"I Touch Your Boobies, I Love You"

I hear this statement multiple times throughout the day.  I am constantly being groped from behind, below and sometimes a full on frontal assault.  I can't escape and I feel like an object.  I have requested on numerous occasions a little privacy, but it seems to go over his head.  I even grope his boobies, but all he does is laugh.  I can't even sleep topless anymore because I might wake to find him with his hands on my boobs.  It is kind of sweet, but enough is enough.  For the love of Pete (whoever that is) he is three years old now and we stopped nursing a year ago.  Ethan, son, it is time to move on to some of those plastic toys you have and leave my boobies alone.

Garage Sale Secrets

It has taken many years to figure this out, although in my 22 plus years of being a real grown up I have had very few garage or yard sales, so it has taken awhile to learn you must price things cheap – and I mean like bubble gum machine candy cheap. I usually just give things to Goodwill by boxing it up and putting it on the curb. My feelings were I would rather give it away than sell it for next to nothing – somewhat of a cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face mentality.

We just had the most successful garage sale ever and I think we have had four in the last four years. Of course it helped we had numerous electronic items such as laptops, cell phones, dvd player, vhs player, etc… and I sold a firearm for dirt cheap (didn’t really know what it was worth until I sold it). The bigger items aside we sold all the other stuff for anywhere from fifty cents to three dollars. We started out with about five boxes of stuff and were left with two small boxes for Goodwill.

I don’t think I will be a garage sale convert having them every month, but making a hundred bucks off a bunch of useless stuff once a year is a hundred bucks in my pocket and probably much better payoff than writing off donations in my taxes.

Jack meets the “Cat-thing” aka Skunk

Believe it or not my beloved Boxer Jack Brody got sprayed by a skunk in our very own residential backyard. First it was fish in the grass and now a skunk – what next? Mountain Lions? Elephants and bears?

First of all to hear my husband tell this story is hilarious. He lets Jack out at about 1130 for his last-pee-of-the-night and he says Jack makes a bee line for the back wall west of our house (by the way we have an incredibly huge yard – our lot is ¼ acre). He chuckles to himself (my husband, not the dog) because he thinks Jack is chasing a lizard, but he has second thoughts and decides to walk out in the yard to investigate. My husband spots the “cat-thing”, known to us native Americans as a S-K-U-N-K, and yells for Jack to come to him, but it’s too late. Jack comes running to my husband frothing at the mouth. At this point my husband believes Jack is dying and comes to get me (I am asleep at this time) yelling “Jack just got sprayed by the cat-thing and is foaming in his mouth you better come out here!” Of course I am wondering after being awoken from a deep sleep what the heck is a cat-thing? Once I learned he had been sprayed by a skunk we broke out the tomato sauce and cleaned Jack up the best we could. By the time we were done we smelled like skunk and so did our house.

The next morning the skunk smell was still ever present on our hands, on Jack and in our home so I sped off to the grocery store for eight large cans of tomato juice. Jack was given a fifteen minute bath in tomato juice turning his pretty white spots pink, but it worked. The smell was barely perceptible. If there is a moral to this story it would be don’t go in your backyard without a visual inspection for any wild animals or fish first.

Sick Mom Walking

I have been sick three times since fourth of July and each time my illness has lasted at least two weeks. First it was a very bad puking thing, then a respiratory thing with a two week wellness break and now here I am again with another respiratory thing. I am sick of being sick. Frankly, I believe these illnesses are related to the little guy’s school days – of course, he gets sick first then me. I think it is time to quarantine him from any and all other children. Okay thats a little extreme.

Right now (yes, at this very moment) I am slightly tachycardiac with lightheadedness thanks to Mucinex and it is kind of freaking me out. When am I going to learn all medications have side effects and perhaps the benefits are not worth the side business?  Although when one is ailing there is nothing like symptom relief.  It sure seems as the years tick by I get sick more frequently.  But it could be that now I have a little guy who comes in contact with lots of sick little people  who have germs.  Or Am I just on the downside of youth and from here on out it is respiratory illness and Depends?  Well if it is..... then getting old sucks.

Fish Tale Mystery Solved

Apparently hundreds of fish were killed in recent weeks when the neighborhood lake temperature rose to above 90°. According to the experts the ammonia level reached toxic limits with the high outside temperatures over 115 degrees. All the dead fish floated to the edge of the lake where they were washed ashore or “fished” out of the lake by people or animals. So it appears the most likely answer for the fish in our backyard is a cat picked it up (with its hands of course) and carried into said yard disproving my theory the fish walked there.