Bet The Farm.

Wednesday mornings are a good time for baths. I don't leave for work until halfway through the day and neither of us is in the rapid downward spiral of hunger and crankiness like we are after a full day of work or daycare. So yesterday morning, right after his nap and a hearty helping of Apples-n-Apricots, I prepared Mister's bath. He loves baths. Takes them very seriously.

I'm pretty accustomed to humming and singing to Walker now. It felt very awkward at first but now it's second nature and I do it all the time. The thing is, though, that I don't really know any kid songs. I know one lullaby and I'm guessing by now that Walker's pretty sick of hearing "Rock-A-Bye Baby" .... especially the times where I stop in the middle, look at Walker, and say "Wait, now what comes after "on the treetop?"" So I just make up songs. And usually they're all a variation of a song I invented shortly after he was born that combines the words "Walker", "Mister", "happy", and "silly". Look, I'm not saying it's a good song, I'm just saying it's a song. Anyway. So I started humming to Walker while he was in the tub, not thinking much about it. And then I really listened to what was coming out of my mouth. I put down the facecloth, looked at Walker and said, "I just realized that I'm humming the beginning to 'I'm Turning Japanese'."

We proceeded with the bath. I started thinking about how when you're a little baby and you live in Vermont and it's winter and you live in a drafty farmhouse, you really don't have a lot of opportunities to be naked. Even baths are usually hurried along for fear that he'll get too cold and crabby. But since it was mid-morning and the bath was warm and the bathroom itself was toasty, I wanted him to take his time and then only remove him from the bath when it was clear he was over it. Just as I started thinking about this lack-of-nakedness, he looked down, his hands shot down, and that's when he became acquainted with his new best friend. "Yes, Walker", I remarked, "that is indeed your penis. Your best friend." Then, with his jagged little finger nails he dug in and I surprised myself with how sudden and severe my wincing was, "Jeez Louise, take it EASY. GENTLE." Yikes. After this bathtime meeting, he is now anxious to see his friend whenever possible. His hands shoot down whenever I barely start to take the tabs off his diaper for a change . Lordy. The love affair begins.

This discovery of his private bits reminded me of a story that we told often while I was pregnant and, if you must know, positively killed at childbirth class. We had decided that we wanted to know the sex of the baby when I had my Level 2 ultrasound. The doctor mentioned that sometimes the ultrasound isn't conclusive in regards to sex, it depends on the position of the baby and a number of other factors. At first the point was moot since Walker had his legs crossed and wouldn't cooperate. Finally, just as we were getting ready to wrap up, he allowed us a peek. And there it was, clear as day. The doctor circled the area and said, "Well usually I tell people not to count on the sex, but you can pretty much bet the farm on this one." He continued to circle and comment, "Here is the penis, here is the scrotum and here, " he stopped to laugh, "is his hand."

Signs of Spring.

1. 35 degrees feels like 50. I left the house today without my hat or gloves on and wearing a normal human-sized coat instead of the Michelin Man puff-o-matic mummy coat I usually wear. This was awesome.

2. No heat on in the car. No defrost. No 4-wheel drive. No sliding off the road. No white knuckling it. No windshield wipers scraping ice across my windshield so I can barely see out. None of that.

3. Owl hooting outside the window as Walker and I were hanging out in bed this morning playing "Can you say Mama?" "Da da." "How about Mama?" "Da da." "Mama?" "Thhhhhhhhh." "Mama?" "ZZzza Za." then we hear "Hoo hoo". I love owls.

4. Spider in the corner of the room. I wanted to kill it but felt this would be in opposition to the whole concept of Spring.

5. On my drive into work I passed a giant faceless, limbless snowman. He was holding a big picket sign. And it read—THE END IS NEAR.

You got that right, faceless limbless snowman.

6 Vignettes for a Monday.

Vignette #1: 6:00 this morning. Me holding Walker up to the mirror and him reaching out, patting his image, and flirting shamelessly with it. Me thinking, "work? really? now? today?" Blah.

Vignette #2: I load the warmed up Pathfinder with diapers, bottles, jars of food, my bag for work ... then 2 dogs ... then a baby in his upholstered bucket. The wagon train pulls out from the snow pack to the sounds of the dogs slamming up against the windows, panting, and whining. Slamming, panting, and whining continues for, oh, duration of the drive to people daycare. I think to myself "Wow, that is so sad that Walker can't nap on the way to daycare anymore because of those dumb dogs." I open the side door and there he is, orange hunting hat on, fast asleep, rosy cheeks. *sigh* Wonder Baby does it again.

Vignette #3: I'm listening to the VPR pledge drive. And as they reel off the names of people who have just pledged, an unmistakable glee emanates from the radio,
"Oh, and Howard Dean of Burlington, VT. He said he loves all the shows and his wife Judy loves Car Talk."
Vermont. Seriously. You gotta love it.

Vignette #4: I'm barreling down 189 trying to gauge what jackass will be barreling down the on-ramp at the same time. Vermont is just full of people barreling on and off on-and-off ramps. It drives me insane. It promotes a type of kamikaze driving that, quite frankly, my frail motherly constitution can no longer tolerate. I look over. There he is. Shiny clean grey Jeep Cherokee coming down the shute like a bat out of hell. A novel twist: I actually look over and this guy looks back. We make eye contact! I step on the gas and win the 189 smackdown for today. Then realize the guy is still behind me. I turn on my blinker to go right, so does he. I turn on my blinker to go right again, so does he. I do it again, so does he. I park at Starbucks, so does this fool. I walk in, I'm right behind him. He places his order "Non-fat vanilla latte." Oh brother, I think, order a MAN'S drink for god sakes. Competition over. I win.

Vignette #5: Drive from Starbucks to work thinking about Friday. Remember that when I was sitting at my desk Friday morning with my coffee, I took a big swig, put it down, and then thought "My coffee smells like baloney." And then that reminded me of when my friend Mike was eavesdropping at a restaurant when we lived in L.A. and heard this exchange that probably remained his favorite til the day he died:
"Ow."
"What?"
"I think I cut myself on a potato."

Vignette #6: Our friends Joe and Michelle had their baby this past Saturday. She is the first baby that's been born to close friends since we had Walker and it's inevitably had me thinking—a lot—about bringing Walker home almost 9 months ago. It was summer, everything was green, the air was warm. When I got out of the Pathfinder, I saw that Jon had spent some of his dogsitting time at home planting flowers for our arrival. He planted petunias where our former Weed Garden stood. He built wooden planter boxes and filled them with snapdragons. And he planted little white and purple Johnny Jump Ups in the barren patches of dirt on either side of our front door. I remember thinking, take it in. Look around, smell the air, look at Jon, look at the baby. Take it all in. This is your life. Be happy.

Who Lives Like This?

Today is the next to the last day for the Countdown to Dog Daycare™. On Thursday they will be thrown into a big building with many outdoor fenced areas to romp around with other dogs who are as much of a pain in the ass to their owners as ours are to us lately.

For almost a month now our dogs have been chewing on our house. And when I mean for the past month, I mean every single day that we aren't in the house and even when we dare to leave the house for 2 or 3 hours during the weekend. They have chewed, let me count now, 6 doors. They've dug into the kitchen walls, ripped off wallpaper and hit the drywall. They've also scratched wide wooden plank floors that have probably been in that house unmolested for 200 years. Let's just say we're glad we rent. And let's also say we're not holding our breath on the deposit.

We're not sure what the problem is. We assumed that it was a loose creature because we have loose creatures in our house. We think they're squirrels. We hope they're squirrels. And, you know, if I was a dog that was part greyhound I'd probably lose my beans if I knew a furry something-or-other was just underneath my feet or on the other side of the wall or outside on the porch leafing through the recyclables. I get that. But this behavior has since exploded exponentially into something that is a whole other deck of cards. We know that Lula is the chewer and Sammy is the clean up crew. Quite the team, those two.

Many mornings, as I'm on step 6 or 8 of my 14-million-step-getting-ready process, Lula will stand in the doorway of the bathroom shaking. It's as if, without a single word, she's able to communicate to me the following:

"See how much I don't want you to leave. I can't tell you why, but I can't bear you leaving. And, after all this shaking, you still to decide to leave, know this: I WILL TEAR THIS MOTHER F**KING SHACK DOWN SPLINTER BY SPLINTER."

Every morning when I leave for the day, with Walker in his upholstered bucket on my left arm, I just close the door behind me and feel depressed. Depressed that a part of my day I used to love (coming home and seeing Walker and Jon on the couch, Jon holding him in the crook of his arm, and Walker wrapping his hands around the top of his bottle ... and petting the dogs, saying Hi to them, putting my stuff down, happy to be home) is now a time when I put all my stuff down, don't look at the mail, don't say Hi to the dogs, don't look at Walker's sheet from daycare, I just walk through the house to inspect the damage with Jon directing me "Oh, that's not all. Look down the hall".

After spending many nights slouched down on our respective couches, talking through what to do we finally figured enough was enough. They're going to dog daycare. They're bored. Their lives are small. We owe it to them to expand their doggie horizons. And we definitely owe it to the wooden components of our home.

Jon asked our vet a couple weekends ago what we could do in the meantime (since wouldn't you know it that we'd figured out the solution just prior to school vacation when dog daycare was full to the brim for weeks). She suggested giving them both a homeopathic for stress relief. Or, as Jon likes to think of it, "witchcraft and voodoo". So in addition to my 14-million-step-getting-ready process, I now have to drop little drops of Rescue Remedy on the dogs. I have to hold Lula's snout and drip it on there and then she licks it off. I'm supposed to do the same thing with Sammy but she literally opens her mouth and licks it up. I could be dropping arsenic into that dog's mouth for all she knows. She is devoid of a survival instinct. If we dropped her into the wilderness with a milkbone and a compass she'd be dead by sunset. Even knowing all this, I looked at her the first time I dripped the drops into her big waiting alligator mouth and said "Sammy, you know, sometimes you're a great dog."

Our vet told Jon that this is the first step. If this doesn't work then there's an intermediate step. And if that intermediate step doesn't work then there's Prozac. PROZAC! When Jon told me this over the phone I said "Jesus Christ, Prozac! We're not giving the dogs Prozac! This can't be my life. This is not a life. This is a bad pilot for a failed sitcom. Who lives like this?"

We do.