“Gladly”, the cross-eyed bear

We won’t even talk about what the vet ACTUALLY said about the quick anal-gland surgery the Peach needed, let’s just keep it simple and say that I was honestly HOPING I could throw $500.00, unexpectedly, somewhere this week and it may as well have been at our Vet-Clinic. My value-to-add: between you & me, let’s just make sure we all pay attention when those doggies scoot from room to room on their butts and spend an entire night at the end of our beds licking their butts because the result could be a trip for the family to a water-park, a few REALLY good dinners out, a much desired shopping spree, approximately 3 visits to my salon for cut and color, etc,…instead of the vet bill.

But, don’t get me wrong; I’d pick a hefty vet bill over any one of these cash-gulping recreational alternatives, any day.

So, Skye “moved home”, officially, yesterday – for the summer. What this means is that his STUFF that lived down the street - all by itself in the apartment he paid for, while he crashed with us continuously for the last nine months - is in my car. I am REALLY hopeful that this is a temporary situation before it all gets carried to our basement, although this verbal equation did trickle into the constant banter-in-my-head: Apartment + CAR = aCARtment. I could totally see us coining the phrase and christening the lifestyle, couldn’t you? Since we are in the midst of needing to downsize and likely to be moving into an apartment in August, what I seriously do not want right now is some Mini-Van load of crap getting fanny-sprawl all over my house but I AM NOT MEDICATED FOR NOTHING! Nope, I dutifully take my anxiety medication so that I will embrace my children and the ebb & flow of their needs (and I believe this includes tolerating the ebb & flow of their “STUFF”, as irritating as this is for me as I fantasize about a perfectly clean, orderly house WITHOUT: crumbs on the couch, cigarette butts on my front walk, dried up pens with no tops, broken pencils with teeth marks on them, entire pads of paper with only one tiny mark on every page, unmade beds, fingerprint smears on every door-jam, window, glass bookcase, etc., heavy-swollen back packs abandoned by the front door to trip over, thousands of books out of bookshelves, mud-flecked shoes, dirty sweat-shirts and socks that lost interest on their way to the laundry-chute and have decided to rest-up for the next outing instead, empty cupboards & fridge but massive amounts of half-tasted-but-rejected nibbles in the garbage so that we can KEEP BUYING MORE STUFF TO EAT…etc).

Scratch that, there’s no EBB in my house…just a super-abundance of FLOW…

After your “Shrewly Bee” letter, I was reminded of so many more of those same word-things – is there an actual name for these or are they simply a “COMMON HUMAN EXPERIENCE INVOLVING THE PHONETIC/SPELLED MISUNDERSTANDING OF WORDS”? We all have our own that we’ve come across and they always make me laugh. Here are a few that I recalled:
• My sister’s friend who repeatedly sang in her church choir: “Gladly, the cross-eyed bear” (Gladly, the CROSS I’d bear)
• Cousin Liam was listening to his Grandmother tell him about God & Jesus - an earnest & informative discussion - when he said: “…wait a minute, Grandma’, are we talkin’ about CHUCK-e-JESUS??”
• My sister’s friend who recited: “The Lord is my Shepherd – he knows what I want” (The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want)
• Or mine: “My Country TIZZA-VEE, sweetlan dove lih birdie”

TGIF!! (how can I say that, with no job?)

(Answer: because I don’t have to have my daily “I-feel-like-a-shitty-mother" panic-attack trying to come up with a lunch to send to school with Atticus that revolves around a staple of chocolate things & Lucky Charms-style shaped and brightly colored marshmallow pieces).

Ruby