Absurd Moments with Your Dog

When Duffy was a puppy, he escaped the house and ended up in the neighbor's yard barking frantically at the Virgin Mary statue.

He escaped another time and raced into the road to chase a large truck that was attempting to turn the corner near our house.  "STOP!" I shouted to the truck as my little black dog trotted up to it. I caught up to Duffy and he ran from me.  Then in the middle of the intersection (another car had stopped by this point), he and I faced off.  He wanted to get past me to the truck.  He went left- I went left.  It was much like a cow-pony cuts a cow from the herd, then competes to see if he can keep the cow out.  (See video here if you don't know what I mean.)  After a couple more feints left and right, I dove on him in the middle of the road.

Photo by Wild Fillies Photography

The man who was stepping out of his truck to help me me cheered for me and said, "Impressive!"

I was chasing after the dog in rain boots- not the best for running, pivoting and diving, but...

This isn't the first time I've held up traffic.  Once, when I was shakily rollerblading toward an intersection... well, here is the story how I previously blogged about it:

The rollerblading incident: I’m not a good rollerblader, so I left my street to cross an intersection to another neighborhood with hardly any traffic. I rolled up to the 3 way stop between at the end of my neighborhood, which is pretty busy as the offices nearby let out. As I roll up, so do three other cars. Well, I can’t stop, so I hold out my arms in a grand “STOP PLEASE, COMING THROUGH” gesture. I take maybe three strides, then hit some gravel and TOTALLY WIPE OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE INTERSECTION, landing right on my back. Well, the cars can’t very well drive over me, so they have to wait while I look up at the sky for a moment, carefully pick myself up, and roll away. This wasn’t one of those “when you look back on it, it’s really funny” incidents. It was really, really funny at the time.

The Magical Obsessiveness of Tidying Up

I just read the book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing on my Kindle, and this is what it has brought me to.

First photo: the girl's top drawer with shirts, undies, socks, and pants.  The book even tells you HOW TO FOLD THINGS, and I also watched a video on Youtube about it.

And the second photo: the boy's middle drawer of jammies, socks, a row of undies, and his swim stuff on the right.

I have to admit, I'm really enjoying folding stuff, and the boy has even tried it.  For the past few weeks he's demanded to help fold with our MiracleFold Junior Size Clothes Folder, but now he sees me folding without it and has tried to fold free-style as well.

(Now that, my less positive self says, is a child who is desperate to spend time with his mother.)

Fashion Advice from Lane

Turn your pants inside out, pull your Hello Kitty socks on, and step into your plastic Sofia heels.

Then strike a pose with candy canes.

Lane Words at 2 years

Lane words at 14 mo: hi, mama, dada, dog, nose, toes, phone, all done, baby, more, Katie, shoes, book, belly, oh no. Cracker, sippy cup, eyes, spoon, Chee (Cheerios), coffee, Amy, bowl, up, water, mine, Elmo, toys. She also says some of her daycare classmates names (Emma, Charlie). Open, Joey, teeth, jump, meow, clap

15 mo

Ball pancake cookie batman close Lanie

15.5

Open close 

Spiders: They're Pretty Much Everywhere

Does anyone else do "Spider Checks?"

You know... you wake up and stumble into the kitchen. Of course, the coffee maker reservoir is empty, so you grab the water pitcher, go to the sink, and start filling it.  Suddenly, you sense there is a spider nearby! You quickly glance up to the light above the sink, the corners of the cabinets, and the ceiling.  Whew.  No spider this time.  

Yesterday I went out to get the mail, forgetting that my husband had freaked out a couple of days earlier when he saw a giant spider in a web by the mailbox.  I reached for the mailbox beside the front door just as I spotted the spider.  I retracted my hand as I squeaked out, "Eeee-eeee-eee-yah!"  I bravely got the mail anyway, postponing a decision about what to do about that large, light orange spider.

I've got a whole litany of spider stories.

That morning, age 24, when I stumbled into the bathroom in the morning to take a shower and spotted a HUGE spider chilling in the tub.  I hustled back into my bedroom, grabbed my "Spiders of the Northeast" book, and went back into the bathroom to identify the beast: Wolf Spider, scary-looking but harmless. I probably used my "cup and piece of paper" spider-capturing method to put it outside.  What can I say, I'm the daughter of a zoologist.  We grew up identifying birds and spiders, rescuing turtles in the road and baby birds on the ground, and hatching tadpoles in the kitchen.

My News Headline Commentary

I was reading the news last night on my phone and found myself having reactions that I wanted to share.  I took a screenshot of each noteworthy article or headline and noted what I was thinking.  I reminded myself of Fred Armisen on SNL, with his nonsensical headline commentary, in the sense that I could only really think of one thing to say about each headline.

So, here, I'm thinking, Is this a spoof on the sometimes overly dramatic "Modern Love" columns?  It starts with the typical, "Fearful of repeating the same mistakes her mother made," and instead of the expected, "a woman must choose an unconventional path," it says, "a porn actress must choose between remaining unattached and financially independent or following her heart."

I mean, what? It sounds like an Onion spoof.

It's not labeled here as a Modern Love column in this screenshot, but if you go to the website, it IS sneakily labeled as Modern Love.  So this is just a regular old, overly dramatic, Modern Love column.

This one, I'm thinking, I love that Ina May,  one of the most experienced midwives in America, can only verbally throw up her hands in response to breastfeeding mothers being banned from swimming pools for fear of contaminating the water.

Naked Man: Was He Dancing or Jumping?

I smiled, then laughed out loud, at some of the lines in this report in the Stamford Advocate.  First of all, I love the headline: "Stamford man arrested for dancing nude in street."  Then, the text by John Nickerson, with my smiles and LOLs bolded:  

A city man believed by police to be high on a powerful hallucinogenic was arrested after police saw him dancing naked and doing pushups on Washington Boulevard early Wednesday...

When the officer got to the scene he found Green without a stitch of clothes on yelling and carrying on while jumping around in the middle of Washington Boulevard, Connelly said.

The officer approached Green to find out what was going on but Green would not say anything intelligible.

Green then jumped to the ground and performed seven perfectly formed pushups with his two hands. Connelly said.

I assume the great details of "without a stitch of clothes on yelling and carrying on while jumping around" came are from an interview. I absolutely love the way colloquial language made it into the article.  This, people, is how a newspaper should read!    

However, I'm wondering, was he "dancing" as the headline and lede said, or was he only "jumping around" as Connelly said?   I would like to know the answer to this.  

The detail of "seven" - seven!- "perfectly formed pushups with his two hands" also just communicates the absurdity of the situation.  Of course it's not so absurd that the guy had to be tasered to get him into the police car, but...