Dog Days of Summer

The cat is stretched out on the blade of the ceiling fan, revolving in lazy circles in the breeze, one paw hanging over the side like a rudder.

Below, the dog is sprawled in the recliner with an ice pack on his forehead, sipping iced tea through a bendy straw. He’s a black Lab. He’ll dive quite happily into a frost-covered lake on a crisp fall morning, but when the temperature hits 80, he goes into hibernation and requires hourly rations of crushed ice and chicken flavored sports drinks. I don’t want to say he’s spoiled, but I have the only refrigerator with a doggie door. I won’t mention his other favorite snack food, but there’s also a doggie door on the litterbox.

Meanwhile, at my computer, sweat has dripped down my chest, spattered on the keyboard like afternoon in a rainforest, and shorted out the machine. A parched mosquito with a sweatband handed me an IOU for a nibble on a body part to be named later. Outside, earthworms have brought in power drills to make holes in the topsoil on my car.

The teenagers poured themselves through the doorway, swooned into a restless pile of melted flesh and weary boredom and announced, “It’s hot.” Hot is a two syllable word with the second half drowning in perspiration and misery.

These are the same kids that were clustered around the thermostat last winter begging to turn up the heat so their fingers would thaw enough to work video game controllers.

Back then I was the "bad parent" because I just said NO to indoor fire barrels. Now I'm the bad guy because I don't allow freezer burn as a weapon in the battle against sweat. These guys hated it when Spring brought plagues of honeysuckle and rosebuds and Autumn swept in hordes of muscadines. They've got a whine for all seasons.

So now it’s hot. Why didn’t I noticed it before? It amazes me how that fact escaped Reuters, CNN, Fox News, and the local paparazzi. Our smalltown presses don’t miss any news flash from ice cream truck fraud to elevator overpopulation.

I decided to give him a call.

“Jay, the teenagers say it’s hot.”

I heard a noise like a straw passing the speed limit sign in Margaritaville. “I’ll get right on that story as soon as I finish my, um, column.”

“See that you do. Somebody has to alert people to turn on their window fans. You could be the Paul Revere of our times. One if it’s spring, two if it’s summer.”

“Right. In the meantime teach those kids to appreciate the important things in life. Like those little first aid packs that get cold when you bust the bubble inside.”

I hung up. I would cook supper, but I’ve been waiting until the temperature dropped. We haven't eaten since that day in March when a UPS truck delivered a load of chocolate covered pretzels to the wrong address.

With an oven that goes from Warm to Controlled Burn in less than ten seconds, I don’t like to stoke the flames just for the simple act of eating. During the summer, we boost the economy by dining out at any local establishment that boasts a working air conditioner.

I’ve eaten so much pizza lately, my navel has turned into a slice of pepperoni. I’ve had so many tacos, I’ve begun to judge local cattle by their weight in ground beef. And I’ve been eyeing the no-expiration-date sausage dogs at the local 7-11 store.

Meanwhile I'm counting down the days until school starts. Both boys take classes at the community college across town. Let the dean of Robotics decide what the temperature will be. In the meantime, the Labrador has a dandy diversion planned. He's packed the car for the beach. I have just enough time to grab a towel before he backs down the driveway.

And I can tell by the way his ears are waving in the breeze. that he's got the air conditioner turned on to chili dog.

Past Tension

“You’re upset.”

“What makes you think so?”

“You’re doing Frito shots again.”

When I’m having what the Captain lovingly calls “the days Homeland Security doesn’t have a color for,” I like to soothe my ruffled hormones with a mixture of Fritos and M&M’s. I take a handful of each and slam dunk them into my mouth like Michael Jordan down the lane at the buzzer. Crunch time. With a candy coating.

I don’t want to say I’m stressed, but I bought a case of each at the local warehouse store and I have them stored in those never-ending watering dishes you get for your dog so that he’s never thirsty. If I play my cards right, I can munch my way through July without ever getting up. I won’t even have to change clothes. I’m wearing stretchy pants and they’ll just grow along with me.

I don't know if I’m more stressed than usual, but I’m so high strung these days that if I flex my pinky my shoes come untied, my glasses fly off, and I lose control over important bodily functions, such as the ability to locate my keys inside my Aigner bag. I sneezed at the office the yesterday and someone had to throw a blanket over me and run for the Bounty. The cell phone in my pocket called emergency services. In Australia.

I’ve noticed that women react to stress differently from men. When searching for something that he needs urgently and cannot locate in a nano-instant, my husband finds it soothing to toss random objects out of his path and assign creative swear words to best fit the scope and purpose of each object. His trusty Lab waits nearby for moral support, ready to pitch in and chew a shoe or take a nap if the situation merits immediate action.

Curiously, it appears that we also turn up the tension knob over different things.

I get upset because supper is late, somebody’s teacher is threatening emergency action again because of a wildlife sighting in her chair and while she’s at it, a mention of Huckleberry Finn on the back of a cereal box is not the same as reading the novel, and there's a spider sending semaphore signals from a web in the bathroom that would support the weight of Tarzan on a junglewide jaunt. Also, there is a $70 tennis shoe in the litter box.

The thing that worries me most is the shoe.

Why is there just one? And which of those careless cats wore the thing in there and left it? I’ll jut have to watch and take note if I see Fluffy hobbling down the hall in a single Reebok. I see disciplinary action in the future. He's irresponsible with tennis balls as well.

The Captain, on the other hand, is distressed that his DVD of Dr. Who episodes is turned the wrong direction on the shelf--obviously the work of housebreaking ninjas with a time travel complex. It’s not like he can watch any DVDs anyway, because the player doesn’t work without the remote, and I think that’s what I saw peeping through the Fresh Step in the litterbox after breakfast this morning. Fluffy the cat is quite diverse in his hobbies.

All in all I think I’ll take the easy way out when it comes to stress. I’ll cook dinner for the in-laws, redecorate the house, and teach the teenagers to drive all at once. After that, everything else will look easy.

This Blog Was Brought to You By Approximately the Number 7

Many thanks to Rhonda, over at The Braves Are Getting Restless, for the Versatile Blogger Award. I don’t know if I’m so much versatile as a random multitasker, but versatile sounds so much better when you’re stuck in the same old rut grooming Labs and peeling carrots, which is a lot better, I’ve found, than peeling Labs and grooming carrots because you never get to the end of all those little sticky little layers of hair and besides carrots simply will not do as they’re told.

The rules of play for Versatile Bloggers are such that:
1. I’m supposed to thank the giver. Thanks Rhonda!
2. I’m supposed to list seven things about myself. Luckily the rules don’t specify riveting things or exciting things or even pinky-swear things. I can probably get by with any vital statistics I can still remember well enough to fudge on.
3. I'm supposed to pass this award to five bloggers. I can’t guarantee this one. I’ll try, but I’m somewhat abstract in thought and tend to wander off long before I decide which discipline to use for counting. If I’m holding a doughnut, one hand is occupied, and my counting abilities are restricted by process of elimination.

So let's send our award over to Stace at Betwixt and Between, Janna at Something She Wrote , Beth at Squiggle, and then if anybody else wants to count to seven, feel free to follow along. And then let us know.

1. I’m surrounded by guys. I have the Captain and Sons Chromosome Y the First and Y the Second. Even the dogs are male. On Friday nights after the role playing gamers drift in, I find testosterone hanging from the fixtures like Spanish moss on Southern pines. And nothing will get that up when they grind it in the floor with their duct-taped tennis shoes. I tried Mr. Clean, but that just made it worse.

2. I have strange taste in men. (Sorry Cap.) If William Faulkner were alive today, I’d ditch George Clooney like last year’s Pradas and follow ole Bill from town to town chanting, “Let’s hear that Nobel Prize speech again!” and tossing him copies of my old term papers.

3. While everyone else in the South is making a pilgrimage to Graceland to see Elvis, I’m hanging out a Rowan Oak (Faulkner’s Old Mississipi Home), hoping to catch the faint scent of pipe smoke. Okay, I’ve only been once, but I have pictures.

4. I also love Fitzgerald, Wilder, and Poe, but really, a girl’s gotta draw the line somewhere. But wouldn’t Poe be delighted by the number of chicks adopting a Goth lifestyle today? I saw enough black fingernails at the mall today to send him into a frenzy.

5. I’m in favor of the serial comma. If you’re listing serial killers and write The Boston Strangler, Charles Manson and me (just ask my jade plant how many of his brothers have gone to the great garden in the sky), then you’ve teamed me up with Charlie Manson and there’s not a ficus in the world who stands a chance. Better to separate us with a comma and avoid an ugly peat moss scene.

6. I almost lost my Girl Card because I don’t have a shoe fetish, but I have a double major in earrings and finger foods. Luckily I have both a sister and a niece who churn out jewelry like Rumplestiltskin spins straw, but I’m on my own to find petit fours in a small Southern town where fried pickles are considered a delicacy. (The pickles are pretty good.)

7. I like soggy cereal. Which is a good thing, because with the amount of teeth I have, it takes a village to go through a bowl of Captain Crunch. Oh, sure, if you’ve seen me grin, it looks like I’ve got more than my share, but get past the store front teeth and you’ll find that I have to hire a cast of extras to eat a box of Cracker Jacks. The peanuts I have to subcontract out.

8. I love a good murder mystery. When I was a kid, I would hide all the household knives after an especially good round with Agatha Christie in order to foil any lurking, slobbering psycopaths. After a while, family members would casually ask me, “Where did you put them?” when they went in the kitchen to make a sandwich.

9. I’m rebellious when it comes to counting.

A Dog's Life

“Mom! He’s poisoning the dog again.”

Son Two’s voice dripped with injustice.

It was one of those days. I dropped my belongings in a pile by the door and let the recliner draw me in like it had a La-Z-Boy certified tractor beam.

“He’s just licking my foot.” Son One grinned as Bo tickled his ivories.

“Last time he did that he was sick all over the living room. It looked like a CSI biology experiment.”

“If you ever uncovered your feet he might lick yours. You’ve had the same socks on since 1993. There's enough gunk on the bottom to make you two inches taller.”

“At least I wear socks. Your shoes squish when you walk like they belong to Spongebob.”

The big dog paused and looked around the room as if polling the audience. Sure, he lifts his midnight snacks from the litter box, but a face that sweet shouldn’t have to stoop to this level for friendship.

“Come here, Sweetheart.” I called the big Lab over to sit by me. Nothing makes a bad day better like a hug from somebody who doesn’t care if you’ve borrowed his razor.

With a regretful glance, Bo strolled over to my chair, heaved the remains of his day of foraging at my feet, then looked up expectantly, waiting for a treat.

Figures. Dog logic dictates that when the stomach empties, it's time to put more inside. Human logic states that when the chips are down and you think nothing else can go wrong, the dog will throw up.

I think I'll get a ferret.

And To Think Noah Had Two of Each

We usually go to the annual dog show in the big city next door, if for no other reason than to see what we could have had. We love our dogs, but without us, they’d be in the line for federal assistance. There are two of them, which in Bible language is a multitude.

Lucy is a Dachshund mix. I’m not real sure what’s in the mix, but she looks like the love child of a link sausage and Daffy Duck. Lucy could give Jennifer Lopez diva lessons. She has an aversion to dog food, getting her feet wet, and sharing the Earth with other life forms. We can’t open the door, turn on the television, or stroll into the kitchen without having her alert the news media with a dedicated barkfest. We've taken to flushing on the sly when she goes outside to eat ants.

Bo is a Lab mix. If you noticed a trend, it’s true. All our dogs are mixes. It’s so much easier than making one from scratch. Just be careful when adding the water, so it doesn’t overflow.

Bo is a talented liar. To hear him tell the tale, he hasn’t been fed since finding the stray square of Shredded Wheat under the refrigerator in 2005. At present he is on the Atkins diet, having failed miserably at Weight Watchers, the Zone, and the cabbage soup diet, the last of which gave our kitchen a signature scent I’d rather not discuss and gave Bo the opportunity to spend a lot of time outside.

I’ve read him all the articles about walking off the weight, but he whiles away his time table surfing for bread crumbs and licking likely spots off the linoleum. He has no shame and will face off with the big, brown-eyed “I’ve never been fed” look if he thinks he can score a bite of your peanut butter sandwich.

The dogs are supervised at all times by the house warden, Justin. Justin is a tabby cat whose official title is Supreme Ruler of the Household and Wielder of Sharp Claws. Unfortunately, as is the case with many heads of state whose family tree is shadowed with intertwined branches, Justin is common sense challenged. Most cats understand that if a space is occupied by another object, they should find somewhere else to lurk. Not Justin. Therefore he has numerous wounds and abrasions inflicted by flower pots or dishes or wayward dogs who weren’t quick enough to escape breaking his fall.

For aesthetic reasons, and to earn the gratitude of our feathered friends who, it turns out, take us for granted and write ugly messages on our windshields when the feeder runs dry, Bill Dear hung a bird feeder in the tree outside our bathroom window. This window is a favorite perch for Justin, who amuses himself by chatting with the birds outside.

However, the window ledge is too small for Justin’s elderly, but massive frame (another candidate for fat-free catnip), and is high off the ground to boot. So Justin sits for hours on the bathtub, staring at the window and willing himself to levitate so that he can see the birds. Occasionally we take pity on him and hold him up to the window, but this became embarrassing when our friends found out. (So, Bill, I hear you hold your cat up to the window so he can see out. Why don’t you just buy him a canary?) It’s not the sort of thing that a man likes to talk about around the water cooler at work.

Despite his best efforts (Bill Dear’s present method of discipline is threatening divorce and shooting me ugly looks across the potatoes at dinner), I’m sure Justin’s kingdom will increase. There is an invisible sign etched into the atmosphere above our house that beams longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates to homeless animals all over the globe. “SLEEP WARM! EAT FREE! OPERATORS STANDING BY!”

I just hope the offer ends soon. I’m tired of sleeping in the doghouse.

Voting Booths & Troubled Youths

I can tell by the jungle of homemade signs germinating in my front yard that election time is just around the breaking news story. Either that or somebody at my house is having a yard sale.

Since by some quirk of government both my sons will be eligible to vote for the first time, I’ve taken it upon myself to teach them the basic jargon of our political system:

Liberal: Wearing lipstick and nail polish that doesn’t match. Or white shoes after Labor Day.

Conservative: Washing your hands in the restroom even when nobody’s looking. Listing your correct weight on your driver’s license.

Voting booth: The little room with the half curtain where you make your choices for leaders of the most powerful nation in the world. Not to be confused with the dressing room at the mall where the curtain is short enough to determine who wore clean underwear on the first day of bathing suit shopping season, at which time you also determine who will have their pool privileges restricted.

Electoral College: A special college that holds classes only once every four years and offers no grants, scholarships, or Bowl-worthy football team. Its mascot is the Mayfly.

Lobbyists: A group of people who hang around the lobby of government buildings handing out free samples and telling lawmakers what to do. Not to be confused with terrorists, but I’m not sure why.

Vice-President: The Vice-President is kind of like a kid brother for the president. He always hangs around listening to things that aren’t his business and threatening to tell. You’d think that would make him the Speaker of the House, but they hire somebody with special skills for that job. The special skills are a secret.

President: The individual who is the head of the Executive Branch of government who works in an Oval Office so that he or she can’t get backed into a corner.

My sons didn’t seem to appreciate my help. They wandered off, mumbling something about conscience and issues. But that’s okay. I’ve tagged all their video games. I’ll make enough at the yard sale to buy their vote.