Just OC no D...this is NOT a disorder!

Married life is a constant joy for my husband, Opie, I can assure you.  And one reason I know it’s true is because I tell him all the time that I’m the best thing that ever happened to him and he never disagrees.

The other reason is that I am constantly bringing excitement and drama to his otherwise organized life.

Like earlier this week when I called him on the way to work, got his voicemail and yelled “Hey, it’s me…oh, never mind, it’s just crazy!” and hung up.

Now I, of course, realized that this could be construed as a somewhat disconcerting message so as soon as I got to work I sent the following email:

Thought I should explain the weird message…

Short version:

I straightened my hair...we have mice in the crawl space. 

NOTE: Even though we’ve only been married for a year or so, Opie’s had enough experience with my particular brand of crazy that I was pretty confident that this would be explanation enough. However, just in case, I also provided him more detailed information.

 Full version:

I straightened my hair this morning which always makes me nervous because that straightener is about 400 degrees.

And since I’m SUPREMELY self-aware, I know that this is the kind of thing that can lead me to have one of those freak outs that you find so endearing…you know, the one where I get halfway to work and then say “Did I leave the straightener on?”  And then spend the rest of the day worrying that the cat will see it on the counter and knock it to the floor. Thereby starting a fire and burning down the house and killing the pets before we got home.

To avoid that, I made a huge deal about unplugging the straightener so I couldn't possibly forget that it was safe.

 

Which made me run a little late.

 Which further means that I didn't get a chance to go through my daily ritual of making sure the dogs were in the house before I left.

Which finally means that on the way to work, I decided that Bubba was still outside, that it was going to get 85 degrees or more and he would get heat stroke before I got home...you would then never forgive me and since you are stuck with me forever we would be doomed to live in an angry, resentful marriage until the end of our days.

 Obviously, I wanted to avoid this at all costs.

 So, I called you--thinking you could call the neighbors and get them to go check if Bubba was outside and maybe give him some water.

Then, while the phone was ringing, I remembered that when I went outside to my car this morning, I saw a mouse run into the grate in the front of the house.

Ick!

I immediately ran all around the outside of the house like a lunatic to see if there were other mice and to see where the grate led.

But on the bright side, Bubba must have heard me and started barking hysterically from inside...the memory of which told me he was safe.

Crisis averted!

But we have mice in the crawl space and we need to put some traps in there because mice can draw snakes and if snakes get in the garage, I can’t live in our house anymore.

And by we, I--of course--mean YOU because the crawl space is creepy and I don't like killing things...even vermin ridden things.

Love you!

 

I know what you’re all thinking…he’s the luckiest man on earth, right?

 

 

 

Important Information

If you who read my last blog, you already know my stance on dead animals as gifts (definitively AGAINST for those of you who haven’t been following along).

However, the other day Bub may have earned the right to bring me any old dead thing he wants…here’s what happened:

I walked out into the backyard and noticed an odd looking old man sitting on his bike right outside our fence, talking.  For a second I thought he was talking to me.

He wasn’t.

He was responding to the voices in his head…but I didn’t realize that at first. Because I didn’t realize he was crazy at first…Until he came right up the fence and mumbled something about helping me sweep the yard.

And that was crazy since I wasn’t even sweeping the yard—largely because I don’t know what that means—and because he didn’t have a broom or any other sweeping implements.

So,  I was a little weirded out…and when I get weirded out Bubba gets worked up. And when Bubba gets worked up, the Rottweiler half of his heritage kicks into high gear.  Basically, he crossed the yard in 1.2 seconds and charged the guy like he was wearing Milk Bone underwear (Pronoun clarification: the second “he” in that sentence refers to the crazy guy, not Bubba.  Bubba almost never wears underwear).

Peek-A-Boo also sensed danger and ran across the garden to add his voice to the mayhem…then decided that, as a Chihuahua, he could better serve me by wriggling through the tomato plants and eating any of the green tomatoes in his reach.

His theory clearly being that anyone who saw such a bizarre activity—I mean, what kind of dog eats vegetables right off the vine?!!—would immediately realize that they were dealing with a creature heretofore unseen in this world.

But I digress…

“Sir,” I shouted over all the barking, “you should probably step away from the fence.”

Which I thought was a fairly clear instruction…but I don’t speak crazy very well because, apparently, in crazy language my statement translates into “Pay no attention to the hysterically, snarling dog.  He is only joking with you and has no interest in tearing your throat out and would, in fact, love it if you came inside.”

Because he took a step closer to the gate and actually put his hand on the latch.

(Side note: Let me take a second to answer the question that I’m fairly sure my mother and close friends are screaming as they get to this point in the story.  Yes, in retrospect, I do realize that this would have been the ideal time to  go inside my house, lock my door, and call the police if the man actually came into the yard.  But I couldn’t because of the dogs…there was no way I was getting Bubba inside while there was a stranger in the vicinity and getting Peek out of the garden when he is on a tomato eating mission is a HERCULEAN task.  I couldn’t leave them behind…and yes, in answer to the obvious second question, I understand that most people think dogs can fend for themselves…but remember Peek is twelve-year-old Chihuahua with a bad heart.  He couldn’t fend his way out of a wet paper bag.)

So I stayed outside and tried to take charge of the situation.  “Seriously, sir,” I shouted.  “This is NOT a friendly dog.

He paused with his hand on the gate and briefly consulted with his invisible friends.

“This dog will KILL you!”  I warned them all.  And smiled in order to communicate that I was equally as crazy as he was…just crazy enough to CHEERFULLY let Bubba rip his throat out.

He seemed to get that.

Because he shuffled back over to his bike, spent another minute or two in conversation with NO ONE AT ALL, and pedaled away.

It’s interesting to note that when my husband, Opie, got home that night I told him about Bubba’s heroics and he brushed the whole thing off…apparently he recognized my description as a generally harmless neighborhood crazy man who’s lived in the area for years.

Which wasn’t comforting for two reasons:

1.      Because “generally harmless” and “harmless” aren’t the same thing.

2.      The presence of such a person seems like information that should have been shared FIFTEEN MONTHS AGO WHEN I MOVED IN…and now I can’t help but wonder how many other potentially volatile people Opie is aware of and has forgotten to mention.

However, in spite of all that, I’m sleeping securely in the knowledge that generally harmless or even generally harmful crazies are intimidated by an enraged Rottweiler (though, sadly, not by a Chihuahua who really just wants to eat some tomatoes) so, if Bub decides he’d like to bring me a dead mole or two this week, I’m not going to freak out like I did last week.

Or at least, not as much.

Dead Things Make Terrible Gifts

 

Am I alone in thinking that there are lots of things no one ever tells you about pet ownership when you first bring home that adorable ball of fur?  Questions that you never imagine you’d really have to consider?  And the problem grows exponentially with every new animal you bring in the house.

You see, for those of you keeping score, my husband Opie and I have 4 pets…2 dogs, a cat, and a bird. They are:

Peek-A-Boo: My “first born.”  A spoiled rotten, long-haired Chihuahua who is convinced that we got the other animals just for him since he is sure that he’s not a dog at all but a grumpy old man in a fur suit. 

Bubba:  A half-Rottweiler, half-Beagle who is so happy to have been rescued from the shelter that he spends most of his day showering us with attention so we never take him back…which, unfortunately, has manifested lately in him following me around the house and flinging himself on my feet if I stay in one place for longer than ten seconds at a time.

Prince:  A Sphnyx cat—completely hairless—who has been called a “rat” so often that he has decided to become a dog and tries to exhibit dominance over the other dogs by smacking them in the head and running away.

Dolly: The tiny finch who I inherited from my Grandma when she couldn’t take care of her anymore who has probably developed a complex since Prince thinks she looks tastier every time  he sees her.

In any case, last weekend Opie and I went to visit my family in Illinois.   We got our usual pet sitter for the weekend but since Peek-A-Boo has been having health issues, we decided to take him with us—largely to spare the pet sitter from my hourly phone calls and demands for updates.  It seemed like the best plan for everyone concerned…except when we got back to Oklahoma, Prince and Bubba decided that we must have taken Peek showed because we loved him best.  It was imperative, they concluded, for them to step up their game, so to speak, and buy our affections with a series of gifts.

The problem is, these animals don’t have jobs.  Which means they have no money.  Which further means that their supply of appropriate gifts is pretty low.

But ever the resourceful Rottweiler, Bubba searched the yard and decided to give us one of his favorite things:

A dead mole that he thoughtfully eviscerated and then left on the back porch so we could see it first thing.

Note: Dead moles make TERRIBLE gifts.

Not to be outdone, Prince spent the next few hours on his own gift quest…as a strictly inside cat, his options were slightly more limited.   Luckily, a cricket had somehow gotten in the house so he was able to kill it, swat it back and forth with Bubba for a minute or two, then wing it at my feet as hard as he could.

Note: While not quite as bad as dead, disemboweled moles, dead crickets ALSO make TERRIBLE gifts.

As a last resort, Prince and Bubba put their heads together this morning and came up with a whole new plan…as I was getting ready for work, I heard the two of them shuffling around, making weird noises and I thought I should probably go see what was going on…but then Prince dashed up to the bathroom door,  batting something around while Bubba followed along behind him.

Then Prince stopped and shot something at my legs with the accuracy of Wayne Gretsky on a breakaway.

Something that ended up being not a dead cricket but a live cricket roughly the size of a human head.

(Side note here: Please don’t think we live in a huge, cricket-infested hovel; Tulsa is experiencing a cricket population explosion of Biblical proportions).

It hit my legs, bounced onto my foot, and began hopping around the room like a toddler on a sugar high.   I, of course, immediately freaked out and started shouting every curse word I could think of…I couldn’t stomp the stupid thing because I was barefooted and I    At this point, Prince decided that I not only loved the gift but loved it so much that I wanted to play with it immediately so he ran in and began swatting.  Bubba couldn’t decide if we were all having a rousing game of Cricket Catch or if this was just the SCARIEST SITUATION EVER, so he alternated between lunging in the room to play and jumping back barking hysterically…either way he was blocking the door and access to any cricket smashing implements.  Meanwhile, Peek—who can’t climb the stairs on his own anymore—couldn’t figure out what all the ruckus was about so he stood at the bottom of the steps barking at the top of his tiny little lungs.

In short, it was complete mayhem.

And I’m fairly sure it’s mayhem that is a direct result of our leaving the two of them behind this weekend…but the thing is, I’ve traveled with these animals before.  Bubba gets all freaked out in the car, refuses to sit anywhere except the front passenger seat floor, shakes for most of the trip, pants like he’s just run fifteen miles, and basically drools all over my leg.

Prince, on the other hand, cries for the entire trip unless I hold him on my lap…and when I hold him on my lap, he always throws up at least once. Usually twice.

And next month is Thanksgiving…which means another trip to see the family and the kind of debate no one told me about when I first got pets:  Which is worse, a collection of corpses or bodily fluids on your lap?

 

kimbo325 is a teacher and writer trying to focus on the lighter side of life…she doesn’t hate crickets per se but wishes they would stay out of the house as they make the animals even crazier than usual.  To read more notes about her crazy life, follow her on Twitter @kimbo325 or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ItIsInterestingToNote?ref=hl

 

Changing Sides

So, I’ve decided I may have to change my position on gay marriage. Not because of any moral, ethical, or legal dilemmas but because I’ve just come face to face with the horrifying decisions made in a male-dominated household.

Here’s what happened:

I got on Facebook yesterday morning and immediately noticed a picture that my friend Eric’s partner posted—a picture of Eric’s hands all lumpy and one swollen to almost to twice its normal size. Swollen into a great big Donald Duck hand.

I contacted him immediately and demanded to know what had happened. And he told me that while working in the yard he had inadvertently disturbed a yellow jacket nest. The bees, of course, swarmed and attacked—chasing him over 400 yards and stinging him almost a dozen times. “It hurts,” he reported unnecessarily.

I asked what any right-thinking woman would ask, “What did the doctor say?”

Long pause. Then, “Do you think I should go to the doctor?”

I managed not to scream “Yes, you idiot, get to the doctor immediately!” and said, “Well, if your hands are still as swollen as they were in the picture, YES!”

Which is when he allowed that it was difficult to tell how swollen his hand was because his forearm had started to enlarge as well.

It took all my self-restraint not to jump in the car, drive to St. Louis, and put him out of his misery by beating him to death. “Call your doctor!” I insisted.

So he did…and the doctor told him to go to the emergency room. But did he? NO.

“I’m not going to the emergency room for a bee sting,” he said.

And you know what? My husband, Opie, chose that moment to take Eric’s side. “I’ve had bee stings,” he said. “He’ll be fine.”

Which pretty much sums up the difference between men and women. Women look at an injury that can only be described with comparisons to cartoon characters and realize medical attention is a good bet. Men look at the same injury and think “I bet a picture of this would get a lot of hits on Facebook.”

Thus, I have decided I need to take a new stance on gay marriage…I believe in freedom and love and equal rights for all but I also feel an overwhelming need to save Eric from himself.

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One Person's Trash Is Another Person's...Trash.

Yesterday morning Opie and I decided we needed a little quality time away from the mongrels and we thought it might be fun to go out and take a look at garage sales.

Well, to be perfectly honest, one of us thought this would be fun. The other one thought “we have enough crap of our own in the house; there’s no need to go looking through other people’s crap.” This person thought our time would be better spent sitting on the back porch imbibing adult beverages and waiting for the Stanley Cup playoffs to commence. But since this was SEVEN-THIRTY IN THE MORNING, garage sales were chosen as the more sensible option.

It is interesting to note that this nameless one was the first one to actually make a purchase saying “I’ve been looking for this book forever!”

The observation that over half of our “crap” is our book collection was left unremarked upon.

In any case, it is also interesting to note that garage sales in small town Oklahoma are very different from garage sales in St Louis…and one of the biggest differences, believe it or not, is advertising. When you are having a garage sale in St Louis, you go to the busiest intersection in your neighborhood, slap up a few signs and call it a day. When you are having a garage sale in a town the size of ours, you go to the busiest intersections IN TOWN, slap up a few signs, give directions with landmarks instead of addresses, and call that a day.

Which means if you live next to one of the busiest intersections and you walk up to read the garage sale signs—intending to get your exercise and walk to these alleged sales—you may well discover that some of the sales are 15 or 20 miles away.

This can, of course, cause some people to reiterate a preference for adult beverages and hockey but if it’s only SEVEN-FORTY-FIVE, you go back home, get the car and press on to the garage sales.

I don’t know if my expectations were too high or if it’s too early in the “garage sale season” but the sales themselves were, well, a little weird. Basically, they can be filed into one of the two following categories:

Sale Category 1: Realize that you have 10 or 12 things you want to get rid of, throw up ten or twelve signs (especially a nice big one at the busiest intersection in town), overprice everything and call that a sale.

At the first of this type of sale, the woman literally had 10 things in her garage each of them with its own separate tags like “Fancy, fancy—only worn a few times! $25.00.” Even odder was the fact that she also kept promising “I had lots of stuff last time” like we really cared about her sale last year. But, far strangest of all, I’m not convinced she wasn’t just having the sale to meet new people because when I commented how pretty the lilies were in her front yard (just making pleasant conversation!) she started saying “That’s nothing! You should see the ones in the side yard…and the back!” And then walked out of her so-called sale like she was going to give us a tour.

We were halfway to the car before she knew what hit her

Sale category 2: Spend 15 or 20 years stuffing every strange bit of crap you can put your hands on in your garage, wait until there is an avalanche of the stuff spilling out into the yard, then throw up ten or twelve signs (especially a nice big one at the busiest intersection in town), put price tags on NOTHING and call that a sale.

The worst of these was, according to the sign, “just past the armory.” What the sign should have said was “Go to the armory, follow the arrow signs for five more miles, cross the 1 lane country bridge while praying out loud, pass one sign that says (I swear these are true!) MISSING TEETH REPLACED HERE and another that says NO DEAD ANIMALS (I don’t even want to imagine the scenario that could cause me to put up that sign), wait until you are right smack in the middle of Deliverance country, follow the sounds of dueling banjos and roosters until you see a strange old woman wandering around dusting things that haven’t seen the light of day for a good ten years.”

I also think that, instead of saying “Big Sale,” the sign should have said “Big Collection of Stuff Goodwill Wouldn’t Take” Seriously, you wouldn’t believe what these people were attempting to pass off as merchandise. I mean, I could deal with the chipped plates. I could also handle the broken Barbies—although they were a little creepy. But then there were things like this white eyelet bedspread that had BURN MARKS all over it…like it had been pulled from a fire. Which means that, at one point, they loved this bedspread enough to keep it even after it had been irreparably BURNT but now were comfortable throwing it on a table with a one-handed clock and seeing what kind of offers they could get for it.

I’m not going to lie, Opie and I both got an attack of the giggles and had to run from that place like we’d been shot from a gun.

But we are safely home and it is now my mission in life to see if I can put together a worse sale. So far I’ve collected a half-chewed rawhide bone, a t-shirt I use as a dustrag, an African violet the cat killed by peeing on it, and the cotton balls I took my make up off with last night.

I smell a million dollar business.
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Creative License

I finally have an Oklahoma driver’s license!! I got it about 2 weeks ago with just a few hiccups:

1. Like the fact that as I was, once again, waiting in the lobby of the Department of Public Safety this seemingly normal guy came over, sat down next to me, said hello and then carefully explained that everything is unhealthy these days…in fact, the only metal that is really good for you is BRASS but your body can’t digest it.

I have to be honest, it was a little difficult to toss back that particular conversational ball.

2. Or the fact that the state of Oklahoma now requires a digital scan of the fingerprints of both index fingers before allowing you to get your release from the Department of Public Safety…which doesn’t seem like a challenge except for the fact that I am now wearing my fingernails at a length best described as “trailer-trash hoosier” and the machine kept misreading. 
 

3. Or the fact that, although as a new resident you have to go to the Department of Public Safety with 64 different forms of ID to get the release to get your license, you can’t actually acquire your license at the aforementioned department. You have to go to a “tag agency” to get that. And, when I looked at the woman in confusion, she assured me “Don’t worry, honey, you can just run down to the East Side to get what you need.”
 

At which point, because I’m still thinking like a St. Louisan, I’m sure I changed from confused to horrified because the words “East Side” conjures up images of strippers, drug deals, and murder. And I don't need any of that.
 

But when I did brave the short journey down to the East Side Tag Office, it was noticeably lacking in strippers, drug dealers, or murderers…and I did get my license there after another five minute struggle with my ridiculous nails and the fingerprint machine.

And if you think this is the end of the adventures, keep in mind that Opie and I are, once again, bringing all the animals home with us…I'm no psychic but I sense drama in our future.

Which is a rough segue to my final note: if you didn’t get a Christmas card from Opie and I this year, do not feel slighted and furiously cross us off your list. NO ONE got a Christmas card from us this year. I mean, for the love of heaven, it took me FIVE MONTHS to get basic driving privileges and that’s something I need every day. Christmas comes once a year and it kind of snuck up on us…we still have 2 presents to buy…and by we I, of course, mean ME….we’ll do better next year…

More Life In Oklahoma

So I’ve been in Oklahoma for another month and, as you all probably suspected, the adventures continue!

My latest adventure?

My incredibly futile attempt to get my Oklahoma driver’s license.

You would think this would be a relatively simple task…I mean, when I moved to Missouri from Illinois, it was a huge pain in the butt…but that was only because I had foolishly let my Illinois license expire and therefore had to take the written test which I assumed would be easy and instead had questions like “When driving at night in the fog, for how many feet should your lights be visible? 300, 350, or 400?”

Let me just close the curtain on that particular disaster and assure you that I learned my lesson. Not only did I go to the Oklahoma Tag Office before my Missouri license will expire, I also actually got online, checked the website and carefully assembled all the documentation I needed.

And I was so incredibly pleased with myself that the ridiculous line at the Tag Office didn’t even phase me. I smirked at the different people getting turned away for lack of proper paperwork and lost myself in near hysterical self-congratulation.

Until, of course, it was actually my turn.

I walked confidently up to the gum-chomping, vacant-eyed, twenty-year-old clerk, handed over all my stuff and she, if possible, got even MORE vacant. “You can’t do that here.” She said.

And I sad “Do what?” meaning ‘What is it that I can’t do here?’

Unfortunately, this is Oklahoma and she thought I meant “Excuse me, I didn’t hear you.” So she said “YOU CAN’T DO THAT HERE.” Louder.

Which I, of course, took as a challenge to see who could actually be the loudest. “WHAT CAN’T I DO HERE?” I shouted back.

“Trade in an out of state license. You have to go to the Department of Public Safety to do that. To, you know, get a copy of your driving record and stuff.

“Wow,” I said. “That would have been really helpful information to have on the website.”

Unfortunately, sarcasm is clearly NOT covered in the Oklahoma Tag Office training so, she looked at me terribly confused and, of course, said “Do what?”

And I punched her in the face.

Ok, not really.

In the fantasy I was imagining in my head, sure, but in real life I just heaved a huge sigh and said “Never mind. Can you tell me where the Department of Public Safety is?”

“Oh, sure!” She said, perking up for the first time. “It’s in the Old Eastland Mall.”

And when I said “I don’t know where that is.” She said “Do what?”

And that's when I punched her in the face.

Ok, fantasy again…instead, I summoned up my best “You’re kind of an idiot but I’m a teacher at heart so I will put up with you” voice and explained that the whole reason that I needed to go to the Department of Public Safety was because I’M NOT FROM HERE so directions with landmarks—particularly OLD landmarks aren’t terribly helpful.

It only took about 5 more minutes to make her understand and get somewhat coherent directions.

And her directions were good but it would have been better if she had told me to drive north until I was afraid for my life, turn right at Murderville, pass the abandoned neighborhood in which EVERY window was boarded over, and turn left into the mall. Then drive around the entire mall lot twice until I knew for sure that the Department of Public Safety is the only office with no sign on the outside of the building…and I was there!

And you would think that the Department of Public Safety would inspire people to feel safe but the thing is, they themselves are clearly so creeped out by the environment in which they are located that you have to take a number off the door and they won’t even let you in the office until it’s called. Instead you have to wander around the lower lobby of the old Eastland Mall, dodging water from the leaking roof and making small talk with gang members.

Nice.

So there I was, with the 9 and 1 already dialed on my phone, primed to press that final 1, when I finally get called inside.

I take in my old license, my wedding license, my new social security card, and a postcard that proves my residency to the window, hand it over and the guy says “You also need your birth certificate or passport to trade in an out of state license.”

Newsflash, this is more information that would have been helpful ON THE FREAKING WEBSITE!!!!

Which I was more than happy to point out to this guy but, as we have already seen, my sarcasm is not universally appreciated.

“I’m not in charge of the website,” the guy said.

“Clearly, no one is.” I agreed.

Oddly, this didn’t endear me to him…nor did my sweet inquiry that perhaps he was just making this up to irritate me , like some bizarre newbie to Oklahoma hazing ritual.

He wasn’t.

So I immediately stormed out of the office, grabbed the first gang member I could find, pointed out the Oklahoma official and said “You wouldn’t believe what THAT GUY just said about you…and your mom.”

Ok, kidding again..because if anyone is going to lose it and attack an Oklahoma Department of Public Safety employee, that person is going to be me….possibly this week when I attempt once again to get my license. Stay tuned for a news report featuring me and the Department of Public Safety, liberally sprinkled with the phrase “Lunatic rampage!”


Check out the other Theme Thursday rerun posts by clicking the link below:
 

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