She’s the victim of a malfunctioning computer that has kept her from blogging for the past week. This is not the reason why she fled the Outpost for a while, but it may explain why she may not have wanted to come back—a thought quickly put aside by her strong homing instinct to recapture the Senator and Governor, before the Green Goddess and Professor entirely corrupted the boys.
The Chairman and VP took off for Las Vegas with a group of friends and left the two boys and two dogs in our custody. Let me tell you, it was tough corralling those kids under grandparental control. However, we managed. The Green Goddess set the tone with a stern, introductory lecture announcing that, when Mom and Dad are away, we “can break all the rules we want.” That included bedtime, which was extended significantly. Only safety was exempted from our rule against rules. The Outpost is too far from an emergency room to let the Senator wave his light saber from a precarious foothold on an arm of the sofa. Too bad, he’s really cute, doing that.
Thanks to our discipline, there was none of this getting up intermittently throughout the night. When those boys hit the sack, they were out, out, out. The Governor was zonked for 10 hours every night and the Senator almost as long. (I keep telling the parents that Chardonnay makes a wonderful bedtime treat. Hey, it’s grape juice, isn’t it?) Not to worry, Chairman, we didn’t really uncork that bottle in your basement refrigerator. Just want to keep you suitably concerned.
The Chairman should be back on the net, soon.
A minor change over on the blogroll. If you are a fan of Gut Rumbles (Acidman) you'll need to bookmark him. I gave his spot to a guy named Paul.
Paul's funny. Anyone who posts bathroom humor is okay by me. Go on over for a visit. His site is Sanity's Edge.
When the VP and I plan a vacation, one or both of the boys get sick. This truth long ago moved out of the realm of theory and into scientific fact by the time The Senator was two.
Tonight as The VP and I were lying in bed discussing our upcoming trip (Sunday) to Las Vegas, we hear footsteps and coughing followed by the unmistakable sound of vomit hitting carpet. Well, to us it's unmistakable; we've been on enough vacations to recognize the Law of Ill Children in motion.
Thank you, Senator.
Here's some detail which, frankly, made me ill, but who knows...it might interest you.
He had a huge bowl of chocolate ice cream with multi-colored sprinkles (uh, jimmies for you Easterners) right before bed.
We had lasagna for dinner.
He apparently swallowed some toothpaste during bedtime preparations. A keen nose could detect the faint waft of bubble-gum amid the overall stench of vomit.
Our carpet cleaner machine does an amazing job of sucking up small bits of food.
Sorry, but I like to share my misery.
I'll be sure to include additional graphic details when The Governor wakes us up in another couple of hours with severe diarrhea.
Yesterday at 4 p.m. I finally removed the last bits of snow and ice from the portion of the driveway in front of the garage. I was aided by near 40 degree weather.
Last night: freezing rain
This morning: snow
#@!$%#
Looks like it's time for another ritualistic sacrifice to the weather gods. I may have to move up the sacrifice scale. Apparently, small rodents aren't good enough.
Here Dumpster Kitty. Here Kitty, Kitty.
Today during the Parent Discussion Time of The Governor's Early Childhood class, the Parent Educator said, "I've got a question for you all to answer as a little ice breaker." We're five weeks into the session, but okay, I'm game.
Her question: "What is your favorite cartoon and why?"
Eight parents today. Here are the eight answers:
Peanuts - because it's always been my favorite.They all stared an me and one mom finally said, "I don't think I've ever seen this Day by Day you're talking about.Calvin & Hobbes - Calvin reminds me of my little Ronnie.
One Big Happy - Ruthie reminds me of my little Sally.
Dennis the Menace - Dennis reminds me of my little Bobby.
The Far Side - It's funny.
The Family Circus - I just love the cute things the kids do.
For Better or Worse - [I couldn't hear the reason; I was looking for something to throw at the parent who liked The Family Circus.]
Day By Day - Because Hillary Clinton leaning over Karl Rover whispering, "Karl, I am your mother" is funnier than anything in print today.
Even in town...I'm surrounded by the wilderness.
A pleasant day with the Old Timers. Hoocher got to take a nap with one of his favorite residents. I had to bribe him with a bag of popcorn to make him get down off her bed. So much for Man's Best Friend and Loyalty and all the other hogwash attributed to the character of dogs.
Although they're still better than cats.
Or Wesley Clark.
I got home from my soccer game last night at 11:30 p.m. As I toss my bag and shoes in the front foyer (someone has to set the example around here), I hear small feet coming up the steps from the basement.
The Senator is in his pajamas and has shoved a foam sword down the back of his shirt and his plastic sword through his boxers with the hilt resting just on his waistband.
Thus armed, he confronts me and says, "I heard footsteps. I came to defend the house."
I'm thinking we made a wise decision in postponing the Glock until next Christmas.
Mr. Chris Muir needs YOU!
I made a list of all the cartoons in the daily Mpls. StarTribune that could be cut to make way for Day by Day.
Peanuts - Blondie - Beetle Bailey - Tina's Groove - Cleats - La Cucaracha - Cathy - Garfield - Sally Forth - Heart of the City - Crankshaft - Mother Goose & Grimm - Mark Trail - Jump Start - The Boondocks - Hagar the Horrible - Hi and Lois - Pickles - The Family Circus - Doonesbury - Dennis the Meance - Zits - Luann - Judge Parker - and the ass who does a lot of the editorial cartoons (I think his last name is Sack).
Did I include Family Circus? Oh good, I did. That should be the first one to go.
That leaves plenty of room for Day by Day.
I might even renew my long-expired subscription if I could watch Damon and Jan argue each morning.
For the past week or so, The Governor has been waking throughout the night and screaming and throwing tantrums in his crib. I took him to the doctor to rule out ear infections and other ailments. Her diagnosis: Night Terrors.
Does anyone else find it wonderfully ironic that the child I openly refer to as Damien has Night Terrors? What is more scary than Satan? I mean besides Chris Muir making hamburger patties out of Gainsburger. Yes, Chris, I'm old enough to remember those. :)
So I Googled 'Night Terrors' and found a web site on the disorder. Here's a descriptive paragraph from the page:
Night Terrors Symptoms: Sudden awakening from sleep, persistent fear or terror that occurs at night, screaming, sweating, confusion, rapid heart rate, inability to explain what happened, usually no recall of "bad dreams" or nightmares, may have a vague sense of frightening images. Many people see spiders, snakes, animals or people in the room, are unable to fully awake, difficult to comfort, with no memory of the event on awakening the next day.Now I'm laughing my head off because after reading this...it turns out I have Night Terrors too! Very infrequently, I will swear I see a spider dropping down from the ceiling above the bed. I've been known to swing my pillow at it, swat at it with the comforter, and even jump out of bed to avoid it. But I do remember that I do it, so maybe I just need to cut back on the late night pepperoni pizza.
And speaking of pepperoni pizza, it has become a staple of the canine diet around here. Dog-spoiling has reached all new heights. Each morning warmed chicken broth is poured over the dry nuggets to encourage eating, and we have been known to go through an entire box of biscuits in a day. Furthermore, Breezy has stopped drinking water but she'll eat lots of snow when she goes outside. I've actually brought in a bowl or two of snow because I get worried about her getting dehydrated. Poor Hoocher. When the cancer finally gets the better of Breezy, he'll be moving out of the Ritz and back to Motel 6.
Ahh...just now hearing The Governor express his extreme disgust at the thought of putting on his pajamas. The VP is getting a sneak preview of tonight's show. Bwah ha ha ha ha!
Natalie has a terrifically funny post today. Go read.
It reminded me of the time the Mormons came to the door and wanted to talk faith with me. The lady of the group asked me if I was familiar with a certain passage in the New Testament. I cut her off and said, "Well, we Jews really don't cotton much to the NT." She looked a bit stunned. They left.
I'm sure my parish priest would have been pleased.
The Termite
Some primal termite knocked on wood
And tasted it, and found it good!
And that is why your Cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.
Very Like a Whale
One thing that literature would be greatly the better for
Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and metaphor.
Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts,
Can't seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to go out
of their way to say that it is like something else.
What does it mean when we are told
That the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold?
In the first place, George Gordon Byron had had enough experience
To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot of Assyrians.
However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and thus
hinder longevity,
We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity.
Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming
in purple and gold,
Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolf on
the fold?
In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy there are
a great many things,
But i don't imagine that among then there is a wolf with purple and gold
cohorts or purple and gold anythings.
No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was actually
like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;
Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red mouth and
big white teeth and did he say Woof woof?
Frankly I think it very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say, at the
very most,
Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian cohorts
about to destroy the Hebrew host.
But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he had to
invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them,
With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers to
people they say Oh yes, they're the ones that a lot of wolves dressed
up in gold and purple ate them.
That's the kind of thing that's being done all the time by poets, from Homer
to Tennyson;
They're always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison,
And they always say things like that the snow is a white blanket after a
winter storm.
Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanket of snow and
I'll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical blanket material and
we'll see which one keeps warm,
And after that maybe you'll begin to comprehend dimly,
What I mean by too much metaphor and simile.
*************
I wonder if can get any NEA funding for improving your minds this morning?
I brought some dog snacks along today. I don't normally do this; Hoocher tends to lose his focus. He no longer wants to snuggle up to the old folks. He zeros in on the food and ignores all else, including the person offering the treat.
However, since we are in full dog-spoiling mood around here, I stuffed a few biscuits in my pocket.
We went to visit Dale, who I think must have had some sort of stroke, illness, or accident. He's too young to be there merely from old age. Dale speaks very softly; I have a lot of trouble deciphering his words, but I catch enough to realize he understands what I'm asking. Or, at least I thought I did. Today I offered him a dog treat he could feed to Hoocher. Instead, Dale tried to eat it.
Nothing more dignified in the world than wrestling a dog treat away from a wheel-chair bound man.
For those of you who are not wrestling fans, GLOW stands for Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. I think. I don't know if it's still on tv or not. Anyone who's still curious, I invite you to my next Freak League soccer game. (Although Gorgeous Ladies of Boxing - GLOB - might be more representative of last evening's match.)
We played Balkans United. Their entire team is comprised of Eastern Europeans and South Americans. Any time a bunch of pasty Minnesotans is going to play a team like this, we expect to have our rears handed to us. Even in a recreational league. Count on it. The only advantage we ever muster is that their women have no talent, so it's like playing a man short for them. The men have no use for their women on the field. They never pass to them. The only reason the women show up is so the men can qualify to play in a co-rec league.
So, we're ahead 1-0 which is amazing. The other team is starting to get angry. Their normal level of play is rough; when they get hot it turns to brutal. Tempers were flaring. Now I was pretty much exempt from all this as they put their one woman near me and left us to fend for ourselves. As expected, their woman had no talent. The only thing she could do was to try and obstruct me every chance she got. I got fed up with her backing into me as I was trying to move around her, so I gave her a well-placed elbow in the ribs.
She whirled around and got right in my face. Well, right in my chin, actually. She was rather short.
"Yoooooooo doe-int touch me!"She drew her hand back to
Well then get out of my way.
"Yoooooo doe-int have to touch!"
While the fans were robbed of a good cat-fight, they weren't completely disappointed. Right before the end of the game there was an actual fist fight between a couple of guys. Red cards were flying. The game ended early.
Replacing torn jersey: $28
Ice pack used to reduce swelling under the eye: $4
Beating a bunch of arrogant pricks who should have won by a dozen goals: priceless
Today's strange occurance: Super-sizing. All of a sudden, my type is two sizes larger and my calendar on the left doesn't fit the whole week. Does it look like that to everyone or is this just something with my computer? Weird.
Bitterly cold again today. We got rather spoiled after a couple of days above zero. Now that I have to take the amputee out on a leash, I'm remembering with fondness on those days when I could just shove the both of them out the back door and let them in after a couple of minutes.
Breezy's doing fairly well. She has a little trouble negotiating turns and manuvering on the kitchen floor (slippery) but otherwise seems to figuring out how to do everything else. One new development. She won't eat her dog food. She'll eat the peanut butter that hides her medication, and she'll eat dog treats. I sprinkled some cheese over her nuggets; she just hoovered off the cheese and left the kibble. Next attempt will be to soak the food in chicken broth. Once these stitches are out and she's stronger, I fear she is in for a rude surprise when she discovers that it will be regular dog food or go hungry.
Freak League soccer tonight. Hopefully it will give me something else to write about other than my dog.
UPDATE: Must be my computer. All my links and bookmarked sites look enormous.
Well, old three-legger is home, and everyone at The Outpost finally exhaled.
She looks a bit grim, but I think all the missing fur around the surgery site bothers me more than the missing leg.
I was amazed at how well she's getting around. I was thinking it would be several days before she would be walking much. She nearly bolted out of the vet clinic and we've already been out on a couple of brief, bathroom-related walks. The vet tech that discharged her said she's doing a lot better than most amputees because she had been using her healthy leg so much more than the other one. A lot of muscle had already been built up to help her adjust to life with three legs. I think it's going to be a bit of a chore to keep her "quiet and restrained" for the next two weeks.
I am amazed by this whole process. Tuesday my world was in the dumps because my dog is diagnosed with cancer. Friday morning she goes in for surgery to remove her leg. Saturday she's home and whining because she can't go outside with Hoocher. To look at her today, you'd never guess she was under a death sentence. If she passed away next week, I would still have felt this was worth it. Two months would make me very happy. Anything after that would be gravy on the kibbles.
Time to go and check on the patient. She can reach some of her stitches and has started licking. She may be wearing a t-shirt to bed tonight.
I was trying to go back and correct the word 'rapid' (should have been 'rabid') in the previous post and MT won't let me. Acting very strangely.
Freemasons again.
Not much time to post. There are several electric company trucks at the end of the road replacing some power lines; electricity could disappear from The Outpost at any moment. I swear there is a conspiracy to keep me from blogging. Must be those Freemasons.
Thank you all for leaving the kind words about Breezy. She had surgery this morning and it went well. I called a few minutes ago and she was resting on a heating pad and being fawned over by the surgical staff. We get to pick her up tomorrow. I feel pretty strongly that we did the right thing. We talked about putting her down, but when her only symptom of the cancer was this bum leg...it was hard to justify anything more than amputation. I've heard dissenting opinions that amputation is too big an ordeal to ask of a dog, but I've seen too many examples of 3-leggers that have done just fine. I think if Breezy can enjoy even one more month of barking at the snowmobiles that race down the river behind our house, she'll agree it was worth it.
Had an interesting lunch yesterday with some old high school friends. Two of the three are rabid Wellstone supports who still can't bring themselves to scrape the green Wellstone! bumper sticker off the back of their cars. I really wanted to ask them their views on the Dem. canidates, but we had a 2 1/2 year old with us and I didn't want him to pick up any foul language.
Late soccer game tonight. Hopefully Kevin will bring some pictures of his two new puppies. (You guys have a punishment fetish or what?)
For now. I'm not sure what caused the satellite connection to blow, but blow it did.
And that stunk because I usually get most of my news from the Internet. I'm away for three days and I miss all the big events: someone tries to poison the Senate and Janet Jackson's boob makes its television debut. I'll have my nose in the blog archives for weeks trying to catch up with it all.
Along with the satellite connection, the warm, happy, fuzzy outlook that usually envelops everyone here at The Outpost has also taken a hiatus. We found out yesterday that our female dog has bone cancer. A swollen area on her front leg turned out to be a tumor...not just a sprain as we had been hoping. The gruesome part is that to rid of her the pain from her leg, we have to amputate the leg. The surgery doesn't curtail the cancer; it's merely a palliative measure. We could do chemo, but it wouldn't extend her life enough beyond the amputation measure to put her through the ordeal. If I understood the vet correctly, Breezy has anywhere from 2-12 months left. I just hope we can get her through until spring. When she does pass away, I'd like to bury her in the pasture where she enjoyed our long walks. After the loss of The Crazyweiler last November, this comes as a pretty raw hit.
I'm not sure how to transition to something light-hearted so I'll just add that I would like to thank everyone who visited last Sunday. I was especially excited to see a comment from my cousin, Jenny. Glad you found my blog. Had I not felt so lousy that day, I would have posted that her young son shares my birthday. So does Mr. E. at work. Happy Birthday, Gentlemen!
Well, that's it for now. I'm afraid to write any longer; the satellite connection might decide to take another cigarette break.
Just remember this, when you’re shaking off a foot of newly fallen snow after 25-below, you can be under the weather for reasons other than chardonnay. Thus, the Chairman wishes me to report that her lack of blogging is not due to the lingering consequences of overly enthusiastic participation in the office party. Rather, she is the victim of a wireless network that won’t let her to connect to the Internet. She promises to return to blogging as soon as the system allows her. I believe the problem is due to the fact, in extreme cold, electrons don’t want to go outside. They’d rather slink along copper wire than follow an unprotected uplink into low earth orbit.
Company Christmas party last night. I'm not sure I should say much more.
Last year we had a guy who imbibed a bit too much at the party and left us with a few memorable moments.
This year I believe I took top honors. Let me reflect.....
Yes. I won.
My parents were here at The Outpost watching the boys. The VP actually bolted into the house ahead of me to warn my folks lest they be horrified at seeing their daughter in such a sorry state. Mom, Dad - thanks for babysitting. I hope you had a safe drive home.
One exciting note from last night: I ran into a woman who knew what a blog was! There are a handful of people at work who read this site, but this lady wasn't aware of crazyweiler.com. Very cool. I'm pretty sure I was trying to talk her into starting her own blog. So Carol, if you're reading this...go here.
Also, one of my co-workers brought his 2 week old baby for a short visit! What a peanut! I was in mid sentence when I spied mom and infant coming towards me. I bellowed, "GIVE ME THAT BABY!" I would have tried to smuggle him home, but his parents seemed rather attached to him. So Dave and Amanda, if you're reading this...I was serious about the offer to babysit if you want to go on vacation or immigrate to New Zealand.
And before I forget: Emily, if you're reading this...thanks for hiding that last glass of chardonnay. You were about three glasses too late.
Also: if I hugged or kissed anyone last night (besides the banquet manager, the bartender, the coat check girl, and my mother-in-law), please don't misinterpret. I like you, but not like that.