Alaska is on hold because Waffles doesn't give a damn.

I'd like to get in here and talk more about Alaska -- I've had a post in the works for weeks now -- but I've gone and done something that has made doing so much more difficult than it already was. My thought process on this one was enthusiastic and brief, perhaps too brief. It was a spontaneous "Imma do that!" without much thinking about what came after. I'm an Aries, which, from what I understand of astrology, means I am easily filled with childlike enthusiasm for stupid things.

I must have been longing for more chaos and less sleep. Maybe I wanted to buy a lot more paper towels. Maybe I just wasn't happy with the level of poop on the floors of my house because my recent foray certainly fixed that last one --

Waffles and Atticus

They're not mine forever, I swear! I've volunteered to be a foster dog mom for an organization that rescues pups from high kill shelters in the South. These are my first two charges, a brother/sister duo, hyper little foxhound mixes from sweet peachy Georgia.

It's tough to keep up with two puppies, even with both of them barricaded in the kitchen most of the day and watched with exhaustingly constant vigilance. If I see Atticus sniffing suspiciously and run forward to grab and run him outside, Waffles will definitely take advantage of those two seconds of inattention to pee and poo in all corners of the kitchen and chew through Lucien's headphone cord. When she's done destroying the place, she pounces on my ankles with a jubilantly wagging tail. She's always so dang pleased with herself.

I'm so tired. It's kind of like having an infant again minus the "they sleep in a cage and I can put them in that cage when I go to the grocery store, too" parts.  I hear you definitely can't do that stuff with human babies.

Natani loves the puppies. I think she sometimes yearns for her lonely days, stares into the distance and pines for solitude as puppies crawl all over her and chew on her ears, but overall she is the best foster dog mom I could have hoped for.

Sigh.

This is my life now.

I mentioned in my previous post we'd lost a pet. It obviously isn't Natani, thankfully, because I need her right now. We thought Bobo would be the next pet to go -- he is one old, old lizard -- but no, Stella the parakeet went first.

Stella made us crazy all the time. The chirps were redundant, constant, loud, shrill, and made us all mental. "STELLA, STOPPPPP!" was a regular refrain from dawn to dusk. Yet the day they disappeared, those constant chirps and learned phrases ("You're a pretty birdie!" was a regular one and unfortunately, thanks to the siblings, "Shut up" was another), the vastness of the silence that descended upon this house hurt our ears more than her constant noise ever did.

I emptied out a box of checks and lined it with cotton balls. I placed Stella's body on top. I wanted the kids to see her comfortable when they came home from camp. I didn't have time to bury her after our tearful goodbyes were said so I chucked that box of checks into the freezer, where it remains to this day. I feel intense guilt whenever I open the freezer to grab some frozen peas for dinner and see her check box coffin lying there. One of these days we're gonna bury that pretty, pretty birdie.

I am now assisting Bobo in daily exercise routines and feeding him a high protein/low carb diet. We can't lose another pet so soon, dragon!  Keep moving those little lizard legs!

I'm throwing my big Halloween party this weekend. And after the weekend, I'm taking on yet another foster puppy. Somebody stop me, what the hell am I doing?

they're just so damn cute

Waffles doesn't give a damn,
MJ

a lemon or merely lemon scented?

Lucien loves Star Wars.  He recently began coloring a picture of R2D2 but left the room briefly to discuss important matters with his mother. He returned to find his sister had turned R2D2 into a pretty princess at a tea party thanks to her pink marker and bottomless princess sticker collection.

There was a bit of yelling but then, thank God, my son realized the exquisite humor in the situation and laughed until he cried.  As did I.

R2D2 has never been so fancy.
The tiara. It kills me.

In other news, we briefly regretted our Winnebago purchase over the long weekend when a panel blew off the side while flying down the highway.  Sometimes one experiences buyer's remorse when one's vehicle starts blowing to bits at 70 mph.

It's possible this is going to become an RV blog.  Or an RV blog with a touch of  "our desert dog, seven months later, continues to destroy all of our stuff" blog.*  When we first moved into Banister Abbey, I thought this would be a home renovation blog.  And it was, briefly, but I have since gotten away from posting pictures of our home improvement.  My point is, I'm no longer sure what my point is.

(*Speaking of Natani, she knocked Coco's favorite game off the counter this week and started chewing it up.  I hate this game.  Alex hates this game.  My mother hates this game and my mother hates nothing in this world except stupid, stupid Mermaid Island.

I debated whether or not to let Mermaid Island die "a natural death" at the jaws of our destroyer, Natani the Navajo dog.  But in the end, I couldn't do it and rescued the ridiculous thing.  My mother can't forgive me.)

nom nom nom i love you nom nom

So the directionless blog wanderings continue this week with more tales of skiing (could be a skiing blog now) and RVs and bestiality.

I might as well take care of that last item now since it's all anyone will think about until I address it. We went out for Seattle Mom's birthday Saturday night and her husband, Seattle Dad, told us the story of the infamous "Enumclaw horse sex case" which happened in 2005 outside Seattle.  Some guy died from internal injuries (perforated colon, I believe) after being on the receiving end of sex with a stallion.  By "stallion" I mean a real stallion, not a euphemism for a virile male.  Truly, a horse.

Our beautiful friends out with us in Ballard.

Right after he told us the terrible horse story.
Why did he do that to me.

I haven't been able to shake that horse story since I heard it.  In addition to being repulsed by some sections of humanity, I just have so many questions about how it happened.  I mean what......how....

anyway, the takeaway from that is the human race is doomed.

We may all be headed for hot livin' in hell but in the meantime, the family and I continue to enjoy the Winnie B and more time on the slopes during mid-winter school break.

I look happy. The Loosh does not look happy.  

HE IS HAPPY

(Nope, he really wasn't, so mad at me right here)

The family headed for Hoodoo, a ski resort in Central Oregon, over the long Presidents Day weekend.  Hoodoo allows RV camping in the parking lot, provides an electrical hookup but nothing else.  It was our first attempt at rationing water, which we did incorrectly so ran out of fresh water from our tank on the second day.  We're learning, we're learning.

I remain the sole driver of the RV.  Alex prefers to put his feet up and avoid driving something big and scary and I have fairly debilitating control issues, particularly when it comes to my family's locomotion.  In that sense, Alex and I are perfectly paired.

I cannot overstate how excited Alex and I were at the prospect of camping at the base of a chairlift. We were near giddy on the drive to Hoodoo, imagining the extreme convenience of being able to wake up, eat a bowl of cereal, throw on our gear and walk twenty feet to the lift.  We were like kids being told they were camping at the base of a candy mountain, and when they awoke in the morning they could shovel mouthfuls of the sweet stuff into their gaping jaws immediately.

Excitement aside, the challenges began immediately upon arriving at Hoodoo and pulling into our reserved space in the resort parking lot.  An RV has to be level in order to avoid damage to both the refrigeration and slide-out wall mechanisms.  If you're parked in a non-level spot, you must put levelers under the lower wheels to even things out.  We've leveled Winnie before with our cheery bright yellow plastic levelers with zero trouble.  But that was then.

When you place RV levelers on top of wet pavement, slush, and a thin layer of ice at a ski resort, then try to drive your RV on top of them, those goddamn cheery yellow levelers shoot away from your vehicle with impressive agility.  You're not getting on top of those things; they're spooked gazelles sprinting into the forest.

When something isn't working, Alex pulls inward, goes silent with a steely and impressive determination.  When he goes quiet like that, I back off, disappear, don't bother him.  Trust it, he wants to be alone with his thoughts.  I instead watched and prayed silently from the inside as he tried shovels, ice scrapers, portable heaters, even put the levelers on top of our anti-slip table placemats.  The placemats were quickly shredded by the tires.  Now I need new placemats but that's neither here nor there.

It took Alex so long to get the RV up on those levelers, I had begun making dinner in the back by the time it happened.  The kids and I grew accustomed to grabbing onto whatever piece of furniture was nearby when Alex revved the engine and lurched Winnie forward to give it another go.  When he finally succeeded, our RV neighbors next door pounded on their windows and cheered.

Alex had been so immersed in getting the deed done, he hadn't realized he'd drawn an audience of fellow RVers and people waiting in nearby passenger cars.  He was like, "People were watching me?  Should I be embarrassed?" but I said, "Nah, hold your head high, man, you are the new face of determination in Central Oregon."

Alex has got serious grit.

We're barely on 'em, but we're on 'em.

we love skiing blah blah blah

Hoodoo is closed Tuesdays.  We camped Monday night and awoke Tuesday morning to find we were absolutely alone in this world --

Winnebago feels lonely and insignificant

I loved the solitude, loved having the entire place to ourselves like a giant snowy playground.  But me being me, I looked over my shoulder every five minutes and thought, "Gosh, we're really alone up here, a murderer could drive into this parking lot and kill us at any time and no one would ever know."  My thoughts are pretty dark but I take comfort in the fact Enumclaw guy's "I should have sex with that horse" is still way way worse.  

Coco and I climbed the beginner slope and went sledding.  While up there, a truck pulled into the parking lot and several men jumped out.  My heart stopped.  It was my nightmare coming true, I was sure of it.  I knew what I had to do;  I had to rush them, confront them, let them know I wasn't going to go quietly.  I was in such a hurry to confront those men about their murderous intent, Coco fell out of the sled in my hustle down the embankment back to the parking lot.

Sorry, baby

but Mama's protecting you

It became apparent, after I ran at their faces, the men in the truck were a father and his three teenage sons who didn't realize Hoodoo was closed Tuesdays.  They were dejected to say the least; the dad had taken off work for the day and the three sons had taken a day off from school.  They only had one snowboard and one pair of boots between them; the rest had planned to rent from the very closed rental shop.

Super nice non-murderous guys. We watched them and yelled our enthusiastic support as father and sons climbed the steepest runs.  They took turns using the one pair of boots and one snowboard.  They cheered for whomever's turn it was then yelled encouragement at the poor sucker as he climbed the equipment back up to them.  They made the best of a disappointing situation.

Sorry I thought you were criminals, guys.  You're inspiring in your can-do attitudes and it was a pleasure to make your acquaintance.

and it was fun to camp in a parking lot

Now back to beginning -- the Winnie B shedding her parts on the drive home to Seattle.  I looked in the sideview mirror after we'd cleared Portland to see what appeared to be a large piece of metal flying alongside our vehicle.  I yelled back to Alex, who was locked in the bathroom at the time with his computer in an attempt to combat motion sickness while answering emails (that was a mouthful and a confusing one at that, long story) I yelled something along the lines of, "WE GOT A PROBLEM, MAN."

Alex came rushing back to the cockpit and confirmed something had gone awry with his panicked, "Pull over!  Now!  The side of the car's about to blow off!" but I was surrounded by people on a major freeway with a shoulder not wide enough to accommodate the Winnie B.

I slowed down, put on my emergency flasher lights, prayed for an exit ramp, told Alex he was going to have to run into the highway to grab the piece if we lost it before I could stop.  (Alex has grit, remember.  I don't.  He was the obvious best candidate for the job.)

It was then I realized what people had been trying to tell me.  Not two minutes earlier, a couple had pulled up alongside me and honked their horn.  Then the man made some emphatic gestures.  He pointed at his own eyeballs with two fingers then pointed at the Winnie B.  It was the ole "I'm lookin' at you" gesture and it struck me as very rude.  I wasn't doing anything wrong, wasn't speeding, was well between the lines, hadn't cut anyone off.  How dare he.

I began making the same gesture back at him.  Two fingers pointed at my eyeballs then pointed at his eyeballs. "Oh yeah?  You're lookin' at me, buddy?  Well I'M LOOKIN' AT YOU, TOO.  I can look at things, too, and I'm lookin' at YOU.  What you gonna say about it?"  He eventually floored it and took off in front of me with a shake of his head.  What a jerk.

Except as I pulled off to the side of the road with part of my RV detached, of course, it became evident he wasn't a jerk at all and was instead trying to give me an important message, that it was time to take a good hard look at my vehicle.

I should perhaps evaluate my suspicions regarding the motives of strangers.  I am an island!

I finally eased to the side of the road on a desolate off-ramp.  Alex jumped out the side door -- straight into a pile of dog poop.  What are the chances?  What are the chances of pulling onto a rural exit ramp and jumping into a pile of dog poop?  That's just how life happens for us.  We embrace the unpredictability but not the mess.

Alex hopped around a bit, some expletives, decided he never wanted to see that pair of shoes again and took them off  right there on the side of the road.  He wrapped them in a plastic bag for later disposal and asked the children to retrieve his slippers.

It didn't take much effort to pull the panel off; it had been dangling by a mere thread.

there used to be a piece there...

...but it is now in here

Al hopped back in and we pulled back onto the highway, slightly rattled but relieved.  Not five seconds later, the battery warning light illuminated before me, a glaring red light that seemed sent from the devil himself.  I hesitated before delivering the bad news to Alex, who was happily wearing his slippers and chatting about our near disaster on the highway.  "Err...Al....?"

One exit later, we were back on a rural off-ramp reading our owners manual.  The manual said if the battery warning light came on, we needed to stop the RV immediately, pop the hood, and inspect the somethin'-somethin' belt for a tear.  Okee dokee.

We didn't know what a somethin' somethin' belt was.  A few Google searches later, we popped the hood and stuck our heads way down inside the bowels of the mechanics of the Winnie B.  The somethin' somethin' belt looked awesome, in fact looked brand new, because it is.

When we took off again from our second emergency stop of the hour, the battery warning light turned off and stayed off.  But still, we were jittery and spent the rest of the uneventful ride home Googling things such as "Is my new RV a lemon or merely lemon-scented?"

We've since learned it's fairly common for everything to go wrong in the first six-ish months of RV ownership.  The thing's never been used before and there are a zillion things that can go wrong with such a complex piece of machinery -- so a lot of them do, brace yourself.  So far, in our four initial trips, we've had a broken slideout wall (now fixed) a dead house battery (fixed) a dead GFCI outlet (fixed --user error, oops), a panel blown off the side (not fixed) and a battery warning light (what the hell was that about).

Yep, this could turn into an RV blog. Or skiing. Our dog is still crazy, too.
MJ

No dice, pumpkin spice

Halloween is over so I can have a life again until next week when I start prepping for Thanksgiving. I will then have a brief life again until Christmas preparations begin, which will be alarmingly soon after the Thanksgiving meal has been consumed.

My grocery shopping for our annual Halloween party revealed America's perplexing obsession with all things pumpkin flavored and pumpkin scented.  There were pumpkin waffles, pumpkin lip balm, pumpkin coffee, pumpkin marshmallows.  I didn't investigate too thoroughly but I wonder how far it goes. I wonder if there are pumpkin flavored hot dogs.  I wonder if there are pumpkin scented suppositories, to remind you of Grandma's pumpkin pie when you take your butt medicine.

We need to get a hold of ourselves because if you truly cut open a pumpkin and take a sniff of the insides, or god forbid taste them, the experience will be more akin to day-old cat vomit than the deliciously warm and comfy scent those marketing geniuses have concocted.

Banister Abbey Parents Gone Wild Halloween 2014 was the best one yet.  It was the year I finally bought my own beer tap.  It was also the year I made sure to set our fire extinguisher on the counter before the party began.  I love my friends but they are definitely capable of burning down my house so it's best to have that thing handy.

I made the worms again

We had over 50 people this year, more than we've ever had before, and they were all enthusiastic, fully costumed, fully on board.  I dressed as Elvis Costello and didn't set my guitar down all night.  I couldn't.  My costume became nebulous without the guitar, something between a Blues Brother and a 1940s era hit man.  I smacked a lot of friends in their chests and shoulders with my guitar as I walked through the party but I think it was worth it to uphold my vision.

It's two Elvises and two White Stripes

Alex was a giraffe --

Animal costumes were popular this year

but what is up with that eagle cow?

A tarot card reader sat in the TV room and gave readings all night, some of which were life changing and had people crying on their way out of the room.  (That could have been the booze, though; too much of the hard stuff seems to have the same effect.) Our friends reported the tarot reader was amazing and right on point, minus the one lackluster review from a wife whose husband had just been told to come out of the closet.

Whoops.  I hope they don't come to the party next year costumed as a divorced couple.

has your life changed yet, Seattle Mom?

The final revelers left near 2:00 a.m. after one guest yelled, "You guys, seriously, MJ calls 911 all the time.  Believe me, she will call 911 on her own party if we don't leave."  I then placed the phone back down gently, grateful someone knew me so well, and understood who I am, at my core.

Here are my kids on actual Halloween, with a Victorian ghost up top --

Halloween

the only holiday that doesn't take itself seriously

exhibit A: my boy is a piece of bacon

As for other recent events, Coco had a starring role in her preschool's class play.  The play was based on an ancient theme, one that has plagued mankind for ages -- Coco had grown a pumpkin that was too big and she couldn't figure out how to get it off the vine.

One by one the other kids came by with helpful suggestions. There was a lot of tugging on the pumpkin -- a little melodramatically overacted, if you ask me.  After the 15th round of tugging and pulling and shrugging of tiny shoulders, Alex leaned over to me and whispered, "Someone give these kids a decent hacksaw and we're done here."

At the end they decided if they all pulled together they could get the pumpkin off the vine.  I guess it's necessary to suspend one's disbelief when watching a preschool play because I don't think even 20 tiny kids pulling together could rip a pumpkin the size of a Volkswagen off a 12-inch diameter vine.

I hit a parked car a couple days ago.  That was the start of a bad day.  Drop-off in front of Lucien's school is always a mess.  Parents are supposed to drive north down the street in front of the school to drop off their kids but there's always some dumb parent trying to come south.  You have to move over as far as you can to let the stupid idiot through. I moved over as far as I could which, I now know, was too far.  I pushed the limits of what was possible according to the parked truck I broadsided.

Lucien, helpful little soul he is, started yelling from the backseat, "OH MY GOD MOM STOP! STOP!  YOU'RE HITTING THAT CAR, MOM, YOU'RE HITTING THAT CAR" to which I replied through clenched teeth yet at full volume (I'm amazing) "I'M AWARE I'M HITTING A CAR RIGHT NOW, LUCIEN, THANK YOU."  The crumply crunchy screechy sound was my first clue, how about you, son?  What was your first indication the morning had gone to hell?

I left a note on the truck, not only because it was the right thing to do but because I knew Lucien would be running his mouth about it all day at school.  If I hit-and-runned it, it would take mere seconds for the school to track down the culprit thanks to the wise guy in 3rd grade.  I have no morals, really.

The truck guy hasn't called yet so fingers crossed he likes the modifications I've made to his vehicle.  Mine looks much worse, by far.  The entire side is torn up.  I may not get it fixed because it makes me feel kind of badass, gives me a little street cred, makes people fear me.

I returned from the school drop-off debacle to find Supermodel Neighbor (he's here working on the house again, both kids now believe him to be an uncle) pacing the house.  He told me he couldn't find his jacket, which he wouldn't worry about too much except his wallet was in the front pocket.  We'd gone out the night before to a friend's stand-up comedy competition (so fun).  We both remember him wearing his jacket home; it had been raining and we'd run to the car with jackets over our heads.  It had to be in the house somewhere, there was no other option.

So we ransacked it.  We tore it apart room by room all the while muttering it didn't make any sense. Then we went outside to search the car, which is when Supermodel Neighbor saw the torn-up side of my vehicle.  "What the hell....?"  he said and I said,  "Oh yeah, I hit a truck earlier,"  Then he opened the passenger side door and recoiled in horror, "WHAT THE HELL...?"  "Oh yeah." I said, "I forgot, Oscar (my dog) also threw up in the car this morning.  I should probably clean that up."

Supermodel Neighbor looked at me funny then, like he wanted to get in his car and drive back to Portland at that point but couldn't.  Because I had his wallet somewhere.

On a whim I called Alex to ask him if he had, for some unimaginable reason, taken Supermodel Neighbor's jacket to work.  And of course he had.  He was trying to return it to a Halloween Party reveler at work who had forgotten his jacket at our house thanks to the too-strong but delicious "Rosemary's Baby" punch.  Alex saw a strange jacket thrown over the back of a chair that morning, grabbed it and and hopped on his bike, whistling, believing he was doing a very good thing indeed.

The wallet was still in the pocket even after its ride to Corporate America.  I breathed easily again until I went to pick up Coco at school and stepped in a giant pile of dog poop -- dog must have been the size of a rhino -- right outside the school's front door.  A friend, who had been in touch with me via text all morning and knew of my struggles, witnessed this.  She went back inside the building and gathered up Coco's things while whispering to her and smoothing her hair, "Now be a good girl for Mommy, she's a mess today."

In good news, my pottery wheel instructor told me I was "a natural born potter."  I'll hold onto that nugget of goodness as I jettison my favorite pair of shoes towards the curb because I am never getting the dog sh*t out of all those crevices on the bottom.

That's mine in a nutshell.  How's yours?
MJ

Cat Stevens and Jesus Mouse

Since I started my writing class, I have less time for the blog.  Heck, I have less time for showers.  It's been three days now, people.

Perhaps I'm in over my head with this writing class.  I'm in there with "real" writers who have done a "publish."  My teacher's former job was literary critic for the Seattle P.I.  My writing assignments are returned with red marks all over them.  I'm pretty sure it's my teacher's pen, though I like to think he was just eating Twizzlers and got sloppy.

My assignment essays, strictly bound by a 300-word limit, have me awake in the middle of the night, writing in fits of sleepy inspiration.  I'm quite proud of my most recent essay and look forward to reading it aloud to a roomful of critics who will have no idea what I'm talking about.

Spring has sprung in Seattle and not a moment too soon.  Winters in the Pacific Northwest, as most people know, are chilly gray and dreary.  But in the past week of warm sunny days, we've come out of hibernation.  Everyone's back outside, stretching and squinting up at the mysterious yellowish circle in the sky. 

My favorite runner is back, running through our neighborhood for hours at a time.  He's my favorite because, while most runners look straight ahead and pound the hell out of the pavement, he gets more vertical with his strides and looks around the whole time.  It gives him the appearance of bouncing, near skipping, down the sidewalk.  He looks thrilled to be running, which is a strange concept to me.

I was sitting on the front porch when I saw him again.  I ran inside to yell to Al, "Ole Bouncy Black Pants is back!  Ole Bouncy Black Pants is back!"  I probably should have been taking a shower instead of sitting on the front porch watching the passersby but we all make questionable decisions sometimes.

The days when all the mountain ranges are out -- Olympics to the west and Cascades to the east -- and Mount Rainier is standing crisp and clear to the south, those are the days we Seattleites live for.  On those days, we are all convinced we live in the most beautiful place on Earth and feel smugly satisfied with our life choices.

photo www.seattlecenter.org 

 

We're now facing another string of cold gray days but last week was enough to give us all more patience.

Coco had a nightmare last night that woke her (and me) at 4:00 a.m.  She was bolt upright and crazy-eyed, screaming that something was in her bed. As I tried to calm her, she seemed to catch sight of something out of the corner of her eye.  Her eyes widened and she screamed again, then bolted to the end of her bed.

She convinced me.  I nearly yelled,  "Holy sh*t, girl, there IS something in your bed!" and hightailed it out of her room.  Instead I gathered my wits, pulled all her blankets off the bed, shook them out, and quickly became hopelessly entangled in the middle of them.  Lucien woke up and said sleepily, "Mommy, are you doing an April Fools joke?"

There was absolutely nothing in Coco's bed but don't bother trying to convince her of that, it's wasted breath and time.  She came back to bed with me where she spent the rest of the night kicking Alex and I in the kidneys.

As usual, for those of us with no family nearby, friends were family for Easter.  We gathered on the Street of Dreams for an egg hunt and mimosas (one was for kids, one for adults, you decide).  The kids watched in horror as Seattle Mom and Dad's cat attacked and nearly killed a mouse in the backyard.  Seattle Dad had to put the mouse out of its misery because there was much suffering.  Happy Easter, kids, and no worries, maybe that mouse will resurrect just like Jesus.

Then there was a ton of food including homemade cinnamon rolls and a psycho jello mold --

Want some candy, little kid?

It was a beautiful day so we headed down the street to an empty parking lot to ride bikes --

"Daddy, why doesn't my bike work anymore?"

When we got back to Seattle Mom and Dad's house, the jumping began --

 

It's not Easter until someone jumps over my head, scares me and makes me spill my mimosa. 

This one's for the ladies

There was some singing involved in our Easter celebration, which reminded me of a classic Alex tale.  When I first met him, Al loved Cat Stevens and sang his songs regularly and loudly.  His favorite song was "Peace Train."  But instead of understanding the chorus for what it was -- "Ride on the Peace Train" -- Alex misunderstood (it's hard to decipher foreign language song lyrics!) and sang, "I love to be straight." 

I love my foreigner.

I was flipping through a catalog full of useless items recently when I saw this --

How is this better than a dog pooping in your yard?  Instead of an occasional left-behind pile of poo, you're going to stare at a fake dog in full poo position, with fake poo coming out of its behind, every time you step out your front door?  Catalog people, go home, you're drunk!

Everyone jump on the be straight,
MJ

The Prodigal Schnauzer

Alex and I celebrated eleven years of wedded mostly-bliss over the weekend.  Alex had to board a plane to Europe for work the morning of our anniversary but that's OK; we've celebrated many together, and frankly neither one of us made any plans this year.  I felt the love in his text after I drove him to the airport that said, "Flight delayed.  F*ck everything."  It was enough.

Oscar the dog was our wedding present to each other eleven years ago.  He was a mini schnauzer, "our first baby" as they say, though once a real baby came along he felt less like a baby and more like a dog again.  Still, we loved the little guy.

We drove up to Marysville a few days after our wedding to "just take a look" at a litter of schnauzer puppies.  And of course, we left an hour later with Oscar.  We had absolutely no dog supplies at home so had to stop at Petco on the drive back.  Oscar's arrival was not the best planned in the world but we had a habit of doing things like that so nobody was too surprised.

A week after our wedding, we went to Quebec for a party with Alex's extended family to celebrate our marriage.  Because we had an unplanned puppy at home, we had to enlist a string of volunteers to stay with him while we were away.  A couple friends were refinishing their hardwoods so were happy to have a non-fumey place to stay.  Other friends were intense dog lovers and happy to spend time with a puppy.  One friend (Cavanaugh, in fact) still takes immense pride he's the one who taught Oscar to go up and down stairs.

Another friend was willing because he was a horny selfish bastard who was happy to use the puppy to meet chicks by walking him up and down the street outside our condo.  The pup was well exercised and slept for days when we returned.  Much to his chagrin, our friend was still single.

Our years with Oscar pre-Lucien were happy ones.  They were full of days at the dog park where Oscar insisted on making the most intense ear-piercing shriek whenever he caught sight of another dog.  Which was often.  Because it was a dog park.  We eventually stopped going to dog parks because the sound emitted from our dog was truly unbearable.

Oscar slept in our bed, often on our pillows with his butt in our faces.  He joined us on road trips to Colorado where he got carsick and threw up every hour on the hour.  He went on a Labor Day camping trip with a group of our friends and accidentally had his head rolled up in our friend's car window.  That was a terrible moment.  Oscar made strangled sounds, Alex tried to break the window, and the rest of us just screamed.  The driver was so flustered, it took him a minute to find the button to roll the window back down.  We just kept screaming behind him, which he claimed didn't help.

Oscar once ripped apart one of his toys and ate all the stuffing inside.  I didn't realize he'd done that until I took him for a walk and he squatted to poo.  But there was no poo coming out of Oscar -- it was just stuffing.  A woman walked past and screamed when she saw the steady stream of white stuffing coming out of my dog.  She said, "OH MY GOD, WHAT ARE YOU FEEDING THAT POOR THING?"

Oscar had surgery on his ear that necessitated him wearing a cone.  He couldn't figure out how wide that damn cone was so often ran into door frames with the edge of it.  If he was running, the force was strong enough to knock him backwards.  He was one dazed and confused little schnauzer.

Alex tossed Oscar into Lake Crescent once because "all dogs love to swim!"  Turns out Oscar didn't love to swim so Alex had to go into Lake Crescent, too.

Those were some good days.  But when we had Lucien, things changed.  Oscar was not happy.  Lucien followed Oscar everywhere and freaked him out.  He snapped at Lucien many times, growled at him regularly.  I had to shut Oscar in the bathroom much of the time.  It was a tense, stressful existence for all of us.

So when we decided to go to Paris for a few years, the decision to give Oscar up was, frankly, an easy one.  We knew we would have less living space -- much less -- putting Oscar and Lucien in even closer constant proximity.  Oscar wouldn't have a yard in which to run, the thing that gave him his greatest daily joy.  Plus, we would be traveling more often so he would be boarded more often, which he hated. 

It was time to part ways with the schnauzer.  A couple months before we left for Paris, Oscar went to live with friends of friends in southern Washington.  Al and I cried when we said goodbye to him and promised we'd visit someday.  We didn't really think we'd ever see him again.

But life's funny.  Because here's Banister Abbey's newest resident --

 Return of the Schnauzer

Oscar's back with us, as it should be.  The family who took him could no longer keep him.  They traveled extensively, often for weeks at a time, leaving him alone.  Even though neighbors came by to feed him and play with him, our emotionally needy schnauzer grew depressed and started chewing the fur off his legs.  He was so despondent he eventually stopped eating.

When the family contacted me in Paris to ask if I knew of a better home for him, we tried to find one but nothing worked out.  I begged the family to hang onto him until we could get back to Seattle and into a home where we could have a dog.  A week after we moved into the Abbey, the adopted family drove Oscar back to Seattle. 

When they pulled up in front of Banister Abbey and Oscar jumped out of the car, I couldn't tell if he remembered me.  He seemed happy but confused.  When Alex came home later that day, however, Oscar was not at all confused.  Without question, he remembered Al.  Alex was always Oscar's soulmate, his number one, and apparently nothing's changed in Oscar's schnauzer heart.

When Alex came walking up onto the porch, Oscar nearly had a heart attack.  It's like he couldn't believe who he was seeing, couldn't move he was so overwhelmed.  At first he just collapsed to the ground like a preteen girl at a Justin Bieber concert.  Then his entire body started wagging and he frantically flopped all over the place. 

He couldn't get enough Alex, jumping all over him as if to demand, "WHERE THE HELL YOU BEEN, PUNK?"  He pretty much tried to crawl into Alex's mouth to be as close to him as possible.  A man and his dog reunited is a beautiful thing.

Oscar's an elderly dog now at eleven years old.  He sleeps a lot more.  He no longer makes the squealing sound when he sees another dog.  He no longer gets carsick.  He no longer poops stuffing, or at least not that I'm aware of at this time.  

He's mellowed in all ways, including with children.  We were prepared to keep them separate but it doesn't seem necessary.  The kids threw a tennis ball for him and he decided they were OK.  Sometimes they smother him too much but he doesn't growl, just sighs deeply and rolls his schnauzer eyes.  So far so good.

I didn't mean to write all that about Oscar but I guess the dog deserved an ode.  It feels so good to have him back.  We always felt guilty about giving him away, and wondered what it meant about our marriage that we were able to give away the symbol of our love and commitment so easily.  Symbol of our love?  Meh, screw it, take it to southern Washington.

Welcome home, doggie

In other news, Lucien is now a Kindergarten graduate.  On his last day of school, the parents assembled in the classroom for a performance.  The kids sang some songs they learned over the course of the year.  Lucien, as usual, was placed in the back row as if to hide him, where he half-heartedly sang until he got bored and started smacking his own butt and grinning widely. 

He's in a sports day camp now that school's out.  I heard from a friend Lucien suggested they name his team "The Underpants" but the coach vetoed it.  Lucien then begrudgingly agreed to "The Banana Peels" but remains vocally disgruntled to this day.

I had a lot to say today but Oscar took up all the room.  Kind of like what he's doing in our bed once again.  Dog butt has returned to our pillows, huzzah.

We promise to give you a good last few years, prodigal schnauzer,
MJ