Monthly Archives: July 2008

True Story

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I’m going to the allergist today because I’m allergic to Zack.

Fact: because we are humans, and because I find him to be so damn sexy, Zack and I kiss a lot.  This kissing, or his facial hair touching my skin, causes me to breaking out into a very itchy, quite painful rash.

To answer the question that is always the first one everyone asks: No, I wasn’t entirely unaware that kissing broke me out into hives before we got married.  In fact, I was fully aware of it.  I wasn’t, however, willing to end my relationship with the my fantastic boyfriend/fiance/husband just because of some itching.  Especially since I’m not only allergic to Zack.

I basically have reactions to (from what I can tell) to all men’s facial hair–even a brief contact (like a hug where facial hair touches my neck/shoulder) will cause a break out.  I don’t have a lot of face-to-face contact with the male population, so I have a limited sample group, but here’s what my studies have found: I have reactions to both Zack and my dad (men that can grow lots of facial hair) and I am not allergic to Brothers/Brothers-in-law Boo, David, Jared or Matt.  I suppose that I am also not allergic to any females, since I have never had a rashes post-female contact (however, I haven’t ever had close contact with a bearded circus lady, so I’d call that research ‘incomplete’).

After seeing my doctor several times about the itchiness issues without any success, the doc referred me to an allergist.  Go see AN ALLERGIST, he said, BECAUSE YOU ARE ALLERGIC TO MEN. SPECIFICALLY THE MAN TO WHOM YOU ARE LEGALLY WED. (Emphasis mine, of course.)  So today I’m off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Allergies, and I am officially Nervous As Hell.  I am absolutely sure that I am going to walk in there, and they are going to say, “You are crazy, either deal with it or get a divorce,” and I am going to cry myself the entire way to the bubble-boy store, where I will buy a body suit that will allow me to snuggle with my husband without having to bathe in hydrocortisone cream right afterwards.

Wake Up Call

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The entire time that we worked at Camp Eagle, Zack and I were technically “on call.” If something were to happen in the middle of the night that required phone calls to be made and/or our presence at main camp, we would have been there. We never had to be, though. Outside of the occasional lunch break interruption phone call, I never had to abandon my time off/wake up in the middle of the night to take care of anything that was happening at camp.

Until very, very early this morning.

Eight months after leaving Camp Eagle, I got a call from my uncle at 1 this morning, frantic because there had been some issues at camp with his granddaughters (so, my second cousins?) and he was concerned about them. They weren’t in physical danger, but had faced some (I’m being vague on purpose) emotional hardships during the day and told my uncle about the stresses. They ended the phone call saying that they would call him back but never did. He was understandably concerned–it’s hard to be 6 hours away from your two 9 year old granddaughters and trust (highly trained camping professionals who are) total strangers with their safety–especially when you know they aren’t bounding through fields of non-cavity causing lollipops and cartoon butterflies.

At 1 a.m. after being in bed for 2 hours, I’m surprisingly dysfunctional. I rolled around in the bed for a while trying to think of what it was that I should be doing to fix the situation. My natural (motherly) reaction was to comfort my Uncle. Their family had been really comforted by the fact that I was on the camp’s property last year, and so I started out saying things like, “It’s okay that I’m not there, those are good people, the twins are being taken care of, yadda, yadda, yadda.” About 5 minutes later, I realized that he had called me with the very specific purpose of getting a phone number to try and contact them. I remembered that I have all the Camp Eagle files on my computer still from when I used it as a work computer, so I got out of bed, and dragged myself to the computer where 34 billion rays of blinding light shot out of the computer screen and melted my eyeballs. I swear I must have dug around in my computer files (still blind as a bad from the light) for 10 minutes before I was able to find the file called DIRECTORY.doc. HOW HARD IS IT TO FIND DIRECTORY.DOC? I must have referenced that file on a weekly basis for the entire two years that I worked at camp, but all the sudden, it’s 1 a.m. and I’m Ray Charles trying to find a docu-needle-in-a-haystack like it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done? Sweet heavens, I was some kind of out-of-sorts last night.

Needless to say, as a result of the phone calls, I have decided that I’m not ever going to be ready to have kids. Kids turn into teenagers, which generally warrant middle-of-the-night phone calls, and If I’m so dysfunctional that I can’t even find a document at 1 in the morning, I have no place thinking I could make proper decisions about whether or not I would let my theoretical teenager sit in jail over night after being stopped for jaywalking at 4 a.m. because he/she snuck out of the house with their best friend (who got away) to go get cokes from the coke machine up the street. (NOT THAT I EVER DID THAT.)

(Just so you know, the nieces are fine. Situation’s all sorted out.  See? I called it in the early-morning air. Highly trained camping professionals, they truly are.)

Pulling Hair

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I just furminated Scout and now she wants nothing to do with me.  She was okay when I was gently combing her with with The Furminator.  Then I discovered that all of her German Shepherd undercoat wound up near about her ass, and that’s where all the mega-shed was coming from.  I attacked. That’s when she decided she wasn’t that tight with me anymore.  It’s okay, though. I really love that dog, but after a long afternoon of her a.) being really, really, really excited about her recently re-discovered squeaky cucumber and b.) vomiting all over the office after ingesting what must have been 45 Million treats (delivered lovingly by a grandma neighbor type who is making it her one-woman-mission to fatten up all the neighborhood animals) and a bowl of food.  There was not one, but THREE massive piles of soggy doggie vomit that she ever so lovingly held in until about 45 seconds after I let her inside.  That’s right. There was exactly one minute window that stood between me and a 3-pile-cleanup, and I was on the wrong side of that one minute.

The way Scout reacts to brushing reminds me of SisterKaty (who’s not a nun, regardless of how much her blogname makes her sounds like one) when she was 8, crying as mom brushed out her long, tangled blonde locks.  I never truly understood being “tender headed,” as a child who could easily rip handfulls of hair out of my own head with no pain. (And often did for attention, but that’s a very different issue, an issue for which I have had counseling) Katy’s tender headedness was the only damn advantage I ever had when it came to sisterly hand-to-hand combat.  There were many a trampoline wrestling sessions that ALMOST ended in me getting my ass handed to me by my baby sister.  If it hadn’t been for my exquisite hair pulling skills, I would have REALLY EMBARRASSED MYSELF.

 

Keepin It Short So She Has A Shot At Me

Katy, keeping the hair short to level the playing field

Happy Weekend.

Cat Training

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Cruz has developed a nasty habit of wanting to be let outside at inconvenient times.

Ever since we brought Scout home, Cruz has turned himself into a really loud cat.  Whereas before, when our family was a humble trio, and he got all the attention he could have ever wanted, he rarely made a sound other than purring.  We had a very specific in-and-out system, and he was trained to know when he could go out and come in, and he never had to ask for anything.  Zack swears that the reason he’s turned into such a loud feline is because of the dog.  I’m not convinced that it’s just the dog–it could just as easily be a combination of the thirty some-odd changes in our lives that happened around the same time: moving from an entirely rural setting to a highly urban one, a change from a bafflingly consistent schedule to one that changes on a monthly basis, little house to big house, etc.

Regardless of the reason, the point is this: He is a loud cat now.  A loud cat that often likes to stand outside our bedroom door at 4 a.m. and say, MEEOW.  GROOOOAN. WHINE, WHINE, WHINE. YOU GUYS SUCK. OUTSIDE, PLEASE? MEEEEOOOOOOOOW.  Because I’m a kind owner, and because I didn’t have a litter box in the house when he started this nasty habit of his, I would get up and let him outside.  I didn’t imagine for a minute that I was training him to come meow at me any time he wanted to be let outside.  The idea of “Training Cats” is mostly laughable anyway, because come on! Who claims to be able to train cats?! I really didn’t think that he was going to make a habit out of the midnight moaning.  But I thought wrong.

Starting yesterday, I officially began The Plan To Un-train Cruz From Being A Owner Waking Up Ass Hat.  He was pitching a fit outside my door at about 4:15, and I met him in my doorway, armed with a pillow and the pillow-fighting fury of 10,000 teenage girls.  With one swift underhand, I connected with that cat’s hind quarters and sent him skidding down the hallway, and then sprinting down the stairs.  He didn’t bother me again, and then when I got up a couple of hours later, he quietly followed me to the front door, where I let him out.  SWEET VICTORY, I thought!  I’ve whooped him!  He’ll never whine outside my door again!  We’ve re-established dominance!

Perhaps I was a wee bit ahead of myself in claiming ‘victory’.  This morning he was at it again, but a little earlier.  3:45.  MEEEEOOW. OUTSIDE! I WANT OUTSIDE YOU WRECHED WOMAN! I HATE YOU. COME OPEN THE DOOR FOR ME. ppppllleeeeease? MEOW!  I’ll count my wins where I can get them, though, because when I opened my bedroom door with a pillow in hand, he preemptively shot down the hallway, and down the stairs, and didn’t make a peep for the rest of the evening.  Maybe, just maybe, cat training is possible after all.

This Is Not About School

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Scout is 40 pounds now! I carried her into the bathroom yesterday like a 4-H cowboy carries a calf and we stood on the scale together. Leaning precariously in order to see the scales, I found myself torn. I want Scout to be a big(ger) dog. She’s been growing the whole time we’ve had her, but her growth has slowed considerably, and what was about 10 lbs/mo has slowed to 5 lbs/mo. I don’t, however, want to see 40 extra pounds when I step on the scale. So even though I know what I weigh (because my weight has finally stabilized for the first time in my life) and I know how to subtract, after I weight us together, I still have to jump right back on the scale to verify that my numbers are the same after weighing Scout that they were before I weighed Scout. As if weight can be transferred? As if she’s going to give me doggie-treat flavored muffin tops after I carry her around? Ridiculous, admittedly, but I always feel a huge sense of relief when I realize that I’m still my size–Even if I would like my size to be a teeny bit more tone.

Last night I went the extra mile to prepare for work ahead of time so that I could sleep in as late as possible. (Like, 10 extra minutes, but still, it’s the principle of the matter.) After I got all my work clothes and the sort ready, I was much too tired to bother going ALL THE WAY down the staircase to put Scout The 40 lb. Dog into her cage. I just let her sleep in the office (which has a door adjacent to our room). (Sometimes she sleeps in the office on weekends so she can wake me up at 7 or so when she has to go to the bathroom. ‘Her waking me up when she has to go outside’ is a phenomenon that I appreciate on the weekends but clearly forgot about last night…) because 20 minutes before my alarm was scheduled to go off, the dog started body-slamming the door with a profound and powerful fury. She was skillfully using all 40 of her pounds to rattle the foundations of this house, which in turn S-O-S’ed me out of bed like a rocket. Like a very angry rocket who wanted to sleep 20 extra minutes and instead wound up leaving through old issues of Domino Magazine at 6:30 in the morning over a bowl of cholesterol-lowering Cheerios, severely regretting my aforementioned laziness.

Zack and I have two sets of sheets that we use for our bed, one brown and one white. I intended to buy two sets that were exactly the same, but according to Zack, I purchased “one soft and wonderful set, and one set that feels like ass sandpaper.” I said that perhaps some exfoliating sheets would be a nice change, give us smoother skin, help remove calloused areas on the heels, etc. That’s when Zack started flopping around the bed like a Mermaid in the 1980s, saying that I couldn’t use the sheets after he bled all over them cause they rubbed his SKIN OFF. But I’m busy. So I haven’t changed the sheets. He has stopped flopping, though, which I suppose could be counted as a Victory For Sarah.