A year ago at Christmas, I got the best gift ever from Hubs…..my Boston Terrier. My buddy Bandit.

He was so cute and tiny and he stole my heart right away. He quickly became my little shadow, following me from room to room,  sitting at my feet while I did  dishes and waiting beside the sink while I took my showers. Soon enough, he was sitting on my lap while I sat at the computer or while I watched television.

Lately, however, he  is exhibiting some odd behavior.

He is no longer happy to just sit beside me. He wants to sit ON me, and when he does, he likes to look into my face and sniff. Ugh!  Last night, he stuck his nose into my freshly washed hair, took a big sniff and then sneezed right into my head! I pushed him onto the floor where he made himself  happy with his chewy bone.

Not twenty minutes later, while I was chatting with friends on the laptop, he decided to sit beside me. He snuggled as close as he could get and then plopped his head onto my keyboard. I nudged him away with a  firm “Bandit! What the Fuck? Move your big fat head!” He lifted his head, scootched his butt a little and then began to run his paws over the keys. (Thank God I had clipped his nails!) Before I could react to this assault on my laptop (!!)  he turned his head to look directly into my eyes.

Do I detect a challenge?

I put my hand on his neck (apparently that is what you do to reassert “dominance”.) He wasn’t happy, but he complied. This dominance thing is kind of new. We have dealt with his “territory” issues and the peeing has stopped. (Unfortunately, now the kids are doing it!) He doesn’t chew on things any more, other than his toys. And he now has “Look At Me Syndrome”

If you were to see him display this behavior, you may think that no one is home with him all day or that he gets no attention. Let me assure you, this is not the case. Almost all of my actions involve taking care of his needs first. (Hmm…that sounds like a man!) He nods his head towards the door and I must get up to take him out. I feed him when pushes his bowl under my feet. Then he goes back to bed…..my bed… and crawls under my covers. I don’t mind. I am usually right there with him drinking my coffee and reading blogs. I dress for my day, and we take a walk. But when we get home, he is tuckered out. He finds a spot and naps. Meanwhile, I get some cleaning done before the kids show up. When they do appear, Bandit has playmates. OneYearOld has learned the concept of “fetch” and is quite happy to throw toys for Bandit, who is very happy to chase them.

When dinner time comes, Bandit wants to ‘taste’ what’s cooking. Usually this is only the vegetables. He doesn’t like bacon or any pork for that matter. He likes gravy but not the meat so much. He is “Vegetarian Doggy”. The guys come home from work and he jumps on them as if saying “At Last! Someone to pay attention to me!!”  Everyone looks at me and asks “Did you ignore him all day?”  Yeah, right.  As if I could.

These actions cause me to think every day. These thoughts made it feel as though this post has written itself. It sounds alot like I’m bitching and really, I am not. I wanted to convey Bandit’s day to day routine and his quirks.

This post doesn’t do him justice.

Bandit has become my fourth child. He has a distinct personality. He does things that some might consider to be human behavior. When he is told that it is almost bedtime “so no more playing around” he will sit, look me in the eye and sigh deeply. He will butt me with his head until I lift my arm so that he can snuggle up to me. When I tell some folks about this, they laugh and tell me that I am nuts.

But you all know. You, who are cat lovers and dog owners. You understand who your ‘friends’ are. They are not stupid animals.

They have become family. And they are loved just as deeply.

Our moods are controlled in many ways by nature. The moon and the tides control moods and emotions. The sun has a lot to do with Vitamin D absorption. Not only that, but a lack of sun during the winter months leads to Seasonal Affective Disorder. Most of us are aware of all of this.

How does it affect boredom?

I like to bake when I am home alone on rainy days. If it is a cold winter day, I’ll bake to warm up the house. I don’t mind cleaning. I will tear apart the range and clean below the burners. I’ll remove the shelves in the fridge. On some sunshiny days, I will open the window wide and tear down all of the draperies and wash them. I am energized. I actually like it.

But being home on a grey, rainy day with anyone else in the house leads to boredom. Horrible, horrible boredom.

I have no desire to clean, knowing someone else is in the house. I don’t want to bake because the goodies disappear as fast as I make them. And it never fails that on the ‘boredom days’ , nothing is on television, or we have no money to go out, or we just plain old can’t agree on something to do.

Today was one of those days.

Not only were we bored but it was also Hub’s turn to have an achy back. We sat flicking channels. I read for a little bit but then I felt like I was ignoring him. He handled some business but while he did that in another room, I felt neglected. We just could not sync up to save our lives! I pulled out the laptop and caught up with emails and chatted a bit with friends. But when I laughed at everyone’s antics, I felt like I was shutting him out. I shared the joking with him, but often it was one of those “inside joke” situations and he didn’t get it.

What do you in that situation?

We weren’t unhappy with each other. We didn’t argue. We asked each other “What do you want to do?” and the answer was always “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

And we also noticed that if it had been sunny, and we were in the same situation, we wouldn’t have been as annoyed. Quite often, we spend time together but doing other things without the ‘abandonment’ feeling creeping in.

Does it happen to you?  What do you think of this observation?

Let’s share.

With the economy in the crapper as it has been lately, Hubs and I have gone through our bills and curtailed our spending in an effort to save a few bucks here and there. We’ve stopped renting movies and ordering take-out every Friday and Saturday nights. We stopped buying our coffee every night at a local store opting to instead make a pot at home. (That saves not only the cost of coffee, but also all the other snackables that were oh-so-convenient to grab.)

Hubs has wanted to consolidate our phone/cable/internet costs with Fios. Not too long ago, the ads were appearing on television and the phone calls began that promised us significant savings. When they called us, I made sure that Hubs took the call. He handles that shit far better than I can. Today was that day.

Hubs was home all morning waiting for materials to be delivered. The phone rang and it was Verizon. This was the perfect time for Hubs to take this call. He listened while they made their pitch and then began to ask his questions.

They made an excellent offer. I could hear the confidence in Hub’s voice. He was saving money. The next thing I know, they are talking to him about cable channels that we do not want. They will be able to let us keep the sports package that my sons enjoy. They will offer cable boxes for three tvs and for the same fees that we are charged now with a fourth added free.For only small amount more a month, we can get this. And for an extra dollar, we can get that.

Hubs, whose business entails keeping a running account in his head, stopped the girl right in her tracks. He told her that now he would be paying more. The savings had stopped. “Let’s go back. I don’t want the other channels. I don’t care whether we have the sports channels or not. Save me money.”

She began again. Finally, she hit a number that Hubs was happy with. He was ready to say yes. The question was asked about what computers were in the house. Son2 has a computer that we didn’t buy. He did. Babygirl has a Frankenstein that her ex-boyfriend built for her. We didn’t know what to tell the girl on the phone. So Hubs told her, “Please record all this information and call me back this afternoon. I will have this information and we can set things up then. ”

“Oh sir, I need to have a set up date for your switch now or we can’t continue.”

“But I don’t have the information that you need. I don’t want an installation date if you can’t guarantee me that there won’t be some charge because you can’t hook up the computers without other equipment.”

She put on her supervisor. Hubs repeated that he wanted their service. He wanted to switch companies.  He just didn’t want to be railroaded into a contract “right the fuck now!”

“Well, I’m sorry, sir. If you can’t agree, we cannot make this offer.

So Hubs hung up.

It took him an hour of finagling with that girl and two seconds to have the supervisor be stubborn.

We will now be calling our current cable company. Luckily, Hubs wrote down the numbers to every single item he discussed with Verizon Company. We will tell Comcast  what the competition offered us and see what they will do to match it.

Fuck Verizon. They blew an awesome sale and a new customer that would have written a blog post  about how awesome they are. They could have had word-of-mouth advertising among the very people they want to reach.

Instead, they got me.

****This post will be sent to Verizon.****

As the mother of seven kids, my mother-in-law was a master of thriftiness. She always knew a neat little trick or craft that the kids could do with scraps of colored tissue, buttons or ribbons. She also knew how to stretch a roast to make a few days worth of dinners and a roast turkey had every single part of it used in something or another. My own mother would buy only what our family would use. Leftovers were a treat, because we ate everything at meal time. We never really played with scraps. I was always busy reading, and my brothers would busy with sports. My sis was a doll girl.

So when I was around my MIL, I paid close attention and learned many of those lessons well.

There was  one lesson I learned a little too well. That was the lesson of  “recycling the holidays”.  Halloween window decorations could be used for gluing once they began to tear. Greeting cards could be used to make gift tags with patterned scissors and a scrap of ribbon. Tissue could be smoothed out to be used again for the gifts going to kids too young to notice that it had been used before.

And the boxes…..oh the boxes….

Why throw them away? Boxes are always needed. So they were saved. If anyone needed a spare box for a Christmas/birthday/shower gift they could get one from Mom and later from me. We were the ‘go-to’ girls. Eventually, a box had the decoration torn away by tape, or they were ripped by the enthusiasm of the receiver. Sometimes a store logo was on the box. Those were discarded. But not enough of them were thrown away to keep up with the ones being saved.

I cleaned part of my basement today. Just the Christmas things were sorted because they were tossed willy-nilly instead of putting them away neatly. Three boxes of  lights were pared down to just one large box. Outdoor garlands now take up one box. All of the wreathes, bows, bathroom towels and kitchen sets are gathered in one place. I am very happy with the results of my efforts.

And the boxes?

Sweet Jeebus! I threw away perfectly good boxes because they had store names on them. If they were bent anywhere, they were tossed. If I had too many of the same size, they were gathered for the local Salvation Army store. And I still have a bajillion. I don’t know how many jewelry-sized gift boxes I had!  Gift bags galore! How did I gather up so many without seeing them pile up like that??

I never considered myself to be a pack-rat. I had cleaned the Christmas mess. I had thrown out so many things. I filled more than one garbage bag and still my basement is full. I turned in a circle and surveyed the remainder of the basement. What was I saving?

Toys. My kids are too old for me to keep this stuff. The kids I babysit play with only a fraction of this stuff. Most often, they bring their own toys or we play outside.  Clothes, being saved for ‘when I fit into them again’ .  Shoes that take up too much room in my son’s bedroom. Pots and pans being saved for ‘someday, my kids will move out’.  And then there is the stuff for ‘you never know when you’ll need it.’

If  this were a stranger’s house, I would shake my head in wonder. I would ask why someone would hold onto such trivial shit when quite frankly, it wasn’t worth holding onto. I would look around and think  “This basement has so much potential if only it weren’t full of crap!”

Tomorrow I intend to move onto the Halloween stuff.  Little by little, I intend to reclaim my basement.

::::BTW- My boxes are still sitting on the floor of the den. Heh heh heh!:::

I was tagged by my friend “B” on Facebook, was it last week? I don’t know. What the fuck ever. I’m only doing this because I’m bored. Yay! You benefit!!!

A – Age: 47 At least that’s what my birth certificate says. I feel and act far, far younger!

B – Bed size: Only full because Hubs and I like to cuddle….a lot!

C – Chore You Hate: Cleaning the bathroom. It’s just a pain in the ass.

D – Dad’s Name: Mr. D….It’s just a coincidence that his first name begins with D too.

E – Essential Start Your Day Item: COFFEE.

F – Favorite Actor: Gary Oldman…..love, love, love “Immortal Beloved” and “Sid and Nancy”

G – Gold or Silver: I love silver but I am allergic to anything other than gold. Even titannium bothers me and only sometimes I can wear surgical steel.

H – Height: 5′ 7″

I – Instrument (s) you play: I can play a little bit of piano.

J – Job Title: Domestic Diva Extraordinaire and “Meanest Babysitter in the World”

K – Kid(s): Son1, Son2 and Babygirl. (And Bandit)

L – Like: Music (Actually it is more like “love” )

M – Mom’s Name: Mrs. D but we call her Mommy

N – Nickname: I’m known as Chris or Chrissy to some, Bitch to others and Metalmom to many, many others. And for Dave and Josh, I’ll tell the truth…..I also hold the title “Queen of Farts”

O – Overnight Hospital Stay Other Than Birth: Dear Lord! Yes…..I love the food

P – Pet Peeve: Slow walkers. I want to punch them….repeatedly…and hard.

Q – Quote that you like: If you’re not part of the solution, get the fuck out of my way.

R – Righty or Lefty: Righty tighty

S – Siblings: Two brothers and a sisters….if Dad has others out there, I don’t know about them.

T – Time You Wake Up: When my eyes open. Usually 5:30.

U – Useful tool: My opposable thumbs

V – Vegetable that you dislike: Parsnips

W – Ways you run late: When I tie my shoelaces together it is very hard to run anywhere. I fall down alot, thus making me late.

X – X-rays You’ve Had: I’ve had them all.

Y – Yummy Foods You Make: Vegetable soup, baked ziti, and cookies.

Z – Zodiac: I can tell you nothing about him…he’s never been caught.

My father-in-law ran a successful business for many years.  Although there were a few lean years, “H Electric” did well enough to take care of his family. Dad worked long beyond the age when others would have retired. When his physical ability diminished,  he was content to simply be an administrator, handling paperwork and job bidding. Eventually, his mental ability also slowed and Hubs took over the family business.

Legalities were taken care of. Truck ownerships and insurance policies were all switched into our name. Letterheads and business cards were changed to reflect the change of address of our ‘office’  and management. This all happened roughly two years ago.

Dad’s office in his home was dismantled and all the boxes and filing cabinets were sent to my house. Boxes of contracts, material catalogs, tax records, insurance, payrolls–everything–was now filling the small room that I used as a home for my iguanas. Slowly but surely, I managed to keep things in some sort of organization.

Last year, my beloved iguana Baby died. It was a traumatic loss for me and it took me a long time to bring myself  to clean out the cage for removal. Heat lamps were moved and space heaters taken to the basement.  A friend wanted the cage for his own lizard menagerie and I was glad it wouldn’t go to waste.

However….

Hubs now has his work papers spread out all over the cage top. Invoices, stationery, office supplies and postal items are arranged all over. It makes me crazy. I cannot clean that room because, God Forbid! I should touch his papers. Not only that, but all of last year’s paperwork and taxes needs to be moved and stored. I have begged and pleaded with him to please do this before it gets out of hand.

He chose today. I stepped back and let him have at it. Slowly but surely, the floor was covered in large plastic storage containers. All were labeled and ready to move. The cage top has been revealed. He found three of my CD’s buried, and a box of candy canes.  Removed from the room was a large box of papers to be shredded and a green bag of trash. But there are two boxes left sitting in the room.

It’s mine.

A couple of books, my ipod box complete with a booklet  “iPods for Dummies”, an assortment of pens, hairbands, a book of mixed drink recipes, a screaming monkey, a shoe, a shirt with Eeyore on the front and earphones. A dog sweater, Kodak photo download, anti-virus software, a warantee for two vacuums that I don’t even own anymore, and three phone books were also found.

You know what he said?

“This shit is yours. Go through it so we can get it out of the den.”

“Okay, I will. Just not today. I’m not in the mood.”

“No, today. I don’t want your mess sitting here.”

Excusemewhat??

After all this time of looking at his shit everywhere, I am being scolded for two neatly packed boxes that will be gone before the end of the week?

Oh Fuck No.

The battle of wills has begun…..

Why do princesses and queens always wear gowns? I understand that was the fashion ‘back in the day’ but now?  Not so much. I watched a movie today and the evil queen wore a long gown. However, the other women in the movie wore pants. Strange….

How come a  mysterious door always reveals a blinding light or infathomable darkness? Back to that movie. There was a door and when it opened, it revealed an impenetrable darkness. Oooh, evil!  But I have seen other movies in which the door opened to revealed blinding light (and it usually signifies ‘God’) Dark, light….why not just clothes? Or scantily clad, barely legal Japanese girls?

Why does Geico money watch me? I don’t get that commercial. I feel stupid every time it is on because I don’t understand it. The money hasn’t been saved. It is the money that I “could have saved” so does it actually exist? Where did the eyeballs come from? STOP WATCHING ME!!

Who was the first guy to ‘waggle’ his junk back and forth while naked and who told him it was sexy? Guys? Just say no. Don’t do it!  That is, unless it is a part of silliness. I don’t find it part of foreplay. It does not make me hot. And no, I don’t want to “touch it”.  Bring it to bed and make sweet love to me. I will touch it,  kiss it, fondle it and whatever else you want. Just don’t flap at me and say “you know you wanna!!”

See that bitch up there? Her legs are shaved, her hair is gettin’ did and those kitten heels!  And…holy shit! Is that makeup?!? Laundry day? MY ASS!

As I type this at almost 11pm, I haven’t yet showered, my legs are so stubbly that I will tear up Hubs’ legs if I don’t do something about them before going to bed! I have one tall laundry basket, two average sized baskets and one small one each overflowing with clean laundry waiting to be folded. My washer is full, my dryer is running and my basement has clean clothes hanging from end to end.

It’s my own fault really. If the kids aren’t here, I should get off my ass and do it all. Instead, for the past few days, I have enjoyed the nice weather, read a book, watched a few movies and of course wasted far too much time playing games on Facebook. So today, even though the kids DID show up, I did laundry. That’s all. No vacuum, no cooking dinner, no making the bed. Just laundry.

I will fold them all as soon as I log off.

See that poor exhausted woman down here? Now that is more like the reality!

Did you visit last week when I bitched about the babies not showing up?

Well, it happened again yesterday.

I waited for them to show up at 1:00 and no show. Well, fuck it. I’m tired of this. So I moved on with my day. Jen called up at 3:00. “I fell asleep with the baby! I don’t know what happened. But I’ll drop them off in half an hour, I’m going into work late.”

Okay, whatever. I need the money.

Half an hour, an hour…no kids. Was I surprised? Not any more. Last week, she asked if I’d be available on St Patty’s Day because her sister (who normally watches the kids on Tuesdays) would be doing college-girl drinking activities. I said yes then. But now I wondered if they’d show.

Nope. No phone call. Dammit! But I am going on with my day, my life and I have applied for a job in a local market. The hours are flexible so that IF I decide to watch any kids this summer, I may be able to swing it.

Tonight Jen called and explained what she could:

After calling me Monday to say she was going into work late, she sat down and fell asleep again. She was with her grandmom so the kids weren’t alone, but Granny didn’t know she was supposed to get up for work. She let Jen sleep.

When Jeff came home, he was pissed off (ya think?) But he couldn’t get her to stay awake long enough to be very coherent. In all the fuss, no one called me. (I’ll live)

Today, Jen went to the doctor. He thinks that she has the perfect storm of depression, stress, low iron and exhaustion. She had lots of blood work done today. Her house phone was shut off and her cell phone is lost in the house and uncharged. That’s  why I couldn’t reach her and my number is in her cell phone. Finally she found my number on a scrap of paper. That’s when she called me.

Now, I am still highly annoyed with her lack of consideration. A phone call…..Is that a lot to ask?

BUT….

I have been depressed. I have been clinically exhausted. I know plenty of people who have been through depression so harsh that  sleeping straight through for a week is not an impossibility. I can sympathize. Now I almost feel guilty for thinking some of the things that I was thinking.

At what point, though, do I cast that explanation aside? I am still charging her for all of my inconvenience. She is cool with that because she feels so badly about what she did (or didn’t do.)   Now I am moving on with my plans for another job. I may have an interview on Friday so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

I should vacuum and fold some laundry before going to bed. I might have kids tomorrow so I need to be ready. If they don’t show, the weather is going to be nice so I’ll just have to get out and exercise.

If I didn’t need the money, I’d bail and cut my losses. But with the economy the way it is….

Damn, I hate the ‘not knowing’!

May the leprechauns be near you,

to spread luck along your way.

And may all of the medications

Take the awful hallucinations of tiny screeching people away.

May your day be lucky and glass o’ beer be full !!