This piece was written by Monica Gransee. Writer/dog lover extraordinaire. I love this woman, her dogs and her writing. Enjoy.
I don't have a fancy blog. Nor do I want one. I just feel the need
to tell you this story. So I'll write, you'll read, it'll be fine.
I now have three dogs. I didn't want three dogs. I don't need
three dogs, no one does. But sometimes things are beyond your control. And when
God is calling you to do something, you are almost never in control. The reason
I know this was Him and not me, is because it all worked itself out a little
too perfectly if that makes any sense at all. Anyway, here goes...
A week ago, yes I said a WEEK, my husband saw this sweet innocent
corgi face on the corgi rescue site. The site is actually called "Corgis
That Are Safe But Need Fur-EVER Homes". Right? I'm saying, we never had a
chance. He had been rescued from an unsafe, unsanitary backyard breeding
program. The owner had used him to breed multiple litters and all the while had
kept him in a cage, untouched, for TWO YEARS. I know, but it gets worse. The
owner was not breeding Corgis any longer because he wasn't able to sell them
for the price he wanted, so the existing Corgis were to be hauled off to the
shelter asap. Luckily for us, our heroic rescuer was there. And she decided to
buy him from the villainous owner right on the spot.
She then posted him on her page for any sucker, I mean me, to
haphazardly scroll across that angelic visage and fall hopelessly in love.
Mission accomplished.
This is the point where logic and reasoning TRIED to voice their
futile opinions into my brain. I came up with numerous reasons why this was a
BAD idea. A really, really bad idea. Unfortunately, when God is the idea man,
your lovely inner voice becomes more of an angel's advocate. Here's an example
of this totally unfair exchange:
Me: We already have TWO Corgis. Any more and we will really start
to look like an intervention is needed.
Voice: Nah. Two corgis, three Corgis. I don't really see a
difference.
Me: That's just more food bills, vet bills and boarding costs when
we want to go out of town.
Voice: So you stay home a bit more. You won't die...will you?
Me: I don't need another dog. This is crazy!
Voice: He needs YOU. And a loving family who will give him the
life he's never had. That's what's really important, isn't it?
Deep sigh. Okaaaaaaaaaa-YUH. Dammit.
Let's skip forward a bit, not much as I said, because things move
quickly when you aren't driving. We arranged a meeting with our heroic rescuer
and agreed upon a fair rehoming fee. After all, she HAD purchased him in his
hour of need and seen to his basic medical care. God bless her.
I must've thought of 1256 reasons why we should cancel. We
shouldn't go. What are we doing? Is this even happening right now? All of this
going on while I packed an overnight bag and got in the truck.
We drove 5.5 hours to Conyers, GA to meet her halfway. This woman
is the sweetest person you'd ever hope to meet so another part of me didn't
want to let her down. I wanted her to think me every part the heroic rescuer
she was. She arrived the next morning at our designated meeting point, a
baseball field across the street from the hotel. As she pulled in, I looked
into her truck window and saw two eager ears poking up. He was too short to see
out the window from a sitting position. Eek! She went around to the passenger
side and got him down. Our eyes met and I loved him immediately.
It was at this point I lost all sense of decorum and procedure. I
handed our heroic rescuer the agreed upon, reasonable, rehoming fee in a wadded
ball of cash before she could change her mind. She smiled at me and she TOOK
it. There. Transaction complete lady! No turning back now. It took everything I
had not to grab the leash out of her hand and bolt for the open truck door. I
calmed myself. Breathe. Just breathe.
He began to play with Sierra and Winston. There was no fighting,
no barking, nothing. All three of them just trotting around the ball field in a
little Corgi conga line. You know how people talk about their "hearts
melting"? YES. THAT. It was beyond my control. I was helpless. Completely
lost in the thought of what this little fur angel had been through. How tough
his life must've been up until this point. Up until RIGHT NOW. This little
handsome meatball had just won the fucking lottery of Corgi loving idiot families
and he didn't even know it. Yet.
So that's it. That's my story. Or should I say HIS story.
History...hmm. He is called Theodore Maximus. As in, "All hail His Grace,
Theodore Maximus. "First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First
Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm."
Or "Teddy Bear" for short. Double eek.
HRH in the middle
We brought him home and
here we sit. I should point out that the first thing he did, his official first
act as king, was to lift his leg on my 7 ft. inflatable Santa. Yup. He peed on
Santa. If that's not a commentary on whom and what the true reason for the
season is, well then I don't know what is. Whether he was brought here by fate,
or divine providence or whatever you want to call it, all that matters now is
that he's here. Let the royal spoiling commence!
Everyday after school Jesse can hardly wait for me to pull the car into the garage before he hops out. First, he runs to the tree and pees. Then, Harley and Khaleesi run out and off they all go. As I watch him out there talking to and playing with the dogs, I often wonder what goes through his mind. Boys. They can be so sweet and kind. More often though, they are completely inappropriate.
Me: Jesse, C'mon, let's practice your spelling words. Read them to me in a sentence.
Jesse: Wiped. I wiped my butt.
Me: (eyeroll)
Jesse: Covered. I covered my butt.
Me:
Jesse: Slipped. I slipped in poop.
Me: Okay! Okay. Enough with the potty talk. Let's finish the rest of these without saying poop or butt.
Jesse: Smelling....(He looks at me and I just shake my head like "don't do it.") I'm smelling something that's not poop.
This is how it goes with boys. Poop, fart, butt, pee is integrated in all conversations and how every joke ends or begins. Today, after the busy work of playing outside, he comes upstairs. Screws around with his Lego's for a little while. He comes over to my desk and ever so sweetly lays his arm across my back. He compliments my drawing and then calmly with zero urgency says, "Someone threw up on your bed."
"What?!" I just washed my bedspread. I literally just took it out of the washer, slightly damp because it takes five years to dry. I laid it over the bed and went up stairs to finish drawing this panda card I'm working on. "Who threw up? >pause< Did you?" I only asked him that because I could smell a faint corn chip smell and snack time was long gone. He says, "No." Me, forever in mom mode, start a completely different line of questioning, "Are you eating chips? We are going to have dinner soon." He pats my back sweetly, reassuring me that it was only a few chips, he'd eat his dinner and that he thinks it was Harley that puked on my bed.
Harley, our Corgi mix has 4 inch legs. There is no way he jumped up on my bed and puked. Had to be Khaleesi.
The suspects
I rush into my room. It was like one of those scenes in a scary movie where the camera flashes from one horror to another. I see a weird brownish color smeared on my bedspread. Pan to it smeared along the side of it, the part that hangs down. To Jesse sitting on my bed with his shoes on. "Is that mud?!" I kind of shout.
"No. Smell it." I'm going to say this, even though you know, when your 9 year old boy tells you to smell something, just don't. Do not. So... I smelled it and no, it wasn't mud. It wasn't puke, either. It was poop. Dog poop.
Dog poop all over my freshly laundered bed spread. I stood there, I think in shock, for second until it all registered. There was no poop fairy coming to clean this mess up. I began to rant. I'm not proud of it but, I did. I instilled and reiterated a few house rules. Loudly. No shoes in the house. No kids, chips or dogs in my room. I threw the chips in there because yesterday there was orange Cheetos dust on my bed spread, hence the freshly laundered blanket. (Weird thing was... nobody did it. Maybe this is a horror movie and I have a ghost eating Cheetos on my bed.) I added that the dog poop pick up chore would now be done daily.
Also, we do not yell an apology. We say it like we mean it or we don't say it at all.
As I was cleaning the mess up and talking loudly from the bedroom to the laundry room; Jesse, God bless him, was trying to not laugh because I kept saying poop. I had to give it all to Jesus when I gagged a little while using my Shout stain remover. I heard him mimic me with a "hoorrrk" sound. I stopped shoe scraping and turned to look at him, I had no words. There he was bright eyed with Khaleesi and Harley right next to him watching the shit show.
It was an accident, I know, but I needed a minute. It was so gross. I want a new bedspread for Christmas -actually I want that right now. I even thought about declaring my house a lost cause and putting it up for sale. It is amazing how much indoor ground a boy can cover with one dog poop shoe.
The boy
"Little boys bring you just to the brink of insanity before gently easing you off the ledge with a sweeet kiss and laughter from a perfectly timed fart."
We just got back from Thanksgiving in Nebraska. I love Nebraska. Nebraska gets a bad rap because usually, all outsiders see of it is I-80 and the airport. Admittedly, this is not our best side. Other than those two places, Nebraska is all earth and sky. It is truly a beautiful sight. Fields that go on forever and a day. You can watch storms roll in from miles away. It's breath taking and there is nothing like our sunsets.
This was taken from Nebraska Through the Lens fb page, check it out.
Nebraska is mostly made up of small businesses, cattlemen and farmers. It is a true characteristic of these Nebraskan's that they are all in, all the time. When I go home, I always ask my dad or, my uncle (if I can get to him), how the market is doing. I love the way these guys talk. My dad says things like, "They got their clocks cleaned on cattle this year." They probably did, but they never throw in the towel. My sister works on the insurance side of things and some of the stuff she tells me would break your heart. Hail, rain, wash outs, no rain, tornado's, it doesn't stop them though. According to my dad, the only thing that'll stop a farmer, is the banker.
I have 20 nieces and nephews. I love it. Every single one of them. Here are a few of the little things that I love. I was looking at my phone on the flight home I had 600 pictures of Joe and they all look like this:
My niece, Leah. Oh, Leah! She is just one of those kids that is fun to jerk around. She can dish it out and take it. For some crazy reason I let her do my hair. I have very thin and not very much hair naturally and now have less. My hair, what was left of it, was styled much like that of my 1 year old niece, Julia.
She was way less excited about it than I was.
Me and Leah
Anthony is my birthday twin and I accidently 'steamrollered' him. I mean, we were wrestling, but I weigh... anyway, I squished him. I may send him something because one should never squish their birthday twin. The sparkly pens I got him from the book fair don't count because the steamroller happened after.
Look at him! So stinkin' cute! And I steamrollered him! Going to post office tomorrow....
My son's fiancée, Daisy, had her family visiting from South Carolina as well. They are amazing. I wonder what they think of us, though. When Daisy's mom cracked my sons back. She had him lie down on the floor, turn his head a certain way and as she pressed down you could hear the tell tale sound of bone cracking, back relief. The next thing you know it, there we all are waiting in line for a back cracking. We are all tall. Someone should have warned her.
I am so proud of all of us. My ex, Chuck, and I can be at the same table and everyone gets along. I love that my family is huge and loud and we have really been through it all via one person or another. It was not always good. Honestly, some of it is really bad and probably still is, but we bring it together because we are a family. We were taught to respect that and maybe there is some forgiveness in there as well. I have heard my parents say, "You guys better figure it out and get along!" or "Shape up and get with the program!" since I was little. My sister Tricia and I got into a big fight last year and now, here we are sitting at her table, drinking too much vodka while cooking turkey and she is teaching me how to Snapchat.
With the six of us kids plus wives and husbands, it seems there could always be drama and honestly there is but, we have been in the "program" a long time and we make it work. The sister that is currently giving me trouble, drove us to the airport. She even hugged me too long which made me forget to be upset at her.
As I read this over looking for typo's that I won't see, I had the thought that maybe it's for the children of this family that we, the adults, pull it together. Even though we all, at one time or another were spitting mad at each other, we never bring the kids into it. When I was mad at my sister, if she had said, "Anna is going with me to..." I would have texted her back. "k." In lower case, though, 'cause I was mad, but would never deny one the other. Same with Chuck. We did everything wrong except Jonathan. We always pulled it together for him. It was the one thing we did right.
*Side note
Things I learned not to say because for one reason or another the younger generation dubbed these uncool:
Go shoot hoops.
Let's snappie.
Let's do snaps.
Isn't snapping with your Aunt Tonya awesome!?
On a slightly other note.
Check out my new website: tonyajean.net and buy a card! It's a work in progress, but seriously, buy a card.
Let's take a listen to some Steve Earle. Some young Steve Earle.
