So this is happening.

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Look out Texas, momma’s coming home.

We’re leaving in an hour. By car. Two people, two dogs, for a twenty hour trip – should be fun.

In the past I’ve blogged about my husband’s unpredictable work schedule, so we can never plan things out ahead of time. Needless to say, this trip came together at the last minute, and we’ll be there for…a while-ish, which is to say the trip back will be equally last minute. Whatever, I’m just rolling with it.

I’ve only made the drive from Texas to California once, fifteen years ago when I moved here. It took forever, and I swore I would never do it again. My mom drove out with me, so it was an…interesting trip. I should really look and see if I’ve ever written about it, because that story definitely deserves its own post.

Anyway, the last few days have been an exciting flurry of preparation and working out logistics. You know what I’ve put the most thought into? Not what we’re going to do about the mail, who is going to water the plant, or what I need to bring for an extended trip. My main concern has been putting together a road trip mix. The longest journey by car we’ve ever done together was seven hours, this is nearly triple that, so I figure we need the perfect mix of music to keep our sanity.

Wish us luck.

PS – My husband just walked in with a grim expression, holding a set of keys in his hand. While looking for something else, he just so happened to come across the keys to our place, which neither of us thought about. It would have been just peachy to show up after two days of travel, only to discover we were locked out.

I don’t even want to think about what other important things we’re leaving behind.

This is why we shouldn’t have kids.

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Yesterday morning I took both dogs to the vet for their shots, and an exam for Stinky. When we arrived my heart sunk, because it was jam packed with people and animals, and my other dog is difficult. At home she’s a total sweetheart, but the moment she steps out the door, she becomes a bundle of nervous, anxious energy.

Because it was so busy, I had to wait a while, during which time my min-pin worked herself into a tizzy. She used to be fine with going to the vet, however, she suffered a broken leg a couple of years ago and they had to perform surgery to put it back together. Ever since she’s been scared. Not that I blame her.

They finally called in Stinko, but unfortunately the other dog’s appointment was with a vet tech, and they still weren’t ready for her. So I brought both of them into the room, and the vet was already examining Stinky when they came for my other dog. Now, just to be clear, I did ask the vet tech if he wanted me to muzzle her (the dog, not the vet tech), and he said no. She was NOT happy about being led away, and strained at her leash to stay in the room with me. Approximately two seconds after the door shut, I heard, “oh Spazzy” in an unhappy voice.

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What?

And then the barking began. It’s worth noting that Spazzy has the world’s loudest, most shrill and annoying bark.

When I opened the door to the exam room, I was greeted by the following:

Apparently, the moment the door closed, my lovely little dog shat all over the floor. I am not kidding when I say all over. Like, her body weight in poo. And as she was doing that, she somehow twisted herself out of her harness. Then she tore through the lobby in circles and barked a mile a minute, scaring the bejesus out of the twenty or so people waiting, and their dogs, cats, rabbits, and other assorted animals, all the while being chased by four vet techs.

I was horrified, to say the least. I also had Stinko in my arms, so when I joined in the chase she was bobbing all over the place, and was not happy about that at all. Anyway, it took a couple of minutes of her terrorizing everyone, but one of the techs finally cornered my dog. I turned around to find the entire room staring at me with accusatory glares. So, feeling like the world’s worst pet owner, I pretty much tucked my tail between my legs and meekly walked back to the exam room. You should have seen the look the vet tech tasked with cleaning all the poo gave me. Awesome.

When I relayed the story to my husband he laughed hysterically. I’m fairly certain that, were we to have children, we’d be the parents whose child shows up to preschool and then runs through the room screaming his head off while knocking down all the carefully constructed blocks and legos and whatnot that the well behaved children put together. Sigh.

What was I doing?

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Longtime readers know I occasionally get fixated on bellybutton-gazing-type pointless ponderings, and then feel the need to share. This weekend was all about the human capacity to consume mass amounts of information, and then fuggetaboutit.

In college I had this professor, who was absolutely phenomenal, in spite of the fact that her classes never actually covered what they were meant to. She spoke several languages, and said she had forgotten several as well. She spent a year in the Amazon doing research for her doctorate, and learned to speak the local dialect, but not long after her study was complete forgot most of what she learned. It’s not uncommon, tons of people grow up and forget a language they knew quite well as a child. Or perhaps you took French all four years of high school, and then in college, and spent six months in Paris for a study abroad program, and now you can barely order foie gras (gross). It’s amazing, really, to think a person could spend the time to learn a language fluently, only to have it slip away from disuse.

I have two degrees in Anthropology, and spent countless hours studying, writing, and cramming my head with theories. Maybe, and this is a big maybe, I retained 15% of what I learned. Yes, I remember the basic principals and theories and whatnot, but no longer the specifics of who said what, when and in what context. That’s pretty pathetic, especially considering the amount I have left to pay off my student loans, and years of my life I dedicated to my studies. On the other hand, fifteen percent is a hell of a lot more than I remember from high school, and if I had to put a percentage on the information I retained from those years, it would probably be .00000001%. So maybe I got my money’s worth in college after all.

Anyway, I’m more interested in the things we forget aside from what we learned in school. It’s one thing to fill your head with information for a test, vomit it out, and then forget about it when it no longer serves a purpose. It’s an entirely different thing when we forget something physical, like pain, which we fortunately have the ability to push out of our minds. Just ask anyone with multiple tattoos or piercings, or better yet, a mother with multiple kids.

To me, the most bizarre form of forgetting is when it’s personal, like names of people and places and restaurants we once knew. Sometimes we forget things we shouldn’t, and as a result end up making the same mistake repeatedly. I’m sure everyone knows a person that swears off dating assholes, and then conveniently forgets all about it when the next douche bag comes along.

Our capacity to forget about heartbreak can be both good and bad. Yes, it’s harmful when a person consistently falls for the wrong person, each time neglecting (often purposefully) to remember how painful it is when the relationship goes south. However, forgetting heartbreak is probably more useful than not. It allows us to get over that bad relationship, or maybe the good one that we thought would never end but did, and move on with life. And how could one possibly bear to start anew with another person if they couldn’t let go of their previous breakup?

Okay, end bellybutton time. I have errands to run, and of course, forgot where I put my keys. Happy Monday y’all.

A ninja, Mom, not a Ninja Turtle.

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My mom is a character. She’s a lot of fun, and also very funny, though she doesn’t always mean to be. Remember when I told you guys about my tendency to get things wrong? Well that trait came from my mother. Once, my dad relayed a story he read in the paper about a rash of robberies perpetrated by men dressed like ninjas. My mom’s response was, “What do they do about their shells?”

My dad looked at her with confusion and asked what she meant.

“You know, their shells. Wouldn’t that get in the way?” This time she pointed at her back with her hands. My dad was silent for a moment before he burst out laughing and said, “Ninjas, like nunchucks, not Ninja Turtles.”

So, yeah, I come by it rightly.

For the last fifteen years or so, she’s worked with Alzheimer patients and the elderly. She’s quite gifted at it, really. I admire her for this, because it certainly isn’t easy. Unlike other societies, where the elderly are revered, we have a tendency to forget about our senior-est of citizens. Not my mom, she does all she can to make their days enjoyable.

I’ve visited my mom at work on occasion over the years, and while her patients with Alzheimer’s might not know who she is, they do know they love her. Their faces light up when my mom walks into the room, and she has a way of getting through to people that are normally unresponsive. Part of that is because she is a patient and caring woman, but there’s another ingredient too – she likes to have fun, and she wants every one else to have a good time as well. She’s always been that way.

Growing up, I had the best slumber parties. All my girlfriends loved my mom, and she went out of her way to make sure we had a blast. And we always did, so much so that my poor dad would drag a blanket and pillow into their bathroom, which was furthest away from the sound of screaming and giggling girls, and sleep in the bathtub. My mom, with enough whining from us, would also agree to cart us through the neighborhood to toilet paper houses. This, by the way, wasn’t as bad as it sounds. We only TP’d our friends’ houses, or maybe some boy one of us had a crush on. All our parents knew each other, so there were no hard feelings. Usually. 

I was in the 8th grade, and a gaggle of girls were spending the night, one of which had a big puppy love crush on some guy that none of us knew. So, we convinced my mom to take us to TP his house. When we got to the street where the guy lived, the girl with the crush was suddenly unsure of which house was his. My mom became concerned, because while it was okay to let your hoodlum children toilet paper the house of someone you knew from PTA meetings, vandalizing a stranger’s house was bad parenting. Or something. Anyway, my friend finally figured out which house it was, my mom pulled around the block, and out we tumbled from the car, each with a roll of TP in hand. Approximately one minute after we began tossing rolls into the trees, a very, very angry man ran outside shouting obscenities. So we split. I hid in a bush two houses down with a friend, and we could hear the angry guy yelling and the sounds of feet hitting the pavement as he tried to chase my friends down. Eventually he came back to his house, where he stood for a minute or two muttering, before he went back inside. As soon as the door shut we took off down the block to find my mom.

Who, as it turned out, was no longer there.

I will never forget my friend’s shocked reaction. She repeatedly said, “I can’t believe your mom left us” while we walked home. I couldn’t believe it either. About five minutes later my mom pulled up next to us with eyes as big as saucers, looking frantic and blabbering a million miles a minute. Apparently, in their hurry to get away from the pissed off homeowner, my friends piled into my mom’s car like sardines and shouted at her to leave. There were so many girls, all of which were yelling over one another to tell her what happened, that my mom never noticed two of us were missing. It wasn’t until they returned to our house that everyone realized I wasn’t in the car.

Needless to say, that incident scared my mom off of being our toilet paper transportation. It was too bad, she was a great getaway driver.

Happy Friday, y’all. And all you mamma’s out there have a wonderful Mother’s Day.