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This is who I get to hang out with every day. Aren’t I lucky? Oliver does so well with the baby that I even let him babysit from time to time when I head out to Sonic for my diet vanilla coke. He’s cheap labor.
The fourth of July is always a bittersweet holiday for me.
Not for a deeply emotional reason, like because I have a family member in the armed forces (though I do greatly appreciate all that they do for us and am proud of my country), but because every summer it always feels as though the fourth of July represents the beginning of the end. Here we are in the throes of my favorite season, enjoying all of the delightful sun and warmth and watermelon juice dripping down our chins, then along comes July fourth and BAM! summer is all downhill from there. Before I can determine how much SPF to wear on any given day, fall is already here. School is back in session. Cookouts and pool days and suntans are over. Winter depression is right on the horizon.
Also on the negative side: fireworks.
To be honest, I am a bit of a hater when it comes to fireworks. The only fireworks displays that I find worthwhile are those at Disney World, particularly the ones at Epcot each night that are choreographed to music and fancy mood-lighting around all of the countries and which probably cost more than twenty times my monthly mortgage payment per night just to make people oooh and ahhh for less than thirty minutes.
I am a fireworks gold digger.
So each summer beginning about a week before the fourth of July when people decide to start shooting off their own hillbilly, jankety fireworks in their backyards I begin to get fiercely irritated. Really, what is the point of them?
Are these fireworks cool to look at? No. Let’s be honest, they’re from the temporary retail place that used to be a used car lot which has an an obnoxious hand-painted sign on an old piece of plywood that reads CHEAP FIREWURKS! and they’re really loud and not even pretty when they burst up a soaring twelve feet into the sky and they’re LAME.
Are they loud and obnoxious and horribly annoying to my ears? Yes, yes, and yes.
Are they really worth all of the money that people spend on them? Can you eat them or wear them? Then the answer is obviously NO.
Do they make my dog turn into a raging lunatic? He has totally made himself an appointment at the loony bin.
Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly thrilled when we came home from spending the fourth at my parents’ house around ten o’ clock that night to see our neighbors parked in the empty lot across the street from our house lighting firework after firework, one right after another. The proximity of the explosives to our house, coupled with the fact that Oliver was so hyped up and nervous that his eyeballs shot out of his head and were dragging along the floor next to him, put my eight-months-pregnant, tired, cranky self a tad bit on edge.
All I wanted to do was drag myself into bed and call it night, but of course first priority was to let Oliver outside to go pee one last time before bedtime. Somehow I managed to lure him out into the backyard in between BOOMS! and WHEEEES!, but unfortunately he was only able to sniff around and hold his shit together for three seconds before another firework exploded and he came unglued and ran back to the house, scratching like a fool on the sliding door to be let inside like a little pansy.
That was the point when I was all, okay dog, if you enjoy the feeling of your bladder brimming with urine and on the verge of exploding, similar to THOSE FIREWORKS THAT WE ALL KNOW AND LOVE, and would like to endure that kind of torture until 8:00 tomorrow morning, BE MY GUEST.
And with that, he went into his (own) bed in the laundry room for the night, and I went to bed 60% agitated, 40% feeling like a bad mother knowing that he’d have to hold it for what would surely feel like a sweet forever, and 10% high on residual firework fumes.
Now repeat this scenario until approximately next Sunday when people decide that the fourth of July is actually over and quit with the stupid fireworks, and that is the current story of my life. In fact, right now? At 8:28 in the evening, when it’s not even dark out? FIREWORKS BEING LOUD AND OLIVER BARKING AND FLIPPING OUT AND MAMA IS GOING TO LOOOOOSE ITTTTT!!!
It might be my motherly instincts kicking in, or just my raging roller coaster of hormones, but lately I have been seriously attached to my dog. For the past two weeks, every morning when I have to leave for work, I look into those big sweet puppy eyes behind the black wire crate and cringe, cry, and give myself a spanking for being such a mean mommy to Oliver and leaving him behind for hours on end.
Then I pull myself together and realize that I work for my parents, both of whom love Ollie, and decide to bring him with me in hopes that he’ll behave and not act like a raging fool in front of clients.
Much to my relief and through my highly scientific experimentation, I am happy to report that he has finally grown up a little bit out of the infamous puppy stage (see above reference to “raging fool”). When we’re at work he barks less, runs away less, and is generally a good boy, and I’m sure it has NOTHING to do with the rolled up newspaper I keep with me – and within his eyesight – at all times.
I even have proof of just how polite he is! Sometimes he sits with me in my chair:
Sometimes he falls asleep under my desk:
And here he is at Orange Tree posing for the camera like a stud:
We’re both much happier when we get to spend the day together. He’s my buddy.
Every time I come down to Florida I am reminded how much I adore this beautiful state. As soon as I walk out of the airport and into the warm, salty air I feel refreshed, renewed, and ready to tackle all of the world’s problems do nothing but lay around by the pool covered in tanning oil.
On this trip in particular I am taking the “getting a tan” part of my to-do list very seriously, not only because I am obviously very pasty white, but also because I recently noticed that one of the Google searches that led someone to my blog was the search phrase “I’m so pale I’m depressed”.
If that isn’t motivation for my melanin, then I don’t know what is.
Yesterday afternoon after we landed, the boys took off on some errands to buy food and fishing supplies for their boat trip, because anyone who has ever been on the Fishin’ Mission knows that the keys to a successful fishing trip are Snickers and Bud Light.
While they were gone, I took Oliver on several walks to stretch his legs and get some fresh air since the poor guy was stuck in a cage during the entire plane ride down here. As we were walking along the edge of the back bay, near the boat dock, I happened to look over at the water and notice four dolphins casually flipping around at the surface. Oliver and I picked up our pace, walked down onto the dock, and sat down to try and catch a few more glimpses of the dolphins before they noticed we didn’t pay an admission fee for the show and took off.
It was at that time – watching the dolphins play in the water, smelling the salty, fishy water, sitting with Oliver and watching the slight breeze blow through his ears – that I almost cried out of pure happiness. Everything just felt right. I was content and totally at peace and it was perfect. This, I thought, is where we need to retire. And soon.
Then Oliver got up and ran over to investigate the splatter of bird poop that was nearby.
And my moment was over. But it was nice while it lasted.
As we were progressing through the building process for our new home, we knew that we needed to fence our yard for Oliver. At the first mention of this, our builder informed us that due to the early winter weather constraints it was possible that the ground may freeze too soon and not allow for the fence to be installed prior to us moving in. I had a slight freak-out, and quickly grabbed his face, pulled it close to mine, and whispered, No, see, you don’t understand. We have a DOG. A dog who does not understand boundaries despite all of my lectures, a dog who is dumb enough to run away from his happy home, A DOG WHO DOES NOT DESERVE ME WALKING HIM OUT ON A LEASH EVERY SINGLE TIME HE NEEDS HE NEEDS TO GO POTTY, ESPECIALLY IN THE DEAD OF WINTER, DID YOU KNOW I HATE WINTER?
I think my pep talk with the builder seemed to be a success, because shortly after that we had a fence surrounding the perimeter of our property. Coincidence? I’d like to think not.
Anyway, what definitely did not get done before we moved in due to obvious weather issues was installation of our sprinkling system and grass. At first we didn’t even notice it was an issue because of ALL THE FREAKING SNOW. Now though, when you look outside any window all you see is dirt. And when it rains, you see mud. And it’s all very disgusting and…dirty.
The problem now is that as the snow is melting and spring is making its way in, Oliver’s toilet is one big mud hole. The other problem is that I’m sort of a clean freak, and get a little hysterical when Oliver runs in the house with muddy paws all the way through the kitchen, down the foyer hallway, and into the laundry room to get a treat. It’s enough to make me curl up in a ball, rock back and forth, and suck my thumb in total housekeeping defeat.
The only solution to this problem that Rob and I could think of consisted of chicken wire and astroturf:
It’s a fence within a fence, a dog run of sorts. And in case the picture doesn’t make it obvious, it’s the very definition of CLASSY. I’d love to be a fly on the wall as our neighbors discuss their view of our backyard, as I’m afraid we have given off a certain hillbilly-type vibe, all for some spoiled dog who shall remain nameless.
This ghetto dog run has served its purpose thus far, although I can (unfortunately) count on two hands the number of times that the wind has picked up just enough to cause the stakes to pull up out of the ground and the astroturf to wad up into a green, dirty, turd ball, thus forcing Rob or I to go out and try and untangle the entire mess. It’s a horrible job, and makes Rob especially vocal (most words having four letters to them, or being placed at the end of the phrase ’son of a’), but I view it as an Intro to Parenting course, because I’m pretty sure there will be plenty more poop-scapades to deal in with in our future.
Every evening around six o’clock Oliver’s ears perk up at the sound of the garage door opening – he knows that that means Daddy is home. So he races to the back door, sits on the rug, and wags his tail back and forth with such violent force that all the dirt and grit in the crevices of the rug end up flying all over the wood floors, giving me an immediate spike in my blood pressure because, OLIVER, I WAS JUST ON MY HANDS AND KNEES SCRUBBING THAT FLOOR TWO DAYS AGO, AND EXACTLY HOW BAD DO YOU WANT TO KEEP THAT TAIL OF YOURS?
It’s just so cute, though, to see him get so excited about Rob coming home, and I may have been known to use the excuse “come on, Daddy’s home!” to get the little butthead to pay attention to me and come inside when he’s out roaming the backyard ignoring me. Works like a charm every time. Then I feel guilty for tricking him and give us each a Milk-Bone for being so cruel.
Sometime awhile ago, Rob and I began morphing the name ‘Oliver’ into various other nicknames. First we started calling him Bubba, which was then shortened to Bub, and then just simply Bubs. Now, however, he is very well-known as The Bubs. One must be absolutely certain, however, that when calling him The Bubs there is much ooey-gooey, baby-type smooshiness slash ridiculous in the pronunciation, ie: Da Bauuubs.
I know he likes his nickname, and probably assumes that he is now legally known as The Bubs, but I am pretty sure that the last time I called him Da Bauuubs with all the ooey-gooey smooshiness I had in me, he replied with something to the effect of DUDE, HAVE A BABY ALREADY.
One of the many things l like most about this particular breed is their ears. They’re long, curly, and puffy – as my niece likes to put it.
Although I am in love with every single molecule that is Oliver, I think it’s his ears that makes him so utterly adorable and causes me to melt every single day.
I simply can’t resist but to tell him he is pretty every three minutes.
If he actually knew what I was saying, his head would be so big that it would be on the verge of exploding at any second.
Or I suppose it is also possible that he would be so annoyed with me that he’d roll his eyes at me and tell me to shove it.
Sometimes I’m so glad he can’t talk back to me.
Anyway, the ears! They’re pretty! And long!
It’s only a couple more weeks until he’ll be using them for take-off.
It’s one of those days.
This past Saturday, I decided that any form of productivity was out of the question. The sun was out and it was a perfect 80-some degrees, so I figured, why waste this UVB goodness? It was a perfect time for a refresher course in Procrastination. So instead of attacking my pile of laundry, I planned on basking in the sun and reading my book, while Rob provided me with an endless stream of Coke Zero.
Because we are officially newlyweds for one more month, and you better believe I am going to take advantage of that lovey-dovey status until the very last second.
After I had grabbed all my stuff and set up camp in my chair, I realized I had forgotten something, so I quickly ran inside and came back to this:
Oh, hey, Mom. Thanks for the sweet set-up. How did you know I preferred pink terry over the back of my chair? You totally read my mind.
What, you wanted to sit here? Sorry, you lost your chance, man. Besides, I’m feeling a little peaked. Look at me! SUN, I NEED SUN!
Ahh, I love this heat. I could just sit here all day. I think I will, actually. Mom, will you go get me one of those Skinny Cow pops you and Dad hoard in the freezer? It’s freaking HOT out here! But oohh, I love it. Burn, baby, BURN.
