Runaway

It is still cold. In fact, it is colder today than it was on Friday. Dr. K has left to go buy a space heater, which I imagine will not be used to heat the space behind my desk. Whatever.

Very busy weekend. Lots of mancub madness. Yesterday I ran away from home. Well, not really. T-Bone took the mancub out for some man-time and I used the opportunity to run over to my mom's house where Gypsy and I took a breather from the non-stop commotion caused by constantly having to say, "Stop jumping up and down - people live beneath us. Stop bouncing the ball on the television. Stop throwing the ball as hard as you can against the floor. Stop pulling the dog's legs. Stop chasing the dog. Stop jumping on the couch. Stop jumping on the bed. Stop trying to jump off the balcony. Stop peeing in the bath water. Stop drinking the bath water. Lift the toilet seat. Put the toilet seat down. Wipe. Flush. Wash your hands. (pause for five minutes of running water) Stop washing your hands. It's time to eat, let's sit down. Sit. SIT!"

. . . and on and on and on. I woke up yesterday with a sore throat and I thought I might be getting sick but it was probably just sore from my non-stop yammering. I don't think we're being TOO restrictive. We're not marshalling him around or expecting him to sit there like Little Lord Fauntleroy lisping platitudes. But at the same time, we live in an apartment building. We share our walls and floors with other families, families who have always been very tolerant but might not enjoy the constant pounding on their ceiling at 6:00 AM or shrieking renditions of "The Jungle Book" playbook at top decibel for forty-five minutes, with occasional interjections of cannon fire as the mancub pretends to blow his toys to smithereens. If we lived in a single-family home, we'd let him jump up and down until he collapsed, but until then we have to be a little less understanding of his boyish exuberance, which kind of sucks.

Fortunately, he does take plenty of breaks from the exploding cigar routine. He'll crawl up on the couch beside me and just play with his matchbox car while we chat, or he'll doze. He's pretty good at letting us sleep late, too. He'll lie in bed and just snuggle for a long time before he prods you and tells you, "Get up, lazybones!"

But by Sunday afternoon, I had pretty much had it. I tossed the dog in the car and we headed over to Grandma's house.

We went around to the backyard first and Crazy Aunt Sundance greeted us. The two dogs bounced around for awhile and my mom caught sight of my dog's boobs. Now I may not have mentioned this previously but my dog has huge nipples sprouting from pretty much everywhere a boob can sprout. She has long stretchy black udder-like nipples and weird little pink nipples that look just like human boobs. I mistook one of her littler boobs for a tick and tugged and tugged, even tried to get the vet to "pluck" it. The vet was like, "Uh, this is a nipple."

"But it's in her armpit!" I exclaimed.

"Yeah, well," the vet nodded, surveying my dog's tummy. "She has a lot of boobs."

Anyway, so her doting grandmother told her she needed a bra. Next time she'll probably run a finger down her back to see if she's wearing one. Oy.

Grandma totally corrupted her by feeding her freeze-dried chicken strips and nylabone "chewies" made of compressed something-I-don't-want-to-know-what and an entire can of fancy meaty dog food with her dinner. I wasn't complaining, though, as one of Mom's Toasted Almonds took me to a happy place.

By the time I got home yesterday, the mancub was already in bed. T-Bone was cooking a stew for the next couple of days. I "helped" by chopping carrots while watching the end of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" and crying at the boy who built a solar heater when he was thirteen so his family wouldn't have to use coal heat anymore and his sister the epileptic wouldn't have asthmatic fits from the smoke and they didn't even have running water and they had tires on the roof to keep the roof from blowing away and . . . Oh no, I'm getting all verklempt! (sob)

Anyway, so we cooked some stew and went blissfully to sleep.