It's a dog's life

Once upon a time, there were two married kids who had just bought their first house and were high on the start of a new life together and the idea of being grown-ups. With jobs! And bills! And a mortgage!

So what did they do? They went to get a puppy, of course.

They drove out to a farm in the middle of nowhere, planning to "just look," but with a kennel, puppy food, and a bunch of plush squeaky toys in the back of the truck. Just in case. And then they were led across a field to a fenced-in area where twelve tiny golden faces peered, grinning, and furry little bodies pawed, stumbled, wiggled, wagged, and yipped. And they, these two, were done in.

There was one puppy in particular. A fat one, redder than the others, with a big splotch of milk on his face. He spared the couple barely a glance and a halfhearted tail wag while trotting relentlessly after his mama, stepping over and on top of his brothers and sisters with his oversized puppy paws.

The couple looked at the other puppies. They were enchanted by all of them. But the plump little penny-colored guy, it kept coming back to him.

That was our Jack.

Well, his name was going to be Billy. I don't know why; I just thought it was a cute name for a puppy. But I let Steven talk me into Jack, after making him swear on his life that he would never, EVER say the name in his awful Jack Nicholson impression.

So instead of Billy, we took home Jackson Tide.

He sat on command the first day home, at 6 weeks old. Three times with cheese as a reward, and he had it down pat. He chewed shoes, as any good puppy will, and sat stubbornly and refused to move when I tried a leash on him for the first time. He was convinced he was our alpha, that little red ball of fur. He was a growler and a nipper, and I once cried to Steven that I thought he was going to be mean forever. "Have you ever met a mean golden retriever?" he asked.

We took him on drives with us and he sat in my lap and panted out the window at passing cars. People smiled and pointed. He was beautiful, my first baby, and I was so proud.

He grew. And grew. And grew some more. At his biggest he was 120 pounds, and he still tried to be a lap dog. We got him a companion, his full-blooded sister Charlie, when he was a year old. When we brought her home he was instantly obsessed. She would take a couple of steps and he would put his big nose under her back end and flip her over. She was his best toy EVER.

When we came home from the hospital with Alex, we put his carrier down on the floor and let the dogs check him out. Jack sniffed at him for a couple of minutes, did the canine equivalent of shrugging his shoulders, and went about his business.

As Alex got bigger, he became more interesting, from a dog's perspective. He was a toddling goldmine of dropped bits of food, sticky tasty fingers, and spilled puddles of juice. He threw balls and sticks, and sometimes sat on Jack's back like he was his very own custom-sized pony. If Jack got annoyed or sick of the exuberant toddler attention, he got up and moved. My mean puppy had turned into a patient, lazy, sweet, dog who wouldn't hurt a flea.

One night I was half asleep when Steven burst into the bedroom and said, "Jack's having a seizure!" I was so disoriented, I said, "Jack who?" The seizures went on pretty frequently over the next few years, and he was put on phenobarbital to control them. He developed skin allergies and was plagued by dry skin that drove him (and us) insane. He became an obsessive paw licker. If I had a nickel for every time I've said, "Jack, stop licking!" over the past few years, I'd be able to retire. Always an Eeyore type, he's been our mopey but content counterpoint to his sunny, anxious, eager-to-please sister. His vet once told me he had "unusually intelligent eyes," and I think he was right. I think Jack understands a lot. I think Jack is a man trapped in a dog's body.

These days his favorite things to do are eat and sleep. He noses the garbage can open and woe to us if there's food within his reach. He constantly steals Katherine's breakfast and waits until no one is looking before polishing off any food Charlie has left in her bowl. He's stealthy. He's afraid of thunder, popcorn, and suitcases. He demands affection by shoving his head up under your hand until you pet him, preferably scratching behind the ears and under the chin. He licks toes. Anybody's toes. A lot.

Yesterday I got a call from our veterinarian. "Jack has cancer." It's an aggressive type, and it's going to spread. We don't really know how much time we have left with our big bear. But no matter how long it is, it's not going to be long enough.

I hope we've given him a good life. I hope he knows that we love him even though (and maybe a little bit because) he drives us up the wall sometimes. I hope he knows he'll never be forgotten, and that he's irreplaceable, that he broke that mold into a million pieces.

Most of all I hope he can enjoy the rest of his time here, being spoiled rotten. Because right now, he's just Jack. He's licking his paws and wagging his tail and nosing into the trash can and sneaking sticks and gumballs in from the yard to munch on and leave in woody piles all over my clean floor. He's happy, in his Eeyore way. For now we'll just spend a lot of time scratching those floppy ears, sniffing the top of his head (which always smells inexplicably like roast turkey), and telling him he's the best boy.

I told him to tell us when he needs to go. He looked at me with those unusually intelligent eyes, and I'm pretty sure he understood.

We'll be devastated. And then we'll heal. And one day it won't hurt quite so much to remember that beautiful, stubborn, "mean" little red puppy and the pushy, sweet, funny, maddening, mischievous, lazy, strong-willed, affectionate, loving, patient, loyal, unforgettable buddy he became.

It's never long enough.

"The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief. But the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love."
Hilary Stanton Zunin

Help! I'm in a rut!

"I'm bored!"

It's not just the mantra of 7-year-olds during summer vacation. Sometimes a 34-year-old working mom of two falls finds herself saying it. Like me, for instance. Like today, for instance.

It's not that I don't have things to do. I have plenty. I have things to write, things to edit, things to fact-check AND edit, toys to rummage through for the donation pile, laundry to do, dinner to cook, dogs to bathe, kids to parent. I have seven years' worth of pictures that need to get put in rough chronological order in a photo album I haven't yet procured. My house could stand another vacuuming, even though I did that this morning. I could scrub the baseboards, for the love of God.

But!

I don't want to. I'd rather just sit here while these things don't get done and think about how bored I am.

And I wonder how much of it is real boredom (if I were really bored, one might argue, any one of those things listed above would cure me of it but quick) and how much is that dreaded rut that people sometimes fall into, when days beget days beget days that all start to bleed into one another. Get up. Make breakfast. Drink coffee. Clean kitchen. Work. Do toddler things. Work. Make lunch. Beg toddler to eat lunch. Work. Work. Prep dinner. Eat dinner. Watch TV while working. Wait for bedtime.

Well, you get the idea. Sometimes I want something crazy to happen. A ghost sighting, maybe, or to win the lottery. Even finding a lost dog would up the interest quotient of the average day. Maybe I'll hold a seance, drive to Georgia to buy some scratch-off tickets, or roam the neighborhood looking for collarless dogs. We make our own luck, they say. 

Maybe it's just insecurity about mentioning "The Rut," which I think is sort of a taboo topic, but I can hear people telling me to appreciate what I've got, to live in the moment, to find beauty in the small things. Shush, you. I DO. But I have to believe that I'm not the only person in the world who has a good life and gets bored with it every now and then. And for some reason the antsiness is at its worst on Sunday afternoons. (What IS it with Sunday afternoons, anyway?)

This week Alex goes back to school, Katherine starts Mother's Day Out, and I have about fifteen thousand things to do. I'm betting this time next week, I'll be missing my rut. Maybe between now and then, I'll win the lottery. Or see a ghost.








***

WARNING: I've made a halfhearted pledge to blog at least once a week for the rest of the year. I don't know how I'll fare with that, but I feel it's my duty to warn you that the topics might wear a little thin. Or be boring. Not unlike when one WRITES ABOUT BEING BORED.

Interest is relative

Parents know their children as the unique creatures they are, beautiful and charming and intelligent to all kinds of dubious extremes. But to suddenly and completely come to acknowledge your children as interesting beings, that's a whole new level of appreciation.

Alex saw a couple of meteors last night in the "shower," which, for us, consisted of three and a half sightings, the half being something that might have been a small meteor but was in all likelihood a small plane. Today, he started a meteor collection from rocks he found in the yard that, according to him, "are not the kind of rocks we have around here, and I rinsed them off in Katherine's water table and they didn't dissolve, so they're not just regular sand rocks, don't you think they're probably pieces of meteor?"

Why, yes. Yes I do. I do because one St. Patrick's Day the nice old man who lived behind us sent his granddaughter and me on a fool's errand looking for four-leaf clovers, and when we couldn't find any we tore one leaf of the three-leaf clovers in half to make a fourth leaf and showed him those, and then suddenly a leprechaun started leaving little surprises - like dollar bills! - around the house and yard that our good luck charms had supposedly conjured.

So yes, Alex, those could be meteors. In fact, if it makes your childhood a tad more interesting, they probably are.

Tomorrow we're going to a water park, and I'm silently dreading it. But he read his requisite number of pages in the library's summer reading program, got his free pass, and we're by-golly going. I will galumph around in a bathing suit all the livelong day and probably get sunburned and dodge screaming kids and let Alex splash me with geysers and ride behind him through claustrophobia-inducing tubes because it's his last week of summer break ever when he's 7 and I want him to have FUN. And I guess there's a chance that I might, too. I kind of like the kid.

Katherine, whom I also like but who is plucking away relentlessly at my last nerve tonight is in bed playing with her toy computer. It's barking repeatedly. It's past 9 p.m. She's 2. She should be asleep. Lately that has not been as easy as it used to be. She stands in her crib bellowing for me at the top of her lungs, then when I go in (as I inevitably do), she demands something, sometimes something weird. Sheep, socks, Mommy's book, mac and cheese, flowers, Alex, my phone, or one of the three songs I have it in my limited range to sing: Rock-a-bye Baby, the Elmo song, and the ABCs. I guess I could conceivably add Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star to the repertoire because it's the same tune as the alphabet song, but I only just now considered that.

She's funny, that one. She can be bought with Dora fruit snacks. She hates it when Alex sits next to me. She has four dances: the Princess Dance, arms flung out spinning in circles; the Smarty-Pants Dance, little feet stomping, spinning in circles; the Katherine Dance, wild gesticulations, spinning in circles; and Mickey Mouse's own Hot-Dog Dance, arms flailing, no circles. She puts things down for naps, covering them with a blanket and giving gentle night-night kisses. Not just baby dolls and stuffed animals, but the remote control, her sippy cup, my feet. The first thing she says when we go in to get her out of her crib in the mornings is "I had good nap."

I feel like I have to keep a record of these things, because they change so quickly. It wasn't that long ago that I was bemoaning her slower-than-Alex speech development and marveling over her sleep patterns. It wasn't that long ago that Alex had baby-fine blond hair and toddled through the kitchen in the middle of the night sucking on butter and hiding carrots under his pillow. It wasn't that long ago that the idea of being parents was just that - an idea, albeit a scary and alien one.

And here we are, a second grader and a 2-year-old under our belts and still finding humor in the everyday. They play chess and he gives her pieces to click together so she'll feel like she's playing, too. We cuddle on the couch and make fun of Sprout shows. She whines and whines and then turns on a grin so dazzling, tiny bunny teeth gleaming, that you forget she's been driving you up the wall all day long and scoop her up into a big squishy hug.

I think I'm ready for school to start, but I have found a kind of deep, quiet, sometimes elusive satisfaction in these summer days that I didn't expect. Alex won't always make me heartbreakingly earnest presents of moon rocks and origami hearts. Katherine won't always beg to be picked up and exert her tree-frog embrace when I finally relent. They're fleeting, these times, and precious.

Tomorrow I'll likely be less sappy and more prone to rushing and entertaining small annoyances. That is if I survive the water park unscathed. But tonight I'm just happy for the blessings of my imperfect little family. If only amongst ourselves, we're an interesting bunch.

Disappointment

Disappointment. It's something we know from the time we know anything, and something that never gets any easier. Not even when you know that people are fallible, plans fall through, things break, failure is inevitable, mistakes are numerous. We can't always get what we want, what we think we need. It's a part of life, they say, but does it matter? That doesn't help the heart accept it.

Maybe the worst is disappointment in people. I've been told that I have a tendency to put people on pedestals, and then I'm always, always surprised when they fall from them. The obvious solution is to stop doing that. I'm trying. People are people. People, each in their own way and to varying degrees, sometimes just suck. And I know I'm one of them. I make plans and cancel them, I break the occasional promise, I've been known to tell a lie or two, and not just of the little white variety. I worry that I'm not always good at being a mother, a wife, a sister, a friend. I worry that there are shortcomings I haven't even noticed yet. That I may sometimes be the source of someone's disappointment.

Because tonight I'm disappointed. Specifics aside, it's something that I know will pass in its own time. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe before bedtime. These things are fleeting, more often than not. I hope it is this time.

And if it's not, if it takes longer than I believe it should to shake it off and move on and forgive and forget, then I hope it serves some grander purpose. Maybe to make me stronger, less gullible, less likely to construct those questionably engineered pedestals in the first place. A girl can hope.

Happenings

Oh Life. You're a funny thing. You lull people into complacency and deliver occasional sucker punches, you offer up peace, love, and harmony and counter it with jolts of drama, trauma, and loss. You put friends in our lives and stitch up rifts and then new ones open in a place we haven't even paid any attention to before. You are the proverbial roller coaster, and we hang on tight and hope the safety bar was latched correctly, and by someone who knew what He was doing before He set the ride in motion.

There have been lots of ups and downs lately. Not just in my life but in those of people I care about. But when I examine the patchwork of people, circumstances, and events that make up the day to day, I'm struck by the way the good outweighs the bad, even when the bad is more immediate and determined.

The good is quieter. It comes in the form of books you can't put down, conversations you don't want to end, helpless laughter, deep and well-earned sleep. For me, it often comes on the slap-pat bare feet of a mischievous, towheaded angel, in spontaneous hugs from a relentlessly and dazzlingly growing boy. In the comfortable companionship of a friend I'm lucky enough to call my husband. In years-long friendships proven fireproof and indestructible.

So in the face of a dead car, a full plate, and a near-empty reserve of patience, I really don't have all that much to complain about. It's been my experience that life often pays back what it takes, and then some.

The summer is going by faster than I could have imagined at the beginning of it. As of tomorrow, there is a month until Alex goes back to school. As a second grader. Grade 2. Grade the Second. I don't know why it's suddenly struck me that I have a kid who's the age I was when we first moved to Birmingham, or when my clear and consistent memories begin. But it's creepy.

He's invited to a birthday party this weekend that seems to be some sort of dress-up affair. Not suits and Sunday best, but Star Wars costumes. It's the antithesis of Alex. He's going to hate it. Of course I haven't TOLD him he's going to hate it, but mark my words: He's going to hate it. He hated it when he had to wear a headband at Vacation Bible School. Said it was "embarrassing." All the other kids were wearing them. Didn't matter. I've told him he's going to pretend to like this birthday party even if they make him wear a Darth Vader mask and do the breathing thing. Pretending to like things we hate ... isn't that 82% of being a grown-up? Just me? Shh, I'd rather not know that.

My car has committed suicide. Well, it's hanging on by a thread, but I can't drive it without fear that the engine is going to burst into flames and I'll have to douse it with the half-drunk can of Diet Dr Pepper that always rides shotgun.

Katherine is Katherine, charming and maddening as all 2-year-olds are contractually obligated to be in equal measure. She is a nudist. She is a temperamental diva. She is a tomboy who likes to wear "pwetty dwesses." She is my shadow, my biggest fan and my harshest critic. She spills her bowl of Goldfish and it must have been something I did. She trips from across the room and why the hell didn't I catch her? That kind of thing. But she's also affectionate as can be, generous with big wet smacking kisses on the lips and tree-frog hugs and cuddles. Working on the laptop, I have perfected the art of typing while my left elbow is immobile, because that's where she settles in. What's personal space? I think I used to know. God, I love her.

Our trip to Destin with the Texas family was wonderful, and just what I needed to untangle the mess that my brain had become in the preceding weeks. You can't sit on a balcony 17 stories up from the ocean while the sun comes up on one side of you and a rainbow sweeps the sky on the other, feeling like the only person awake in the world, and not absorb some of that peace. And take it with you. The kids loved being together, looking for fish in the ocean, riding Boogie boards, catching sand crabs at night with their little headlamps, digging holes and burying the coolest uncle in the world in a shallow grave, and of course playing lots and lots of Nintendo DS (we are an electronically inclined bunch). The grown-ups (and who thought we young parents would ever be included in that category?) loved watching the kids have fun, enjoying the occasional (yes, what?) adult beverage and lots of good food, playing board games, and making fun of HGTV. I would say "and relaxing," but between us we had five kids including two 2-year-olds ... 'nuff said. But there was enough relaxation in the between times to make it perfect. I was remade.

Which is perhaps why I'm not a mess of personified anxiety right now. But I won't examine that too closely, because I have a feeling I could become such a thing if I put my mind to it.

Summer's here, kill me!

I'm staring down the barrel of summer break. What's three months, anyway? Surely I can manage to occupy and mentally stimulate a feisty 2-year-old and a 7-going-on-16-year-old 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from now through mid-August, while keeping up a stream of work steady enough for us not to starve or be forced to farm out child labor. Right? That's what I'm telling myself.

Alex is frequenting every vacation bible school known to man. He's also going to at least one week of camp, thanks to his doting grandparents, a family trip to the beach, and two church day camps. In his spare time there will be reading (he's determined to read 300 pages in the library summer reading program for the sole purpose of earning a ticket to the park formerly known as Alabama Adventure), workbook doing, sprinkler playing, and various and sundry other things that will keep him entertained without forcing me out into the unbearable summer heat. When the temperature gets above 85, I spontaneously combust.

But what of Katherine? She's been in Mother's Day Out two days a week since September, and I've kind of gotten spoiled by the arrangement. If there's something I can't squeeze in on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, either because I'm juggling fifteen fruits or because she decides not to let go of my right elbow, I stick it in the Tuesday or Thursday to-do pile. This summer there will be none of that. I'll have to suck it up, detach her little hands from my elbow, let the fruits fall as they may, and muddle through.

By the time 2nd grade kicks off, about seventy-two years from now, I'm betting I'll be ready for a fresh start. Maybe a job outside the home, with structure and steady pay. Maybe a new haircut. Maybe I'll take up dancing, or get a bird. (I won't get a bird; I hate birds.) Maybe if I survive the summer, I'll be ready to take on the world. After all, no matter how long and hot and boring and challenging it gets, it's the stuff of their childhood. And I wouldn't dare forget that it's supposed to be fun.

Spring broke

Oh yes, I used to have a blog. Here it is!

I've dropped the ball on lots of things lately. Blogging. Writing that story that all both of my fan-friends are clamoring for me to finish. Cooking real meals. Working. Dressing in grown-up clothes. Those kinds of things. Lucky for the family, I haven't given up showering or brushing my teeth.

As for excuses, I've got a laundry list that I won't bore you with. Feeling run-down is among them, and that kind of encapsulates all of the NOTs I've been busying myself with nicely. I could blame Katherine, who has us staring down the barrel of Two with trepidation and sometimes outright soul-sucking panic. She's going to be a sight more difficult in this phase than her brother was, I daresay. I think it's payback for what an easy baby she was. How she slept from the minute she popped out straight through her newborn days and up to around 6 months of age, when she woke up only to grace us with smiles and sunshine until we were coddled into believing we'd never know what it's like to deal with a temperamental small person with a personality the size of Texas.

But I won't blame her, because that would be supremely unfair. She's doing what she's supposed to be doing, and is entitled to a mother who meets tantrums with calm, whining with a deaf ear, inexplicable sleep disturbances with grace and boundless energy. Oh, those mothers don't exist? Well that does make me feel better.

If I'm being honest, I haven't stopped working. On the contrary, I've been doing more than I comfortably can, and so arises the key issue of working from home, when you never leave the office and therefore forget that you should really set hours for yourself and allow for the occasional cuddle with the toddler when she's allowing people to touch her and the occasional game of Chinese checkers with the big kid when he's in the mood to refresh you on the rules without rolling his eyes too much. Or even to catch the occasional episode of The Office, The Walking Dead, or Judge Judy (don't judge me).

But not being able to do it all leads one to believe that one is not doing enough. And feeling like one is not doing enough compounds the problem by making it more and more difficult to be satisfied with what does get done, and more often than one would admit, pretty darn competently.

I'm trying to cut myself some slack. It's easier said than done.

In the meantime, Alex's spring break is almost over and I couldn't be more relieved. (Cue mommy guilt.) It's just that I feel bad when I don't keep him occupied and supply the "fun" that is supposed to be had, in theory, during spring break. I've taken them for game playing at Chuck E. Cheese and an impromptu (and ill-conceived) side-jaunt to the state park's fake beach. We walked to the park and played even though Katherine fell and scraped both knees on the way there and her diaper fell the heck off when she came down the slide. I invited their cousins over for pizza and rowdy X-Box play. We tried bowling today but were turned away because the leagues were dominating all the lanes (shame on the leagues; it's a rainy day during spring break!). So instead we ate cookies and watched a movie. All written out like that, it doesn't sound like I exactly neglected the kid, but then again I suffer from often-baseless guilt and was born with no gauge of enough.

It was a taste of the summer, and made me want to redouble my efforts to keep Alex occupied for most if not all of it. My boss insists that I stop playing and get back to the grind, and that can best be done when I'm not dreaming up ways to prevent two kids from getting (gasp!) bored. Perhaps the funniest part is that Alex is so easygoing, he wouldn't mind if his summer was a 24/7 three-ring circus or an endless loop of Nintendo DS and an occasional trip to the pool. It's all me and my misconceptions and misperceptions and mis ... givings?

I think I need to try harder to go easier.