Deaf Uncle Babysitter

O.K., I’ve mentioned, before, the importance of keeping our house under lock & key, not because it’s a high crime neighborhood but because we cannot ever allow Kier to “get out” on his own because of his autistic penchant for WANDERING, which becomes a death/life issue instantly. So how this translates to our lifestyle is that there are 3 things (really probably hundreds) that can never happen in this house: front door can never be left unlocked (bolted from the inside – goes against all fire-safety standards), keys can never be left in plain view – because he will help himself to a quick exit, and the inner and outer doors of the front vestibule can never be opened at the same time – but this is for the DOGGY.

Calliope-Peach was a Parvo puppy – which was a fun tidbit of tragedy to share with the children after we had owned her (our first family dog) for all of 1 day. Thankfully, she survived but came home with many restrictions, like that she could not tread upon “public” pavement (sidewalks) for 6 months, had to do her business in a confined little pen in the yard, etc. The result was that she has never figured out that most dogs walk and potty at the same time, so she’ll go for a long walk and then scurry into the yard to pee when we come home – convenient for us because we never have to humiliate ourselves with those little bags of dog-mush. She also has bad manners; by the time she was allowed to literally see another dog, she acted like a lunatic, all jumpy and excited with a ridge of defensive fur sticking straight up on her back, despite our attempts with dog-training classes. Now, as an almost 4 year old dog, although super sweet sleeping on our beds and licking the kids faces, she is crazy to walk publicly. Her hound dog instincts mean that her nose is the only part of her body with a direct link to her brain and she excitedly zigs and zags from left to right, threatening to trip you with her leash while she eagerly sniffs at traces of dog-life and dog-waste and you just have to pray that wherever you are there are no other dogs because she just goes wild – not in a threatening way – but in a way that makes me repeat my dog-mantra: "Holy dog-crap! I’d rather choke on glass than ever walk that pooch around the block again!!"

So the dog, (not unlike my “indoor-cat” kids) has a little pent up ENTHUSIASM when the front door opens, because between you and me, we have simply stopped walking her (which I feel O.K. about because she does a lot of vertical jumping against our 6 ft. fence when she sniffs the neighbor dog on the other side...which is probably sufficient dog-cardio).

Anyway, we had to drive to Chicago yesterday for my niece’s 20th birthday party – which was really a nice party, everything looked so pretty and girlie-pink and clean and cup-cakey and Zoe in her fab pink/red slinky little dress and nice friends – completely worth the trip and we’d planned on going for weeks - but it is never easy to just leave our house because this typically means finding someone to stay with Kier and the dog.

So Scot’s brother, "Uncle Kitt" - who I absolutely adore - sometimes does respite for Kier and he has many of the qualities that make him a perfect fit for this assignment, mostly because he is calm like Scot and can just hang out and be an unobtrusive set of eyeballs in the house to make sure there’s no trouble. So Scot goes through his spiel with anyone who is left in charge of Kier – which is a comprehensive list of well honed instructions including when to give medication (hidden in yogurt – Scot prepares and labels ahead of time), when to order Pizza, how to understand the few key “words”/needs that Kier is likely to utter, how to follow dinner immediately with bath time, etc., etc. and the BIG one: the door/key thing.

But Kitt had a faraway look and I was shifting uneasily on my kitchen stool as Scot kept reciting the spiel. Kitt had, upon arrival, shared with us that he is NOT HEARING WELL these days either due to being a musician who has spent a good chunk of his life around AMPLIFICATION or because of a severe wax buildup, or both. Scot hates to be interrupted during the spiel in case it throws him off course which might make him skip over a critical piece of info – so I try to stay quiet at these times but let’s face it, that is not exactly easy. I prefer to repeat things approximately three times – differently iterated each time so as to ensure optimal chances for comprehension; Scot likes to say things ONE TIME and after 21 years of marriage to this man, I am just "guessing" that he finds it dead-boring and unnecessary whenever I do my “here – let me say it another way for you…” routine. But I am a woman who counts on eye-contact and the repeating of instructions to feel like I did my part and I was finding myself repeating everything that Scot said to Kitt – with a “…you got that...right, Kitt?” and Scot had that look in his eye that says “You are not helping”.

…and Kitt would say “What’s that?”

I heard Scot say “so the thing to be super careful of is when you open the door for the Pizza delivery guy at dinner, make sure one of the front (vestibule) doors is always closed while the other is open so the dog doesn’t get out...” and then I repeated that same phrase 3 different ways and said “you get it? Do you get that? Did you hear that, Kitt?”

Then we left, Scot happily and me uneasily because of the torrential rain which I hate to drive in and because of the fact that Atticus also decided to stay home which meant that Kitt had to have heard the exact McDonalds lunch order for both boys – our 2 boys who have “issues” and who can never get the WRONG FOOD. That meant the front door would have to open twice for the out/in of one McDonalds trip and twice for the open/close of the Pizza delivery. This is how we measure the comfort level of a day away from our house: how many times will the front door need to be opened????

So we return home, through more INSTABILITY (rain, wind, dusk, children pawing at each other’s car-snacks) to Kitt’s story of how he was shocked to see how FAST that dog is…And we ask, “well did you do the door thing…just one opened at a time?” and he says “What’s that?”

He had brought the Pizza into the house and given out slices before telling Atticus (tiny, frail, feathery – with issues) to WATCH Kier (HUGE and volatile at any moment, especially when anticipating his next meal) while he was going to go down the street, in his car, to find the dog. The good thing: he locked the door before he left the house. He could see the Peach – a speck way in the distance, running like a greyhound at the track…FREEEeeeeeeeee!

So here was a singular act of GENIUS…Kitt never got into his car but instead had grabbed one slice of Pizza before running out of the house and as he shouted to that crazy dog, he waved that Pizza in the air like a surrender flag – “You can have whatever you want…EVEN PIZZA…if you come home”.

There is only one thing the Peach likes more than running away apparently and that’s HUMAN FOOD…and she sniffed that slice from a mile away and raced back home to gobble it up. So they all lived HAPPILY-EVER-AFTER (which for me means making it until roughly 7:00pm on any given night with most of my senses in tact).

Ah, good to be home.

So sorry – I feel your pain regarding not getting the Weighing-in job at Weight-Watchers. That did sound perfect, in a relaxing way. I’m thinking you may have just come off as “over-qualified”…considering your history (starting in your 20’s as some high-voltage business woman in TV Sales in NYC, right? who bought her first home - alone - before most young people are buying their own groceries….hmmm…you think?). But don’t give up. Are there any hotel maid positions around…I always thought that would be a pleasant job…or does it have to be weight-loss related? How about a fitness club? Keep me posted.

Ruby