Let Sleeping Dogs Lie - Unless They Have Deep Sleep Disorder

    You should not let sleeping dogs lie when they choose inappropriate places to do their napping.  Our latest edition, Riley, a small puppy, turned out by its mother, has come to know the comforts and security of being cared for like a newborn baby.  He was bottle fed and sleeps on a bed of plush cotton with a tiny stuffed animal that looks just like his mother. When Riley sleeps, he enters some kind of deep R.E.M. sleep that nothing can wake him from.  You can poke him, pick him up, even dress him in tiny Build-A-Bear clothing and he will never wake.  When he finally does come to, he loves to be outdoors running and playing. The problem is, Riley is the runt of the litter and tires easily.  After a few minutes of terrorizing the cats and scratching around in the flower beds, he finds a cool place to nap.... usually behind my tires and enters his deep comatose like sleep.

    Before I drive, I always honk the horn several times, alerting the cats sleeping inside my engine and any small children who might be standing behind my car.  I normally walk around, checking behind each tire, but on this particular day, I was in a hurry.  I made the horn wail for a ridiculous amount of time, sure to scare off any sleeping critters in or around my vehicle.  I preface this by saying that it is bad to run over your own dog, but to do it twice is much worse.   I began backing out of the drive when I heard the most horrible yelping.  I knew what had happened and feared that I was on top off the dog, so I put the car in forward and pulled back over the poor thing.  More yelping ensued and as I put the car in reverse to get off of him again, I realized that this may be a vicious cycle that would never end and I should probably park the car and assess the damage.  Scared to look and traumatized by the screams from my child and the yelps from my dog, I ran around the car only to find my little dog staring up at me with a look of dismay. There seemed to be no real damage.  There was no blood or brains or any of the other things I suspected I would find.  The dog had urinated on itself, but I would too if a large SUV was coming over the top of me... twice.   I scooped up the dog and carried him to his bed of fluff and laid him down gently.   I had taken that CPR course at work and knew that his vitals signs would be off the chart if there was bad damage.  His heart wasn't racing.  He appeared to be in no pain and he wasn't shying away from me.  I quickly told him it was the cat that was driving the car so not to destroy the caregiving image he has me associated with.
  
    A few hours later, I discovered the leg that wouldn't work and decided to go to the Emergency Vet.  That was my first mistake.  Upon arrival, I was greeted by a nurse who handed me a pamphlet on the costs associated with being hit by a car.  A small red flag went up in my mind.  While waiting in the tiny sterile room with my dog who still appeared to be in no pain, I noticed a sign on the wall that encouraged patients to use the office phones to contact friends and relatives who could call in credit card numbers to help finance my pet's emergency care.  Hmmmm... Flag #2 had now popped up.  The vet arrived and looked my dog over.  He talked about free flowing abdominal fluids and hidden injuries and I explained that the dog had not actually been hit by a car flying down the street, but had simply been run over... by me.... twice.   There was no blunt force trauma.  The vet left and in came a financial counselor.  I should have left then, but no... I stayed for more.   He walks over to a large write and wipe board and begins creating a visual diagram of all of the required treatments and associated cost estimates.  It began with Pain Medicine - $50 - $75. X-rays came after that for $200.   After we flew through anesthesia, surgery, physical therapy and life coaches, I screamed that he had to stop before my head exploded.  The obvious question had to be asked... how can you even talk to me about surgery when you don't even know what is wrong with the dog.  They were preparing me, he told me.  I suggested a better method and asked that we just X-ray the dog and then map out a course of action.  "Not without pain medicine," I was told.   I dismissed my Pet Loan Officer and asked to talk to the vet.  I voiced my great dissatisfaction with this plan and even went so far as to challenge the ethics of drugging an animal or person when there is no sign of pain.   I would like to point out that challenging a doctor's ethics is never a good thing to do.  I lost the debate, my dog got Toradal and I now own a series of expensive X-rays of my dog in various disturbing positions.... running, sitting, spread out like a hog on a spit and more.   I believe my dog may be flipping me off in one of those photos.   I'm sure that was a humorous Vet joke because of my ethics comment.  

    An hour and a half later,  I received the news that my dog had a hairline fracture and we would splint him and place a large funnel on his head. Having a basic understanding of the healing process, hairline fractures in young bones and that fact that neither my husband, nor the three dogs waiting at home, would ever accept a funnel headed Spaniel.  I opted to take our drugs and take the dog home to heal without the splint or funnel that would be more traumatizing than the tiny crack in the dog's leg. The dog was stoned on narcotics at this point and was weaker now than when I brought the happy puppy in.   $240 later, we left with a drunk dog in a box exploding body fluids in the back seat of my SUV. It was the longest 45 minute ride home I have ever made.  My daughter and I were hanging our heads out of the windows, ironically, like dogs, trying to escape the odor coming from my stoned dog passed out in the back seat.

    A week passed and the leg began healing nicely.  The dog is getting around great and will continue to heal with no narcotics or funnel hats.   I walk a little slower around the car now, checking for sleeping dogs or tails poking out of the engine and hope nobody is napping in places they shouldn't be. It is critically important that I not run over another animal, because they will never let me back in the Emergency Vet Clinic.

Shark Boy

If something amazing and truly worthy of a photo opportunity occurs, I am usually the one who has just turned their head for a split second, missing everything, only to hear the "oohs" and "aaahhhs" of my family reveling in what they just witnessed. I've missed goals, perfect landings, certificates of award from the President printed on colored card stock, and a series of other special events moms are supposed to be clicking their cameras on.  My timing is off by just a millisecond and the world can change in that tiny moment of time.  I'm certain if an alien invasion ever occurs, I will be head down, rifling through a box of popcorn or digging under my chair for someone's lost shoe.   I will miss the introduction to the new life form and have to ask them to kindly recreate the scene so I can capture it on my Handycam.

While at the beach this week, Shark boy, in the above photo, was moving in on my territory with his cute smile, foreign accent and eye for my girls.   Of all moves intended to impress a couple of young girls, I would have never expected him to reach down into the Atlantic waters around their feet and whisk out a baby shark, as if he does this everyday.  I was, of course, rifling though my bag of multi-SPF lotions and sunblock, digging for a tissue to keep the sand out of my Pina Colada, when I heard those familiar "ooohss" and "ahhhhs."  What had I missed... again?! I, instinctively, grabbed for the camera, still unaware if it was an alien takeover or just a good hair moment that needed to be photographed.  I knew it was something cool, though.  And there, as I looked up with a Pina Colada milk mustache, is Shark boy with tiny shark in hand.  The girls' shoulders instantly drew forward in some genetically instinctive act of coyness like Wally Cleaver's girlfriend when he donned his argyle sweater.  They oohed and ahhed and giggled as waves of doubt washed over me and Shark boy's self confidence beamed like a beacon from a lighthouse. Surely, that boy didn't just grab a live shark, I thought.  In yet another act of greatness, he gently places the tiny man eating sea critter back into the waters to swim away, showing his sensitive animal activist side.  I managed to pull myself up from my beach chair that was already six inches deep into the wet sand and walked up to this trio of kids.  Like an investigator, I questioned him on how this happened. People just don't reach into the water and pull out live fish unless you live on the Blue Lagoon and are working a movie set.  With excellent manners and a boyish foreign accent, Shark Boy offers to go grab another shark for me to see.  I knew the sun was hot and the rum had been flowing straight from my blender to my beachy little spot by the shore, but I was keenly aware that this was not normal.  The three ran back into the sea.  The girls normally scream when seaweed touches their feet, but now they were knee deep with this mystery boy walking with the sharks, safeguarded by his aura of self esteem.  It was a scary glimpse of the future, filled with ooohhs and ahhhs that I know will never be intended for me to capture on film. It took only moments and they returned from the sea with yet another baby shark in hand.  The girls giggled, the boy beamed and my older son was googling away, researching Shark boy on the Internet to determine his actual name, Facebook profile, age and political affiliation.  We all petted the little shark,  snapped a few photos and then released him back into the waters to rejoin his family of killers.  I took another sip of my sandy Colada, whispered a little prayer that the sharks will always stay far away from my girls, and took my place back in the sand next to my son.  As I closed my eyes in the summer sun, I heard the familiar "ping" sound of an email being sent.   Pictures of sharks and pretty girls were being uploaded and sent across country.  I found out later that one additional message went out from the shoreline.... a simple and easy to understand message from my son to Shark boy that simply said, "They're 12."    We did not see him after that, but pictures will last forever.

Leaves Falling

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Written by Jana Klemke and Julie Poss 

(Jana - Email me or get in contact with me.  I need to talk to you.-M)

Pre-Driving Protocol for Busy Moms

If there was a survey that could be done and ever was... I would like to know just how many people have been sailing down the highway oblivious to the bag of meat that was on top of their car.  I'm certain I am one of those elite few.  You must know that there are two bad things about having a bag of raw meat on top of your vehicle... 1.  It would be hard to explain to the trucker behind you why meat products flew off your car onto his windshield at seventy miles and hour and ....2.  If you do stop to retrieve the meat, what do you do with it then???  It's not like you want a Ziploc baggie of beef tips dripping onto your floorboard.  Of course, all this being considered, you have to wonder why one would have this item on top of their car in the first place.   I suppose it's just part of being a Brodnax.  Some things simply have no answer.  While traveling from my mother's house to our house, a distance of about fifty feet, my husband is known to place things on top of my car.  I'm never really certain what is up there.   As long as it's not children, I've learned not to complain.   I've traveled with pies, meatloaves and cups of coffee all on board without my knowledge.  It's those times he forgets to remove these items, that become bothersome.  I traveled for two weeks with a bag of licorice on my car that never came off.  That's not as bad, however, as traveling across the neighborhood with a kitten in my engine, that did manage to get out... safely, I might add.  Only because of Facebook and the status of a young child announcing to the world that she had a new kitten, did I know that our family pet had relocated.  Just like the meat products and the licorice, the kitten was retrieved and brought home where it belonged.   I'm sure there is a proper pre-driving protocol for checking your car for unknown contents or even unknown passengers.  I believe the driver's manual in my glove box says to check for tire pressure, cracked windshields, proper running lights and such.   I will never make it to those steps.   My pre-driving protocol consists of making sure each child has a shoe for both feet, removing the left-over latte cups from the last time the kids and their friends were in the car,  and racing to the car charger before someone else lays claim to it.  There is no time to check for tire pressure or meat products on the top of the car.  A quick scan to make sure everyone is buckled is the signal to go.  I've actually made it half way to another city before I realized I had an extra child in the car with us.  She was in the third row with the latte cups I can't reach.  That's no man's land and she is lucky I found her when I did.  At least she wasn't on top of the car like a bag of meat products or licorice.  

Smiling Eggs are Harder To Eat

It's hard to make egg salad when your eggs are staring at you with warm smiles and all have names.  These are the post Easter eggs that fill my fridge. I always have plenty of them because half of the neighborhood kids arrive about the time I drop the first Paas dye tablet into its glass of white vinegar. I don't know if they hear the gently fizzing tabs calling their names or if the smell of vinegar and eggs wafts down the street calling them to my kitchen. That wouldn’t be an appetizing smell, but it does scream of fun at the Brodnax house.  Before the smell can dissipate,  we have dozens of wacky, colorful eggs in the fridge, pastel fingerprints permanently stained on the counter, and someone teary eyed because their last egg to dye had a big crack in it.  


All of this is part of Easter tradition at our house and I am thankful that this Easter season was not  torn apart by shattered beliefs and disappointment.   Let me explain.... It was a year ago at Easter when my daughter announced that she felt so sorry for all those kids who didn't believe in the Easter Bunny. Seeing how she was ready to stand up for Peter Cottontail on the school playground and protect all that he is, I knew it was time to have a talk.  I had safely avoided the Santa Claus talk and had even skirted past the "Wonderfully Made" sex talk that was given to all sixth grade students and still had my little girl with all of her wonderful innocence.  I wasn't ready to turn tail on Peter or St. Nick, but I knew this was my cue.  I sat her down and explained that she may not want to keep such a strong stance in her protection of the Easter bunny. She gave me a puzzled look.  Sweat began to form at my temples and I groped for words.  I cringed at what was about to happen and tried to ease the pain with chocolate and promises of shopping sprees and mani/pedis.   After delivering the news that a bunny did not actually arrive in the cover of darkness and leave eggs and candies all about, I saw her processing this information and I was afraid of what was coming next.  I had no idea how bad it would actually be.  She looked me dead in the eye and asked, "Then what about Santa?  Is he fake, too."  I felt horrible and a rush of heat came over me as I fought back the urge to comfort her by avoiding the truth, but she stood there in front of me, demanding to know. I talked about the Spirit of Christmas and giving and all things good and hoped that she would continue to believe even though the truth had been laid on the table. She said nothing. She sat at the table and tear after tear quietly ran down her face. There was no loud sobbing, simply tears rising up from a broken heart.   She did not want to be comforted.  She did not want to be hugged or touched. While I wanted to to do all of those things, I knew that most of all, she did not want to be lied to and I allowed her the space she needed to process this information.   


When enough time had passed, I offered to take her to the mall where we spent some quality Mom and Daughter time.  After new hair highlights, a few new outfits, a  2 pound bag of candy and the depletion of my checking account, we were headed out of the mall, with spirits lifted a bit.  As we neared the exit, we spied the Easter Bunny one floor below sitting amongst a spread of giant pastel Easter eggs and floral displays.  We both stopped at the railing and looked down.  Testing the waters, I smiled and asked my daughter if she would like to go see the Easter Bunny. She looked up at me with one of those looks that says, "I'm smiling on the outside, but don't be fooled by it" and replied, "...and perhaps I can ask him for ...The Truth."    I commented on how nice her highlights looked and we walked past the bunny without ever looking back.  This year, as Easter rolled around,  all traditions were still in place.  We dyed eggs and filled baskets with treats and celebrated in Christian fashion at our church, focusing on the real meaning of Easter without letting go of the fun a child finds in the season.  It is a wonderful relief to know that my refigerator is once again filled with smiling eggs that nobody will be able to eat.

Laughter Is Good Medicine

 

They say that laughter is the best medicine.  While laying in the Emergency Room of the local hospital getting updrafts and steroids to open my lungs, my son was somewhere else in the hospital shooting bizarre photos of my family members and sending them to my phone.   This obviously failed brain transplant photo did more for me than the meds being pumped into my veins.
My daughter's picture soon arrived and carried the look of "Will she ever get home... This is taking forever." This is a genetically inherited look of frustration and tells those around her that one eye is about to pop from the socket and fly into orbit around her head if somebody doesn't do something to rescue her.  I wear this exact same look at tax time, when standing in line at a Wal-Mart store and when I learn at ten o'clock on Sunday night that my daughter has to write twenty poems before Wednesday and I'm boarding a plane at 6:00  a.m.  the next morning. Unless I want to be writing cinquains and haikus from the airport bar, I have to push my eye back in the socket and help her start crafting poetry and rhyming words while the rest of the world is fast asleep.    

The more I look at this photo I realize that this is the same look of an exhausted working mom.  Yesterday, we were trying to get to a 2:00 appointment.  We began our exit from our house at noon when we discovered that not everyone had exactly two shoes.  I'm not sure how you lose a shoe, but it's a common occurrence here. We discovered the missing shoe in the backseat of my car about the same time I turned quickly and knocked over the giant blue drink someone had left in the car near the shoe.  As my daughter rescued her glittery pink mule, I was ripping floor mats from the car and sopping up blue goo.  My son is wired in to great music in the front seat of the car and is oblivious to the chaos around him as he slowly floats away to the melodic sounds of Muse and some folk group not yet discovered. The cats have discovered that there is a tasty substance dripping from the sides of my car and they are now underfoot, licking up blue raspberry goodness.  It's raining, so I toss the floor mat into the rain hoping Mother Nature can lend me a hand and wash the carpet for me.  My daughter and I carry similar facial expressions and neither speaks while we go through the motions of trying to fix this without complaining or crying.  We are finally in the car,  free from blue liquids, each with an even number of shoes and are headed out the drive when I realize I have no gasoline.  Refusing to accept the rising cost of gas,  I always fill my car to $50 no matter what the current price per gallon is.  This way I don't stress over the rising prices and I'm more cautious to make it last longer because the tank isn't actually full. During the 30 seconds it takes now to pump in fifty dollars of petroleum,  my daughter has jumped from the car, entered the station and returned with yet another unnaturally blue drink product.  The muscles around my eye tighten as I try to keep my eye in place and I say nothing, because deep down inside I know that I want one too.  I remove the earphones from my son who actually doesn't have the big head you see in the photo and we all go inside to get something to drink.  Before long we are sailing down the road in a car with a half full gas tank, sipping on sodas, laughing and talking.  Our eyes are in place and stress levels have dropped to acceptable levels.  It is true, laughter is great medicine.

Are Four Cans of Tuna Enough When Packing for The End of Days

  

Yesterday, while in a meeting preparing for the possible shutdown of the government, I received a text message from my son wanting to know if I still had a job.   I also received a message from my daughter telling me how cute her shoes were. It was followed with "Luv ya" and three emoticons, all too tiny to see.  Both children should have been heavily involved in mathematics or history and were obviously secretly packing cell phones while in school.  I assured my son that we would be fine.  The thought did cross my mind, however, about what would happen if I suddenly found myself without a paycheck.   The twelve pack of soda and assorted baby bottle pops in the back of my car wouldn't carry our family far.  That night, while we were all gathered around the kitchen counter discussing the end of days as we knew them and life without Netflix or "Words with Friends", the power abruptly shut down without notice or advance flickering. We were thrown into a sudden blackness where you could not see your hand in front of your face.  While I groped in the darkness for matches and candles, I discovered they had all been replaced with plug in "Scentsy" candle warmers.  I was living in a wickless, flame free world.  My cave people relatives from the beginning of time would be so ashamed.  My son grabbed his cell phone for light and communication to the lighted world only to find that AT&T was off-line as well.   The invisible cell phone signals and wifi networks that normally surrounded us with a pleasing false sense of security were gone.   My daughter, very astutely announced in the darkness that the government must have shut down. Brilliant observation, I must say.  As we sat there in the falsh wash of light we had mustered up from our cell phones, my son whispers to me, "Do you think we've been EMPed?"  I only knew what this meant because of watching too many end of the world movies.  It's an electromagnetic pulse that arrives just before the nuclear bomb, shutting down all things electrical and wonderful.   I assured him that this was not the beginning of something horrible other than the fact that my burrito was now cold and I couldn't find the pica de gallo in the dark.   Because we are curious creatures and it was so dark in the house, we decided to drive around the community in hopes that we wouldn't drive off into some giant chasm or be zapped by the alien space-ship possibly hovering over city hall. We discovered people everywhere, just standing outside in the dark, waiting for something... a sign, a spaceship, a giant plume. I'm not sure what they were all looking for other than just an answer. I wondered if we had not all been so sucked into this 2012 end of days prophecy and fear of sudden terrorist action that we did actually believe that it was the end of time as we know it. I found myself driving around in the dark thinking that I should really change my investments in my 401K plan to something less riskier now and that it might be good to have some kind of emergency plan.   Today while at the grocery store, I picked up four cans of tuna and a really big bottle of water. And yet... somehow I think my emergency preparedness plan is lacking something. I toyed with the idea of actually taking those little bottles of shampoo and conditioner that they leave for you in hotel rooms.  That could come in handy for bargaining or simply for hygienic practices in the end of days or if the government shuts down.    My plan is obviously in the formative stage right now and I can see many things that might be helpful to have should we suddenly be thrown into the darkness with no communication or access to the deli-mart in Kroger.    I realize that it depends on what level of isolation we find ourselves in.  Would we need seeds to begin planting for subsistence living or would it be more of a need for weapons for protection of life and property?  I do have a giant spatula that could be handy and I'm adding it to my toolbox of things I may need if the world comes crashing to a halt. I know that when this day should possibly come, my husband will be 200 miles away on a lake completely oblivious to any change in modern day living.   While I'm at home fighting off Mayan warriors reincarnated or duct-taping the windows and doors, he will be gently rocking on the waters waiting for another big eyed Bass to tug on his line.   I will be attempting to shape tuna into McDonald's chicken nugget shapes and praying that we have the things we need to survive.  I'm certain I can grow things like kale and cabbage, but my children wouldn't know what to do with it. What I really need is emergency packs of P.F Chang's Honey Glazed Chicken or to be on the lake with my husband when the bottom falls out.  Our family could live out of the boat and eat the fish of the waters until the skies open up and a hand reaches down and pulls us out of the darkness.   That final act is the best part of my emergency preparedness plan and will take us much further than four cans of tuna or a giant spatula.