Glamorous. Just Call Me Fergie.

Well, the pressure cooker has found a new home. I haven’t heard from her since, so I am assuming she is either madly in love with it and cooking up a storm or dead from poisoning and unable to communicate her utter loathing. Either way, I’m off the hook.

Meanwhile, here at the DeGroot house, life marches on. Specifically, it marches behind tiny yorkie butts that produce a surprising amount of poo. Most of that poo is gathered in small plastic bags and disposed of in the garbage. Please do not ask me where the garbage takes it. Probably the landfill where it can pile up with all those disposable diapers we threw in there when the kids were little. But hey, at least the poo is not in your yard or on the road or on the bottom of your foot. See? Silver linings.

Unfortunately for me, one of the bags I used Saturday morning had a hole in it. Which I didn’t notice until I pulled it out of my pocket and poop flew everywhere. It was quite the start to my day, I must tell you.

The good news is that I was outside and the poop all flew on the road. That’s pretty much all the good news. Because then I stepped in it three times while I was spinning around in confusion and the dogs were lunging at the end of their retractable leashes at an oncoming huge pickup truck. However, I did not notice the truck because A) my dogs are jerks and bark all the time and B) I was digging in my pocket for a new bag while still holding the gross holey poopy bag, while trying to hang on to both leashes, while trying not to step in more poop.

I noticed the truck finally, and started pulling the dogs in but of course I still had the defective poop bag in my hand so I’m trying not to drop that while trying not to get poop on my gloves while trying not to fling any more poop while trying to operate the retractable leashes. And now I’m sweating profusely. Truly a vision of loveliness.

I closed my eyes and stood there – mentally swearing at my father. My dad saves all of his bags that come with his newspaper and gives them to me. They make excellent dog poop bags – they are large enough for your hand to fit into them but compact enough that you hardly notice them in your pocket, unlike bulky plastic grocery bags which make me look like I have goiters on my hips. So it’s a win-win situation, except that my dad doesn’t pay attention to whether the bags have holes in them or not.

Of course, at 52, I am sure he figures his daughter has enough poop bag experience and marginal intelligence to inspect each bag prior to use. That appears to be his undoing. And mine.

So I finally get the poop off my shoe and most of it off the road and go home. I walk in the garage, I pull the new poop bag out of my pocket to throw in the garbage and see a tiny bit of yellowish snow topple to the floor. That’s when I realized that the poop may have gone other places besides all over the road. Oh boy. Do I dare stick my hand in my pocket?

Of course I do. You all know me better than that. This is a woman who will eat a strange M&M off the carpet at work. I live on the edge.

Thankfully, the only other thing in my pocket was another empty bag. But I knew there was poop juice in there because of the snow. Or perhaps, by now, it was only poop cooties. Either way, the pocket was compromised.

I got in the house and threw my coat on the bed while I dug around in the bathroom cupboard looking for the antiseptic wipes, when Dave walked in the room. He stuck his head in the bathroom and asked me what I was doing.

“Cleaning out the poop juice in my pocket”, I told him.

You wanna ruin the ambiance of the bedroom? Just mention “poop juice”.

“That’s so disturbing,” he said. “Why don’t you just wash the entire jacket?”

Oh sure. Mr. Logical. NOW you show up. At least this time I didn’t forget the poop bag in my pocket like I did when I washed my jacket last year. Silver linings, baby. Silver linings.

Sue

PS. I’m probably the only person you know that can write an entire 800 word blog post about a single incident of dog poop. I should get some kind of award for that.

5 Day Black and White Challenge – Day 2

Today is Day 2 of the 5 Day Black and White Challenge.  For Day 1 and Rules, CLICK HERE.

Today I picked my dogs as the subjects.  These were taken after one of the first snowfalls, and we were outside romping around.  The first photo is our Daisy – she looks adorable in this photo and she really is.  The second photo is our Lucky dog – he looks fierce in this picture – I must have gotten him at the end of a bark or something.  He’s not fierce at all, except his breath.  Definitely needs a tic tac.

I’m fricken adorable!

Grrrrrr! I’m fierce! Give me a denti-stick!

I am not going to nominate anyone today, but I do invite you to check out my friend, Tree, at Conversations Around the Tree.  She is also participating in this challenge, and she has some lovely photos!  Plus she is funny and sweet and has a big glorious heart – I know you will like her as much as I do!

More fun tomorrow!
Sue

 

The Terror-iers of Scott

The Culprits

Well, I’m sitting in my basement wondering what to write, while being barked at in very demanding doggie voices by animals that probably don’t even weigh as much as one of my boobs. Yes, I did just say that. We need some perspective here. My boobs are big, my dogs are small. And both control my life.

Every big boobed girl knows the agony of spending a day at work in a crappy bra. That will definitely control your life right there.

“So, how many kids did they say they needed to fit in this cafeter…ow – what the heck…stupid bra…anyway, so 250 kids per lunch period…Dang it! What is going on with this thing? Something is poking me…(covertly adjust)…a little better…now then…OW. (less covertly adjust)…stupid POS bra…how many fricken kids again? Oh yeah, 250 at each…GEEZ am I bleeding this time? (furious tugging and yanking)…crap, now I’m all discombobulated. I gotta get this stupid drawing done and I think I have a boob on the loose (covert tucking, more tugging)…ugh…now, am I good? Is it safe to move?…(experimental twist)…okay I think I’m good…so, where is that drawing..oh great it’s on the floor…”  And by the time you bend down to get your paperwork off the floor, your bra has impaled your breast and you wing that sucker off, knocking out cold everyone in the department within a 5 cube radius.

Back to the dogs. Since we have moved, they have had a few adjustment hiccups learning to live in the new house. First, we made them stay with the evil veterinarian  for two days.  Seeing as they had never been boarded before, I am sure they spent those 32 hours waiting for some horrific calamity involving the loss of a body part they used to like to lick. Then we bring them to some house that smells weird, has no lawn, and where they have to all the way down the steps to find the door that goes outside, where they have to pee on…gasp…gravel. And not only that, but they just have a small, soggy pen, and not a huge yard in which to run around while barking furiously at squirrels, neighbors, robins, leaves, wind, imaginary burglars, and Hank, the Next Door Nazi German Short Haired Pointer. He’s probably from hell, too.

View of the apparent doggie torture chamber from the upstairs patio doors.

(Side note:  We have a walk out ranch.  The upstairs patio doors are screwed shut to prevent someone from falling 10 feet to the ground, because we don’t have a deck yet.  Well, maybe more like 15 feet now with the moat*.  But anyway, the point is, we made the dog pen off the downstairs patio doors, so now we have to troop down the steps to put the dogs out.  Bear in mind that only Daisy will actually go down the steps.  Lucky has to be carried.  No, there is nothing wrong with him.  He’s just a jerk.)

Here is the new routine: Mom let’s them out in their little pen, and stands there demanding, “Go potty. Go potty! GO POTTY!”, each command a little louder and a little less in control while they stand and stare at her, saying “no barky no engleesh”.  In frustration, she let’s them back in, and then they trot up stairs, wait until her back is turned, and then sneak back down and pee by the workbench. Or poop on the landing. That’s mom’s favorite. She loves finding brown poop on brown carpet in her stocking feet. Ha! It’s very entertaining when she hops around on one foot until her big boobs flop in opposite directions and she knocks over a lamp while crashing into Dad, who is blinded by the flailing boobs.

Sooo…the cat doesn’t seem to mind the new pen. Unfortunately, he’s not allowed out there, because he will jump out and turn into a mud ball.

Okay, that didn’t really happen. Really, just trying to prove a point. But the “Go Potty” yelling happens every day. Every. Day.

So mom decided to start walking the dogs a few times a day, to keep from having to mop up the indiscretions. Which worked for the most part, except when everyone gets locked in the basement for the day. By “everyone”, I mean the dogs and the cat. We of course wouldn’t lock up any humans in the basement, although some days we might rather that than going to work. And we wouldn’t pee on the stupid floor either. But I digress. The point here, is that in between munching on cat poop candy bars, the little menaces to society would pee on the floor, conveniently right next to the potty pads mom and dad bought for them to pee ON. Not next to. ON. And don’t go giving me that “poor babies, they have tiny bladders, and so much change to deal with” crapola. I know they are just tiny furry jerks.

I’m afraid to know how many years of my life have been spent walking the dogs. It’s all about the pee, man.

So how do you deal with tiny furry jerky yorkies with adorable, sweet faces and liquid brown eyes that keep you from throwing them off a cliff? You buy them the biggest kennels you can find at Fleet Farm, that’s what. And you make them cozy comfy beds in there and you give them a pee pad and a dish of water and liver treats and hugs and pets and scritches when you lock them in there and leave for work, weeping uncontrollably because you are a monster for locking them up. A MONSTER, I SAY!

Look how huge these kennels are. “Neener” says Midnight.

And then you speed home and hurry down the steps, and fling open the doors and they jump and leap and are soooo happy to see you. You put them outside in their little gravel pen, (Go Potty….Go Potty!….GO POTTY) and they tinkle just a tiny bit and run back inside and you go upstairs and 5 minutes later you need something that is still packed in a box so you go back downstairs and there is PEE BY THE WORKBENCH. And then, you take a better look at their kennels, and notice one pee pad is ripped to shreds in one kennel while in the other kennel someone has peed on the doggie bed. And that’s how you know they are actually just tiny furry jerks.

FLAILING BOOBS PART TWO.

Not really. I just like to say “Flailing boobs”.

But there is a part two to the dog saga. When we first moved here, the ground was still frozen. Because of that, our yard has not been graded yet. Okay, no biggie, they told us they would do that when it thawed. So now it’s starting to thaw. And the ground is settling. It’s settling so much, we have to jump to get on our porch, and we have a huge sink hole in our front yard and our temporary gravel driveway has a huge dip in it right before the garage, making entering and leaving said garage a bit of a technical challenge for those of us who happen to be technically challenged when it comes to driving anything other than a flat road, and you know a ripped off car mirror is just waiting to happen.  This really has nothing to do with the dogs. I’m just venting.

Here’s the dog part. We now have a moat*.  So what’s a castle without a moat? That would be a castle without a spastic queen in it who is worried the moat is going to eventually go over the drawbridge. The dirt settled so much along the back of the house, that we have about a two foot trench that has filled with water. Water that isn’t draining, mind you. AND, the trench is right outside the downstairs patio doors, so we had to put in a ramp for the dogs or one jump out the door and they would be eaten by the moat monster, which has so far claimed one decorative rock that was previously being used to anchor the pen, and one partial rug that was in place to help keep some of the dirt outside. The garbage can and the poop shovel were almost victims, but rescued just inches from being sacrificed in to the pit.

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That means that even the small area we had is almost unusable, and we are now walking dogs about 5 times a day. Still, not such a big deal. Until Sunday night.

Sunday night we had gale force winds and sideways rain. But neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow nor spring twister will keep us from making the dogs pee outside. So here’s me, trying to drag two very reluctant 10 pound furry footballs across a sinking gravel driveway while it’s raining so hard I can barely open my eyes to see where we are going. Lucky has his front feet stiffened and planted firmly in front of him so I have to literally drag him and Daisy is huddled by my feet with her ears out like kites, and my boobs in full flail, while I am yelling pointlessly into the wind, “GOOO POOOTTYYY!!!”

Even more exciting was doing the same thing again in the morning only this time in near white out blizzard conditions. My neighbors now fully understand the definition of “crazy” that has moved in next door.

And here’s the final kicker. Once summer comes (like maybe in August) and we have some semblance of a lawn, it really won’t matter. We have two eagles and countless hawks and a few vultures that would LOVE us to leave the little jerks unattended. So there really is no hope for us. So go. Save yourselves. Buy quality undergarments and dogs large enough not to be carried off by birds of prey. We’ll be here, holding down the fort in our worn out bras and walking our smelly jerk dogs with faces so cute you forget to be mad at them. Send us a postcard.  Maybe we’ll be able to start a fire with it to keep warm.

Tune in next week for:  The Legend Of Zelda:  The LG Appliances of Time

Sue

Sunset on the bay. Totally random and has nothing to do with today’s post, but figured you were getting tired of seeing dogs.

 

I’m Back!

It’s been a while since I posted.  The last couple of months have been fraught with distractions, like eating Thanksgiving pies, Christmas cookies, Marge’s homemade angel food, Dave’s birthday lasagna, cheese cake, Christmas ham, Lucy’s yummy chocolate truffle cookies, and assorted dips, cheeses and crackers.  Not to mention half of the tin of homemade cookies my mom gives us every year that I assured her I would leave entirely to Dave (I cannot be trusted to promises made when it comes to baked goods).

Mmmmmm….cookies!

I have also been distracted by a game on my iPad, introduced to me by my nephew.  My adult nephew, who is 30 years old and expecting his first baby and whose care-free video game playing days will soon be coming to a crashing sleep-deprived halt.  Excuse my cruel chuckle as I experience the empty nest days of doing whatever the heck I want whenever the heck I want to, as long as it doesn’t break any laws, interfere with my job, breach national security, or send us spinning into bankruptcy.

The game in question is The Simpsons Tapped Out.  First, let me say that I don’t even watch The Simpsons.  I think, in the entire 500 years it’s been on the air, I may have watched 3 episodes.  I have paid enough attention to pop culture to know who Homer, Marge, Maggie, Bart and Lisa are, but that’s really about it.  I would never have looked for this game on my own, because I wouldn’t have cared enough to even think it might exist.

So, when David showed me the game on his iPhone, I thought it was in complete innocence, one gamer to another.  No.  He was seductively trying to suck me into the vortex so he could add another friend to his game and fulfill a quest.  I watched in fascination as he clicked on people and buildings, collecting cash and making Bart go to church and Ned Flanders take power walks.  My eyes dilated and my finger reached tentatively out towards his phone.  Then he said the magic words…”It’s free, Aunt Sue”.

This is not a game for those afflicted with OCD.  I became obsessed with rebuilding Springfield and fulfilling quests.  Breakfast, lunch and dinner were soon filled with the sounds of my finger spastically tapping on glass.  I started bringing my Ipad to work to sneak extra game play during the day, where I hunched over my iPad, tapping furiously while casting furtive glances over my shoulder.  I needed to buy more land and build more buildings!  I needed more cash!  More Halloween Treats!  More Christmas coins!  More friends!  I visited Tapped Out forums to find strangers to add to my ‘friend’ list and forced my friend’s 12 year old son to “add me”.  I almost went as far as buying fake donuts with real cash, just to be able to build the mad scientist volcanic lair.  Oh yeah.  I was hard core.

This baby cost 200 donuts.

Somewhere between Christmas and New Years, we ran out of the Christmas cookies that I was using to feed my gaming frenzy, and I realized I needed to get my life back.  The dogs were picking thru garbage and hanging out on the street corner, harassing the neighborhood collie (Hey you.  Yeah, you!  Look at you behind your fence, pansy boy!  Oh yeah?  I dare ya!  I triple-human dare ya!). The cat was cooking ‘nip in the basement and selling it to unsuspecting kittens.  The boys were mixing lights with darks in the laundry room while surviving on Hot Pockets and Tina’s frozen burritos.  I had 10,679 unread emails just from Kohl’s alone (Save 30%!  Free shipping!  Get Kohl’s Cash!), and was so far behind on Facebook that I didn’t recognize any of my friends.

“Pssst. Little kitten! I have some candy for you!”

So I quit.  Cold turkey.  I don’t recommend this to the faint of heart.  First came the shakes.  Then then the delirium.  I cried.  I giggled maniacally.  I sobbed in hysterics.  I beat on my Ipad, shouting “WHY?  WHY?” And then I crashed.  It was the worst ten minutes of my life.

And now I’m back to my barmy old self, ready to motivate the hell out of you  to work out, eat right and pray your socks off in 2013.  Are you ready?  Let’s ride!!

Weekend Update

Welcome to “Weekend Update” – the portion of my blog where I fill you in on what’s been happening on life details that I may (or may not) have mentioned in past blogs.

100 Pushups – I start week 5 tomorrow.  To be honest, I’m not sure how well I will do.  Tomorrow’s sets are 36, 40, 30, 24, 40.  Seriously?  That’s 170 pushups.  One hundred seventy.  One.  Hundred. Seventy.  Pushups.  And I have not grown any fonder of them.

SAD Light – I ordered my SAD light (SAD stands for Seasonal Affective Disorder – basically, you get depressed in the winter due to lack of light) and it came last Tuesday.  First of all, I have to say I paid a lot of money for something that looks and feels like it should cost ten bucks.  Then, not all of the lights worked – about 6 of them did not light.  Oh joy.  My skepticism and annoyance just multiplied by a billion.

Perhaps what I really need is actual sun on an actual beach for an undetermined length of time. Like 3 months.

However, because I did NOT want to package it back up, trudge to the post office, ship it back and then pray I got my money back, I decided to try it, regardless of the 6 dark LED’s.  I have used it for 30 minutes every morning since and the first three days (W-TH-F) I felt more awake and had continued energy at night after work.  However, I did not work out two of those three days because work was hair-curling crazy, so that may have influenced my evening energy.  On Saturday, I was talking about it with my sister, who said the energy increase was probably psychosomatic, something I kind of wondered about myself.  After which, I suddenly felt exhausted and promptly went home and took a nap.

So the jury is still out on the light.  I have read that it can take a few weeks to fully kick in, so I will keep using it.  I certainly don’t mind trying as it requires no real effort on my part, and I’m just drinking coffee and browsing the internet anyway in the morning.  Oh, and ironically, the 6 LED’s are now working.

Oh yes, I did just go there.

Y-M-C-A! – Sing it with me!  I joined on Thursday after work.  Haven’t gone yet and frankly I am a little stressed about trying to figure out when I will have time to go.  I am also stressed about putting on a bathing suit in front of strangers – something I don’t mind when I am at the beach because of all the weirdos at the beach anyway – I blend right in.  At the Y, I will be donning my suit with Michael Phelps Wanna-bes in goggles and speedos, pretending I know how to swim well enough to claim a lane in the cut throat world of 5am swimmers.

I am also going to try the spin classes.  A couple of the gals from the bike club also belong to the Y, so we are planning on meeting there to take them together.  And, heaven help me, I am probably going to start running on the indoor track.  Not that running in a circle and counting laps is what I want to do, but it’s slightly less boring than running on a treadmill.

Do not bathe us! We like smelling like corn chips!

A Clean Dog is Not a Happy Dog – However, a clean dog makes for a happy owner, especially when said dog sleeps right next to said owner’s face.  I noticed an increase in the corn chipiness of the air when one of them was next to me, and decided that November 19th, the day of their next grooming, was much to far away for my survival.  They now smell like soap and doggy perfume, which I am sure they hate with the heat of a 1000 burning suns, and that they are quietly plotting revenge.  The ‘revenge’ will likely show up in the hallway when I get up in the morning.  They are masters of the well placed doggie tootsie roll.  (This would be one of those “updates” that really have nothing to do with any past blog entries.  It’s pretty much just shameless yorkie poo promotion.  Or anti-promotion, as the case may be.)

And that, my friends, is that.  Time for bed and a new work week tomorrow. Hopefully, it will contain fewer moments of hair tearing than last week!

Sue

Battle Plans

You know, I was sitting here freezing, wondering if I should turn on the fire-place and lay on the couch or try to be productive. I choose productive, for the simple reason that I found my socks.

The Bees Knees in footwear

I have this favorite pair of alpaca wool socks, and they had been missing for at least a week. At first I thought they were in the wash, so dutifully wore my other socks until I got around to doing the laundry. Ten loads of laundry later, they were still missing. Then we had a spurt of warm, fall weather – well into the 70’s – so I didn’t notice too much that my feet were clothed in mere cotton.

But tonight, I walked the dogs in a chill 40 degrees with only a sweatshirt and came home cold, tired and footsore. I wanted my socks, dog gone it. I began to suspect a sock thief, but realized that the only other two occupants in the house are both males and unlikely to be sock stealers (unlike a certain daughter I know), so did the next logical thing. I looked under the bed. Viola! I pulled them on, and felt instantly better physically and emotionally. It got me to thinking too, about the up coming winter, and how I was going to battle the short, cold days of gloom and snow.

I’m going to need a battle plan. I can already feel myself being dragged into the comfort food vortex, where fuzzy blankets, mystery novels and video games conspire with the evil war lords from the Land of Carbohydrates, in a battle for my soul and my waistline. And to be honest, I am a willing victim.

Obviously, the socks are my first line of defense. They really do give me actual ‘warm fuzzies’. I love these socks, and I do not use the term loosely. You can get a pair for yourself here.

I didn’t have a SAD light picture, so had to settle for a Sue’s A Dork picture. Yes, those are glasses with windshield wipers.

My second line of defense is to buy a SAD light (SAD stands for Seasonal Affective Disorder, not Sue’s A Dork…just sayin’). My trusted healthcare professional (interpret as you wish) has assured me it will be the best $60 I will have ever spent. I certainly hope he is right. Mine is coming on Tuesday (if the FedEx website is correct), so I will keep you posted. I’m supposed to use it every morning for 30 minutes, which won’t be a problem. I spend the first 30 minutes of every morning huddled around my coffee mug, staring into the glowing screens of one electronic device or another so what’s one more in the mix?

“Dog Breath set to ‘stun’, Mr. Scott”

My third line of defense will be to get outside, as often as possible, when it is light out and especially when the sun is shining. This is difficult during the work week, when I go to work in the dark and come home in the dark (hence the need for the light). But on weekends, I need to be diligent about finding time to be out, even when it’s so cold Lucky can’t make it to the corner with out pitifully holding out a frozen paw. (Lucky is one of our yorkie-poo’s. He acts tough, but is pretty much a wuss, although he does have breath that could kill a man. Right now he is sleeping under the bed. Weirdo.)

And my last line of defense will be to join the Y- for a couple of reasons. First, because the idea of having only the sweat box (our pet name for the gym at work) to go to for exercise all winter is enough to make me want to gnaw off a limb. The other reason is to get some swimming in after work. With the longer days, I am used to being active in the summer until at least 8 or 9 at night. In the dark of winter, I tend to completely shut off by 6:30. Maybe if I swim a few times a week after work, it will trick my brain into resetting its winter activity clock. Plus, it will give me an alternative on the weekends when the weather prohibits outside activities.

Oops – not THAT Frozen Tundra

I think it will help if we get some snow too. Last year we had very little, and I think that actually made winter seem longer. If I have to live in the Frozen Tundra, I want to have fun in it. Dave got me a pair of snowshoes last Christmas, which I was able to use only one time on a test run in the back yard. Of course, if it doesn’t snow, I can keep riding my bike…ah but we need the moisture more than I need to ride all winter. Plus Kay did invite me snowmobiling, and if I know Kay, it will definitely be a good time had by all. Maybe this winter won’t be so bad after all!

How do the shorter days affect you? Are you a winter hater or lover? What do you do to combat cabin fever?

Sue