Before in another country.

Some dogs are very food motivated and will do anything for a kibble of food. Hell I have some that will sit just to lick my fingers. I am sure most folks that have pets know this motivation and it is just part of life with pets.  But when you have a child that is so food motivated it sometimes makes me scratch my head. Now she learns quick if food is involved and cannot retain nothing without an injection of food.  The rest of the family has teased her so much about this food thing she tries to never say she is hungry first. She will try to get us to say something about food first.

Over the weekend we went to the Pawlooza Dog festival in London ON.  We started out late Friday night after I got home from work. Everyone was hungry and we were running late and still had to take one of the girls to another function out of the way of our intended destination. So in these times we do the Micki D’ thing. None of us like Mac Donald’s but it fills the empty space between the navel and back bone. The first thing is they did not make my order so all I got was French fries. Now put that together with chips and it falls a little short of a healthy dinner. Now as this has happened a few times in the past because I get the food and drive then once down the road the discovery is made I hate to go back so we just make do, I don’t lean either…… , the girls knows not to say too much in these cases as it will set my bad mood off. Again the next morning is hurry, hurry ,hurry so off to Mac Donald’s we go again for breakfast.  Now seriously I am choking down this stuff but time is way more important at this point.  Lunch did not improve much as the girls went out and found hotdogs for all of us. My daughter ask me if I wanted mine with onions or without as she holds out two hotdogs. I told her did not matter, so I got the one with onions. She started eating before me and said “ Mom this is really dry” well I don’t put much thought into it as I am hungry. I took a great big mouth full and started to chew, then told her “Hell mine is crunchy”. I am not sure what happened to these hot dogs but they were not eatable and so I finished my bun with mustered and onion’s then wash it down with a bottle of water. Now that being said the foods was the only part of the day that was bad. We had a great day and all were exhausted at the end. Again we just stopped and got a bucket of chicken with all the fixings and went back to camp and ate.

The next morning we pack up and head into town to get something to eat. We have two dogs that cannot be left alone in the van as they will eat each other so having a nice sit down breakfast is out of the question.  As we are discussing our options little one pipes up “Ma I am sick of food”. What! You’re never sick of food so “Who are you and what did you do to little one”? The taunts and jeering started in, as this is something no one in the family would have ever thought she would say. This kid eats everything, literally everything. We ended up with Subway and called it good and headed for the states.

As we get into check point at the boarder I hand over all the human documents and say “this is the human papers first”. I got the look, the look that says what are you talking about. Now each of the girls have three pieces of ID’s and I have a pass port so it is a fist full of stuff I am handing him. As he sort through all of it he looks at me and ask, how we are all connected, where do we live and why did we go to Canada. I explained the foster kids in and out of the system and I am the foster parent, and I have permission to take them out of country with a letter from the local judge. We were at a dog show in London. The whole time he is looking at Gertrude standing at the window being her normal busy body dog self. Then he says “what kind of dog is that”?  Then it was all downhill after that, as I explained the whole hairless dog thing in its entirety. At one point he dropped his hands down to his lap with all the documents and just sat there hanging on to every word I had to say. We started to show him each of the dogs as they are so different and he entered into the is huge conversation about the dogs.  I started to worry as the lines grew behind us. At one point I said “Wow, all those folks behind me are going to get mad at me. He said “I don’t care I give everyone who enters USA my undivided attention and screen them thoroughly and the dog conversation continued.  He was checking out the PIO’s with such interest I thought I might have a potential adopter on my hands. Finally I pushed the paper work for the dog out the window to him and he just shook his head and said anyone that does all you do I have no worries that you take fine care of all your animals, it’s been interesting ,welcome to back to the USA and have a nice day. That had to be my most interesting border crossing I have ever had.

We barely made it out of the Port Huron area when the little one says” Mom are you hungry”? I said “No, we just ate a couple hours ago” Why? She then says “I’m hungry”. What the Hell you just told us you were sick of food a few hours ago. She said “ya Ma, but that was before in a different country. I will skip the name calling that started with the girls as they yelled at her. I just shook my head and thought how wonderful it would be at home in my laundry room, alone with a mountain of laundry and the world would make sense again.

Twilight the kitchen version.

For all the Twilight fans, I have to say in my day we loved vampires ours were on soap operas call Dark Shadows, and Barnabas Collins kept us all on the edge of our seat. We ran home from school every day to see the next episode and never cared that we missed out on some high adventure with the neighborhood kids. Now to be somewhat fair I have watched bits and pieces of the first Twilight film but could not get the whole love thing without a bite. I liked the werewolf he had some color to his skin. The movie spoof, parody is more my speed anyway. The girls are just beside themselves waiting for the next movie, and just swoon over the main character Edward Cullen, hell I had to look up his name as the girls can't even pronounce it. To say I am not a fan is an understatement. I really don't like love movies and to make one where the guy lays next to his dinner night after night without a taste, hell I would eat. The girls can watch love movies till their eyes fall out. They killed the Titanic DVD watching it so many times.

But even though they like the romance of the movie they still can find humor in our day to day life that they will relate with, to the movie. The first time the little one had a rare steak she told me it was like watching Twilight as blood and juice covered her plate. Then that lead to all the jokes one can make about a bloody steak, a vampire movie and a straw. I'll leave it at that

The girls think it is cute to drop food on the floor for the dogs. They will sit food near the edge of the counter and then bump it so it will fall on the floor, and say "oops I droped it".  I tell them to stop that becasue they will be worse than Damn Dogs. They will think we are going to feed them everytime we are in the kitchen. Well they are now listening to me. They were out in the kitchen and eating an orange. The dogs are hovering for the food to start raining down from the counter. When one of the girls puts her hand next to the edge of the counter and scraps the orange peel into her hand and lowers it just low enough that one of the dogs thought he was going to get the food before it left her hand. He jumped and grabbed the peel and she jerked her hand back, just not quick enough and the dog got her. Now I am sure it would not have been as bad as it was if she would not have jerked and then proceed to keep moving her hand up with the dog still attached. So she got a big bruise and two punctures. She yelled he bit me, and screamed then pinched the scratch and a little drop of blood came out.  She is steady yelling he bit me, he bit me; when the youngest looks at me and as serious as a child can be says “Mom she’s going to turn into a vampire now?   We all busted out laughing. I have to say it change the mood in the kitchen as we all started in with the jokes about her teeth, not to slurp when drinking from a straw, and how we will all have to lock our bedroom doors at night. 

I'm getting younger, NOT!



I am not sure when I started believing my age was 61 this past year. I have been looking forward to retirement and was getting all excited about only having 4 more years left. I set up an appointment with a retirement specialist to make sure all is on the right track. A few days before my birthday I met with the specialist to work out a retirement plan. She started in, and with in a very short time she said " I see you have 5 more years...." I did not hear another word after that and began to correct her. No I only have 4 years left. Your going to be 61 this Friday aren't you? "No" I said. I will be 62. She said Oh my we must have the wrong information on you and turned the lap top toward me, I got up close to see through the old bifocals and looked at the birth date. "Oh my GAWD" I said and started to laugh the laughter of what the hell, not the laughter of I am so embarrassed. I look at the date grabbed a pen and paper sitting on the table and immediately  started to do the math. I looked at her and said " I'm pissed, I am not even embarrassed I don't know my own age". I was so happy I only had 4 more years till I can retire and then I can do the things that mean something to me not a job that pays the bills. Crap now I have 5 more years. By the time I left the office I was so upset I went back to work and told my co-worker about the reality check I had just received. He laughed at me and said " you're the only person I know who is getting younger not older".
I got home that night and my kids started in on me about telling them I was going to be 62 instead of 61. Then one says" see I told you she was wrong" What the hell? I just hope I still have some brain cells in 5 more years or the kids are going to have to look after me.

Butt Seriously

 

Butt Seriously:  Thank you all for the Birthday wishes.

 



I am not  one to celebrate Birthdays. It is for no other reason than I just never did. My parents went on vacation the same time every year, last week of July first week of Aug. We went camping at Black Lake MI every year thought out my childhood. Now this was the best part of summer and I looked forward to this time all year long. I never gave it a second thought that my Birthday was spent camping and I never celebrated it. Swimming till I was water logged and playing on the sand hill was way more fun and totally consuming.  As I got older I never gave it much thought. I move to Florida met new friend and never thought about it after that.  After all we don’t miss what we never had. Now I am not complaining. But I have had three Birthdays in my life that I have enjoyed and this is one of them. I have no plan I am working today and my co-worker took the day off. I am sure the kids have something up their  sleeves and the Damn dogs started spreading there good cheer very early this morning.  I never knew of such out pouring of happy wishes. It is such a nice thought to think I have so many friends around the world. I am reminded how many folks have touched my life and I am better for that. I love happy and hate that I can have a day without laughter.  Now my kids may say I have many days that I don’t laugh they just don’t get to see them.  I am truly bless to have so many friends.

My very best birthday in my whole life was when I was 40 years old. I just broke up with the guy I was seeing and then had to drive 100 miles back home to cook BBQ in the back yard for my family. You might say I was not having a good day at all. Now a few weeks before this GAWD awful day my Mom and I were having a, remember when, conversation and we got on the subject of birthdays and she made a comment on all the birthday cakes she had made in her life time. Now I was obliged to tell her she never made me one and this immediately turned into the she said, I said containing all the denials and I remember statements. I knew we were not going to end this without proof, when I asked her where we were every year the first week of Aug. my whole life. As the words, on vacation, came across her lips I could see the look of  OMG on her face. We quickly moved on to another subject.

Now as I am going about getting the grill hot and getting all the prep done for the BBQ my mood was deteriorating at speeds that could not be measured by any means. My family arrive and in comes my Mom with my very first Birthday cake at the grand old age of 40.  Now I was surprised but to tell the truth it did not do much to improve my mood. I still had the Bahhh Humbugs, I put my smiley face on and started cooking. We sat on my deck to enjoy the nice summer day when my neighbor decided to show his ass and turn up the music to ear piercing levels.   As I battle to keep my mood in check my Mom signals to my brother to go get the cake. He leaves and I tell Mom lets go inside now. So we started to gather up everything when we hear this loud cussing scream and an even louder crashing thud that seemed to go on forever. We both ran to the house and there we find my brother on the landing at bottom of the three steps coming down from my kitchen, hugging the large sheet cake to his chest cussing and mad as hell. We went into action helping him up and asking what happened. As he stood up pulled the cake from his chest, I busted out laughing and reached over and ran my finger down his cake covered chest and stuck it in my mouth.  He was so mad that he looked like he might have a heart attack or something. As he tried to explained, that just as he started down the first step the cat ran between his legs and he missed the step and fell on the cake. Laughter can be such a catharsis and manic hysterical laughter just cleanses one soul. He was so worried I would be made because he destroyed my very first Birthday cake. I think he could have killed the cat without giving it a second thought he was so mad.  All I did was laugh and tell him thank you for the best Birthday ever.  I never gave the ex a second thought after that moment, and the neighbor well he did not live there much longer.  The next time I saw the cat he still had frosting on his head and that sent me right back to another round of hysterical laughter.  Mom’s arthritis is so bad now she cannot decorate cakes any more but my one and only tasted so good scraping it off my brothers shirt.