God Save the Queen

You ever have one of those mornings where you think you should have just stayed in bed?

Yeah, that's today.

Except add a truckload of poop, vomit and about ten tons of crushed rock.

I worked Thursday night. I stayed up all day Friday and didn't get any sleep *before* my shift.  So last night (Friday night) I slept for ten hours straight and got up this morning thinking, 'Hey, I feel great!  I got sleep!  Today's going to be such a good day!'

First mistake of the day?  Thinking positively.

Sadie was whining in her crate as I stepped out from under the covers. (The sound of Winston smacking his lips all night is keeping me up - Chad sleeps through the sound of Blackhawk helicopters - so we've banished him to his crate at night.  And because he won't sleep in his crate alone without YELPING all night - waking me up yet again - we've made Sadie be his crate room buddy.)  She's generally a whiny little turd anyway, so I thought nothing of it until I opened the "dog room" door and the smell of stool (to use a medical term) punched me in the nose.

Now before you jump to my poor wittle dog's defense, consider this: Sadie will sleep in MY room for up to twelve hours without stirring to pee, poop, or whine.  She does FINE for an extended period of time, as long as she's out of her crate.  As soon as she's in her crate, be it for one or forty hours, she's PUNISHING me (THAT'S RIGHT!  MORE CAPITAL LETTERS!) by instantly peeing on the towels we are constantly washing and throwing back in with her.  She usually reserves her poop for outside.  Well last night she decided that urine alone wasn't thoroughly getting her message across and chose to further desecrate her space with another type of ammunition.  Her evil plan backfired on her though, since I didn't know anything about it as I slept soundly with my white noise machine running full blast, and she decided to take out her anger at the poop in her crate by grinding it into the towels and pawing furiously at the latch on the crate, thus coating herself and everything within a five-foot radius in a pleasant layer of Taste of the Wild Dog Food version two.  Don't give me any of that "dogs aren't trying to punish you" dog whisperer crap.  Cesar Millan has never met my little minion of Satan.

Let the dogs outside.  Took Sadie's crate on the back porch.  Let the dogs back inside, locked Sadie in WINSTON'S crate since I didn't have time to bathe her immediately, put Winston and Missy in my bedroom and rushed off to Emma's horseback riding lesson. 

Came home and told Emma to let the dogs out of my room, but to please leave Sadie in her crate so I can give her a bath.

A shriek and a "MOMMMM!!!!" from the direction of my bedroom.

Winston, deciding that he would like me to murder HIM after I finish with Sadie, had licked up the poop from Sadie's crate this morning when he was on the back porch with The Crate.  Now there are approximately twenty piles of shivomit (that's SHIT+VOMIT, courtesy of my nurse co-worker Tricia) all over my carpeted bedroom floor.  Emma starts gagging at the sight of the steaming piles and then begins to cry when I yell "For GOD'S SAKE, do NOT start puking in here!!"  It appears that Winston also wants a repeat of the trip to the special Doggie Gastrointestinal Doctor from three years ago, where we spent two thousand dollars to retrieve a ROCK from his stomach.  (An expense that we could have avoided, according to Army Man, because a bullet only costs *five* cents. I was horrified to hear him utter that back then but today it is sounding like a very viable option.)  There are rocks interspersed with the shivomit.  Bits of the ten tons of crushed granite from our backyard.  I throw all dogs into the "dog room", where Missy, the genius of the group, repeatedly opens the door with her front paws because she wants to inspect my cleaning process. 

THREE dogs are going to die today.

So now I've got about twelve wet spots in my carpet, three dogs whining in their room because I'm not letting them out until I can guarantee myself that I won't be tempted to sell them on eBay, I can't get the smell of poop out of my nose, and my carpet cleaning machine is working overtime.

I really should have stayed in bed, but God BLESS the man who invented the Spot Bot.

Hola.

Has it really been two months since I've posted on this thing?

Well it's not like there's anything going on around here, anyway. 

Except that we're moving in a month.  And that Chad is back from Iraq.  Oh and that we went to Disneyland.  (Trick-or-treating at Disneyland = expensive but fun!)  I guess I could mention that Halloween has come and gone and that Chad is turning thirty-five this week.  (OLD!)  I'm also going back to work full-time.  We're planning on doing in vitro again in February.  Emma has started private flute lessons and is getting quite good and starting to enjoy herself at it.

So that's it.

Not a ton of things happening here AT ALL.

Surprisingly, I think Chad's being back at home has been harder on me than on him.  I expected him to have to adjust a little more  but he seems to have picked right up where he left off really well.  (He is currently blasting Guitar Hero in the family room.  Goodbye silent house!)  He was off of work for a month before he FINALLY went back last week.  (Love you darling!)  His constant need to plan out my day was making me a little bonkers.  He's been used to a life of routine for the last year, and I've been used to sending Emma off to school and sleeping all day, since I've stayed up every night for the last year worrying or working.  Gone are my days of laying around in my pajamas until two in the afternoon and dozing on the couch while trash TV plays in the background.  Attempting to be non-comatose during daylight hours all of a sudden has been a bit of a challenge for me, since all Chad wants to do while he's home is PLAY PLAY PLAY and SPEND SPEND SPEND.  He also felt the need to know exactly where I was at all times and what I was doing every second of the day but after he started following me to the bathroom we had a have a little talk about that.  He's used to playing Mr. In Charge with a bunch of underling soldiers who actually did have to report to him every time their bladders needed attention but I ever-so-gently reminded him that he needed to BACK OFF and that I could really handle THAT on my own, thank you.

Seriously, it is really nice to have him back home.  I kinda love the guy.

Emma has been on cloud nine, a different kid altogether since he's come home.  Her sense of humor has returned, and my worries about her sinking into depression at age ten have disappeared.  I knew that the deployment was hard on her, but now that I see the difference in her I truly understand just how difficult it was to have her daddy gone.  Which leads us to the next topic.  The taboo topic.  The topic I'm not supposed to bring up because it might make someone feel uncomfortable.  Or that someone reading this might know my ex. But WHATEVER, this is not a NICEY NICE BLOG.  It wouldn't be my blog if it were.  So here goes.  Her birth father hasn't called ONCE in the nearly two months that Chad has been home.  I'm at a loss about how to deal with this at all.  Do I call him and yell at him for abandoning yet ANOTHER one of his offspring?  (He has a twelve year-old "secret" son that nobody is supposed to know about, one that he never sees because it would ruin his facade of being the victim in our divorce.  Oops!  Spilled the beans!)  I've benignly asked Emma a few times whether she wanted to call her dad, and she's flat out told me NO, and the other day when I asked her again she responded that she didn't think he cared about her.  I did tell her that it isn't on her to be the responsible one or to make sure they have contact, but that her dad does care about her and sometimes he makes mistakes.  This, of course, is completely at odds with what my brain is doing, which is imagining punching the dude in sensitive areas for putting my baby through this.  HOW do I handle this?  At what point do I just give up on the guy?  I texted him once about an issue that Sonora Quest was having with his insurance carrier but he never texted me back. 

Maybe he's dead?

Anyway, so happy things!

Here are some photos of the last two months to catch you up: