I Speak With the Tongue of a Thousand White-Hot Lies!

My grandmother got home from Tennessee yesterday, where she spends about four months a year with my aunt and uncle, so today after the boys got out of school, we headed to Casa de My Parents to see her.

It was a nice afternoon and evening, and we returned home to the Little Pink House to discover that it's that time of year again--housekeeper spider time!

Housekeepers are not poisonous, and they're a good sort of spider to have around, but they're huge and creepy. So we do not squish them (they're too big for me to even want to try ~shudder~); we capture them and let them outside.

Scott spent part of the evening chasing "Mr. Spider" around the living room and into the bedroom. Unlike our recent frog-hunts, this was somewhat lackadaisical, and when he went to bed it was Scott: 0, spider: 1 (and hiding in the bookcase).

So I'm reading on the couch. The book is good, but I'm tired and my fleecy blanket is making me even sleepier. Time to retire. But I'm thirsty, and there's a little detritus on the side table, so I figure I'll toss that as I go to get my drink ...

... zoiks! Mr. Spider is on the floor by the side table. (They're not poisonous, but seriously, you see one of those things on the floor and you startle.)

Okay. Take a breath, head to the kitchen, toss detritus, grab glass and laminated card of measurement conversions. Return to Mr. Spider, drop glass over him, slide card under, head to door ...

... zoiks! There's another housekeeper spider in front of the door!

Do not drop glass. Take a breath. Finangle the door open, toss Mr. Spider into the shadows of the front porch. Time to address Mrs. Spider ...

... zoiks! Are you kidding me?! Rather than a breath, take a moment to consider the various and sundry possibilities of this third spider's identity, and what sorts of marital/familial configurations spiders might have, before placing glass over Mrs. Spider, card beneath, finangling door, and tossing her out to join her husband.

Only pull the door to, rather than closed. The Other Mr. Spider (I went with adulterous lover; I like drAma in spIderland) has scrunched himself into the corner where the doorframe meets the wall. Harry him out of the corner and onto the floor, except he stays half on the bottom part of the doorframe. Harry him along that, at which point he heads out under the partly open door and makes his escape (after some prodding with the card).

Look around, carefully. No more spiders. Take glass and card back to kitchen.

And realize ... I am wide bloody awake.

The dog across the street is barking, as is its wont. This has sparked barking from other dogs in the vicinity.

Z, shouting out the window to them: "Dogs, can you keep the racket down?!" (more barking) "I don't know Dog, so I can't understand what you're saying!"

Before I begin, let me lay out the following facts, the order of how much they factor into my not wanting a dog:

1. My husband has severe allergies. His allergist has told us that if we get a furry pet, Scott will very likely develop asthma.

2. The Zweeble is uncomfortable and very nervous around any dog bigger than a poodle.

3. We cannot afford an animal right now. No, seriously, we can't.

4. I am way too much of a neat freak to own a dog. This may or may not be a moral failing on my part, but it would definitely be a moral failing to figure this out after we got one.


All that said, I like dogs. I might get over the neat freak thing for a German shepherd. Sadly, they don't make tiny, hairless and dander-free German shepherd dogs, so I think I am out of luck.

Yesterday, in the yard, Z. and I were approached by a medium-sized, brown, floppy-eared mutt that I think is female. The dog is super-friendly--no barking, no growling, no nothing--though prone to jumping up. I checked the dog for a collar and found a collar but no tags. Very wet and super-smelly, and untrimmed nails. Z. was getting a little freaked out, so I took him inside and we both had to bathe to get the incredibly wet dog smell off of us.

When Scott got home, he found the dog eating our garbage. He tried to shoo her away to no avail--apparently my five minutes of being nice in order to check for tags means we've been adopted.

I called animal control and left a message. The dog stayed in the yard, barking occasionally (I know there are possums and such that tend to migrate through our yard at night, so I assume that was what she was barking at). At midnight, when I went to bed, she was still in the yard in that classic lying down but keeping watch dog pose. At 12:30, when I had to soothe the boy after a nightmare, the dog was asleep in the yard.

When we got in the car this morning and opened the garage door, the dog came in and stood up to look in the car window at us. I got her shooed out of the garage, managed not to hit her on our way out. When I got home, she was lying curled up in the driveway, and now she's sleeping on the front walk.

Now, see, somewhere in there is the moment when someone else, without those 4 issues listed above, would have taken the dog in, washed it, headed to the vet, and the story would end with us naming her something like Sadie and having a dog.

Yeesh.

I don't have an enclosed porch. I can't be here all day, so I can't put her in the garage to wait for Animal Control because they can't get in. My son is afraid of her, so I can't just take them both to the shelter--not to mention that as friendly as she seems, she is a strange dog that I do not know, and I am not taking chances with that and my three year old.

So ... I think I've done all I can. I may give her some water later, though.

Yup.

ETA: Animal control just picked the dog up! I hope she gets a bath and a good meal today.

For the past couple of days I've been mulling taking Z. to the beach. And not our little tiny strip of local beach, but a real beach. It's an enormous undertaking, much more so than a trip to the park, but with the oil spill in the Gulf ... well, I don't know when we'll be able to go to the beach and have it be a nice day--maybe next weekend, or maybe not for a long time. I just don't know.

Plus, the last time we went to the beach I got massively, scarily sunburned.

So today I decided to haul us out to the touristy beach. I began the preparations by sunblocking every bit of me not covered by my bathing ensemble.* Then I got Z. in a swim diaper and sunblocked every bit of him not covered by it, and got him in his suit.

After a couple of detours, we got to the beach. There's a high bridge you cross to get there, and at the top Z. said, "Is that the beach, right there? I LOVE it! It's FANTASTIC!"

And, after I got cash and change for parking, I discovered that the damn beach finally got parking ticket machines that take debit cards.

Z. was entranced by the sheer tacky tourist hell that this particular area is, and claimed he wanted to go shopping until I reminded him that there was water in the other direction. Then we were all over that.

So we headed down, got two steps off the boardwalk, and my son laid on his stomach in the sugar sand, pretending to be a dog. When he tired of that, we found a spot to put our towel and stuff, got his swim vest on, and headed out to the water.

It was murky, but you could see schools of minnows. We waded out a ways and Z. tried floating on back and tummy, kicking, and sort of vaguely moving his arms in a swimming-esque motion.

Now, it's May. May is sting ray season. Season lasts until October. In my entire life, I have seen one ray in the wild**, and that was on Lover's Key and it was a pancake ray (round like a pancake). But I dutifully shuffle my feet to disturb any rays that might be on the bottom, in the sand, because I remember the summer of my senior year when a girl I hung out with stepped on a ray and, well, it sucked. Still, I've only ever seen one ray in the wild, and I have lived down here for thirty years.

Well, gang, today I saw sting rays. A lot of them. Z. and I shared the water with them. Now, there may have just been two and we saw them a lot, or there may have actually been eight or nine different ones, but every other thing there were sting rays swimming nearby.

On the one hand--stinging things! Near my baby! Who likes to jump up and down in the water! ACK!

On the other hand--my favorite form of sea life a bloody foot away from me! Looking sleek and awesome and fast! And flipping the tips of their wings out of the water! AWESOME!

So we were moving back toward shore, me explaining that we need to drag our feet to Z., and a ray swam in front of us. Then I saw movement to the side of us, and saw a ray swimming behind us. We were surrounded!

Figuring better I got stung than the boyo, I scooped Z. up and made my way cautiously around the rays to shore. We stayed in the shallows after that, but we saw more (or more of the same) rays periodically. One man was trying to get a photo of one, and told us that when he got really close, the ray buried itself in the sand. Z. found this hilarious.

We played in the waves for a bit, then gathered our things, rinsed our feet, and headed for the playground, where Z. ran around while I re-applied sunblock in a fairly OCD manner. Then I grabbed him and re-applied it to him. It takes a while, but I do learn.

Now we wanted ice cream! Actually, we wanted juice from the soda machine, but all I had was a ten, so we were distracted from Mommy-fail by the siren song of ice cream.

Since it was Big Adventure Friday, Z. got a small strawberry sundae and a blue drink (aka the Arctic Blast blue raspberry frozen toddler-crack), and I got a strawberry lemonade. And after about a quarter of it, I couldn't stand it anymore (dear god, the syrupy sweetness of its unblinking eye!) ... and Z. commandeered the rest of it. He was like a little hummingbird, sampling the nectar of three sugary treats.

Surprisingly, he was not that wired when we left. But we had to take the blue drink with us.

So we walked the pier and checked out the little gift shop there. (I think everyone I know needs a coconut purse for Christmas, by the way, so don't be surprised in December!) Then we went farther down the pier to where the old men who fish hang out, and charmed an older couple:

Z: I LOVE to fish!

L: Well, we'll have to get Grandpa to take you.

Lady: Our granddaughter loves to fish, too, and she's three.

Z: I'm three, too!

Gentleman: Want to see the fish I caught? Look in the bucket.

So we looked in the bucket at his fish, then got to see him catch another one, which went into the bucket, too, where the two fish began chasing each other around and around.

We now had an hour left on our parking permit, so we hit the water one last time (after the long walk down the pier, where Z. complained about his legs being tired and I explained that I couldn't carry him and the blue drink, and the blue drink proved it's made of toddler-crack because the kid wouldn't let me throw it away and stopped complaining).

Z. was content to sit in my lap and kick waves ("My feet can defeat them, Mommy!" he said, without realizing the pun) for the most part, though he finally did want to move farther into the water. And when we did, what did we see? Well, we saw three college-age girls in bikinis (one of whom was pretty hot, and made me sorry my husband wasn't there to check her out) who suddenly started gliding their way quickly out of the water.

"Okay, Cathy, that was freaking creepy," said (not the hot) girl, in the age old tone of voice that means, "you're the Floridian and you brought my yankee ass down here without telling me about the stinging wildlife, what the hell?"

"Just keep shuffling your feet," said Cathy, looking--like all of us Floridians do in these situations--both sheepish and secretly pleased.

Yes, that's right, we enjoy it when you freak out over the ginormous palmetto bugs and the alligators sunning themselves outside our places of business. Bwa-hahahahahaha!

A little while later, I saw two more rays zipping along under the water. One of them veered off and started heading directly toward us, so I started backing off--and I swear to god, this ray herded us back up into the ankle-deep shallows.

By now it was time to leave, and that prompted a meltdown. Plus I threw away the toddler crack, so you can imagine how that went. But the boy fell asleep in the car, I managed to scrape up enough change for bridge toll, and neither of us is more than slightly pink. All in all, a successful trip to the beach.

(I just hope and pray we can have another one. And another after that, and so on.)



*a sports bra, tank top, and my bathing suit bottom. The tank top covers most of the area where the worst of the sunburn was, and comes up high enough in the back that I can get sunblock on the rest of me. Until Z. is old enough to actually put sunblock on his old mother, this will be my bathing attire when he and I go to the beach alone. Well, until I can get some cool board shorts.

**wait, hang on. We did a walk-a-thon over a bridge ages ago, and I saw one in the water from the top of the bridge, but I don't think that really counts in the same way.

The Zweeble and I went down to the mailbox. There was what looked like gravel strewn partway across the bottom of the driveway. Upon closer glance, I discovered it wasn't gravel--it was snails! Lots and lots of little snails! All in the shell, none out or moving, but some stuck together in clumps.

The Zweeble looks, too, and is excited: "Hi little snails! Hi!" I check the mail and make my way back through the crowd of snails. The Zweeble pauses, looks around, sees he's surrounded. Then he carefully makes his way through them, saying (I kid you not), "Excuse me please!"

The Zweeble knows something's in the air ... and by god, he was going to keep an eye on me at all costs!

Good lord that was one cranky, fussy, angry, exhausted one-year-old.

He slumbers for now.

---

I did manage to get all the packing done that I can do, at least until Scott gets home. I still need to fill the bird feeders, though at this point I don't know if it's feeding the birds or feeding the cats.

There are stray/feral cats in the neighborhood. I've been seeing them around for a while. There are, I think, three adults. There's Orange Cat, Dark Multicolored Cat, and Looks Like a Psychotic Pirate Cat. Or Medium, Small, and Large, respectively. It looks to me like Small had kittens--there are two kittens roaming about, and Small seems to have the post-kitten belly going on.

The kittens have been "adopted" (I hope) by the lady who lives behind us, the one without kids. We saw her feeding them both. The other three were mostly hanging out at the abandoned house down the street, and in the overgrown lot directly behind our house. Occasionally they've come onto our porch, probably because I have bird feeders on our porch.

Yesterday Small, Medium, and Large were hanging out on my porch all morning long. The Zweeble loves this. I'm not quite so keen. For one thing, I like my birds. For another, dealio and I are seriously allergic to cats. I would probably adopt Small and/or Medium were it not for the allergy thing, budget be damned, but we've been told that any furry pets would probably lead to Scott developing asthma, and that ain't happening for anything other than a dog. :)

Then there's the matter of Large making my spider-sense tingle. I dunno, he gives off bad vibes.

Anyway, my point is ... if I don't have a home base for these cats to give to animal control, can I even call them? I mean, yes, I want them to go away and leave my birds alone, but I also know they're in danger of all kinds of things out here in the boonies (monitor lizards, cars, dogs, possibly even alligators) and Large was looking pretty rough when I saw him. I'm not sure how domesticated he's likely to ever become, but the other two are very cute and very likely to be adopted out of a shelter, I'd think.

Not that I can do a whole lot right this minute, anyway, as I'm about to leave on vacation, but I *am* about to feed the birds, so I may have three cats who've set up camp on my porch when we return.

In bird news, I've had a flock of blue jays on and off the feeders today. There were six and a couple of doves a little earlier.

Damn cat just tried to catch a bird on my porch!!!!

I like cats just fine--I am horribly allergic, but we used to have cats before the allergies kicked in--but I do not like cats that are obviously too cared-for to be strays, wandering my neighborhood all the freaking time** and trying to eat my birds! My son likes the birds, and due to his parents' combined allergies, they're as close to pets as he's going to get for a while!

Plus, along with my crankiness at unleashed dogs running around the neighborhood, I am cranky at the cats because there are a lot of people with large trucks living out here, and they like to drive very fast down these roads, and I like cats and dogs and don't want them killed. For a variety of reasons, some noble, some not.

**Every pet gets loose at some point, but you don't have to let them make a habit of it, people!

sugarcoatedlie posted yesterday about the football player who was arrested for dog fighting--well done, police!--but it led her to all kinds of sad stories about dogs and she got kind of bummed. She's a dog lover, is Miss T. And while I do not want to in any way de-emphasize that dog fighting is evil (actually, doing that sort of thing with any animal is just wrong and horrible), I thought a happy dog story was in order. It's also a slightly evil dog story, but in a good way.

My Dad had a friend in our neighborhood: R. R. was elderly and had had dogs before, but he lost his pet to old age and was doing that sad kind of fading thing that can sometimes happen when people get older, live alone, and lose their pets. (This is not starting out happy--hang on.) Now, another neighbor up the road had this small dog and no longer wanted it. Dad felt that this would be the perfect dog for R. R. disagreed. He didn't want another dog; his last dog was it because there was no dog that could ever replace him. This stream of protest continued until Dad arranged for R. to meet the new dog.

Love!

So there's R. with his scrappy little mutt, and Dad with his behemoth malamute/Belgian shepherd mix. And eventually Dad's dog passes away from old age. "No more dogs!" says Dad.

Now, there's a bar up the road from where my parents live, and R. has a daily drink up there. And the bartender has a German shepherd that she can't keep anymore, as she's moving to a new place. She'd like to give him to someone she knows will take really good care of him. Next thing you know, R. is telling Dad about the dog. "No more dogs!" says Dad. "My dog was the best dog, and there can be no other dog as good as he was."

"Just meet the dog," says R. "Maybe you can think of someone who could take him."

So Dad agrees, and they go to meet the dog.

Revenge!

And that, my friends, is how Mac the Dog joined the family. He had ten really great years with my parents, and both my grandmothers adored him, and while he's gone now too, he left me with a lot of happy doggie stories. Like how he learned to flip Dad's book shut with his nose when he wanted to go out. When we stayed with my parents after grad school, Scott would take the dog out, as well, so if Dad wasn't around he'd come get Scott. And if Scott was playing his Game Boy, Mac would try and flip the Game Boy shut with his nose.

He also loved to chew on tennis balls. And every so often, if you took him into the back yard, he felt the need to RUN. So he'd run around and around the shed in the back yard--and he was a really big shepherd, so he'd run with this galloping noise. On this particular day, Scott and I were pulling up amaryllis bulbs for my mother while the dog swooped past us on his orbit around the shed. Scott, a bulb hanging from his hand by the leaves, turned to say something to me; the blur that was Mac snatched the bulb from his hand and skidded to stop. He gave the bulb an experimental chew--once, twice--then spit it out and gave us this look like, "What the hell kind of tennis ball is *that*?!"