We waited for you...



After a crazy day at work a glass of wine on the patio, dogs running the back yard, breeze blowing and the warm sun shining down on me was what I envisioned on my way home.  Well the sun was shining and the breeze blowing but it was cold and the dogs didn’t want to play so I took my wine and went to the basement took off my shoes and got comfy and  played around on the computer. After a while I went up stairs looking for something to eat.  I put a cup of left over coffee in the micro wave and heated it up and was about to pop a bagel into the toaster when the girls started in on me about, let’s go out to eat Mom. I just drank a glass of wine I can’t go anywhere. Ok we’ll wait.  Well I am not waiting I’m hungry now; in the toaster the bagel went. Ding, left over coffee is warm, so I added hazelnut creamer and way more sweetener than normal to cover up the stale taste: my hot bagel popped up and I smeared butter over it and went back to my room to watch TV.  I have no opportunity to watch TV upstairs since the girls found Korean soap operas.  I went downstairs and sat in Archie’s chair and ate my bagel drank my leftover warmed up coffee and fended off dogs. I finished just in time to have Archie come down and scream he wanted his chair back.  I jumped in the bed and got warm and tucked in all the dogs and turned on my reruns of Law and Oder when one of the girls come to me and said “Mom it’s been 30 minutes let’s go”.  What? It will be more than thirty minutes before I can get behind the wheel, get out of here and stop bothering me.  Ok we’ll wait. Now I am full, warm and cozy it’s going to take an act of GOD and Congress to get me out of this bed; so when I woke up it was 8:30. I took my sleep eyed self up the stairs to see what was going on, when I peered into the living room Korean soaps blared from the TV and the girls who by now would be in their jammies, are sitting there fully dressed.   Then they said “Mom we waited for you”. I laughed at them and told them to keep on waiting we were not going out to eat at 8:30 at night. They hate it when I laugh at them and enjoy myself at their expense. I then had to make amends for my BAD, and told them we would go out tomorrow.  As they talked amongst themselves as to where we would eat I yell back at them Mc Donald’s!   As no one in my family likes Mc Donald’s this caused a huge up roar, I guess cheep is out of the question.

I got you, you little bastards.

It’s amazing how good I feel when I finally get one over on the Damn dogs.  They have had me so long in the grips of their plot to drive me over the edge of sanity that I forgot what it feels like to get a slash mark on my side of the score sheet.  The Hooligan boys are right up there with Archie and the garbage can. They play catch me if you can with the kids who refuse to play so they just leave them where ever they are when they start the game.  Now that is in my room……  the game as it were is played out when the girls get home from school and let all the dogs out of the kennels and let them outside to take care of their business.

This is a good thing now when it gets out of control is when they open the door to let them back in the house.  Every one shoots into the house from their invisible cannon at the door.  It shoots them either way coming or going and if you’re in the way you’ll get run over. Now they all run straight to the kitchen except the hooligans.  They make a sharp left as soon as the cannon is fired and they blow down the stairs and over the gate as if it were not even there.  Once they are in my room they turn into guard dogs and will not let the girls near them and bark the whole time.  The girls quit playing this game with them months ago.  So they get in my room, girls go upstairs and they stop barking the others settle into a lap and girls get a snack all is happy.  Now when I get home they have done every unspeakable thing to my room.  I have tried to dog proof my room but the bets are off when it comes to their body functions. They were just out, but that makes no difference; and then times it by two. If they find one little piece a paper or heavens for bid I leave the box of Kleenex where they can get to it, I have a shredded mess and one if not both will have to poo or pee on the shredded mess.  And let us not forget about the sticks they have in their mouths when they run back in. I yell at the girls and they say they can’t get them and they just run down there.  I found that they will not jump the gate in the hallway because it is too close to the steps going down.  Now the gate at the bottom of the stairs they jump because they are on the stairs and jumping on to the floor, but they have not tried to jump over the gate when they are on the floor and the stairs are on the other side. So I made the girls leave the gate in the hallway up and they just need to step over it and not move it: let the dogs in and out in the study room then they won’t jump the thing and go down into my room.  Now this has worked again until I get home and the gate comes down the first thing they do is head for the basement and they cry their butts off because they can’t get back up stairs.  Now my choices of how quickly I will go insane and the route the dog send me down changes daily, as if one thing has just got to work.  The mornings go the same I send them all up and out first thing in the morning.  I put the gate up behind me and go upstairs to start my day.  I make my coffee and go back let dogs in.  Again the hooligan boys get shot straight down the stairs and over the gate and on my bed.  By the time I get there to get them out they have already tore up my bed I just made.  I gave up on that mess and let them tear it up.  But then if I ignore them they will cry they want up stairs, until I want to strangle them or rip out their noise makers myself.   I thought if I put the gate up higher they wouldn’t jump over it, wrong.  They just went under it.  I mostly just gave up because this battle was going to last a lot longer than I cared to fight it.  So this morning I it came to me if they don’t like to jump down on the stairs move the damn gate in the middle of the stairway.  I’m not sure how this epiphany came to me but I am damn glad it did.  So I let the dogs in this morning and waited and sure enough they ran down to the gate and came right back, but I needed to test this a little more. I through a little kibble over the gate and they just stood on the steps and wiggled around and cried. I started to do my happy dance and yelling that I finally got them.  Yes it is a good day.  The girls just looked at me like it finally happened and I completely lost it.  I licked my finger on the end made the number 1 in the air in front of me and yelled "I got you, you little bastards". It has been a wonderful day indeed.

Can you let us out????

The company I work for went through some huge growing pains.  We were busting at the seams literally.  They ended up buying a huge warehouse with extended land for building a new facility.  I was shuffled off to the new warehouse so my space could be utilized for manufacturing.  We worked through the logistics of getting the raw materials to three different locations to be assembled. My office was a desk on the dock, were I staved off natures elements while doing my job.  After a fashion they built us an office; four walls a door and a couple of windows.  Now this did keep the draft off our feet but done nothing for the wind blowing up over the walls and down our necks.  My co-workers and I dealt with this for 5 years all through the building stage of the new manufacturing addition to the warehouse.  We grew to love our little office with no roof, and the jokes about closing the door you’re letting out the air conditioning. Now that the new space has been built and manufacturing is in one building, the company has started to remodel the preexisting warehouse and its offices.  While this work went on we were move to the middle of the open warehouse in cubes to do our work.  I watched my new office as it was being built and last week we did move into our new space. There are a few details that still need to be addresses like putting a door on it and now putting glass in the window of the door, finishing off the warehouse truck drivers entrance and waiting room, along with a little detailing.

Yesterday the construction worker was putting the door on the waiting room, he appeared to be having difficulty  getting the door to close correctly so even though there is a sliding window between the office and waiting area we could hear him  banging away at the door we even felt the wall shaking a couple of times.  Then toward the later afternoon he went to get the construction supervisor and both men went into the waiting room and had a discussion.  After a few moments the Supervisor knocks on the sliding window.  My co-worker and I just look at each other as if to say what they are doing. He made some hand jesters to my co-work to come to the window. She slides the window open and he says “can you come around and open the door for us”. Both of us are in a fit of laughter to see the two locked in.  As they make their quick exit we start making fun of them.  Now this morning we are filling in the other co-worker that shares this office with us, on the daily activities of yesterday, when the construction supervisor and one of his men come back to the waiting area.  The supervisor enters first and walks to the other side. The young man, most likely not knowing the door will lock behind him, hesitates for a moment then just shuts the door.  The three of us are having a good laugh at their expense, I get up to go over and tell them they just locked themselves in again and my co-workers say” don’t you dare tell them, make them come knock on the window again”, so I sat back down and watched as they discovered yet again they locked themselves in the waiting area.   The supervisor with his red face knocks again, we are all laughing and making fun of him saying “didn’t learn anything from yesterday”. I hope we did not make him too mad as we still need glass in the window of our door.

Looks like total chaos.

As humans we all have strengths and weaknesses and every month we have to answer these two questions.  It is part of the case manager’s monthly interview.  Of course the kids mostly use the standard answer of, I don’t know. But I am left to come up with the answer, now it is hard enough for me to answer that question about myself let alone answer for the kids. For the most part it is the same, month after month, but on those occasions that I  actually put some real thought to the question I have to  take a long deep look at all of us and what we all bring to the table of life.  It’s amazing when you actually think about it and really dig deep into the fibers of each person in the family and how we are so different but that’s what brings us to the point of what makes this all work. Now when you add in the dogs and start to think about them in the same way it takes on a whole different look, from the outside it looks like total chaos and dysfunction.  I have been contemplating this very thing, for a long time, I mull it over on those nights that I am awakened from my sleep then my brain activates and it just can’t be turned off.  So I think about everything and as of late I spend this time trying to understand the reason why this family works: The dogs the kids the chaos the noise and total diversity of the house. 
The dogs are so different, Cabot is afraid of anything that moves.  He has a high pray dive and is one of my Alpha males. He wants what he wants and will not heed any of the others warning growls for him to go away or get out of the way.  He absolutely pisses off everyone when he enters a room.  He can’t help himself.  The barking can drive the sanest person to want to drop kick him to the next county.  He can jump shoulder high from a standing position and will steal food from your mouth. Now I can go on with his faults’ but just know he is a huge pain in everyone’s derriere.  But when he seeks me out for a little lap time and one on one, he looks at me and his eyes tell me everything.  The, I wish it was just you and me, the, I only want to spend my life with you.  He loves everyone he just does not want them to move.  A lady stopped by last night to meet some of the foster dogs, looking to adopt.  Cabot barked at her all the way through the house till she sat down then consumed her lap and just loved her to death.  As soon as she got up and ready to leave he barked at her all the way out of the house.  All the barking leads to everyone in the house yelling shut up Cabot; or Cabbage depending on the accent. Then we have Chiquita she is my spinner.  She spins out of control and will run into things and trip humans and barks at the speed of light when she is in her accelerated spinning modes.  She talks to me all day long and loves to be high on top of things she wants to snuggle so bad but it is hard for her to settle down so she will not be annoying.  But once she calms down she is quite the lover.  She growls at Archie and really dislikes him and we have no idea why.  The two of them will get in front of the heat duct and start growling to determined who is going to get the hot spot, and then she will snap at Archie and cause him to defend himself the whole time the sound of this is being channeled through the heating system and heard throughout the house. So there is no escaping this annoyance because the sound disrupts every single person in every single room.  Archie is just plain old and the epitome of a dawdling old man: I apologize to my male readers.  It’s as if his mind got stuck when he was in his peak ,prime days of the number one alpha dog where all he does is walk in a room and the pack just move back and give him space and choice of anything he could possible want.  Well he still acts this way but does not have the body to back up his stuff.  His body is starting to snarl and curl up he walks slower and does not have good balance the only thing he has is his voice and teeth, and he use both to get his way but all it does is piss off the other dogs and cause a ruckus, and he is voted off the couch any way. The garbage can must be screaming at him 24/7 to come hither and he does just that.  It has become one of the biggest challenges to keep him out of the garbage. We even tried moving it to higher ground so he could not reach it, but the only place in the kitchen he cannot reach is the top of the refrigerator and because it has a cabinet above it, the garbage is placed half over the frig and half over the door to the frig.  Now I can’t tell you how many times we all have had garbage come careening down all over us. If we are able to move so the can does not bash us in the head we still get a garbage shower. I personally have had all the garbage showers I care to in my life time.  So we have been trying other approaches to this problem but have not found one that is Archie proof. You can be standing next to the sink and he will just reach up bite the door and yank it open while you stand there. It makes me want to declare a moratorium on garbage.
My sweet Weezie my first small dog she is going blind and hard of hearing and an energizer bunny extraordinar, she can’t see the ball but will run like hell to find it and the whole time barking for the ball. She does not have time for the Chinese Cresteds nor does she care about them.  She loves her Papasan and won’t let anyone sleep in it or use it in any way. She lives to gut stuffed toys and get that squeaker.  But at her age she is either going 100 MPH or she is dead on the Papasan.
Gertrude she is the pup of the bunch at 3 she has found her place in the pack and the home. She is an independent girl that struts her stuff and knows she has stuff to strut. She is confident and will take on anything and believes she is way better than sliced bread. Of course the kids made her that way.  The foster dogs add all kinds of things to the mix as they come and go and we are all characters. 
To take one Character out of this mix, none of this would work, our differences is what makes us the Damn Dog house, Characters Welcome.                              

One time only food

I think most of us use recipes or learn how to cook our favorite foods, so we can make it again if we like it.  I personally cook from memory and at my age I have lots of food cooking memories to tap into. I do have some favorite recipes that I still follow to make sure the dish comes out the same, But most food I learned how to cook and can make again and again. Now the girls are see food cooks; they see it and cook it.  Everything is cooked the same, one girl boils everything in water. Take whatever you find in the frig put it in water add onions ,salt and hot chili peppers. I have only one time found something too hot for them to eat; Habanera peppers.  Every other pepper is OK by them.  The hotter the better.  Sometimes the steam coming from the pot is so spicy hot I can’t breathe,   It takes my breath away and chokes me.  Now another girl cooks the same way but she puts it all in a fry pan with way more oil than needed adds everything in the frig  along with  onions, salt and  hot chili peppers.  Another girl cooks everything with Berbere spice(mixture of hot chili, garlic and ginger root etc) red onion, salt and way more oil than needed. One girl does not like to cook so she eats warmed up tortilla’s with salt.  I call their food one time only food; because we never have the same things in the fridg every time they cook.   Fried eggs are the only thing all three make the same,  One cup of oil and a whipped egg,  then deep fried.  The rule is you make it you eat it.  I caught one of them with a can of chili beans and she was cooking them in oil in the frying pan, for 15 minutes.  I told her you know those are already cooked you just heat and eat or add to a dish your making.  You do not need to deep fry them. Her reply was one of the other girls showed her how to cook them.  Make sure you eat all of them……..  There is just something about a pot of boiling  Iceberg lettuce with hot chili in it that makes me want to diet.   I had a cupboard full of different spices, none of the girls knows what 99% of them are.  So they smell them if it smells good in the pot it goes.  They think the more spice you use the better something will taste, needless to say my supply of spices is dwindled down to  nothing.  I must add that I do not eat the foods they cook, you make it you eat it.  One of the girls has found the new world of TV cooking shows, so she has shown a big interest in learning how to cook the Mmmmm good food she sees them make. So she is hanging around the kitchen and learning how to make some different foods, she even offered to cook the next big holiday family dinner. Now it is a tempting offer but I am real sure if she screws it up she won’t be able to eat all that food.

I came home the other night and the youngest is cooking and made enough for the exchange student to share with her.  I look to see what she is cooking and found it to be totally unrecognizable so I passed. As I muddle around the kitchen looking for something to put a space between my back bone and belly button, I hear the exchange student say “I don’t know what this is but it’s pretty good”. I started to laugh and said “ Enjoy because she will never be able to make it again, It's a one time only Food'. 

Name calling

I know all of my dogs voices just like I know the difference between my kids. But I have those moments that I almost have to call every name out before I hit the one I want. So I am on the couch with a lap full of dogs drinking my coffee and catching up with the morning news and the kids are in the kitchen getting ready to leave for school and a dog barks, the first thing I do is yell out shut up Cabot.  He is my prolific barker so I don’t think about who’s bark it belongs to, I just yell at Cabot.  Again with the bark, Chiquita shut up, then I look in the chair and Chiquita is looking at me like I’m nuts.  Cabot is standing in front of me, again a bark. Gertrude shut up, hell she is in my lap so now I am up and in the kitchen to quiet the offending dog.  Back to my coffee and comfy spot on the couch and the kids start the school morning procession out the door. Bye Mom; bye daughter one, no Ma I am daughter two, Oh sorry Bye daughter two,  Bye mom; Bye daughter three, No mom its Daughter one,  OK! OK! Bye girls.  Now the dogs start again barking because the girls are leaving.  Shut up Cabot. Marley what are you barking at? GAWD, its Joey. Will all of you shut up.  I reach over for my coffee and Cabot got his head shove down the cup to get to the coffee. So much for morning news and coffee,  After I get dressed for work I start kenneling the foster dogs, I yell out lets go puppies and they all run to pick out their kennel of choice.  I have a couple dogs that need assistance getting in, one is hiding in the big bed and the other want to play catch me if you can.  As the morning is not going quite as planned so my frustration is kicking in and I start with all the names of the dogs trying to hit on the right dogs so I can get his attention and get him in the kennel.  With  eleven dogs by the time I am on the third wrong name I want to kick myself.  I even hear myself start to stutter.  What the hell, is my mind completely gone. Then comes the, you Damn dogs, now I have their attention and my morning is shot so off to work I go.  

Texas Fly Swatter

I’ve been asked about the Texas Fly Swatter and the role it plays in the Damn Dog house: It was a humorous souvenir given to me when I had Noddia my Great Dane.  It was quickly throwed into the cupboard that contain many things I didn’t have a clue what to do with, to be forgotten.  My Great Dane was a perfect dog.  I never raised my voice or scolded her until she ate the exchange students Graduation cake while we were at commencements.  She never took food off the table nor did she steal food from a plate just lying around. Now her head was much taller than the table top so as she walked by the table she was in grabbing rang of anything not directly in the center of the table.  She was 7 years old when she done this.  Why that day she decided to grab the cake I have no  idea.  When we arrived and saw what she had done I was in shock and did not know what to do, so I cleaned up the mess,  then went and bought a cake off the sale table at the bakery. It was not the same as Grandma's home made hand decorated cake but we had cake.  Later that night my sister was digging around in the cupboard for who knows what, she saw the fly swatter and started to shaking it in the air, laughing, then she asked “where did you get this thing”.  Hey you can use it on Noddia. At that point the dog who was sitting on the couch watching us, jumped off and ran like hell.  That was the moment I learned of its power.  I never did have to use it on her that was her one and only aggression. 

When she passed I got Weezie my Toy Fox Terrier who was a good dog too. But she was toy aggressive and she would gut every stuffed toy that came in the house rip the squeaker out and chew it like gum.  When she was displaying this behavior she became toy killer and would act like she could not hear or see you.  Nothing in the world could distract here from her intend death of a stuffed toy.   Now I used the power of the Texas fly swatter and it worked.  I grabbed it one day when I was yelling at her to stop gutting that toy and she acted like she couldn’t hear me, I smacked the floor in front of her with it and she took off like a flash of lightning.  I only used it when she was in murder, death, kill mode,  and with her I had to be close or she would not see it or hear it.  Then the Chinese Cresteds started coming and they never  listened to me so I was always smacking the floor, wall, furniture or any flat surface.  It worked till I finally broke the handle and now it says swatter only.  Then it got to where all I had to do is shake it at them and they would stop whatever they were  doing and listen to me.  Then the rescues started growing in numbers along with a whole host of issues that would blend into the pack and they finally became the Damn Dogs. It has been chewed on, peed on and lost. It spent one winter outside in the back yard where it got dragged out and left.  Not knowing where it was it stayed there all winter till spring lawn clean up came and it was found: it use to be a dark blue, but outside all that time faded it.  Then the kid’s learned of it power and they start shaking it and smacking everything  but if you don’t smack it on a flat surface it becomes a dud that has no affect.  So one day I’m giving the kids instructions on how to use it to achieve  the maximum benefit, and all the dogs where in the living room jumping around like we were going to feed them or something. When I  squarely smack the floor with it and every one took off.  I started to laugh at the mass exoduses that just took place and yelled “Now that’s what I’m talking about, crowd control”.  To this day it has the same effect; but the problem is I can never find it when I need it.  So one day I bought a couple regular fly swatters but it just isn’the same thing and they are so cheap now the first smack will bend the little wire handle.   I have no idea how to get more of these marvelous souvenirs. If it breaks or gets eaten totally I will be in trouble, the Damn Dog will take over completely