Follow Up

So, this morning, in preparation for the much anticipated beginning of the fencing in process, I headed out to the backyard to finish (yep. didn't get it all done in one shot) the poop pick up. As I launched into my task with a goal of completion in mind, ever so confidently, I learned a few lessons I'd like to share with you.

Lesson 1. Its all about getting in "The Zone". Head down, focus on the pile you are currently chiseling out of the frozen ground. When your eyes trail from the current pile to one of the many, many, *sigh* many remaining piles you've yet to tackle, overwhelmed is the last of what you'll feel. You must develop a poop pickup tunnel vision. I'm certain Darwin mentioned this somewhere.

Lesson 2. You don't need help. I'll clarify. You don't need help in the way of a 1 year old yellow lab named Murphy. Here's why. To get the frozen poop dislodged from the frozen ground, you'll need to wedge the scooper under the tip of the frozen poop pile. Next, elevate the scooper and using your worst judgement ever, kick the scooper with your boot. What this will do is loosen the frozen pile from the ground keeping some of it attached by mere strands of grass while simultaneously sending delicious frozen poop nuggets straight toward your waiting assailant. He will love this part, you won't. Now, using the same boot you kicked the scooper with and also managed to find the only fresh pile of poop in the yard with nudge your helper firmly enough to smear fresh poop into his soft, yellow fur but gently enough to not move him at all. This is an effort to move him away from the poop nugget on the ground; forget the one in his mouth. Lost cause. No kisses. You'll notice we've achieved nothing but the poop smear. Lets move on.

Lesson 3. We've mastered the poop smear, now lets entertain the neighbors. The next thing we'll learn is how to send the frozen poop snack flying AWAY from your helper. First, you'll need to make certain the tie down reaches just far enough that in an effort to get to the frozen turd your helper will take out your knees from behind. Where you knew he was. But didn't. The important thing to focus on here is that you bend your ankles at the right angle such that the poop that spills out of the scooper spills into your wide open, untied boots. Don't worry. This is much easier than it sounds. You're going to feel like screaming. You are also going to feel like reaching down with your frozen, ungloved hand and giving the nylon coated steel tie down cable a hearty yank. But, before you do that try to remember that the nylon broke in the freezing cold and now there's a jagged edge right where you're grabbing. And what is that on the, oh. poop. its poop. There's poop on jagged edge you've now driven into the palm of your hand. This is a good time to set the scooper down like you're in control. Don't worry, the poop won't spill. Its mostly in your boots, remember? You're going to want to tend to the searing, now actively infected wound on your hand. But, you aren't going inside without your helper and you need to get that poop in his fur cleaned up. Remember the nudge? Now that you've set the scooper down and are trudging toward the house, you've given the clear universal sign that its time to play. Oh! Its a race! He's going to beat you to the door! Bad news, you lost the race. Good news, he wiped most of the poop from his fur onto your pants! One step done. And now, OH! ITS A GAME! He's got your coat! He's got your coat! He's got your coat in his poop mouth! Your helper is now ready for a nap and you? Well, thank God for wine.

Lesson 4. Sometimes poop pickup tunnel vision does jack shit.

Ava's First Communion

This Saturday, Ava will receive her first holy communion. This is a big deal in our family; we're Catholic. But, we also love puppies and Gene Wilder movies so don't go getting all judgey. My dad actually converted to Catholicism just recently, but he has always a been a fervent supporter in the Sunday morning ritual of 'waking' the 'sleeping' children who on this one day of the week when sleeping in and being seen as resting so beautifully with so much mercy would be an absolute Godsend except that of course you can't physically oversleep on a church day. You can't. Like you will not fall asleep as you lay in your bed staring at the clock knowing you are the only one in this hemisphere still awake even though if you don't fall asleep soon you're going to fall asleep in chemistry, miss the one vital key to understanding anything ever and drooling on your desk in front of cute, smart boys. Life is so unfair. Anyhow, we would be rousted from the beds we truly didn't want to be in anymore but you don't ever show your cards that soon. You never know when your parents might be hit by an errant puff of euphoria and nostalgia and maybe they'll want you to spend your Sunday morning in a sunny spot eating toast instead of standing, sitting, standing, kneeling, sitting, standing, singing, kneeling, audibly digesting your own empty, empty stomach, and then finally kneeling on a small, pointy rock. But, no. Here you are squished into the car on the way to church. Mom and dad are all cologne and perfume and breath mints in the front seat while in the back seat it's all pissy and tired, someone else's socks, not a damn thing to eat, and then out of nowhere, "HOLY JES**!! Someone is spraying perfume in my eyes!!! Why would you DO" "get out of the car! We're late!" "But my eyes!" "Stop yelling! We're late! We're almost inside, lower your voice!" And when it seemed it couldn't get any worse, dad would whisper in your ear as you slid into your seat "And when we get home, you need to clean the litter box. There was cat crap in the laundry this morning! (Pause) Where'd you find that shirt?" And then the priest starts in, "Good morning my friends. (I'm already losing consciousness) On this beautiful, faithful morning, we find ourselves giving of our time freely to The Lord. Today's mass is the longest in our season as we have much to discuss..." So, I was saying, we're Catholic. First communion is a big deal. To this point in our family, the girls have all worn the same traditional dress starting with Grandma Shirley. It is beautiful and delicate and I am terrified to put it on Ava. Probably just for pictures. We purchased a new first communion dress for Ava because the traditional one is so fragile. I would like to have photos of her in it. Tragically, the photos of me in this dress were lost due to a really bad perm and two front teeth that refused to stop growing. My train of thought may be derailing. Last night, I was telling Jeff about my first communion party. My grandpa and grandma, uncles and aunts, cousins a plenty; it was great. And I began to realize how things change over time. Uncle Tom won't be there force feeding me Teddy Grahams. We won't have a solid 45% of the state's cowboy boots and belt buckles on site. Probably no garbage can lid shields and sticks and HUGE VHS recorders. What will there be? There will be Georgetown Cupcakes. Lots of them. These are serious cupcakes. In flavors like salted caramel and Irish cream. And there will be family. Not all of us, but enough of us to cause some sort of issue for someone unrelated to our group. It's what we do. So, on Saturday Ava will wear her new dress and the traditional one, she will receive her first communion, we will eat cupcakes, and so help me God, no one will get perfume in their eyes. Should be a pretty nice day.

Spring

Its finally the time of year when everyone starts quoting poets and musicians recounting how they've survived the dark times and now realize that it is the season of rebirth. Baby bunnies, chicks, pregnant moms at church, etc. I'm going somewhere kind of different so...hang on. Spring, to me, is not about the rebirth of almost everything. It is about the sudden, unavoidable realization that Jeff and I are not nearly as great at rounding up the winter turds in the back yard as we thought. I just spent an hour of quality time with the poop scooper and a 15 gallon pail. The sun felt warm, the outside noises weren't the screaming of the wind across frozen chunks of land meant only for slipping on and awkwardly making your way across. But the poop. Oh the poop. We try to stay ahead of it but for right now and not much longer we are not only combating the build up of our own dogs' collective deposits, we are also wealthy in that of our neighborhood's dogs' poop. Not cool. We NEVER, and I do mean NEVER, let our dogs out of our yard to potty. We go on walks, we take bags for cleaning up after them. They need to go out, we put them on the tie down. But in our self-proclaimed dog friendly neighborhood, we are the minority and it makes me CRAZY. When I'm cleaning up dog poop that there is no physically possible way it was our dogs I get a little bit cranky. I know exactly which dogs are doing it too. It isn't worth going to the neighbors and saying, "Hey. I know we're all friends here but when your dog craps in my yard it makes me feel unstable" and I care too much about my own dogs' safety to accidentally intentionally let them wander directedly into the neighbor's yard for a good ol' poo full of legos and stuffed animal filling. But, I just really need to not know that the neighbors share table food with their dogs, that their dogs have a penchant for eating brightly colored something or other, and that their dogs have too little time to stop and poop so they must poop while walking thereby spreading out their gift to the maximum. Very, very, extremely soon our yard will be fenced. That makes me happy in the dark places of my soul. I'm mildly interested to know how the neighborhood dogs will survive without their (clearly) top choice dumping ground. I imagine the unfenced front yard will be extraordinary this time next year. But I will deal with it as I point and laugh from our fenced back yard. As I think about this all, I realize things about myself. First, I never thought there would be an internally developed dog poop ranking system by which I would find myself living. Example: I would rather use the corner of the poop spade to scrape the soft, water-logged poop out of the grass and onto my scooper than to fish the floaters out of the thawed pockets of ice where the sun hasn't yet melted the ice completely. I would MUCH rather, to an almost dinner table conversation worthy level, scoop hot, fly-covered summer poop than anything produced in the winter or spring. Also, scooping poop midwinter is NOT easy. Even if the snow is soft. You either end up with half your poop slurry being water depending on temperature or you have to chisel the poop out of the ice and you can absolutely expect to get a sudden sensation of something small and cold and mysterious right next to your mouth in the process. Was it a big snowflake? Could have been. But, you know that isn't what you're going to settle on. Nope. It was a bit of chiseled poop ice that flew up and landed right by your pie hole. You can be certain. And there is no way there was only one single tiny piece that came careening through the air toward your face. Is there something on my tongue? Was it there before? How come when I scream I smell dog poop? This is all possible. Getting back to spring, birds are chirping and guys in jacked up trucks with no money to fix the muffler AND feed their family (I tell myself) are frequenting the streets. They have their windows down and no matter what kind of mind-expanding music I'm certain they're listening to, it all gets washed out by other noise which leaves them sounding like a poorly maintained ice cream truck to me. And I would very much like to tell them that. I would also like to give them a bullet point list of the keen and correct observations my 5 and 7 year olds have made while sitting next to them in traffic briefly. But not right now because clearly by the way they just peeled out they're late for their Mensa meeting. So, like I was saying, YAY SPRING!!