This Is Not About School

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.