Posts Tagged ‘humor’

This weekend we moved out of the house we’ve been renting for the past six months.  I’ve never been happier to leave somewhere before.  After the break in, it was next to impossible to make that place feel like a home.  We are meeting today to sign our lease on our new house which is much bigger, in a much nicer neighborhood, and even has a pool!  This nice little upgrade is brought to you by TWO INCOMES!  Yay for employment!

Unfortunately, we can’t move into the new house until this weekend and so we packed up and moved everything into a storage unit for this week.  We get to move in on Sunday.  I can’t wait!

What all this means for today is that I am officially homeless.  Which isn’t necessarily a terrible thing considering where we just came from.  It also means that we have moved even more junk into my parent’s house.  We’ve been here for the past week and will continue to stay here this week until we move in next weekend.  Last week we had the things we needed to live in my parent’s house.  We brought out clothes and some of Bean’s toys and things like that.  But now that we have moved out, we brought even more crap home to mom and dad’s.

Now, there are miscellaneous boxes just hanging out all over the house.

And some of Bean’s bigger toys had to make the trip home with us, too. So the living room looks more like a daycare center.

And my mom’s big, clean kitchen counters have become flooded with the odds and ends that it takes to make our family run. Bean’s sippy cups, Goldfish, bread, snacks… The counters runneth over.

We’ve also moved our computer and office stuff into the breakfast nook, which means we are eating most of our meals as a family either at the formal dining room table or in the living room on our laps.

But the messiest area is without a doubt our bedroom. Chris, Bean, me, and the two dogs are staying in one of my parent’s guest bedrooms. We’ve got it as neatly organized as it can be, but we’re making a big stinking mess in there. Although, some of the things that look like a mess are really serving a purpose. Like, see that towel on the bed there? That’s Bean’s changing table, not dirty laundry.

And see that pile of random bags? Those each serve a purpose. One is my school bag, one is my bathroom bag with my toiletries, one is Bean’s new diaper bag (his old big one was stolen), and that big suitcase is full of shoes.

Oh, and look. There’s one of our televisions. Right there in our bedroom, in the box. How nice. And that’s our mail that we are trying to keep in one place so we don’t lose anything important during this transition period. And those are clothes that need to be dry cleaned (which I have to hide from my dad because he does laundry like a machine and if I leave clothing laying around, it’s going to be washed). See? All of that is useful, purpose-driven stuff.

Even though everything has some kind of use, it still feels a little chaotic. I keep losing things like my cell phone charger and the other day I even forgot where I put Lt. Dan!

But even with all of that going on, nothing can damper the excitement that Chris and I are feeling right now. We are so excited to be moving into the new house that we can’t even stand it! This new house has the same square footage as our house in Connecticut, so we’ll actually be able to unpack all of our things that we have had boxed up since we moved to Florida in March. I miss my serving dishes! I miss my candlesticks! I miss my throw pillows! And on Sunday, I GET TO SEE THEM!!

Until then though, I’ll be here at my parent’s house, trying to find my hair straightener and Bean’s left shoe. I know I’ve seen them here somewhere…

(Warning: This post is about poop.  Lots of poop.  Proceed at your own risk.  Just be thankful that my camera cord is still missing and so I don’t have any pictures to share.)

For the first few years of Lucy’s life, I was living in college apartments.  That meant that she learned how to walk on a leash pretty good because I had to walk her every day.  She got so good that she could actually go to the bathroom on command.

“Go potty, Lucy.”

Done.

But when we got Big Molly, we lived in a house with a fenced in backyard which meant that she never really learned to walk much on a leash.  Anytime we took her somewhere to run her, she was off-leash in a fenced in field and a leash usually wasn’t necessary.  She’s not horrible on a leash, but she isn’t great.  And she certainly can’t go to the bathroom on command.  In fact, Big Molly is having a hard time going to the bathroom at all now that we are at my parent’s house and having to walk her on a leash.  She doesn’t like an audience and so whenever we walk her, she happily goes for a little walk but there isn’t much business being done.

(I promise there is a reason for me to tell you about my dog’s bowel movements.)

So, yesterday afternoon when Chris got home from work, we decided to take the dogs to the dog park here where my parents live.  It is one of the nicest dog parks I’ve ever been to and our dogs love it.  Without the fenced in backyard to run around in, the dogs have a big case of cabin fever so we thought a good romp might do the trick.

We loaded up in the golf cart (yes, our dogs ride in the golf cart…) and we headed over to the park.  This park is in a huge field that is fenced in and divided in the middle – one side for the little dogs and one for the big dogs.  When we got there, I took Lucy over to the little dog side and Chris grabbed Big Molly to walk her over to the big dog side.

But they barely made it out of the golf cart before Big Molly decided that she needed to go to the bathroom RIGHT NOW.  Right there on the sidewalk.  Humiliated, Chris started grumbling under his breath and Lucy and I scooted into the little dog side before anyone knew we were with them.  Chris cleaned up the mess and then took Molly into the fenced in area.

Molly proceeded to spend the next 20 minutes pooping all over the dog park.  All over it.  Chris couldn’t get one cleaned up before she was squatting somewhere else.  And, I don’t know how familiar you are with dog parks, but it’s pretty poor form to have your dog crap all over the place.  You’re supposed to walk your dog before you come in to keep the area clean, but accidents happen.  So, once or twice isn’t that big of a deal.  But Molly probably went to the bathroom 7 or 8 times.

And the whole time, everyone was looking and staring and pointing and whispering at Chris.  What a terrible pet owner!  But it wasn’t Chris’ fault.  It was all Big Molly.  It was like she had been saving up for the entire week we’ve been here and now that we were out in front of everyone, she was ready to let it all go.

I was dying laughing.

Dying.

Couldn’t stand up straight.

Couldn’t catch my breath.

Chris spent the entire time we were there acting as a human pooper scooper.  And I know we probably should have taken Molly out of there, but she really needed to run.  She’s been cooped up in a house for a week with no fenced in backyard.  Girlfriend needed to run!

And apparently use the bathroom, too.

The whole time this was happening, Lucy was sitting next to the fence calmly, staring at Big Molly in complete disgust.  It was the look that said, “You are an animal and I can’t believe you are my sister.”

And then Molly would crap again.

I think that Chris ended up running around more than Molly did as he followed her around with plastic bags.

The moral of this story is that even if you have a fenced in backyard, you should still teach your dog to go to the bathroom on a leash because you never know when your house will be broken into and you’ll have to relocate temporarily to your parent’s house where there are no fenced in backyards and walking on a leash is the only option.  And in that situation, you will desperately want your dog to be able to go to the bathroom on a leash.

If you doubt this in any way, talk to my husband.  The Human Pooper Scooper.

We’ve been at my parent’s house for almost two weeks now.  And we all seem to be adjusting to the situation pretty good, all things considered.

Everyone that is, except Lt. Dan.

Our new fish, Lt. Dan, is turning out to be a royal pain the rear.  Apparently, I have the only demanding beta fish known to man.  From what I can tell, Lt. Dan is upset that he has been moved.  Though, I cannot fathom why.  He has been relocated to the kitchen table in my parent’s kitchen, right next to the bright, big front window.  Who wouldn’t want to sit in the warm sunshine?

Apparently, Lt. Dan.

He is none too happy about this situation.  I know this because he just keeps laying on the rocks in the bottom of his bowl.  There is no swimming, no frolicking, no smiling, no singing.  He just lays there on those rocks.  All.  Day.  Long.

And before you ask (Chris…), yes, he is alive.  When I poke him with the bamboo shoot in his bowl, he suddenly comes to life, thrashing and splashing around as if I have just stabbed him in the heart with a toothpick.  But after his little protest, he drifts to the bottom of his bowl again and resumes his stance on those rocks.

Well, not a stance really.  Cause Lt. Dan ain’t got no legs, remember?

He also seems to be protesting the new fish food we have here.  In the hustle and bustle of the move, I left Lt. Dan’s fish food at our house.  Which isn’t a huge deal because my parents have beta food at their house, too, so I have just been feeding him that.  But I guess Lt. Dan is a food snob now because he is completely opposed to the flakes he now gets, instead of the pellets he had at home.  Perhaps I should go out and buy him the food he prefers, but I’m refraining from that on principle now.

Lt. Dan, you are a fish.  Act like it.  You will eat what I give you or you will die.  Now, get up off those rocks and EAT THESE FISH FOOD FLAKES!

I’m not really that mean to him.  Actually, I’m being overly nice to him, given his awful attitude these days.  He sits right next to my computer and so even as I write this post I am talking to him, soothing him, pointing things out to him.  And yet, he lays there.  On those rocks.  Ungrateful like.

Lt. Dan better get his act together and start swimming around or something here very soon.  Dude’s here to entertain Bean.  And even Bean knows that laying on rocks is not the way he wants to spend a day.

Maybe we should strap him to the back of the golf cart and take him for a joy ride.  That always seems to lift Bean’s spirits.