One Birthday Sunday. Or is that Sundae?

It’s my frickin’ birthday! (Thanks, Mom and Dad!)

My train was delayed getting out of the city last night. The rule is that if your train is delayed, you get Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream so I don’t really mind too much when it happens. What? Of course that’s a rule I made up, what are you, new?

I got home after midnight so it was technically my birthday. Add to that the incomprehensible segue to Daylight Saving time and it was like my birthday was running in hyper-drive to meet me!

I had this lovely assortment of cards to open when I got home:

I took Misty’s Laws advice to heart and made sure I had lots of water with me at the Bikram class #1 took me to at 0-dark-thirty this morning.

The kids sang me a truly horrible rendition of Happy Birthday that the puggles joined in. One of these days I’m gonna get that on tape. Or else one of these days the cops are going to come back and give us a ticket instead of just a warning.

Then we had cake for breakfast.

Did you know you can get a bunch of free crap on your birthday just because it’s your birthday if you sign up with everybody’s rewards programs? I totally milked that. Perfume, mascara, and chocolate- what more could a girl want?

The kids cleaned the house up. I was thrilled to also get a $5 starbucks gift card that #4 bought with her own money, and a beautiful blue scarf that #5 knit all by himself in Knitting Club (which pretty much every kid in the 5th grade belongs to, including the boys. I love his teacher).

I even made a new vegetarian black bean chili recipe that I halfway made up and everybody ate it. WOW!

I love birthdays. I wrote this post last year about the things that rock about turning 40, and it all still holds true.

So keeping in the spirit of everything being all about MEEEEEE today, here are MY links.

My favorite, laugh-out-loud picture of little boys doing dishes: No Shirt? No Shoes? No Pants? No Problem! on Nurking Moms.

Howling. This is awesome. Also, people, this is why you should register ALL your domain names. EARLY. Guy Fieri didn’t quite get that done and now there’s guysamericankitchenandbar.com

This one I’m putting in because I loved it and I know it will make my mom cry: Boomer Grandparenting: Able to Leap Tall Continents in a Single Bound

Here’s another one that cracked me up: a little fabulous cartoon about a wedding entrance fail on Happy or Hungry.

Last today is an organization dedicated to helping struggling volunteer fire companies raise money to carry out their services. Via Beer. From a vintage fire truck named Betty Lou. 77Rescue.org

Happy Sunday.

#5 Learns Why He Shouldn’t Open Other People’s Mail

Because we work nights, we usually get home after the kids go to sleep. They leave us notes: tests that need to be signed, permission slips, requests for money, and random thoughts are all written out and laid on the dining room table.

Also, anything that arrives in our absence and is addressed “to the parents of…” is immediately opened, read, and taped shut again. Or hidden in their bedroom in a futile attempt to avoid the inevitable, since our schools always send an email alert saying what we should have received.

This is what we came home to last night:

Sometimes it’s better not to know, isn’t it? At least he didn’t hide the letter.

I usually don’t snoop because it always ends in regret. One year my sister found our Christmas presents and showed them to me. I felt so guilty about it. Christmas morning came and I felt like I had betrayed my parents as I kept saying “Just what I always wanted!” after I opened each non-surprise. Since I can’t remember if we ever actually told this story to our parents or not, this seems like a good place to end this post.

Did you ever find anything that made you regret snooping?

Remember to enter the Pi Day Pie Challenge! Deadline is end of the day March 13th.

My Vet’s Hotter Than Your Vet

Recently we changed vets. Our former vet was at the super chain pet emporium. Great staff; terrible corporate-structured business plan designed to make sure that every time you take your dog in it will cost at least $500. And it will have to stay overnight.

So we have a new vet that we love even though we’ve only been there once so far. Then Casey developed an issue. There’s no polite way to say it: she wouldn’t pee. When I called to bring her in they asked if I could get a sample.

Me: Umm. That’s kind of the problem. Nothing’s really coming out.

They said not to worry about it. They’d take care of it at the office.

Casey and Jack are terribly attached to each other. Jack more so; he screams whenever they are separated. Yes, screams. Ever heard a pug scream? Click here. It’s neat. And loud. He started screaming when Casey and I walked out the door and he got left behind. I could hear him as I was pulling out of the driveway, even with the house closed up and the car windows rolled up.

In the car Casey jumped into my lap and forced her full body weight against my chest. She trembled silently as I attempted to steer around her. It was pathetic.

At the vet she kept looking back over her shoulder at me. Without her twin there, she was completely ungrounded.

We waited in the exam room.

caseyface — Casey under my chair in the exam room

And then the doctor came in.

This was a different doctor than the one we saw before. Much different. This doctor was a hot Columbian chick in leather pants, knee-high boots, and a lab coat.

She was awesome.

We discussed Casey, and then the doctor scooped her up under one arm before Casey even knew what was going on and took her in the back to “get a sample”.

I’m not entirely sure how they managed to get a sample out of her. Did they just squeeze it out? Is it in any way like milking a cow? I kept picturing different scenarios until she came back in with Casey. And a sample.

I didn’t ask.

We put Casey on the exam table- which was an elevator, which totally freaked her out- and I held her head in a futile attempt to relax her. The vet meanwhile slapped on a rubber glove, lubed up and started manually checking Casey’s urethra for stones. Then she spoke to Casey in the most incongruous baby-dog voice and Casey calmed right down. Didn’t seem to mind at all. And I couldn’t think of a single appropriate thing to say.

Jack was Still. Screaming. When we got home. I’m glad no one called the cops on us this time. That happened.

Thinking about it afterwards, leather pants seem really appropriate for vets. They clean easily and offer way more protection against scratches and bites than scrubs do. There are probably a lot of other occupations that could benefit from leather pants. This has become my current obsession and I would love your input on which occupations you think could really do a better job utilizing all the benefits of leather pants.

Really, we’d all benefit. I’m thinking here perhaps a National Leather Pants Day (there isn’t one; I checked. There is, however, a National No Pants Day, though there is ~~some~~ great debate on what day that is).

Meanwhile, your questions of the day: How do you think they got “the sample”? Who do you think should be wearing leather pants? When is National No Pants Day, and are you going to celebrate it?

Casey is going to be fine. Even with four medicines (because she also has an infection in her ear and between her toes) it was less than $500 and she didn’t have to stay overnight. One of the medicines is a shampoo for just her paws.

That I am supposed to leave on for fifteen minutes.

Which should be interesting.