Don’t Get Up . . .

I’m over on Family Circle’s Momster blog today.

There’s also link there to my essay, “Reality Check” in the May issue.

This was a great issue. I especially liked the essay on p.90 — I especially liked the essay on page 90. Can you please make the pulled pork now?

Happy Friday.

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.

Remember to enter my Pi Day Pie Challenge!

What’s that Sound?

I was in our bedroom writing. The kids were all downstairs and CC was at work. Casey was sacked out on the bed behind me.

And there was this sound. . .

One of those sounds that’s just on the edge of your consciousness. You don’t really notice it at first, but it keeps repeating. It repeats enough and you suddenly realize you can’t identify it, and that’s a problem.

Because unidentified sounds at home fall into one of two categories: Things That Will Kill You – think: burglars, bears, or bombs – and Things That Will Cost You Money like, say, maybe a tree falling on the house. Or a toilet overflowing for so long before someone mentions it that it floods the garage. Not that I would know anything about either of these.

This sound was a little knock-knock, a little tap-tap, with a bonus suction sound.

“What the hell is that?”

I said this out loud. I talk to myself out loud a lot. I am not bothered by this. It’s only a problem when another person is in the room and they go, “What?” and I get all indignant and say, “I wasn’t talking to you!” because they just interrupted me when I was talking to me.

I walked out of the room to investigate.

In one of many moments as a pet owner in which I have regretted not having a camera on my person, I found that a single dish had been left on the table when the kids cleaned up after dinner: the top to the tupperware cake keeper.

The cake keeper in our house serves only one purpose: to keep people from eating the cake between the time it is made and the time it is served. We never have “leftover” cake. Thus there was no need to replace the cake keeper top on the cake, since there was no more cake. Like many other things in my house, because it was unable to fulfill one of their immediate needs, it became invisible to the kids.

But not to Jack.

The knock-knock, tap-tap, suction sound was the sound of Jack having wedged himself entirely inside the lid as he licked out the little bits of icing stuck to it. He was moving himself all over the table as he shifted side to side, licking the edges. Kinda like one of those balance boards at the gym. Except with icing. And sides.

It reminded me of a similar experience when the one dish that had been left on the table was a measuring cup half full of gravy. I came out to find Jack, head jammed down in that cup, drinking for all he was worth before someone discovered him, gravy all over his ears.