A canine conundrum

I am cleaning up after supper and I hear Tallulah yelling (in her throaty old black lady voice that she gets when she is real mad) " I told you no! I don't like it when you do that!!!" I discounted it for a second because the girls have been bickering basically all day, but then my mom radar said " wait a minute, Annabelle is in some other part of the house, who is she yelling at? " I stuck my head out of the kitchen to find that she has the dog in a headlock and is applying pressure.

Of course there were stop-that-this-instants and what-in-the-Sam-Hill-do-you-think-you're-doings? I briefly wondered if she needed counseling and was perhaps sociopathic, but then took comfort in the fact that very few seriel killers are women. Turns out the dog had "thumped me with her tail and I don't like it she she does that!" The dog, to her credit, was taking it all in stride looking just slightly annoyed, because she is essentially a good dog, despite the fact that yesterday, she somehow reached up onto the kitchen table and got a bag of pecan halves my mother had given me and ate most of them and the bag they were in...but I digress.

We finished cleaning, weeded the kitchen garden(can you imagine, dear reader, lettuces and herbs and flowers in a very cottage pottager style? Me too. But that is not at all what it looks like), cleaned up outside, came in got baths, did teeth and nails and hair and cleaned up their room a bit and read books and then I left them in their room with a few books to look at, so I could play on Facebook. Then, after a few minutes, Annabelle came out to tell me she was tired. So I went in to lie down with her ( yes, I am the bad mom that has to lie with her kids for a few minutes to get them to sleep--you wanna make something of it?? Meet me out back). Tallulah though still wanted to look at books. And of course wanted the light on and was prepared to scream and have a fit over it, as she has been prepared to do and has done all day long. So I told her to go to the living room and look at them out there.

"But, dere no one dere. Dat living room is scary and I want to say heaw."

"Well, then you need to be quiet and have the light off. Or you can go in the living room. You won't be by yourself. The dog is out there."

"Oh? De dowg out dere? Oh. Okay, I go be wid hehwah. She likes books."

And off she went. Happy as a clam, reading books to her best bud. Hopefully this time there would be no tail wacking.

So I made the mistake of buying "let it go" on iTunes today....

It is from the movie Frozen, which is awesome because in the end the true love ends up being sister love, which pretty much sums up life as far as I am concerned.

But after listening to it 32 times today, I was kind of sick of it, so I scrolled to something else on my kid friendly play list(kids friendly meaning no curse words not necessarily kid music) and landed on angel flying too close to the ground which is my favorite willie Nelson song (although how could you possibly choose?).

Then I hear this.
A( in an extreme whine) I want frozen

Me: we are taking a break from frozen

A: ok, but I want to listen to something like frozen

Me: but this is like frozen (In the sense that it is music)

A: no I want it to sound like Ana or Elsa.

Me: he does

A: no he doesn't

A: ok pretend that he does...

Then we all got quiet, which is the calm numbing effect that is willie Nelson, and soaked all that beautiful nasal twang and chromatic scales in and dethawed from our frozen trance.

How I spent the last day of my thirties..

1. I took care of smallish children and animals, keeping them fed and alive.

Literally. Like Tallulah walked out the front door and I heard it with my mom ears from the other side of the house. And then for reasons unknown to anyone but herself, I saw Annabelle in the backyard, in her swimsuit with bungee cords belted around her waist and then stretched to the door of the chicken coop. She was trying to move the coop like she was an ox and damn near tore the door off. Meanwhile, the chicken eating dog is standing next to the coop salivating. Sometimes it is hard for me not to say "what in the hell are you doing???" So I just opted for the tried and true "stop that this instant you're going to hurt yourself and the dog is going to eat all those chickens."

2. Talked to my parents on the phone and heard how my dad didn't put the car in park "ay I don't know what I am going to do with him, and I say Keen, what are you doing, you are going to kill us, but does he listen? no'mbre. I mean my illness was physical, but this? How do I fix this?" Later on when I got out of my car, I couldn't turn it off because I forgot to put it in park, and when I told her this " ay, see? You get it from him and you are not even old. Pay attention mija you have my grandchildren in that car."

3. I bullied people perhaps unnecessarily. The city is replacing a sewer line and in doing so had to take down a section of my very nice fence that we bought and had installed by a fence professional. The guy was getting out the claw end of his hammer when I stopped him in garbled Spanish, asked to talk to his boss and then proceeded to tell his boss something like this, " let me tell you something, you may think in your life you have seen pissed off, but let me assure you, you have never seen pissed off until you have seen me pissed off" etc. I am not exactly proud of that, but it was the city and they were about to destroy my fence, and now I have become they reigning crazy neighborhood fence lady, protector of the fence, a title previously held by a Miss Rita Hartman, my back neighbor, but one that I now wear with honor and understand because fences are expensive.

4. I waited until the last minute to do my cles and heard something that sounded like this:" and basically puts the onus on the parties whereby that particular issue subject to the board.... That recommendation becomes prima facie evidence..." God I wish I had a Busch lite and a car full of hungover people heading to the Guadalupe instead.

5. I hung out with my college friend. We went to Lubys for lunch.

6. Then I made my own birthday cake 'cause lord knows h wasn't going to do it and while I was at it I decided to make him some egg salad since we have about a million eggs and he was been working really late lately.

But oddly enough, he had been craving it made himself some at work....weird...

I think it all pretty much sums up the decade.

Sigh...

Annabelle is going to be six in a week and a few days and today I found myself thinking of something that hadn't really crossed my mind in these past 6 years, until today.

When we brought her home, we went through all the typical new parent stuff, but one thing we didn't realize was how much stuff we were going to get. I am not talking about hospital freebies-- I am talking about gift baskets and flowers. We probably brought home 5 baskets from the hospital and then they just kept arriving. Almost every day for about two weeks the doorbell would ring and there was something. Lou malnati's pizza from Chicago from one of Hyphens co workers, flowers from his office, flowers for my mom, a huge gift basket with food from his meat supplier, another basket from his boss's old partner, it went on and on and it was a wonderful outpouring of love--for Hyphen.

My coworkers came to see me, which is more personal and brought me food, which was wonderful and very appreciated. But as public servants, we didn't really do flowers.

Then one day the doorbell rang and there were some flowers for me. A bouquet that was in a ceramic baby bootie. It looked exactly like the one my mom got when I was born, that she had kept all these years and had given to Annabelle at the hospital, filled with flowers, and we both commented on it. "Now you have one so your next baby can have one too and then they will each have one to give to their little girls." My mom--always thinking ahead. I was just thrilled, because I really do love flowers.

The sender?

Judge Fred Edwards.

I am not sure if I ever wrote him a thank you note.

Thank you, judge. The next one's on me.

Hitting on senior citizens at bells my own cleaners, or in other words,today was Wednesday...

While I was dropping off H's dry cleaning this morning, I ran into an older gentleman. He was wearing wool pants, a sweater vest and a wool sports coat and the only way he could have looked more like Sean Connery was if he had a wool cap on. So I decided to hit on him...

"You look very dapper today."

And then he hit back,

"I am 86 years old and when a young beautiful woman tells me I look good, it makes my day."

"And since I am 40 (practically) when someone tells me I am young it makes my day."

" you are young, and beautiful."

Laughter and goodbyes and have a nice days. Then he jauntily got in his caddy and I hopped in my minivan.

And I remain firm in my belief that compliments and Christmas cards are the grease that make the world go round.

Hiding places and cruel booby traps

Tonight I heard some unorthodox crunching and munching and saw that the dog was eating a Halloween size pack of Reeses pieces, wrapper included, of course.... I had found this extra bag of candy the other day and I needed a piece thought they might be a good source for Annabelle's Friday lunch treat. (the only day I put dessert in her lunch). But somehow naughty children discovered it and were sneaking candy here and there. I really have no problem with a certain amount of naughtiness in fact, i think it is healthy. But, when I heard the dog munching on another piece and scolded the girls, I noticed that they seemed unconcerned with their candies' disappearance. They were far too interested in watching a nature show with their dad and this could only mean one thing-- there was a stockpile of which I was unaware. When the dog ate another candy plus wrapper I made them 'fess up. It was in the bookshelf. So I promptly disposed of it and when Annabelle went to get another piece and I told her I threw it all way, the look on her face told me there was another cache in the house. I said as much and all three of them burst out laughing. H said he was sworn to secrecy and had known about the stash for several days. They ate a few more pieces and I went to the pantry. To the source of the naughtiness. I hid the candy up high, I mean she might still need some for her lunch, and then I filled the bag with dried cranberries.

Take that you little shits....

Red light ahead

I was always annoyed when adults would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, so I never ask kids that. But when you are the parent to an adorable 5 year old and the world is her oyster, your crazy mom mind sometimes wonders what she will end up doing. She is so athletic, sometimes I think she will be in the Olympics or a ballet dancer. She is so creative about things and likes to sings and make up her own songs, so maybe a lyricist or a performer of some sort. Or just an artist. We were at the mfah the other day and she commented that when we got home she was going to draw something so they could "have one of mine." She also has such a mechanical mind she likes to "play Legos" and rinky tinks(what we call tinker toys.) So maybe and engineer or architect. She likes to build forts and the other day tied her scooter onto her bike and then onto her ez roller and turned the entire contraption into Santa's sleigh with reindeer--she always manages to find a new way to play with a toy, something its creator would never have imagined , so maybe an inventor. She is such a nature girl and always has been, even as a baby if she was fussy we just took her outside and she would stop crying, so maybe a park ranger or a biologist. Or maybe something with animals. She was actually teaching our old dog a new trick the other day--how to climb the stairs, which Bella cannot do because she is stupid, but she tries to because Annabelle was coaxing her with goldfish and she loves Annabelle and loves goldfish. And let's not forget when she was three and had an obsession with all things dentistry.

But it was the other day that she said something that made me think in a totally new direction for her career choice, something I never would have considered for her in a million years. We play this game where we try to get an "express" while we are driving, which is to say no red lights. We really like to play it as we are heading down shepherd, because there are a million lights and it is a challenge. We have made a few rules, If the light is red and you slow down but don't have to stop before it turns green, it counts as green. Turning right on red is the same as a green light. Whatever. But then I hear this one:"mom, what if you are almost at a red light, and are slowing down and then it turns green but the person at the front of the line is texting and not paying attention (where would she get that idea?) and they kind of waste the light and then you have to stop? It's not really your fault but you have stopped. What does that count as?"

"Hmmm. That is a slippery slope, my lambkin a slippery slope..."