The damn dog kept me up all night because she's a Puggle, which means she's part HOUND, which means that she can smell chocolate before it enters the house. So when the E-Bunny left all those chocolate eggs for the children, that dog went completely chocolate-CRAZY and although she was more welcome in our bedroom than usual so that we could keep tabs on her, she had to whimper by the door all night and try to get out.
Dogs are not supposed to have chocolate. The first Christmas we had Calliope-Peach she ate about a dozen bourbon filled dark chocolate treats and we had to give her peroxide with turkey to make her vomit. We saved her life. Maybe. Since then, that dog has done everything in her power to get chocolate and as long as it’s the more lame/tame MILK chocolate, she seems to inhale it without drama (although we still try to avoid this). Today, she held her entire head inside a boot, for a minute or so, where a foil wrapped chocolate egg had been found hours earlier, intoxicated by the scent. (I know women who do this).
The day went nicely. The dog and children acted like addicts all day (chocolate) and it was Atticus’ 10th birthday so there was also a giant bunny cake tonight. I don’t eat sweets but I feel bloated from just smelling it and seeing it all around me all day.
So this is what I was thinking about while I listened to that doggy try to get to the chocolate all night. It was not the most intense thing that ever happened to me but it may have been the first time my feelings were this intense (I have told this to a few people but not to you, I’m thinking):
Before Easter, when I was in first grade, my teacher - Miss Meyers - wanted each child to contribute an egg to the Easter Egg Tree in our classroom. Allen brought his in first and she commended him for being so responsible with his BLOWN, FRAGILE egg and asked that we all do what Allen – THE GOOD BOY - had done and bring our eggs to school in a glass jar (imagine the world without Tupperware?). I remember feeling like my cheeks and eyes would pop, getting light headed as I forced the egg out of its shell through an unimaginably tiny pinprick of a hole. WHO THE HELL ASKS A SIX YEAR OLD TO BLOW AN EGG? Nevertheless, I felt good about myself and brought the egg in my jar and I held it so, so carefully between snowy mittens (one of those cold snowy late March Easters). As the crowded line of kids formed inside the school (single-file-keep-to-your-right) I did not take my eyes off the egg, concentrating so completely on cupping my mittens around the jar, when the girl in front of me suddenly swung around and her elbow bumped my arm, sending the jar crashing to the floor. Snowy puddles, rubber boots, my fractured egg, broken glass. And then, the bad part: the pointy shoes of Dr. Stone, the principle, stopped right in front of me and I could hear her bellow “WHAT A STUPID CHILD!!!!!!! WHO BRINGS A GLASS JAR TO SCHOOL??!!!!" The humiliation was palpable as I peed in my pants, drenching my favorite green velvet leggings (some fancy, velvety version of snow pants?), which then FROZE. A safety-patrol 6th grader escorted me, sobbing, to Miss Meyers, who told me I could go home if I wanted to. Which I did. And luckily my Mom was home when I arrived in my icicle-stiff leggings, frozen tears, traumatized. And I’ve referenced this experience often enough throughout my life; my family knows the level of trauma I’m experiencing if I say “I’ll wet my green leggings!”
Hope your Easter was lovely!!
By the way, just curious, if I had a ring tone on your phone, what would it be? If you think it will help, tell your husband that Scot has the croaking frogs on my phone.
Ruby
2 comments:
“Shattered Glass”
I am not much older than you. I went to a school that had 103 kids from 1st through 8th grades. I remember that number because I must have been "the good boy" not named Allen, and was rewarded the fun chore of posting the attendance in the office. I can still picture hanging that note in the office and ringing the bell for recess to end. Ringing the bell was another rewarded "fun" chore.
When I was in 1st grade my class had 3 rows of desks in it -- 1st graders in one row, 2nd and 3rd graders in the other 2 rows. 1 of my older brothers was in the 3rd grade row. This was Wisconsin in 1960. Everyone brought lunch in a brown paper bag, and of course, would get a milk handed out for lunch. One of the not fun chores the good boys and girls volunteered for was passing out and collecting the "glass jars" the individual milks came in. They looked exactly like the glass gallon jugs of milk that were left on our family doorstep early in the mornings. The ones that had the metal contraption that held the lids on, unless you were not fast enough bringing them in on the cold mornings and the cream started bursting through the top.
103 kids sitting in 103 desks tearing through 103 bags of lunch with 103 glass jars of milk sitting on the front right corner of the desks. You have to know that not a day went by that at least one elbow sent at least one of those glass jars crashing to the floor. I can still hear them shattering now. I can still see the 2 or 3 empty slots in the trays when we gathered them up and put them away at the end of lunch.
"Glass jars at school" indeed!
Oh yeah -- I must have a croaking frog ring tone because she knows I am really a prince.
touché!
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