Hops in the Right Direction: Sometimes, You Gotta Play Mama Bear

I've gotten a few snide comments about my dog.  Usually it happens when I'm on a long walk or am out for the day with Prada, and I've got her in the belly bag.  Because you know, purse-dog stereotypes blah blah blah.  I've snarked back a time or two--in my polite way, of course.  It's amazing how far a, "yeah, it's great that there are more options for handicapped dogs these days, isn't it?" will go.  (Cue the stuttering and agreeing.  Because while plenty of people are willing to make fun of purse-dogs, not too many are willing to be an asshole about handicapped ones.  Kind of like people who are really nice--except to waiters.)  More often, I just grin at them to let them know I've heard and move on.

I don't think I should tell someone anything about their dog that I wouldn't say about their child.  Or, more universally, if you don't want to feel like an asshole, don't be an asshole.  Asshole.

Because sometimes, you've just got to play mama bear.

Naturally, assholes aren't limited to snarking on dogs with altered mobility.  Purse dogs, small dogs, dogs they've decided are a mean breed or just ugly, whatever.

Which leads me to an incident my dad described to me.  My folks were recently at a national invitational for rally obedience.  (Yeah, they got invited to nationals their first year doing it.  Dad and Linka took 3rd place in Rally 2, and tied for 6th in Rally 3, the hardest level.  Against the best dogs in the country.  Not too shabby, right?)  At the same event was a conformation show--the standard kind you see on Thanksgiving, for pure-breds only. 

Now, Linka is a pure-bred miniature schnauzer, but she has a small white line on her chest that disqualifies her from participating in conformation.  So Dad has no real reason to groom her within the parameters of conformation--Linka's got a cut on a variation of the standard, which is more suited to her active lifestyle/running around in the woods all the time.  Okay, okay, I'm done with the exposition.  Here's the actual story:

My mom was holding Linka during a break between rallies.  She wandered over to the conformation show to admire the dogs.  A woman with another schnauzer came up to my mom and asked, "What are you doing here?  You're obviously not here for conformation."

"No," Mama Bear said.  "We're not here for the frou-frou dog show--we're in the competition for smart dogs."

My Job Here is Done

The Squeeze and I have been dating for a while now, going on four years, I guess.  And that's just this time!  Over the years, I've told him repeatedly that I don't cook, I don't like to cook, I can't cook.

Confession:  I can cook just fine.  I just didn't want him--or anyone--expecting me to cook all the time.  Or ever, really.  Sometimes (usually) I'm cool with having a bowl of cereal and letting anyone else fend for themselves.

But, now that I'm living so far from my parents that I can't visit them regularly just for comfort food, I've been cooking a bit more regularly.  I've cooked like, three times in the last two weeks, and he hasn't tried a single bite. 

First, it was bean soup, and I thought, okay, maybe he doesn't like bean soup.  Then it was home-made mini pizzas, which I was sure would be a hit.  They were pretty darn tasty.  Nope.  But then, they did have whole-wheat crusts, so maybe that scared him away.  Spaghetti.  Everybody likes spaghetti, right?  I even cooked meat for it.  (I'm not a vegetarian, meat is just expensive and takes a whole 'nother step to prepare and one more dish to wash.)  So the spaghetti was, you know, manly.

It was also a no-go.

Want to know what I think?  Well, you're here, so I'm going to take that as a yes.

I think I did my job too well.  I have convinced him that I don't cook, I don't like to cook, I can't cook.

The Squeeze is absolutely terrified of eating anything I've had a hand in preparing.  And he really doesn't even have any reason, if you overlook the fact that that's what I've told him a whole bunch of times, and that one time I made pancakes and he puked for hours.

That could have just been a bug, you know.


(True:  My specialties are Kraft Mac'n'Cheese and frozen pizza.  I should totally have a contract with Food Network.  (That's a thing, right?  Food Network?))

Coco isn't a picky eater.

Prepare to be Amazed

Let me start this post with a pre-emptive apology.  I was going to have this really clever post with entertaining photos about my weekend in Wisconsin, but The Squeeze forgot those photos are on his phone.  So, instead, I've come up with some poems you won't want to share with your children.

Hickory dickory dock,
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck two,
The mouse went poo,
And I said, "Eww,
I'm leaving the cleanup all for you."

The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout.
Down came the rain and washed the spider out.
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain,
So I ran the spider over with my truck.

There was a crooked man, who walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked house,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.
And so he wrote a country song, and sang it all about.
And morons loved it everywhere, and cheered it with a shout.
He bought some fancy clothes, you can see in U.S. Weekly,
But his ex-girlfriends say, he's really bad in bed.

Jack and Jill went up a hill,
To fetch a pail of water.
Which was a lot more work than it needed to be, since everyone knows the water table doesn't suddenly rise just because you've climbed a stupid hill, so really they had that whole "crown" tragedy coming.

This is the McMansion the Jack built.
This is the bank that foreclosed on the McMansion that Jack built.
This is the box behind the dumpster next to the bank that foreclosed on the McMansion that Jack built.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Ate omelets.

Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater
Had a wife and couldn't keep her.
Because she wanted a damn apple pie for once, asshole.

This photo is extra-large to make up for the fact that I didn't have any others to post.

Dora would like to point out that she has no say in what I post, and she's not nearly as messed up in the head as I am.

The Squeeze is Getting a Bipedian Dictionary for Christmas

In a pasty shop in Edinburgh, I overheard the man in front of me place an order for "a plain one, and an onion one, also."  It sounded like "Ah 'na plen 'un en an unun 'un ow."  No joke.  The tour guide with me had to translate.  Apparently, that was, in fact, English.

I also speak English (along with a smattering of Frisian curses).  And apparently, I also occasionally need a translator.  Who knew a Midwestern accent could be so incomprehensible?

For example:  On the way home from dinner one evening, The Squeeze asked me if I'd liked my meal.

"Yeah," I said.  Except, in Wisconsin, it is perfectly acceptable to turn the "y" into its own syllable by adding a schwa in front.  One can also end the word with a glottal stop, like the one in between syllables in the negative "nuh-uh."  This lead to my "yeah," sounding like "a-yugh."

The Squeeze heard "yuck." 

Bit of difference, there.

Last night, I mentioned that I was tired.  I do not pronounce this as "tye-erd," but rather as "tahyrd."  The long "e" sound is only touched on at the end, and very briefly.  So briefly, in fact, that it can be missed all together.

The Squeeze heard "tard," and proceeded to spell it out in what he thought was an approximation of my accent. 

"Tee Oooh Arrrrh Dee."

He says this was meant to spell "tarred," and his intention was not to call me a turd.

Well, we'll just see what ends up under the tree, won't we?



My thoughts exactly, Rusty.

(True:  Even something grammatically incorrect can be linguistically correct, as long as it is understandable.  Apparently, I can write but not speak.  Either way, sentences should not be minivans.)

Rusty agrees: There is nothing wrong with short but sweet--just like him.  (Also, can I just say how impressed I am at his ability to balance on two legs and lift the third that high?)