Today is not forever

Mostly I try to find humor in my chaos and the world around me.  I never knew that writing could be so enjoyable.  I am not good at it my spelling is terrible and yet I find such pleasure in knowing that in the 5 months I have been doing this that I am being looked/read by folks from all continent .  I thought if just my friends liked what I was doing I thought myself  lucky.  I have tried to understand the blogging world but I still find it confusing at best.  I was encouraged to start this project but now find it therapeutic. I love my dogs and my kids and anything that makes me laugh.  It is what gets me through life. I started my meaningful life at 53 before that it was my selfish life. I am tired most days and sometime can not make it through a day, but know when my head hits the pillow at night I am blesses to have this life,  I seek humor, friendship,love all the thing most human seek to help them through it all.  I do think of my life as normal but find it is not. So many have found a laugh or two in the things I deal with daily.  To that I am happy to share, everyone needs to have a laugh or two and to know that there are things in this world that are different and yet good.  That there is more to a dog peeing on your bed than hatred, there is another side to life and if we look at things with an open mind and find the humor in it all we will surely be blessed. We as humans have the ability with in us to over come diversity, hatred and evil. We must try.  Today is a day I am having a hard time to find my ability so I am writing about it. My writings today are just to help myself overcome hatred and ugliness that sometime creeps into my life. I will over come this but the process  of getting through it seem overwhelming today I am longing for the lighter side to pee and poo. That ugliness will not rule me today.

Hair or no Hair

For those who are not familiar with the breed Chinese Crested dogs they are very unique in that they offer so many choices.    They come with or without hair and some are in between For those who breed them I am not an expert on standards for the breed what I am is totally enamored with the breed.  So my apologies to the group of folks that are well versed on the breed.  I find it amazing that one breed of dog can look so completely different from each other.  The Powder puffs resembles a uncut Poodle or have long straight hair.

The hairy hairless can have varying amounts of hair 

and then the True hairless can also have some body hair but they mostly have no body hair or little or no tail/ feet hair .

They all have the plumage on the top of head that is called the crest. The crest can be different from dog to dog also. I rescue, foster and re-home these little guys, so I have had the pleasure of meeting over 100 of them. Grant you they are all not pure bread but at rescue level that is not a concern.  I am always taken by the different hair growths that each one has.  During the cold months I often do not shave body hair and it’s when they are naked after a few months that the odd hair growth is so obvious.   Some have a hairy butt. Some have a Mohawk along their back bone, some look like they have a bad toupee on.  

The litters are always a surprise because you cannot breed to get one or the other.  You get what you get.  Mostly I find you like them or you don’t.  To know them is to love them.  If you prefer hair or hairless they all possess the same unique way to love their humans like no other breed I have met.   

They are great little bed warmers and at my age it goes from warm to flame on, times that by 10 and it becomes a blanket on blanket off night. If your into mothering things this is the dog for you.  Now it is best to let them sleep naked so there is no overheating for them or their human. Mornings are always a race,  to see who pees first, Mom then clean up after dogs who can’t wait or Dogs and clean up after one self because I can’t wait. These choice have me moving a lot quicker when my feet hit the floor.  Get them up, get them dressed and put them out to do their thing.  Now with ten I just put them out naked, and yell pee quick and run back to the bathroom.  Now that we have all pressing matters taking care of I get them dresses. They rarely smell but will have dry skin that can be rather annoying to them and us. Too much lotion mean more bathing to keep their skin pours clean.  Now with 10 I find I can deal with a few flakes over 10 baths every few days.  They can get fleas but I have never seen them nor do I treat for them.  Their laundry is bigger than mine. The living room always looks like an unmade bed because they all like to burro in the blankets add the kids blankets and  you have to pat down all the furniture to make sure there isn’t  dog or kid buried before you sit. 

 The pile of kids dogs and blankets  heaped up on the couch makes finding them difficult.  I’ll go to bed and get comfy turn the lights out and then remember I forgot to count dogs.  If one or two is missing I have to back upstairs and start shaking them out of the blankets.  I will find a kid now and then along with the dogs.  Going to bed takes much more time than getting out of bed does.
They are so snugly and most will become velcro dogs. They love humans and crave there companionship. Living with a herd of them has its moments but I would not want it any other way.

 

Bad Mommy

I guess you could say I am a Bad Mommy.  I love to take advantage of a situation to get one over, on my kids. If I don’t have a situation I will make one. I tell the kids you have the Grouchiest Mom in the world and it suck to be them.  But I am not grouchy by nature the kids and Damn dog make me crazy.  So on those times that no one is stomping the hell out of my last nerve I like to get back at them by driving them nuts.

Now we have a rule with the phone, no calls in and no calls out after 10 PM for the most part I hate the phone so the kids on the other hand love the phone and they will drive me to the edge of insanity with it.  Now I know that their friends will  break that rule in a heartbeat, and the kids can’t just hang up, before they have a 10 minute conversation. So to stop the incoming calls I told the girls to not answer the phone after 10 PM, or the wrath of Mom will drop down on them like a  bird on its prey.  One night after a couple of glasses of wine I had to check this rule to make sure all were compliant.  I got the cell phone out and call the house phone and laid in wait for the soul that picked up.  Now I snared two of them on that one.  One picked up an as I am sucking in air to explode on her the next one yanked the other receiver up.  I had just enough wine to get my academy award  that night.  I could hear them all through the house yelling at me,  Not fair you set us up.” Ya and it Sucks to be you”….

I like to take the dogs ,yes all of them, when we make short trips to the market. It helps with their socialization.  We would get out of the car and start to walk away and they start in howling.  We call it singing.  We could count the steps we would make before they start in.  Now the dogs behavior is a given and predictable so on occasion when the devil got to me and the parking lot was full of people coming and going.  I would use my best outside voice I have and yell out, “Hey is that a pack of wild dogs” “Oh my GAWD look at all them dogs in that car.”  Now the girls start shrinking and telling me to stop it, Mom.  Then I will start to laugh and won’t stop.  Now they just walk away from me.  At my age not much embarrasses me, But those girl will turn so red they look like they are going to start bleeding about the head and face.  If we go into a fast food place they all run to the bathroom first and I am left to hold our place in line.  So when they come back, I’ll yell “ Line cutter, the end of the line is back there”.

When we travel they all fall asleep, now sleeping pics are my favorite. You fall asleep and I’ll get a picture of you with foam coming out of your mouth or hugging a dogs butt, you name it I have a picture in the family album of it. 
If we need to go somewhere early in the morning and they don’t get up on the first call I open their door and let all the dogs in.  10 excited dogs can get you up in a flash.

When we first moved into our house I discovered I could hear the girls talking in their rooms from the heat ducts in the laundry room.  One night they are all in one of the bedrooms on the first floor and I am in the basement doing laundry, so I decide to see if they can hear me.  I reach up and start scratching the heat duct, It cause such a ruckus that they left the room screaming, as I sat in the laundry room laughing my ass off.

Now if they call mom at work and I am not busy,   they become prime targets and open season just started.  It starts out “ Hi this is Sue.” “Mom”  Hello!, Mom, Hello!, MOM! HELLO,   click .  They call back and I do the same thing when they catch on then they yell at me.  Or I look at caller ID and know it’s the house phone and won’t say a word.  The silence can be deafening.  Sometimes they hang up on me to just call back and have me do it again.  Then I will answer as if I am somebody else then they think they have the wrong number, I can kill ‘em on that one, they’ll hang up and call a half a dozen time before they catch on. The whole time I am telling them they are rude to keep calling this number and make an old lady walk across the floor with her walker to answer the phone.  My co-works tell me I am rotten playing with them like that.  But what is a Mom to do, we have to retaliate. It’s just more fun when we do it from a slightly younger maturity level than them.  

Why bother?

Now I have my days when I could have stayed in the bed and got just as much accomplished.  You get up let the dogs out use the facilities step in a puddle of pee.  Ok we are off to a good start.  Let dogs in and make coffee turn around and step in poo.  Its early I can control myself, coffee will be done soon and life will be good again. Pop a bagel in the toaster, add cream and sugar to the coffee and now we’re moving.  I have my coffee in one hand bagel in the other on my way down stairs to check e-mails, when I drop my napkin, no problem I’ll get it on my way back up. I finish breakfast and head up stairs to put dirty dishes in dishwasher and pick up the napkin that was dropped.  What the hell which one of you Damn Dogs peed on it.  Now all of that cleaned up and dishes are washing and I’ need to make my bed.  Back down the stairs I go, when I refer to down stairs I am referring to basement, it is dark with very little light coming in the small windows so If I don’t turn on the light before entering I may find a surprise left for me by one of the Damn dogs.  My room is about 800 sq. feet it is the recreation room, but I have my sewing, reading, and TV area computer bed and so on in there.  I call it the mom area my place to get away from it all.   Well I dream of a place like that to get away from it all.  It now houses the dogs during the day so I have kennels all over the place and in the evening the dogs won’t leave me alone any way.

Archie is the only one that does not want to spend any time with me he is busy getting into the garbage he has no time for me anymore.  I have to keep an old cover on my bed during the day so no one marks it.  I keep the known markers pee banded but it is the occasional you never see who it is marker that gets my bed.  Well because I did not make it straight away and the markers did not get banded first thing it looks like pee fest 2012 was celebrated on it. So I throw my bedding into the washer and get the broom vac and proceed to vacuum the floor and the small area rug.  Its fine for dust and small things but thread on the carpet it just won’t pick it up.  No matter how many tries I take it still on the rug so I bend down pick up all the thread and roll it in my hand till it’s a ball, then through it on the floor so it can be picked up by the broom vac.  And now it won’t pick it up because it’s a ball of thread, Of course the trash can is right next to me.  I would yell at the kids for doing that I guess the pee fest got the best of me.  As I am going into the corners I find dried pee spots under the sewing machine behind the computer desk.  Ok so now I have to mop on top of it.  I head up stairs to get the mop and find another poo I have to clean up.  I am getting ready to line’m up and nip their little pee pee’s off and cork their behinds. I have lost control now and decide to just sit and watch TV.  I shut the light off down stairs and plop on the couch with the dead remote.  Of course my butt is down so going to find more batteries is not on my list of things to do.  I just keep mashing the buttons harder thinking somehow it will start working.  Then I smack it on the arm of the couch still hoping to revive them batteries.  It’s getting close to noon and I’m thinking snacking sound good.  I am on my third cupboard and still nothing to snack on without major work to cook it.  I end up at the fridge and search through the green science projects that have been pushed to the back and forgotten, hoping for a small tidbit that can be warmed up and consumed.  No luck and Oh hell NO! I am not going to start cleaning the fridge out, those kids made’m they can clean them out.  Oh Well might as well just watch TV, It’s not long before my mind has completely turned to mush and I head back to the fridge hoping something eatable has materialized while I was gone. I look one more time in the cupboards, and settle on another cup of coffee.  Kids come and go I’m still in my jammies and my hair has a case of pillow head that would scare the dead.  I am now in a zombie state.  I have watched 10 episode of the Law and Order 24 hour marathon.  I have been back to the fridge a half a dozen times and I still have not found anything eatable.  I finally gave up on the remote I forgot to let dogs out now I have another round of messes to clean up and I still have to mop up dried pee in the basement.  GAWD I can’t even go to bed and pull the covers over my head as they are in the machine wet.   

The way I see it is, if I stayed in bed the dogs would not have peed and pooed all over the house because they will sleep when I sleep. I still would have dried pee under the sewing machine and have not eaten a thing.  The remote upstairs is still dead and there is still green stuff in the fridge. But I would have slept through it all in a clean dry bed.

Resistance is futile

Dogs personalities are as different as day and night, having over a 100 dogs come through my house I have had a chance to see the differences and how they change as their lives change with a new environment.  They often change again when they leave.  They are the most adaptable little creatures and truly are a gift from God.  When they first come some just pee if you look at them. Some want to eat your hand all the way up to your shoulder, and others run and hide  but there are the ones that just bounce on in and make themselves right at home.  They are the remarkable little ones that everything just rolls of their little backs and they take everything in stride.  When they jump in the middle of a pile of sleeping dogs and get totally bitch slapped by all of the, now awake dogs. They just shake it off and go find something else to do.  They truly dance to a different tune.  Not much affects them they don’t completely act like a dog and yet they know all the little doggy tricks to get their humans to stop drop and roll for them.  As their human counter parts they know how to weave and spin their cuteness webs. We get entangled in them and even after we know we have been caught we just give in and let ourselves get tangled even more.  We are slaves to that cuteness thing they posses.  How can you say no, how can you get mad, just one look and we are toast.  I have one of these dogs that can charm even the most diehard dog hater.    He wants to be kissed and he knows just what to do to get the kisses he seeks.  He has a little sound that is very much like a grunt he makes when he wants a kiss and no one is paying him any attention.  When folks stop by and he starts in, it is not long before they ask what is up with your dog.  One lady thought he was angry.  She said I’m sorry I didn’t mean to make your dog mad.  I said “He’s not mad he wants a kisses.”  She laughed and picked Jack up.  He placed one paw on each shoulder and stuck his neck up to her face.  She hesitated and drew back thinking he might bite, but he gave a big yawn and pushed his neck to her face.  I said “ Kiss him that’s all he wants”  I could tell she did not want to kiss this dog at all, but she gave him a quick peck as if she might lose her face or get a germ from the kiss.  I didn’t count but it could not have been more than 5 minutes before he had her kissing him all over the face and neck.   The dog she came to see, she lost all interest in after that. But alas he was not a good fit for her home but she wanted him so bad after that. I thought she would never leave and I was afraid I would have to frisk her on the way out to make sure she did not have him under her coat.

If I am at the computer and not paying him any attention he will start with the grunts, now I know what he is up to but I keep ignoring him.  Soon he is jumping on my leg and wanting in my lap.  I still ignore him. Then he just crawls up on me so I make room for him and keep on with what I am doing.  I soon get his head up in my face.  I move my head and he moves his. We play this till I am in pain from holding my head in every possible position other than straight up.  Then he turns to face me and the paws come up on the shoulders.  I give him a couple of kisses and he won’t move, I give him a few more and he just keep pressing his neck to my face.  Now I have stopped what I was doing and have him in both hands kissing the devil out of him, then from another room I hear “ Mom you kiss to loud and we can’t hear the TV. “  I now know he got me again.  I push him away and he comes back, at some point I feel like he is smothering me and he has not licked me one time.  My lips hurt and I can’t breathe so now he goes to the floor.  He does leave but it’s not long till I hear “Jack, I’m not going to kiss you go away.” With the accompanying sound of smacking lips making kisses.  I believe at that point he makes his rounds to all the girls to get kisses.  By the time we go to bed he smells like the perfume counter at the high end department stores.  Now Jack is a pudgy little guy and I tell the girls to not give him extra food.  Not that it works because he has not lost an ounce.  I catch the girls sneaking little tidbits off their plates to give to his Cuteness.  He truly has all the girls wrapped around his paw.

He walks in a room surveys his targets and then starts.  He will do some crazy antic to get attention, and it works he is a show stopper.  Then after a few entertaining moments he singles out his intended target, and it’s not long till the sound of kisses fills the air. Resistance is futile.

My latest trip

  

Mom and Dad with Older brother and myself in Feb. 1954

My second day back to work after the New Year and I’m unable to keep my mind on my job.  As I sit here I let my mind wander just far enough on the other side of the door to the company that I find myself taking a little trip down memory lane. It brings back such found memories for me, I often reminisce about my childhood with the kids. The girls and I love the kitchen not only because we like to eat but it is a warm and happy room with lots of window to see out and a relaxing view to enjoy while we cook and eat our dinner.  I use this time together to drive my message home and to reminisce. Some days it’s just a few memories and other days it is a flood and we can sit in the kitchen and talk and laugh the night away.  Growing up my father had the gift of storytelling.  He could spin a tale and had us hanging on every word.  He told us of his life on the Mississippi River and his migration to Michigan. We sat in our living room every night begging him to tell us more stories, or just repeat our favorite ones. It wasn’t till after he passed away I learned that most of his stories were fiction, but the memories of those days were happy and we didn’t care about truths we just love the story telling that brought us all together as a family.  Now I have found I possess some of his story telling abilities, I just have an endless supply of topics and a life of chaos to talk about, no need for fiction. 

We grew up poor, with Poor Mans gravy and potatoes towards the end of the month and eating bliss at the beginning of the month.  There was always food just not always variety. Our house was the favorite house on the block, Wednesdays all the kids from the neighborhood came over because that was bread making day, hot fresh homemade bread. You could smell it all over the neighborhood.   Mom always made a little extra dough and she would fry small pieces of it and then shake in a paper bag with sugar, and if we were lucky and she had cinnamon, we all thought we died and went to heaven, All our less fortunate  relatives always love to come to our house or have us come to theirs.  Mom could make a dinner for an army out of a fish and a loaf.  Back then there was no food stamps we got commodities.  Now for those who do not know what commodities are they are the basics and if you cook you had enough to feed every one.  But you had to know how to use powdered milk, powdered eggs, flour, cornmeal, oatmeal and lard, because the canned meat and brick of cheese and butter did not last long.  Most folks never used these things so Mom was given everyone’s powdered milk and eggs etc. She baked and made some of the best bread, cakes, cookies and we grew a garden and had an orchard so it was canned and preserved for the winter months.  When we got older we were sent to the relatives’ farm for the summers to work in exchange for a side of beef that was cooked and canned so it would last the year. We never minded because we got fresh milk, real steak not canned meat and to swim in the creek, ride the cows and horses and all the things kids can find to get into on the farm.   Mom never went anywhere empty handed so she made lots of goodies to take with us when we went to visit. Now to us this was normal but to the relatives we had the best food because their families did not do all that cooking.  I always was envious of them because they had store bought bread. All I had was homemade and if we ever got fresh milk it was mixed with the powdered milk to make it go further. Mom had her own version of Jiffy mix.  She took the milk eggs and flour and mixed it together in big containers.  So all we had to do was take out a cup and water in different quantities to have pancakes biscuits or the basics for cakes and cookies.   I miss the taste of the food from my childhood.  Gone are the days of hot fresh bread, who has time.  Most days I don’t want to cook at all. I never realized how much time my mom spent in the kitchen and how much of what she did there made our lives so wonderful.

Dad worked hard to make us things to play with.  He put a cable between two trees angled it down to the other and because the distance was longer than the cable there was a splice ¾ the way down.  A rope was hung on a pulley with a large tree limb on the bottom to straddle and sit on.  We would pick up speed as we headed down the angled cable, when it hit the splice and if we did it just right we could make the rope throw us so far up that we almost totally wrap around the cable.  I think about it now and have no idea why we are still alive.  We had go carts Dad made for us from old parts that he got from the junk yard.  He made a figure 8 race track on one acre of over grown grass, we would start at the same point in the figure 8, but we would be going in opposite directions and not able to see the other one from the tall grass there were many crashes. Dad made an ice skating rink in the back yard, where I almost lost an eye fooling around on hockey skates. We had a baseball sand lot I don’t remember many games just batting the hell out of rocks, dirt clots and any other thing we could smack with the bat.  

There were no cell phones back then if Mom wanted us she just stepped out the back door and with her finest outside voice she would yell Suzeeeee, Jimeeeeee, Traceeeeee and so on.  The E sound was always long and drawn out there was no mistaking it and it lasted so long you could hear it in the next county over. We listened in on the party line phone to hear all the gossip, who was grounded or what someone did in the neighborhood. We would sit in the crab apple tree telling all the gossip and eating crab apples till we were bloated.  Later the processing of them apples caused us a considerable amount of time in the library where we had a stack of comic books to pass the time as the apples exited.  We loved Buck night at the drive end theater it was only a dollar for a car no matter how many people were in it. We wore our jammies, ate dinner and played on the play ground before the show. Of course we never watched a movie because we were asleep by that time.  Sunday drives to the country and sharing a bottle of coke a cola while we were there was always fun till my brother and I started to fight and then the ride was over and we could just forget the coke. We dug holes in the back yard trying to see if we could make it to China.  We never did but after a good rain those holes were the best mud holes to play in. We would jump in them like we were going swimming.  Then rinsing off with the garden hose always turned into another way to horse around till Mom cut the water off.  I so miss the simple life of my youth.  Although there was a lot of discomfort from the things we did we had the best time.  Every day was a new adventure in the lessons of life and Mom and Dad at the ready to redirect our lessons when they got out of hand. I often wonder what our kids will reminisce about when they are our age.  (I love to sit in my room and skype my sister in the room next to me.)

Happy @#$@#$ New Year to me.

This past spring one of the planets was going to be close enough to the earth it would be the brightest star in the sky.  The girls and I got out the small telescope that the young one had just gotten.  We tried every which way to see through the darn thing and was having no luck because it had to sit so close to the ground where we could not see through it.  Now my bright idea is to sit it on the railroad ties that sit at the end of the parking space in our yard. But I can't see no matter where its at.  I have trifocal vision and refuse to use trifocals so I use bifocals.  I have several pair for diving and looking at dash board, typing and looking at computer monitor and so on.  Of course I do not have the correct set so I just take them off and set them on the tie.  30 more minutes I give and we go in the house. I spent the next day looking for my glasses.  When I remembered what I had done with them I went out to the railroad tie and they were not there.  I spent another day looking for them and just could not believe they where not there so I went out to look around again.  As I am hot footing it out to the tie again I hear a crunch.  What to my wondering eyes should appear, my glasses in the grass flat as a pancake.  The optical place I go to said they were not sure they could fix them but would try.  Yes, it was a miracle they even fit better.  Now it is a couple of months later we get back home from our camping vacation and we took everything out of the van and put it in the drive way so we knew where everything had to go and it all got put there.  It was a hot day so again I take of the glasses and put them on the retaining wall next to the drive way.  Next day I get ready for work and no glasses. I went several days that time trying to find them.  But alas they were found by the lawn mower.  But yet again my optical place pulled another  miracle out of there hat and was able to put them back together again.  I was then told they were not sure if they could fix them again so be careful.  So I am pretty good at taking advice so because I just can't go buy more glasses, I payed close attention to where I put them keeping them out of reach of dogs and other places that will get them lost or broke again.
So last night we rang in the New Year with our Sparkling bubble juice and talked with my friends and one of the girls who was in New York.  Posted pics on face book and so on and so on. It was around 1:30 in the morning New Years Day and we finally went off to bed.  I came down to my room and it was dimly lit with my night stand light.  It was just enough light to see the shining pee spot in front of the computer. I turned and went in to the laundry room saw a pee pad on the floor for washing and grab it, went back into my room turn absorbent side down over the pee spot and step on it to wipe the pee up. When the sicking sound of crunching came from under my foot. I yanked the pad up and got close enough to see my glasses smashed flatter than a pancake. I don't remember the exact cuss word I yelled but I am sure they were rich.........   I ran to the wall turned on the light and then realized what happened.  I left my glass of wine by the computer when posting pics.  I pushed it way back so no dogs could get to it but my glasses was in front of it and they jumped up and knocked my glasses on the floor.  You know stepping on them again was not the thing that got me.  The thing that got me was they knocked them on the floor and Pissed on them. Then I stomped them into oblivion. This round of Damn Dog business has caused me to start my own book of cuss words. I am praying real hard that this is not a sign of my New Year to come.