Trifecta

Pee.

Poop.

Barf.


I had a %()&*^(&*%%$&)*) morning.

I woke up LATE to the sound of Mike barfing. He was on the edge of my bed. Sooooo grateful he has a good aim and completely missed the bed. Soooooo not grateful it splattered everywhere.

Then, my mom informs me that J.D. pissed all over the bathroom floor. Right by the toilet. 8 inches from the litter box.

THEN, my mom further informs me that someone (either J.D. or Mike but most likely J.D.) POOPED in the dining room.

THEN, she pointed out more barf that Mike apparently had leftover and decided to let loose in the living room.

4 rooms, 3 bodily functions.

It's days like this that make me want to pack up a suitcase and get the hell out of dodge.

However, despite the J.D.'s apparent lack of use of the litter box, how can you be mad at this:

You can't. So, I just suck it up, clean it up and move on.

In more animal news, Max has this cleanliness fetish. He HAS to get every bit of trash that's thrown out of moving vehicles that land in our yard or the neighbors yard or the other neighbors yard or, well, any trash at all in a mile radius.

Even if it's buried.

So, it's nothing to walk outside in the morning to find bits of lime green Styrofoam or broken glass jars with dirt on them or torn to shred soda cans in the yard.

However, this morning?

He stumped me.

Yeah, that's a sweet potato. And not a rotten one. And not one covered in dirt.

Where the hell did he get a sweet potato?

This, people, is REAL LIFE.

And some days, it's just too much.

I just have to keep telling myself, "One month, one week and two days."

Later,

Mama Dawg

My Crappy Morning (That Started The Night Before)

Days like today are the kind that make you want to just give up.

It actually all started last night.

First of all, I needed to come into work a half hour early so I could get off a half hour early to go pick up J.D. at the vet by 5. It will take me an hour and a half to get from my work to the vets office. So, I have to leave here by 3:30.

Having said that, I needed to be out the door by 6:30 at the latest this morning. I got out the door at 6:35. Not too bad considering what happened.

I have tons and tons of things I need to do and not having light of my life at home, well, it just makes it easier for me to get them done.

Well, nothing got done last night. The house was so empty without light of my life, my mom and J.D. in the house. I actually got lonely. All I could do was wander around the empty house and mope.

Then, after I had finally made a decision to cook dinner and had sat down to eat it, Mike (my other cat) decided he was lonely too and jumped up on the side table next to the couch and spilled my iced tea all over the rug and the floor. It scared him so much, he pushed off my leg while USING HIS CLAWS and now I have a nice 7 inch scratch (looks like a zipper track) on my left thigh. It was deep enough that blood was dripping down my leg. Gross.

That was the first of several liquid situations I found myself in.

I fell asleep on the couch and woke up around 1:47 am. I noticed that my cell phone battery was getting low. I have to have my cell phone as it's my alarm clock as well. Since I had been traveling, I had my charger packed...somewhere. It took me 20 minutes, but I finally found it.

Luckily for me, Mike decided to forgive me for scaring the crap out of him (that's the way he thinks. I just know he blames ME for putting the iced tea cup there to begin with) and hopped up on the bed to sleep with me.

I got up in time to get ready. It only takes me a half hour to get ready (this includes getting breakfast and lunch ready for me).

My routine is to get up, pee and then go to the kitchen to make coffee. Well, I had forgotten that yesterday morning, after I poured myself a cup, I had taken the coffee pot and put it in the sink to wash.

I poured the water in, put in the coffee and turned it on.

Without a coffee pot to catch all the coffee.

I didn't notice this at first because when I was turning around to get breakfast ready, I noticed that Mike had peed in the kitchen near his food bag.

Oh, shit. He has never peed in the kitchen before. Because I was gone for three days, there are currently two litter boxes in the bathroom. Both of them clean. There was no reason for him to pee in the kitchen. The only thing I could think of was that he was depressed because J.D. wasn't home.

So, about that time, I heard a dripping and looked up and discovered the coffee dripping off the microwave (the coffee machine stays on top of the microwave, I have a really tiny kitchen).

Double shit.

So, I clean the coffee mess first and get a new pot started (with the coffee pot in place, this time).

Then, I stepped in the cat pee. Luckily for me, I recognized this and instead of stepping back and tracking pee all over the kitchen, I just took my shoe off and left it there.

I had to get a trash bag and set the cat food bag inside of it so I could scoop out all the food. The cat food bag is layered with several layers of wax lining, so the pee had not penetrated the interior of the bag. In fact, it hadn't even penetrated the exterior portion of the bag, so it had to be pretty fresh.

So, I'm on my hands and knees smelling like coffee and cat pee while in my nightgown and with only one shoe on.

I get all that cleaned up and thrown out in the trash and get ready for work. I have to take a quick shower just to smell normal. By this time, I only had 10 minutes to shower, get dressed, get my coffee in my to go mug, get my lunch and scrounge up some money for my breakfast since I clearly had no time to get any ready before leaving.

I actually got it all done.

Major miracle.

Until....

....triple shit....


....I get ready to leave. I have my coffee in my to go mug and set it down on a table to get my keys to lock up and my cup goes flying off the table by the door and lands on the floor. Coffee spills EVERYWHERE!!!!!!

I am so tempted at this point to just yell "Fuck it" and go on to work.

Well, I did yell "Fuck it" but I didn't leave. I was a good little cleaner upper and cleaned up the coffee spill.

That's what put me 5 minutes behind.

Luckily, I got to work with three minutes to spare.

I swear, the gods were against me this morning.

I sincerely hope that the reason they did all this to me was because they wanted me to get on the road a few minutes later to avoid some sort of catastrophe.

At least, that's what I'm gonna believe.

Otherwise, I might just have to go home and have a good long cry.

Later,

Mama Dawg

My Morning

When I got home last night, I noticed that J.D., my cat, was just laying in the kitchen on the floor near his food bowl. This is very unusual. After bringing in the stuff from the car, I went back to check on him and he was still there but decided to get up. Y'all, he stumbled. Like a drunk.

I knew this wasn't good. It wasn't like back in December when he was walking crooked. This time, he couldn't stand up. At all. He was having to drag himself all over the house. It was the scariest thing I've ever seen.

I decided to go to work late and take him to the vet first thing this morning. I decided to sleep on the couch last night with him on me. That way, if he needed to get off the couch, he would have a shorter fall (if I wasn't awake to help him off). The only reason I did this was because he's a stubborn cat and he would have wanted to sleep with me in my very high up bed and I couldn't have him falling off the bed and breaking something during the night.

After a restless sleep, we got up. I watched him drag himself into the kitchen for food. He wouldn't let me help him (kept growling at me when I got too close). After he ate, he tried to come back out. I went over to help him again and this time he didn't growl. I picked him up and took him to the litter box (thinking it was time for him to go). Y'all, he couldn't even stand up to use the box. He just laid down and did his business. That scared me as much as the not walking thing.

The vet finally opened at 8 and I got him there around 8:30.

The vet seems to think it might be a clot that traveled from his heart to his legs. He has a bad heart (just discovered in December) but the vet isn't sure. Last time, the problem was an ear infection but because he didn't have the exact same symptoms, the vet wanted to keep him overnight for observation and to give him some injections. He responds to pain in his legs (the vet pinched his toes with some sort of evil looking contraption) and likes to have them rubbed. The vet also said that the pulse in his left leg was weaker than the one in his right leg but not so bad that he was overly concerned.

I adopted this cat when he was already an adult and no one knows his exact age. He could be as young as 12 but the vet thinks he might be as old at 16.

I'll tell y'all his adoption story at some other time.

My heart is hurting right now. I'm so afraid that when I call the vet in the morning, he's gonna tell me some bad news. My eyes hurt so bad from crying.

Here's some pics of my baby, J.D. (stands for James Dean...my all time favorite movie star but his old vet says it stands for Jack Daniels, lol!).



All wrapped up.



Being lazy on his new favorite thing, his pillow near the heater.



This is my urban panther, Mike. He's the biggest scaredy cat on the face of the Earth. He weighs in at a whopping 18 lbs (but he looks bigger). I got him about 4 months after I got J.D.

Later,

Mama Dawg

Starbucks Mug

Light of my life is currently on candy restriction. She’s not allowed to have it at all….period…..end of story. She can’t bring it home and she’s not allowed to have it. I know I can’t control her eating candy when I’m not with her and I accept that.

At church this past Sunday, before the sermon, B’s brother in law talked to all the kids (see one of the prior posts). They leave the pew and go to the front of the church and stand around while he tells them an amusing story that relates to something about God or Jesus or stories in the Bible. They all then get a piece of candy and go sit back down with their parents.

Well, since light of my life is on candy restriction I had remind her before she went up to the front that she couldn’t get any candy. Well, that pissed her off. She flounced back down in the pew and announced that if that was the case, she just wouldn’t go up there. Oh, boy. That was the wrong thing to say. I reminded her that the reason she went up there was not to get a piece of candy but to listen to what Mr. K had to say. The candy was just an extra. I made her go up there. After he got finished with what he had to say (again, see one of the prior posts), he mentioned that he had some special Valentines’ candy for the kids. Man, oh, man….did I feel like a heel then. Light of my life looked back at me with such longing in her eyes that I so badly wanted to reverse my decision and give in. However, I had to remain firm. I shook my head no and she pouted her way back to the pew. She actually sat there and cried while in church. My heart was breaking but I couldn’t do anything about it. She was crying silently so unless someone was watching, you didn’t even know she was doing it. I just let her cry.

Now, this is the amazing part and this is just one of the many, many, many, many reasons why I love and admire my daughter so much.

She kept pulling away from me on the pew and wouldn’t allow herself to lay down on my lap like she normally does during church (yes, I know, bad mommy). However, she didn’t pull away from me rubbing the back of her neck or stroking her hair. She also eventually stopped crying (without any prompting from me) and laid down on my lap. She started playing with my fingers and snuggling a bit.

She did all of this without me prompting or encouraging her. I thought that showed huge signs of maturity that she managed to get over the whole situation without me having to have a discussion with her or threatening her or punishing her.

I also thought I showed incredible signs of maturity by letting her work it out on her own instead of having a discussion with her or threatening her or punishing her.

I’m so proud of us. I think we’ll be fine. Of course, I say that now…..I can only imagine what it’ll be like in a few years when she hits 13.

She later went to Wal-Mart with M, C and their grand-parents while mom and I went traipsing through a daffodil field. I had gone to the bank to get some money for her lunch and her allowance (I never keep cash on me) and was only going to give her a $10 but decided to let her have the whole $20 to spend. I advised her that she had to buy her own lunch but that she could keep the change. She was so thrilled.

Know what she did with the extra $10 she had?

Spent it on me.

She bought me a Starbuck’s coffee mug with Starbucks hot chocolate and marshmallows. It was one of those special Valentine’s combo present things. I’m not a huge fan of hot chocolate but I do like Starbuck’s hot chocolate and I had been contemplating buying one of their mugs. It was a great present.

I just could not get over her generosity (albeit with my money).

I am so proud of her.

Later,

Mama Dawg

Just One of Dem Days

Ever have “one of those days”? Mine started off that way. I got up at the usual time I need to get up in order to get a shower and then get light of my life a shower. At some point during the night she had crawled in to my bed (never heard/felt a thing) so I let her sleep a little bit longer while I took my shower. I was up at 5:34 (alarm was set for 5 and I normally hit the snooze for half and hour before finally rolling out of bed) and in the shower about 10 minutes after that.

I had painted my bathroom yesterday (skipped church in order to do so, but what can you do with only two days off!?!?!?). Because of that, I had gotten paint on myself including on my fingernails. They were already painted (on purpose and a lovely dark pink, if I may say so myself) but with the green paint on top of that (green was my color choice for the bathroom), I really needed to remove both paints from my nails. I took a few extra minutes to do that. Maybe that was my first mistake that led to my horrible, horrible morning.

Anyway, I hopped in the shower and when I got out, I went through my usual routine. I always dry off, do the deodorant thing, perfume/body spray, brush my teeth and then put in my contacts (yes, I do all this before I get dressed). Well, B, my neighbor, had told me about Clean Clear or Clean and Clear contact lens solution. You put your contacts in this medieval looking contraption and the pour the solution on it and then in the bottle. You let the contacts set in this stuff for at least 6 hours and during that time, the solution turns to saline. You can then put your contacts in but if you need liquid in order to do so, you have to pour some from the little tube, not the big bottle of solution.

This whole process was new to me. I had always used that no rub stuff.

Anyway, all I know is, when I put in my right contact, I screamed like a mofo (in my head only). It burned!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don’t know if I accidentally used the actual solution or if something was wrong. I flushed my eye out with cold water immediately and it helped, but my eye was red for like an hour. It’s ok now but the trauma has made me all sleepy. That and I’m bored at work.

After that, it all went downhill. I woke up light of my life and got her in the shower. While she was showering, I went in to the kitchen to make her lunch and get the life saving coffee going. I glanced at the clock and saw it was 6:20!!!! I thought it was (at the latest) 6:10. That meant I was 10 minutes behind. I needed those 10 minutes to dry her hair (she has a sore throat and a cough) because it was cold outside this a.m. Luckily, she takes a quick shower and I got lunch made in record time. However, the broom near the garbage can was CONSTANTLY falling over and annoying the heck out of me. There were groceries that hadn’t been put away on the kitchen table where light of my life eats her breakfast. My hair was still wet, light of my life turned over a bucket of headbands in the bathroom, light of my life’s hair was barely dry, I couldn’t find my keys, I forgot to put on a coat when walking light of my life to the bus stop and nearly froze, I found my keys and went to start the car up to get the windshield defrosted and the car almost wouldn’t start, I went back in and realized I had forgotten to pack me a dessert (not that I need it) for lunch, mom was up and on the phone with the Terminix guy who was just wanting to show up to re-spray for fleas (he was supposed to have called so we could have time to clear the floor and give the cats their flea meds) and yelling at him, I couldn’t find my i.d. for work (I have to have it to punch in), finally found that, got in the car to leave and realized in never put in my contacts. I had to run in to get my out of date prescription glasses on. I couldn’t get a clear signal on my favorite radio station, I was 5 minutes late to work, my hair was still damp, I kept dropping things at work, my computer was slower than molasses and I had to reboot twice. It was just horrible. It’s gotten a bit better, but not much.

Man, I just need to start today all over again. Is that possible????

Later,

Mama Dawg