More Proof that I am a Horrible Dog Mom

Wonderbutt taking a break from reading his Oprah magazine

Friends and family might tell you that I am a fairly ethical person.  (If the topic came up.  But, really, why would it?  I mean, are you going to be standing around together at some bar talking about how the Cowboys lost again, and then say, “Hey, you know that Mrs. Cap’n Firepants?  Would you say that she is ethical?”)  The truth, though, whether you choose to discuss it or not, is that I am less ethical than I am scared of being caught doing something wrong.  Which really stems from my caring way too much about what other people think about me.  And that pretty much explains everything about me in a nutshell, according to my psychiatrist anyway.

The reason this makes me a horrible dog mom is that our dog, Wonderbutt, has been limping for a week and a half.  He has done this before, and recovered in about 5 or 6 days.  But he does not seem to be recovering this time.  So, I’m thinking he needs to be taken to the vet.  But I don’t want to take him.  Because I know that they are going to say the only way they can help him is going to cost me a million dollars and 95 cents.  And then I’m going to have to sell a lung or something.  Which leads me back to the problem of worrying about getting caught, because I think that’s kind of illegal.

The thing is, I have had a brochure on Pet Insurance on my desk for the last year, and I keep putting off purchasing it because I’m too lazy to do the research on the 65 different pet insurance companies and Consumer Reports says that I would do just as well to open a savings account for my pet (which I haven’t done, either).  Considering that I only have $2 in my daughter’s savings account, I figure the dog probably should not take precedence.  Of course, the daughter does have health insurance – just maybe not a future college education.  But, does my dog need a future college education?

Now I’m confused.

I realize, now, that if I had the Pet Insurance it might offset some of the million dollars.  But I don’t.  But I could get it, and then I could hang out for the waiting period, and then take Wonderbutt in to the vet.

But I can’t do that.

Besides the fact that I’ve just advertised that I even entertained the thought of trying to take advantage of that little loophole, there is the small matter of the fact that I always get caught when I do something wrong.  Always.

Plus, there is the possibility that Wonderbutt is in pain.  Though it’s hard to tell because he always looks unhappy, and he is snoring and farting just as much as usual.

To compound my guilt, I ran across this product, and immediately thought, “What idiot would buy this?  IF MY HOUSE IS ON FIRE I AM NOT GOING TO TAKE THE TIME TO STRAP A FIREPROOF COAT ONTO MY DOG!”  And then I felt bad.  Especially when I read the part about protecting my dog from falling objects when we walk through construction areas.  I can’t believe that I am so selfish that I haven’t already bought this for Wonderbutt just in case Wile E. Coyote tries to drop an anvil on him the next time we go for a walk.

Which we can’t even do because the poor dog is limping.

I suck.

FireandAnvilProof Dog Coat

UPDATE:  I just realized that I should not advertise this coat as being Anvil Proof.  I don’t really think it can keep you from getting smushed by an anvil.  So, if this is a real concern of yours, please don’t buy this coat based on my advice.  Truth be told, I am not really advising that you buy this product at all.  (I’m covered, legally, now.  Right?)

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ALWAYS Have an Exit Strategy

Our bulldog, Wonderbutt, has been trying very hard to run away from his own butt lately.  He suddenly leaps up, looks at his rear end, and then races around the house, screeching to a halt in random locations, and sitting down hard.  Then he tries to bite whatever is bothering him back there, and generally topples over because dogs shaped like fat sausages just can’t do that kind of contortion.  This picture shows Wonderbutt following one of his desperate attempts to elude his bottom, at the end of which he barged into Dimples’ bedroom where Cap’n Firepants was relaxed on the floor reading to her with a blanket over his legs.  Wonderbutt charged underneath the blanket, then whirled around and glared at everyone from underneath – apparently blaming us for his disobedient derriere.

But enough about him.  Let’s talk about me.

The other day, I was getting ready for work, and decided to wear a dress that I hadn’t worn in awhile.  I vaguely recalled that it had a zipper on the side, but my fumbling didn’t find one, so I decided to pull the dress over my head.  Of course it got stuck.  That happens to me a lot.  But this time I could not wiggle my way out of it in either direction.  The more I tried, the more stuck I became.  What’s worse is that I realized during my struggles that there was a zipper on the dress – and it was very decidedly zipped.  Which made me feel a bit less fat but a lot more blind.

The sight of myself in the closet mirror made me panic further.  Cap’n Firepants was in the shower.  There was no way I was going to let him see me like that.  There are just some things you can never unsee.  And I certainly couldn’t let my daughter see it either.  I only had one option.

I tiptoed to the bathroom and got the nail scissors out.  This was no easy feat considering that my arms were strait-jacketed to my sides.  Even more challenging was cutting the dress.  But a shot of adrenalin made this an easy task when I heard the shower water turn off.

Unlike Wonderbutt, I can’t blame my butt for my wild dance around the room; the dress never even made it to that region of my body.  Nope.  Just my own stupidity and lack of planning.

From now on, I’m going to take a cue from my dog.  If I’m going to insert my uncooperative body into a piece of fabric, I’m going to make sure there is an easy way out.

Either that, or I need to perfect that glare that lets everyone know that the fact I look ridiculous is entirely and completely your fault, not mine.

Just Because Winnie-the-Pooh Went Commando Doesn’t Mean Your Phone Should Suffer, Too

With the unveiling of the new iPhone with fingerprint reading technology, some people have raised the fear of having their fingers cut off for the sake of unlocking a stolen iPhone.

People are so paranoid.  About the wrong things.  Of course the new iPhone should raise some security concerns.  I mean, the most vulnerable part of the phone, the Home button, is now the key to unlocking all of your sexting secrets with a single tap of your specific finger friction ridges.

Clearly, it needs protection.

I give you, my friends, the Smart Pants Smarty Pants.

No well-dressed phone should go without this foundation item.  I mean, you put a case over the back of your phone and there aren’t even any buttons there.  It’s like Winnie-the-Pooh shamelessly marching around in just a shirt.

What you need is something that insulates the front and devotes less of its valuable resources to the unnecessary defense of the rear.  And you can stick it in your pocket without the worry of visible panty lines!

A thong for your phone.

You never knew you needed one.

Smart Pants Smarty Pants – buy them here!

Pens and Pencils May Taste Delicious, But They Do No Good If You Can’t See the Board

While the rest of us were getting ready for the new school year, it occurred to my daughter, Dimples, that Wonderbutt might do better in his lessons with improved vision.  He hasn’t asked for a locker chandelier, yet, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.

Doesn’t he look like an intellectual?

I Promise I Haven’t Locked My Child in a Closet for the Last Ten Years

It became quite clear while we were on vacation that my child has led ten years of a very deprived life.  Evidently, this is an ideal child-rearing strategy because it truly makes kids appreciate the simple things.

Mom, quick, get a picture of that dragonfly!

Mom, look at that frog!!! He’s just sitting there! He’s so cute!

You can do what with this? OMG! It’s like a helicopter!!! Can I take one of these home?!!!!!

Chasing fireflies and a light-up frisbee in the dark, playing tetherball at the beach, and taking a satisfying nap in the rental car during a two-hour drive all completely delighted Dimples.

But nothing compared to the ultimate entertainment – the Whirlpool tub in the master bedroom of our condo.

Dimples is not deterred by the fact that this huge tub is in the master bathroom, which is connected to the master bedroom, which is not the bedroom in which she sleeps.  Because she is not the master.  This makes no difference to her because, by her estimation, these tubs are designed especially for her, and it is her intent to monopolize all use of the tub for the duration of our visit.  Any plans that I may have of relaxing with a book and a glass of wine quickly take a back seat to Dimples’ tub schedule.

Just to give you an idea of her complete enjoyment of this amenity, here is a video I took on our last night there.  I was standing outside the bathroom door as she reveled in her final bath.  So, the video is of the door.  So, really, it’s the audio that might be interesting.  But there is a picture at the end.  Because, despite all evidence to the contrary, I don’t believe in complete sensory deprivation.

Don’t Wear a Thong When You Ride a Horse and Other Advice for City Girls

So, once we made the rare sighting of the Pedal Tavern during our photo safari of downtown Nashville, we hopped in the car and drove for two hours to a place in the country where our family reunion was taking place.

I like to think of myself as an adventurous person, but I am much more comfortable with taking my life into my hands by jay-running between speeding cars in the city than I am with hiking through poison-ivy infested woods.

My daughter’s first priority for vacation was to go horseback riding.  I’ve done this several times, so I know the basics: wear close-toed shoes, put your left foot in the stirrup first so you don’t end up facing the horse’s rear end, and don’t let yourself fall off.  Despite the fact that my horse, Maverick, emulated his Top Gun namesake by showing no regard for anyone but himself and nearly decapitating me on low-hanging branches several times, I did pretty well.

It wasn’t until that evening that I realized my wardrobe mistake.  Major chafage pain in the posterior region informed me that I should be less concerned about panty lines the next time I go trotting through the forest.  I know this is TMI, but I feel it is my duty to warn my fashion-minded readers about the consequences of improper undergarments when riding a horse.  No one thinks to tell you these things. Sure, they will give you a helmet to keep you from cracking your head open, but no one mentions the importance of protecting your crack.

I did get advice later on that day about the ramifications of picking up toads.  The kids seemed so enamored with one that was hanging out by the sidewalk that I swept it up in my hands to give them a better look.

“Ewww.  It’s going to pee on you!” approximately 10 people shouted to me at the same time.

Now, I’ve had held lots of strange animals – hedgehogs, snakes, tarantulas, hissing cockroaches, etc…  And, a few of them have peed on me.  It’s no big deal.  You set the animal down, go wash off the tiny drop of urine and all is good.  So, I wasn’t too intimidated by this warning.

Toad pee, though, is a bit different than hedgehog pee.  Apparently, a toad’s bladder holds an unprecedented volume of pee.  Picture yourself holding a water balloon that is the size of the palm of your hand, and a dime-sized hole suddenly opens in the bottom of the balloon.  Oh, and to this picture, add a bunch of kids of various ages watching you closely to see if you are going to screech and pitch the poor toad 10 feet into the air as soon as it dumps urine all over you.

Ironically, my efforts to encourage the kids to observe nature more closely ended up with them observing me intently for signs of a freak out.

I will tell you , quite proudly, that I did not toss the toad.  Nor did I freak out.  In fact, I calmly held the toad for another couple of minutes – until it released another gallon of pee all over my fingers.  Then I prudently set it down and said, “Well, that’s enough for now.  Why don’t you go chase fireflies?” (to the kids, not the toad.  Although I guess the toad might be interested in eating fireflies, too, but I was a bit too ticked off at him to be giving him meal or entertainment suggestions) and walked quickly to the bathroom to wash my hands.

Well, as quickly as one can walk when your butt cheeks are on fire.

My sister took a picture of me holding the toad. This is not the picture. I got this from http://exoticsandmore.blogspot.com

Waterboarding is for Sissies

I discovered today that I apparently missed my calling as an interrogator.

I had a bit of a mystery in my classroom as someone had played around with the settings on one of our laptop computers.  Considering I teach 6 grade levels a week, two other classes had borrowed the laptops in the past few days, and I host the Robotics Club in my room, I was pretty certain I was not going to discover the culprit out of a pool of over 100 suspects.  So, I figured I would just lecture everyone, beginning with today’s 5th graders.

“So, apparently someone changed the name of one of the desktop icons, which one of my 4th graders discovered yesterday.”

The students started looking around at each other.

“It was Evan!” two of the kids said in stereo before I could say one more word.  I couldn’t believe how quickly I had gotten them to rat someone out.

“What?”  Evan is in Robotics club.

“Yeah, a few weeks ago he messed with the desktop but we changed it back.”

“Well, that’s not it, then.  But I will definitely be talking to him.  This was something that happened recently because it was noticed yesterday.”

“It was Harry!”  someone yelled.  Three other people nodded and murmured, “Yeah, I saw him do it.”

I looked at Harry, who seemed completely bewildered by this sudden onslaught of accusations.

“No, he changed the names of some files, but I changed it back,” another student defended (?) him.

“Harry, you and I are going to talk in a minute,” I said sternly.  “Now, back to what happened yesterday.  Someone changed the Internet Explorer icon to say something different.  I’m sure you were just being silly, but you guys could get me in a lot of trouble by doing things like that.  If people don’t think I’m supervising you enough they could take away the technology, and wouldn’t that be sad?”  Encouraged by the seeming willingness on the part of my class to throw people under the bus, I laid it on thick.

They all nodded that this would, indeed, be sad.

“What did they change it to?” someone asked.

I shifted uncomfortably.

“Purple Mustache,” I said, and waited for the laughter.

Silence.

Slowly, a hand came up.  A quiet voice said, “I did it.”

It was my daughter.

“You did?!!!” I said – along with 15 other people.  My daughter has gotten one conduct mark during her 5 years of elementary school.  The only one I suspected less of changing the icon to “Purple Mustache” is my dog, Wonderbutt.  And that’s only because he didn’t have access to the computer.

Crap, I thought.

“Well, you and I are going to have a serious talk at home tonight, young lady,” I said.  Even though I wasn’t sure about what.

I had no idea that I had this kind of confessional power.  Apparently I somehow mastered the technique of the Guilt Trip without even knowing it.

Now, if I could just master the technique of the Don’t Even Think About It Trip, maybe her teen years won’t be so bad after all.

Is Committing a Crime Going to Be What it Takes for Me to Get Good Hair?

Lately, I’ve been obsessing about Jodi Arias.

When they show clips of the trial on my favorite news channel, HLN, I stand in front of the television, transfixed, and ask myself, “Why?  Why?  Why?”

Why does her hair look so friggin’ good while she is in prison?

I’m serious.  This is driving me crazy.  I mean, I know her hair isn’t all that glamorous right now, and people are claiming she’s deliberately looking mousy to deceive the jury.  But, look carefully.

No split ends.  No frizz.  PERFECTly straight.

Do they let her wield a straight-iron in jail?  Does she even have permission to possess a comb?  What kind of shampoo is she allowed to use?  How does she get those locks to look so shiny and thick?  Isn’t stress supposed to have a negative impact on your hair?  Is she one of those people who shakes her head when you say, “You are so lucky to have such straight hair,” and responds, “I’ve always wanted it curly”?

I hate those people.

I really need for this trial to be over.  I keep going to the store and loitering in the hair product aisle, trying to reconstruct the crime of Jodi Arias’ flawless tresses.  I wake up in the morning, and eye all of the bottles and appliances lined up in my bathroom and debate who I can put on trial for deceiving me with false promises of frizz-free hair and ends that will reconcile with each other and refuse to split after all.

I know.  I know.  I’m missing the whole point of this unbelievably long, drawn-out courtroom drama.  Jodi Arias has a lot more important things to worry about besides her unbelievably healthy hair.

Like how to score a facial before her next mugshot.

Or, during her next mugshot…

image from: thestar.com

 

Just Don’t Mix Up What Goes in Your Eyes and What Goes in Your Hair and What You Plan to Drink with Breakfast Tomorrow Morning

Okay, raise your hand if you knew that pineapple juice is good for getting Knox gelatin out of your hair.  Now, raise your other hand if you don’t know what the heck I’m talking about.  Okay, put both hands down because you look kind of funny.  Not as funny as I looked with Knox on my hair a couple of nights ago, but still kind of goofy.

Now, you’re probably tempted to Google everything in my first paragraph, and you will probably find confirmation for the milk thing, maybe in the goofy thing, too.  Because the internet will confirm everything you want it to.  But, if you think the internet is the best place to learn things, then you obviously have not attended a synchronized swimming tournament.  You will get all kinds of information that you never knew you needed to know if you stick around a natatorium for three days with a bunch of experienced synchro families.

For example, if your eyes start burning from the chlorine in the pool, put milk in your eye.  Yep, you read that right.  Grab a pint from the corner store, tip your head over backwards, and douse yourself with the stuff.  Of course, it helps if you can keep the eyes open while you do this – which might explain why that home remedy didn’t work for my poor daughter.  To be fair to the milk, none of the more conventional eye drops purchased from the pharmacy helped, either.  So, I guess we can’t say that we debunked that myth, just that my daughter claims that it helped, even though she still held her eyes tightly shut for the next two hours and spurned the sun like a real vampire (not like those contemporary pseudo vampires who can apparently go wherever they want.)

You can imagine my skepticism about the whole pineapple juice thing.  A bunch of the moms mentioned their daughters had tried it, and that it really helped to get the Knox out of their hair faster.  But I have a tendency to disbelieve completely subjective statements.  If someone will conduct a scientific experiment in which everything is the same except the pineapple juice variable, and I mean everything – including the amount of Knox that was on there in the first place, then I might just give it a whirl.  Maybe.

In my Knoxing internet searches, I found a thread about using Elmer’s Glue to make your mohawk spikier.  (It’s amazing how quickly an internet search can devolve into something completely not what you were looking for.)  And I thought it might be fun to surreptitiously spread the word throughout the synchro circles that I’d heard you should mix glue with the gelatin to make the perfect shiny hair helmet. Just to see how fast it would get sprinkled all over the internet and back to me.

But no one would be dumb enough to believe that.

This is exactly how internet rumors get started. One day you post a pic of a hare with a pineapple, and the next thing you know pineapple juice gets jello out of your hair.

 

If I’d Just Stand Still, I Might Be Able to Catch Up

It’s the Bermuda Bag Blunder all over again.

You know?   Those purses that had changeable covers but were completely impractical in every other way? They were all the rage when I was a kid, and I begged my mother for two years to get me one.

And she did.

And I went to school with it. And no one else had one. No one else even had a purse.  They had moved on.  Back to where I started.  And it could have saved my mom some money if we had just stayed there.

But since she spent all that money, I had to use the purse.

Don’t you wish you had one, too?
photo credit: http://www.liketotally80s.com/bermuda-bag.html

Now my purse is a refrigerator.

When we moved into our first house, our kitchen appliances were mixed. Some were black and some were white. We bought a brand new white refrigerator, and spent the next five years slowly replacing the other appliances to match. By the time we got them all matched, it was time to move.

And we moved to a house with black appliances – which really didn’t complement our pure white refrigerator. No matter.  Because, by this time, white was so yesterday and stainless steel was the rage.

Our white refrigerator died. (Natural causes, I say.  And I’m sticking to it.)  Stainless steel or black, we asked ourselves. My husband was leaning toward stainless steel. But I was hesitant. I didn’t want to be Bermudaed again. I mean, stainless had been the rage for awhile now. It was getting time for a new trend.  I could feel it.

But I could not find any record of the new trend anywhere. So, we joined the masses, and bought our stainless steel fridge. And we are slowly getting the rest of the kitchen stainless.  Of course, we have to wait until they die, too.  I mean, you wouldn’t replace your grandmother while she was still alive just because she was the wrong color, would you?

Okay, that didn’t really sound right, but I’m not sure how to fix it.

Anyway, this morning, there happened to be a news report on appliance trends – specifically, refrigerators.

“Stainless is going out, ” they said.

The new trend?

The old one – white.

“Like iPhones!” was the reasoning.

Now why didn’t I see that one coming?

Someone needs to invent a Bermuda Refrigerator.