Now He Gets It

CC is finally out of production. This means I get to see him more than six minutes a day. It also means that I don’t have to get up with the kids every morning. Both of these are Very Good Things.

This is our conversation the other day:

Me: I am so happy you are home.

CC: Me too.

Me: I’m serious, I nearly wept with joy when you got up this morning with the kids. But then I rolled over and went back to sleep.

CC: Yeah, I know.

Me: You have a lot of children. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not.

CC: I have just the right number of lives in my life. Five kids, you, two crazy dogs. I don’t need any cats or goldfish. I don’t need anything else.

Me: Except maybe a turtle. That would be pretty cool.

CC: A turtle?

Me: Yeah, wouldn’t it? Especially if it was one of those ones with a skateboard?

CC: What the hell are you talking about?

Me: You know, like when they lose a leg and so you strap them to a skateboard so they can still get around?

CC: I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like that.

Me: It totally does! I saw a picture on the internet! It’s just like that dog that used to live across the street from us that had wheels for back legs.

CC: It didn’t have wheels for back legs. That was a dog wheelchair. It was a Dalmatian with hip dysplasia.

Me: Whatever. A turtle on a skateboard would be badass.

CC: I’m sorry, did you say something?

Me: A TURTLE ON A SKATEBOARD WOULD BE BADASS!

CC: Now I know why no one ever married you before me.

What is even more badass than this turtle is this turtle that I saw on rubberduckiecreations blog, the reason I had turtles on the brain to begin with. This turtle has the most badass name ever, and is so badass it is quite possibly German.

Waiting

This makes me happy. The puppies keeping watch, waiting for their kids to walk home from school.

Yes, those are lightsabers behind them. They took a break from their Jedi battle because it was coming on three o’clock.

Lots of little kids walk past our house after school. The puppies are known for their flatulence, not their eyesight. I always wonder how they can tell their kids from the others.

God forbid if someone has an after school activity. They’ll stay here all afternoon until they all come home.

Waiting.

Everyone’s a Critic

The Puggle, Casey, aka the Evil Brown One, has a far more subtle personality than her brother.

Jack the Fuggle is fierce and in your face with any toy he can find the instant he wakes. Casey sits and watches him play. When she jumps in, it’s pathetic. She may be genetically superior to him in every other way, but she can’t hold on to a tennis ball to save her life.

Jack was housebroken by the time we brought Casey home three days later (which is a whole other post entirely). He had a minor setback when she joined the household, but he got it together. He learned within a week to ask to go out, and rarely had accidents.

Casey couldn’t be bothered. She had a great deal of sleeping to do, and too much table food to steal to deal with these petty concerns. If it was raining, she preferred to go on the floor.

But lately, she’s developed some communication skills. She has started to learn how to ask to go out, but. . . indirectly. Passive-aggressively. The way all the girls in our house communicate. She’ll sit slightly closer to the stairs. She may gaze in the general direction of the front door. These signs are far too subtle to be noticed by the heathens, but I see them. I respond.

That’s how it started, anyway. Casey is now drunk with power regarding her newfound ability to communicate. Whenever I sit down to write, she comes and sits in front of me.

She stamps her feet.

She whines.

She dances.

She paws at me.

I have responded to this in every way I know how to respond to a dog: I’ve taken her out, I’ve fed and watered her, I’ve rubbed her ears, I’ve rubbed her belly. I’ve tried to engage her in play (to the best of her ability). I’ve given her bacon, for pete’s sake. Nothing ceases the stamping and whining and dancing. Or chewing of cables.