Failing Miserably

     

     Well, I guess I’ll just go ahead and address the big fat elephant in the room.  Maybe nobody around here wants to admit it, but I seem to be really sucking ass at my job lately.  I’m trying to juggle way too many balls at once, and who am I kidding?  I don’t even know how to freaking juggle!  So, yes, this is my pity party, so pull up a seat cause you’re all invited.    

     The arrival of our literal little son of a bitch has thrown a big wrench in my ability to get a grip on anything around here.  He takes up so much of my time that I feel like I’m neglecting the kids, who are by far WAY higher up in the pecking order of importance.  I feel like I’m constantly telling them that we’ll have to play that game later or read this book another time so I can deal with the dog.  I’m totally sucking in my role as entertainer.  

     In addition, I’ve also been like a giant road block for my kids’ brain cells.  I totally missed the boat last week on an entire week’s worth of spelling activities for school. Yep, Mama Jackass somehow overlooked a whole list of homework assignments and didn’t even discover this little brain fart until over the weekend.  Oopsy daisy. Luckily, they were just at-home activities that kids were supposed to do each night with their parents, but still, I should’ve been more on top of my game.  

     Then, there’s the whole issue of trying to tame the Tazmanian Devil.  Since I was at my wit’s end with the pooch all last week, the hubs spent a lot of time trying to teach him how to not be a maniac over the weekend.  I made sure to carefully watch his technique so that I could continue with it once he went back to work on Monday. So why is it then that the dog refused to do ANYTHING I asked him to do even though I was doing the exact same thing my husband was doing over the weekend? Does he have something against me or what?  I swear if he had a middle finger, I know for certain that he’d totally be flipping me off.  The dog is clearly trying to tell me to eff off.  All he does is bite me and step in his own shit.  

     Then there’s my inability to be even somewhat of a semi-pleasant wife lately.  I am so frustrated and exhausted by the end of the day that I end up falling asleep by the time my tush finally makes that long-awaited contact with the couch.  I even turned down my husband’s offer to take me on a date over the weekend and opted to order out sushi instead.  How lame am I?   Yeah, I’m just a barrel of fun these days — being with me lately is only slightly more fun than a sharp stick in the eye.  Good God, am I turning into Kate Gosselin?!  

     So, to summarize my efforts around here:  kids = failing, dog = failing, husband = failing.  My report card looks pretty pathetic, don’t ya think?  I am flunking out big time with everything and everybody.  I gotta snap outta this and get back in the driver’s seat cause I am not a fan of spinning out of control.  It makes me dizzy.

Changing of the Guard

     

     I know I may complain about him being sloppy and about how much he procrastinates, but I gotta hand it to my hubby for steppin’ up to the plate this past weekend.  He must’ve realized that I was at the absolute end of my very frazzled rope with the new puppy and him being out of town ALL last week.  It was WAY more stress than I had envisioned, and I realize now in hindsight that the timing could not have been worse. I was like a shaken up bottle of Diet Coke just waiting to blow my top.

     Since I was so sleep deprived, the hubs took it upon himself to get up with both the dog and the kids at the first sign of day on both Saturday and Sunday.  He even herded them all to the backyard so the house would stay nice and quiet for me.  Good man. Mama needed her sleep, especially after that little rendezvous with Benadryl (necessary for the itchy bumps the dog hair caused me) and one too many glasses of Chardonnay.  He also spent a significant chunk of time trying to work on training the dog, only to come to the same conclusion as me — that we have, in fact,  purchased an insane baby alligator.  

     Now, that’s not to say that everything was all sunshine and rainbows.  The kids, of course, decided to make up for lost time with Daddy and show him how well they’ve learned to let things go in one ear and straight out the other.  I could hear his frustration mounting over having to repeat the same damn thing about two hundred and fifty thousand times.  Of course, I just sat back and observed because we all know that payback’s a bitch.  I was so glad that he was getting a little dose of just what all he’d been missing — one big happy, albeit apeshit, family.  

     I had to just overlook the fact that my kids were running around the backyard still wearing their pj’s well into the afternoon.  And I had to just bite my tongue and turn the other way when I saw that the pile of crap on the kitchen counter may very well have rivaled the Sears Tower in height.  And I had to just let it roll off my shoulders when my husband came back from the grocery store with quite possibly the cheapest toilet paper ever manufactured — seriously, we might as well just wipe our asses with sandpaper.  None of these things could overshadow the fact that the man was giving me a much needed breather.  I was so beyond grateful to have any kind of break whatsoever from the constant chaos that has become my life.

     My gratitude was only compounded after I ran into a friend of mine on Sunday who was complaining about her lazy husband.  She was out trying to run errands and said that he was literally calling her every three to four minutes to tell her to come home and feed the kids lunch.  She was on the verge of tears as she told me that she was really sorry but she needed to run.  I stood there in awe at the audacity of the whole ordeal.  Could the dude really not slop together a flippin’ pb&j for the kids?  Seriously, any moron can do that. Thank God my husband can not only make a mean pb&j, but he can also fire up some chicken nuggets in the microwave like nobody else’s business.  Now, he may not sail the boat exactly like I do, but at least he keeps it afloat long enough to give the captain a little catnap.

Dog Days of Training

      Am I awake or asleep?  I’m not really sure lately since they feel kind of the same. My days have turned into a complete blur now that we’ve added this furry little creature to our mix.  I feel like I have literally just been going through the motions trying to keep myself from collapsing on the sidewalk.  The hubs has been oh so conveniently out of town this week, so I have been on my own to drive the crazy train that is my life.  And best believe me when I say that I am barely hanging on by a string.

     It is truly like we have a newborn baby in our house again.  I was perfectly happy to be well past that stage in parenting because I’ve kinda grown attached to my sleep these days.  However, lately I have been awakened multiple times a night EVERY STINKIN’ NIGHT by what sounds like a squealing pig being transformed into bacon.  I honestly feel like I no sooner close my eyes than I have to pry them open and take said “pig” out to pee. And as soon as I return him back to his crate, I get another encore presentation of this ear-piercing protest. All of this new morning chaos has the added bonus of my kids now waking up even earlier than normal.

      I then get to juggle the kids trying to play with the puppy who only wants to bite anything and anyone in his path with his razor-sharp little teeth, all while making sure that he doesn’t decide to pop a squat and diddle on the carpet somewhere. Naturally, the kids get upset when he nips them with his little fangs (those suckers hurt like a mother!), and I only can catch him about eight times out of ten from peeing on the sly.  Our morning routine was crazy enough without throwing a wild little beast into the mix, and now, it’s flat-out batshit nutty around here.

     Yesterday, I was so crazed trying to get the kids out the door for school, that I didn’t even realize until almost three in the afternoon that I was still wearing the same tank top that I had slept in the night before.  I did somehow manage to throw on a bra, because, you know, I’m classy like that.  I just literally have not had time to do anything.  I thought I had the world’s smallest bladder, but apparently, this dog has me beat.  He has to constantly be taken outside to pee, so any errands I run have to be completed within two hours time.

     Then there’s the whole feeding issue.  He must still be all freaked out by a new environment because he’s not all that jazzed about eating his food.  The breeder suggested we mix in a little bit of yogurt or cottage cheese to try to tempt him, which I’ve tried doing just to get him to hurry up and eat the damn stuff.  I’ve got places to go and people to see!  So, you can only imagine how happy I was to come home yesterday afternoon to find a crate full of barf as a result of the cottage cheese experiment.  

     And since poop scooping was not really part of my physical therapy plan, my back is totally taking a beating from having to bend down so much.  Do you have any idea how difficult it is to pick up mushy puppy turds from the grass? Let’s just say that we very well may have some bald spots in our yard now. And I learned the hard way that I need to take a flashlight with me when I take him out at the ass-crack of dawn because I will otherwise find myself on a rather shitty scavenger hunt trying to hunt down all the tiny logs he dropped in the dark.    

     And I’ve gotta wonder if my neighbors REALLY want me to tell them when they ask me how it’s going.  The extreme look of exhaustion on my face should be a tip-off that they might just get an ear full if they do, in fact, ask.  I find myself envious of people who have older dogs who seem to be more chill.  I wish we could fast-forward through all this beginning insanity and get to the point where we can actually enjoy the dog.  In the meantime, I’m thinking about asking ours if I can borrow his crate for a while — I could really use a dark little place to hide away and snooze.  And I promise that I won’t even pee in it.

Wordless Wednesday

And this right here is why I don’t even have time to blog today.  May try to write again later, but for now, this is all I got.

Puppy Love

     

     My world just got a whole lot nucking futtier, since yesterday was the day that we finally brought home our highly anticipated new puppy, Wrigley.  It was like a dream come true for my daughter, and my son, who, as you may recall, is not the craziest about dogs in the first place, even got into the excitement. Yep, I am once again a baby mama, and I’ve got the sleep-deprived bags under my eyes to prove it.

     Much to my kids’ disappointment, the breeder’s house was located about three and a half hours away from our house, forcing my husband and I to listen to five minute intervals of “Are we there yet?” throughout the entire duration of the car trip.  When we finally pulled up to her house, my daughter shrieked so loud with elation that she about burst our eardrums. She’d been staring at pictures of the puppies online for weeks, and she just couldn’t wait any longer to get her little hands on them.  We were first introduced to our puppy’s aunt, Mrs. McGillicutty, and his dad, Nike.  They were full-grown Airedales, which made my son a little anxious at first.  He kind of hid behind my back and watched from afar.  My daughter, on the other hand, who could very easily give the Crocodile Hunter’s daughter a run for her money as to who loves animals more, was, of course, all over the dogs.  And when the breeder finally introduced us to our little guy, she was truly on cloud nine.  I’ve never seen a bigger grin on her face as I did when I handed her the puppy for whom she’d been praying so long.  My son took a little while to warm up to him, but, eventually, he even sat in the floor and played with the puppy, as well.  My husband and I breathed a huge sigh of relief as we watched our son, since we were worried that he’d end up in therapy for being forced to face his biggest fear on earth.  

     As the breeder went over all the paperwork with us, she put the dad and the aunt in their crates and let the puppy play with the kids. Halfway through our orientation, we noticed that Wrigley had laid down in front of his dad’s crate.  They each put their faces up to the crate, so that they could feel each other’s warmth.  I couldn’t help but think that maybe they were saying goodbye to each other, and I immediately felt a lump in my throat. They both lay like that, faces pressed together, for a good fifteen minutes.  It was both the sweetest and the saddest thing I’d ever seen. We were taking this little creature away from the only family he’d ever known. (Little did we know that he would make sure we were more than aware of this fact later on that night.)  

     When we set off for home, we started out with the puppy in his crate at the back of the car.  That lasted for only about fifteen minutes, since he was completely freaking out.  I couldn’t stand it anymore, so he rode the rest of the way on our laps.  As we piled out of the car in front of our house, all the neighbors came out to meet this new kid on the block.  And, naturally, all the day’s excitement wore the poor thing out.  He happily snoozed in his crate after we put the kids to bed, so my husband and I scarfed down our pizza-delivered dinner.  We fooled ourselves into thinking that maybe this whole puppy stage was gonna be a piece of cake. How sadly mistaken we were.

     My husband took the dog out one last time around midnight.  We thought surely he could last until the crack of dawn.  Ha!  He instantly started in with the whimpering and whining, which soon escalated into ear-piercing shrills.  It honestly sounded like a pig was being slaughtered in our kitchen. For the next THREE hours, we both took turns going downstairs to try to quiet him down, much to no avail. How something that small can make noises that unbelievably loud is beyond me.  My husband eventually ended up grabbing a comforter and laying on the floor in front of the crate with his fingers through the bars.  Somehow, miraculously, the dog finally drifted off to sleep for a very short two and a half hours.  I don’t know who had the darkest circles under their eyes this morning — my husband, me or the dog. It’s definitely a toss-up.   

     One thing’s for damn tootin’ though.  Something’s gotta give tonight. We’re most likely gonna move the crate into our bedroom, so that he can at least feel that we’re near him.  I realize that he’s just scared and unsure about this new environment into which he’s been thrown, not to mention the fact that he’s probably missing his family. Great, as if I don’t already have enough mother’s guilt built up from my own twins.  Now I have one more little being to cause me remorse….