Naughty Dogs and Dream Jobs

My dog was made to pull a sled through snow. So he has a pretty easy go of it when he runs through fields of hay. Out in the country, people let their dogs run loose. We did that until he caused trouble. There was the fact that he looks like a wolf and scares small children when he tries to hug them. There was also the time he trapped a raccoon on our neighbors porch at 3AM and woke their household with
his proud barks. Then there was the time he killed some of the neighbor's chickens. That time did it. We bought some heavy duty cable, and now Arrow spends his days straining and tugging against the cable. He lives at the edge of his leash.

Then he figured out how to bust out of his collar. He must have been thrilled at his new freedom and ran like the dickens with the wind plastering his ears to his head. He must have sniffed out the water in the nearby creek and sprinted his way through the forest behind our pond. When he infiltrated the horse farm, he must have thought to himself, "What glorious creatures I see! I should play with them!" He crouched, tail wagging, and, when the horse finally noticed my puny dog, Arrow pounced. Horses don't like pouncing dogs.

I got a phone call and arrived at the farm minutes later. I hung my head in apology as I introduced myself to the lady who could have but did not shoot my dog.
"He's such a nice dog," she said, "but he scares my horses and it's dangerous for both of them." I couldn't apologize enough as I took note of her beautiful farm. Three gorgeous horses held me in their lazy eyes as they nibbled on hay in the sun.

"My daughter would love to come see your farm," I told her. "She loves horses."
"I always need help around here. Is she looking for a job?"

And that is how my naughty dog got Emery the job of her dreams. 

Chicken Crazies

It is my personal belief that owning and raising chickens should not turn us into raving lunatics.

We knew when we filled our chicken coop with over twenty living chickens that we were embarking upon a journey that would stretch and challenge us. We knew we might need to do things we had never considered doing before. Things like frequent the feed store or save our table scraps.

I didn't really foresee the necessity of "removing" certain chickens. Apparently they can go nuts. When a chicken goes nuts, it tends to believe it is continually laying an egg. It sits in it's nesting box just waiting for that egg. But the egg never comes.

Unfortunately, when this happens, all the other chickens find it disturbing. They find it so disturbing, in fact, that as a group they all go on egg production strike. No eggs are laid until the sad, crazy chicken is gone.

I refused to be a part of this removal process. My husband undertook the job and removed the chicken. By that, I mean he removed the chicken's head from the rest of it's body.

It is my personal belief that when a man must, for the sake of his family, undertake head removing jobs, he should most definitely not place the headless chicken in the deep freeze for his wife to unsuspectingly find when forging for food.

NOT NICE.

100 Shades of Green

Mike and I looked at each other across the kitchen about 5:00 PM last Saturday night and realized something. We were alone. All the kids had returned from work, showered, shoveled food into their mouths, and, in a flurry of flying outfit changes, left the house to meet up with their friends.

We seized the moment to have an impromptu date. Since the weather was gorgeous, we decided to see the Iowa countryside atop the Harley Davidson. And I have to say that some cosmic event planner deserves a standing ovation because we happened upon Winterset on bike night. We poured into town with hundreds of other motorcycles and parked in the Harley section like that was what we intended all along.

We were told the Northside Diner was the place to eat, but when I entered a very average looking diner, my expectations plummeted. At the first bite of fried cheese curd, the restaurant totally redeemed itself. I ordered an avocado sandwich, and my mouth felt like it had won the lottery.

Then we strolled around Winterset enjoying the biker crowd and the small town feel. I bought a Harley Davidson t-shirt, and then Mike suggested we ride the motorcycle along the country roads before the sun set. I think he feared a shopping spree.

There aren't many things that can compare with the colors that Iowa produces in the summertime. I think I saw a hundred shades of green that night. When I'm surrounded by tree farms, corn fields, ponds, and prairies, I like to breath as much as I can. I breathe deep and often, and it feels as if my lungs are throwing a party.

We returned home to piles of laundry, dirty dishes in the sink, and about a hundred text messages from the kids asking if their friends could spend the night, could we pick them up and supply them with pizza.

And it struck me. Right now is the good 'ol days. 

I Feel Better Now

You know how nice people notice the things that might embarrass someone and then pretend to have that same struggle so the other person feels better? Like when you trip and then someone else mentions how they nearly tripped over the same thing? My husband did that for me.

When I attempted to mow for him as a surprise and, instead, I crashed the mower into the go-kart damaging both, I felt bad. But then Mike totally redeemed me!

"I need the keys to the truck!" Mike hollared at me as I sat in the grass playing with the new kittens whose adorableness I find very distracting.
"What's wrong?" I asked, alarmed at his urgency.
"The mower is in the pond!"
"What? How did that happen?"
"I was mowing on the bank and just got too close I guess. It started to slide, and I couldn't do anything to stop it." He tore off in the truck not even bothering with the driveway, but just driving straight over the grass toward the pond in the backyard.

And it worked. I do feel a lot better about my mowing fiasco now.

Walmart Talk

I am not making this story up. I wish I were.

When my kids prepare to go to camp, a serious Walmart trip is necessary. Which is why I was pushing my loaded cart down the shampoo isle scanning the shelves for small, camp-sized bottles of Prell. I passed a woman in a Walmart uniform as she loaded conditioner onto the shelves, and I steered my cart to the side of the aisle.

"Excuse me," a deep, male voice behind me addressed the conditioner stocker, "where would I find the Preparation H?"
"Triste," she said in her heavily accented voice, "que?"
"Preparation H," he said louder. "Where is it?"
"Um," she hesitated, "I no understand. So sorry. What is it?"
"Preparation H," he enunciated slowly.
"No hablan. I not hear of this thing. What is it to be used for?"
AND THEN HE TOLD HER.
And I was wishing that I also could not understand English.

Seriously, are there cameras around recording this stuff?
BECAUSE THIS IS NOT NORMAL.

Boys About Girls

Vacations are fun and exciting, but what I really love are the conversations that happen after spending countless hours together. One such conversation happened during a game of Battle of the Sexes on our last night in Mexico. The girls drew a card and asked the boys the question written on it: How does a girl stop a run in her pantyhose? The boys discussed this question at length and came up with many possible solutions including: cutting the legs off and having pantyshorts, using a blowtorch to melt the fibers together, and covering the spot with duct tape.

"No," I told them, "the correct answer is to paint clear nail polish around the area."
"What?" Drake yelled. "That is ridiculous!"
I smiled thinking he was surprised that it was a good idea to purposefully put nail polish on clothing.
"That's crazy," he continued. "Who in the world would have such a thing as clear nail polish?"
"Yeah," Josiah agreed. "Whats the purpose of clear nail polish?"
"It would be for people who just like the feeling of paining their nails but don't want them to actually look any different," Drake laughed.
"Yeah," Josiah added, "they would sit and paint their nails and then show all their friends how they looked exactly the same as before they started."
"Look!" Drake mimicked in a girly voice, "I just spent the afternoon painting my nails and you can't even tell because the polish is CLEAR!"
"What a waste!" Josiah agreed. "Nobody would do that!"

And I have to admit, their logic was actually pretty solid.

Nature Channel Living

I'm not a cat person. Never have been. Which is why I cannot explain the collection of kittens I now have.

I had a cat named Fred when I was in college. Even though I had never loved cats, I loved him because he could fly through the air and land in my face as I opened the front door. That's cool. 
After Fred, I said goodbye to cats. I had had one cat, which was much more than I had ever wanted.

Recently, though, some mice came into my house. Cats are better than mice, so we decided to get a kitten. What took me by surprise, though, was how utterly adorable kittens are. They can jump straight into the air from a sitting position all because of a tiny noise. And when they want to be scary, they fluff their tail, stomp their itty bitty paws, and make a hissing noise. They think they are fierce, but they are just really hilarious.

So I took two. And then I took another one. Then another.

Yes, I have four kittens.

Please stop me.

And then my son said something terrifying, "Mom, don't freak out." When you tell a person not to freak out, that pretty much guarantees that they will freak out. And then something astounding happened. Josiah tiptoed to the garage, grabbed a kitten, and put it in my living room. Then, that small, adorable kitty moved faster than my eyes could really keep up with. It did something that looked a lot like ninja wrestling a horrible rodent until that rodent was gone.


In my living room. Where I do my living. Not my naturing.

Then that fluffy kitty began to play with a towel in an adorable fashion that would make you think she had not just swallowed a mouse.

I stood transfixed, torn between total disgust and amazed wonder. I can't decide if she is more disgusting creature or brave champion.

But I have four of them.