the back yard when suddenly she got crazy! There was something in the backyard and she was gonna git it. I sort of cocked my head to the side, as my little girl has been known to do to consider the situation.

From 2010

If it's a cat or a squirrel, I want her to run out there and scare it out of the litter-sandbox and/or garden. If it's a bird, I want to avoid prying feathers out of her teeth. If it's a skunk... well I never want to go through that again. Squirrel? Skunk? Squirrel? Oh what the heck, I'll let her out and follow to see what it is. (Great plan if it's a skunk, right?) She took off! All the way to the other side of the patio table five feet away! Then she ran in circles! Then she charged! OMG! Retreat! Charge! Retreat! CHARGE! She GOT IT. It was one of two plastic cups that had blown off the table and were rolling around on the patio. So - I will be saved from the evils of plastic. Lucy will protect us all.

More Quotes

I recently instituted the Whine Fine. You whine, you owe me 10 cents. Lots of people on facebook had questions about how it was working, so here is the latest. Luke whined, I told him he owed me 10 cents, and he has been so polite ever since that I told him I wasn't going to collect on it. Jack, on the other hand, pretty much has to pay for college himself based on what he owes me so far.

Today, Luke asked me if Jack also had a whine fine. I said, "Yeah, he owes me a lot of money. But it's hard for him because he doesn't even know what 10 cents is."

Luke said, "10 cents is?! No wonder! He only has 5 senses."

More Luke

Yesterday I received a request for more Luke stories, so I'll share this one, even though my facebook friends already know it.

Luke, what did you learn at school today?
Nothing.
Nothing?
Nothing.
You didn't learn one new thing today?
No, they haven't teached me anything.

I posted that on facebook, and I was trying to get the dialog right, so I asked Luke for clarification.

Was it, "they don't teach me anything or they haven't teached me anything?"
He said, It's "they haven't teached" me anything. Because they still could teach me something in the future.

So there you have the conjugation of the past imperfect verb: teached.

(Luke's school of 268 students, will have between $30,000 and $113,000 cut from their budget for next year.)

Now, I could tell another story about how Luke had a friend over, which is very stressful for me these days because most kids don't like a puppy jumping on them, but I told Luke that after I yelled at him for what happened, I wouldn't talk about it anymore. So, I should stop there with the story.

See, I either have to have kids in the yard, and puppy in the house, but then the puppy whines to go outside, or kids in the basement and puppy upstairs, which is perfect for me, but kids don't necessarily like to be in the basement on 70 degree March days. We had tried some of both, which occasional jumpiness during the transition between one set up and another. Then the kids were outside and Lucy was on my lap when Luke walked through the house alone. I asked where he was going and what he was doing, and he didn't answer. I got suspicious as he went into the basement, and still didn't answer me. Why did he leave his friend in the yard? What was he getting in the basement? Then I heard 2 voices down there and as I was trying to figure out how the friend had gotten past me, Luke came upstairs and asked me to replace the screen in his window that had come out when he let his friend in through the window well/egress window. Oops! I talked about it. Well, I wrote about it - so I suppose that's a loophole.

We've agreed to use the door from now on.

Bedtime

"Jack, who do you want to put you to bed? Do you want Mommy to put you to bed or do you want Daddy to put you to bed?"

"Puppy put me to bed."

No Room for the Laptop

I think I'll turn this blog into a list of excuses for why I never have time to post anything. Here's one...

Watching the latest series on Netflix (Rome) while perusing InStyle Magazine would normally be prime blogging time because I like to multitask. But there was no room for the laptop with Lucy napping on my lap. She was pretty relaxed, so I could hardly wake her.

From Drop Box

A Boy and His Puppy

Jack has a bunch of stuffed animal puppies in his crib, and today he wanted just one more puppy in there with him. Poor Lucy was exhausted from our Biggest Loser workout. She was crawling all over me the entire time, and probably got a better workout than I did.

Puppy Accesorizing

I can't believe I was thinking that $14.99 was too much to spend to humiliate your dog, when I could have been making that point with a $70.00 jacket.

In unrelated news, I need that dog dish.

Obligatory puppy photo:

MetaMegan: Now With Puppies!

I just deleted my opening paragraph because it was all about how my life now revolves around potty training a puppy and a toddler. And I started out to make it sound really tragically hilarious. And then I realized two things:

1.) I am really lucky to have a 2 year old and a puppy. Could life be better than this?
2.) No one wants to hear that much about poop. Or maybe they do, but they should just go ahead and find another blog for that, please.

Yes, we spontaneously went out Saturday and got a puppy. It seems that way, to me at least. Because I only spent a year researching dog breeds, and I only refreshed the Humane Society web page 1,000,000 times. Then I said, "Please do not let me look at this site anymore today. PUPPIEEEEZZZZ!!!!" And Dave said, "Just put one on hold." I did, and we picked up my darling girl the next day. Have you ever heard of anything so crazily spontaneous? It's really not like me.

Unfortunately, I checked my spontaneity this afternoon at the pet store and did not buy Lucy this Valentine's ensemble.

Prepare to hear more about Lucy as the days and months progress. Luke and Lucy and I start puppy training classes soon. That should be very interesting!

Here is Luke taking her for her first walk:

Details: Lucy was born 11/12/2009, so we'll always have the issue of two birthday parties so close together. She is a cocker spaniel mix and she was given to a shelter in Kansas and then shipped to Boulder. Reason for surrender: Too many. Spay and neuter your pets, people!

She weighs 5 pounds right now, but since we don't really know much about her background we don't know how big she is going to get. I think - too big for the basket on my bicycle, so I will need a side car.