We got Jack and Casey as puppies when they were seven weeks old.
They spent a lot of time in the kitchen because it was the only room we could completely make safe and secure. Plus it had a tile floor for easy cleanup, if you know what I mean. We gradually enlarged their inside world by blocking off larger sections of the house for them to explore while we were with them.
One night I was home with the kids and we had movie night. I made popcorn and milkshakes. I don’t remember what we were watching. The puppies were sniffing around the living room. At that time, they still fit under most of the furniture so there was a lot for them to check out. We had a green trunk that we used as a coffee table. Some of us set our milkshakes upon it.
The thing about puppies, unlike kittens, is that they’re not normally quiet. Stealth is a quality dogs generally lack. I rely on my hearing more than anything to make sure my dogs aren’t getting into something they’re not supposed to. It’s not rocket science; even small dogs lumber.
But this night? My puppies were ninjas.
I got up to go back into the kitchen and turned around. There, on the trunk directly behind me, was a heavy glass that had formerly contained a milkshake, lying on its side. The contents spilled across the trunk and two puppies were silently slurping up the dregs. Chocolate, of course.
This was the first of many times to come where we were hipped to the teamwork that is possible between a couple of puggles that bonded in the womb.
The only two in the litter. Can you tell?
In my mind, I picture Casey getting Jack to crouch down while she tipped the glass over onto him so that it didn’t crash. Then licking up any milkshake that spilled on his back. It sounds like something she’d do.
I can only imagine what it must be like to have twin humans.
We have a Screen Ban at our house from 11am-5pm. This is a new thing for us, just started the day after school got out for the summer. Music is allowed during this time but no other internet, no TV (exception granted for the Olympics), no video games, no movies.
It’s been a good move, though the kids might beg to differ. Of course it isn’t perfect- they complain, sneak whenever our backs are turned, watch TV at friends’ houses. But other things have happened too. Sometimes they’ll hang out on my bed and read while I’m folding laundry. The dogs get an extra walk. We go to the pool. They play board games. They help me in the kitchen. They make stuff up.
#5 asked if he could make a fort recently during the Screen Ban hours. An indoor fort.
I was a big fan of forts when I was a kid, both indoor and outdoor. Indoor forts we made by stringing sheets and sleeping bags over artfully arranged furniture. My sister’s brilliant contribution was the addition of a box fan, placed just so in order to extend a sheet into a “room”. Outdoor forts we made with whatever wood we could find in the patch of woods behind our house: scrap lumber, branches, sticks, logs. Outdoor forts rocked because you could add to them over the days; you didn’t have to dismantle them to give your mom the sheets and chairs back.
#5 mostly makes indoor forts because we don’t have a yard or woods per se, unless you count the property that doesn’t belong to us and contains all the trees that keep landing on our house. He did make an outdoor fort once but I literally couldn’t get to it when he wanted to show it to me, it was in such a steep and treacherous part of the “yard”.
He wanted to make a fort this day upstairs, and offered to take it down before dinner because it uses all of the dining room chairs. He didn’t want to make it downstairs in the music room because #2 was down there and, I quote, “She’s really annoying when you’re trying to build a fort.”
If you asked her, she would probably say the same thing about him.
Once he made the fort, he started working on me to let him sleep in it. He even offered to take it down so everyone could eat around the table and then rebuild it. I’m just so thrilled any time something non-electronic happens that doesn’t involve arguing or tears that I relented. It was pretty cool- it came out round inside.
This picture was taken the morning after, before 11am. Hence the TV.
My permission secured, he went to work on getting #4 to sleep in there with him. Because it’s a little scary and lonely to sleep in there by yourself.
When I got home from work, it was odd how dark and quiet the house was. The dogs were crated, #4 and #5 were asleep in the fort and the sitter was on the couch using her laptop. We said goodbye in whispers but the dogs woke up anyway.
The dogs were so totally discombobulated by the fort. They whined in the crate because there were nearby laps they weren’t in. I let them out to take them outside but they beelined for the fort instead. Except Jack couldn’t figure out how to get in it, so I helped him.
Go in here, Jack.
Then came a series of nails on the floor and much dog activity. In and out and all around the fort. I took them both outside briefly but afterwards neither one would calm down at the same time, all the while crawling in and out of the fort and on #4 and #5’s heads.
I went to forcibly remove them, but #4 protested sleepily and said that Casey was under the covers, which she was. Somehow Jack also ended up naked, which makes him harder to grab because he’s quite wiggly and there’s nothing to hold on to when he’s naked. Well, nothing good anyway.
At this point, #5 sat up halfway and said, “Why is it so hard to sleep?”
I told them if the dogs got too annoying to put them back in the crate and went back in our room to read.
More whines. More nails on the floor. I heard the crate door open and shut, twice. Then more whines. Lots and lots more whines. The crate door opened again, and then there was the unmistakable sound of Puggle Demolition Derby.
One of these days I’m going to record that. It defies description. My friend Jeremy, who is owned by two pugs, refers to it as “weaseling”.
#4 and I opened my bedroom door at the same time.
Me: Are they being annoying?
Her eyes were wide and she nodded vigorously: Yes!!!
So I let them in and squished their little heads together in an embrace, reminded them I was the big dog and told them to calm the hell down.
Them: wiggle wiggle
Me: I’M THE BIG DOG!!
Them: wiggle wag
Me: Big dog! That’s me.
Them: whine
Me: Shut it.
Them: lick
Me: awwww.
Everyone slept after that. #4, in fact, managed to sleep until ten a.m. which earned her this picture that she doesn’t know I took.
I noticed she also added a fan. Aunt Beth will be proud.
Did you ever build forts as a kid? Is anyone else doing screen bans this summer? I told my chiropractor about it and he thought it was brilliant; then he told his kids and now they’re pooling their money to take a hit out on me.
Welcome to One & Done Sunday. One picture, and five links that are worth your time.
When you tell stories that are not your own, often things get lost in translation. Details may be embellished or forgotten, significant bits left out, and complete fabrications can occur.
This is not the case with the following story. You’re just going to have to trust me on that.
A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless and without any identifying characteristics, is having problems with squirrels getting into her trashcan. They have chewed through the fastening mechanism on the lid to reach the contents. They are not thwarted by mothballs, bleach, or anything she can think of to secure the lid.
No one else on her street is having this issue.
She’s one of those moms who does too much, but she’s usually in the flow and pretty organized. Monday morning she woke up and was checking out her schedule and saw that she was completely booked. She always makes Monday’s dinner the night before. (I know, right? Sunday night I make something from the freezer section for the kids and then throw lunch money at them Monday morning so I don’t have to deal with making lunches on my day off).
As she remembered she made meatloaf for Monday’s dinner, she also remembered that she’d never taken it out of the oven Sunday night.
Bummer. Bye-bye, meatloaf.
She threw it away in secret, neatly avoiding a conversation with her husband about wasted meat and what’s for dinner tonight.
Some time later her husband said, “Do you know anything about a squirrel out here with a meatloaf?”
There was a squirrel, trucking across the powerline with some difficulty, carrying damn near an entire meatloaf that he had liberated from the trash can.
Here’s your picture (sadly, not of a meatloaf-carrying squirrel).
CC was out slaughtering the overgrown wisteria and mulching our dangerously raked “back yard” and the puggles were beside themselves and would not leave me alone until I put them out with him. They have 20-foot leashes that let them explore a little bit under supervision.
Casey managed to climb up on the little stone wall into the flower pots while simultaneously getting herself all tangled up and stuck. The part you can’t see are all the branches her leash is wrapped around.
Here are your links.
A beautiful, tiny essay by a great writer: Tragedies
Reminiscent of that Moe the bartender Simpsons quote I was born a snake handler, and I’ll die a snake handler: Paul Johnson at The Good Greatsby If It was a Snake It Would Have Bitten You.
Beth Howard makes pie. She also lives at the American Gothic house (yeah, that one in the Grant Wood painting. I mean, the actual one that he painted, she doesn’t live in the painting. She’s a real person). She has a hell of a story about coming back to life after her young husband died suddenly. Here’s her Real Simple article Miss American Pie.
JM Randolph, accidentalstepmom 