Free to Good Home: Leather Sofa.....smells like shit

I found that when my girls were babies that something inside me transformed and the person I was, that ate fried chicken with a knife and fork because I couldn't stand to get my fingers all sticky, became the mom who rushed to position her cupped hands in just the right spot to catch the vomit erupting from her child's mouth so it wouldn't ruin the carpet.

The kids grew older and the carpet got ruined anyway and I went back to ordering boneless chicken and started using my knife and fork again.  I really thought I was home free.

I don't know why, the kids still lived here and now there was a plethora of animals they'd drug in with them.  From hamsters to sugar gliders, we have homed all manner of critters and still have a rogue armadillo I named Lightening (those suckers are really fast) who is steadfast turning my entire lawn into a scene from Caddy Shack and Carl is just about ready to press the detonator and blow the whole flipping thing to kingdom come.  If you've never seen the movie, well shame on you, go rent it and then you'll know better than to walk across my yard after dark.

The kids and animals in our home throughout the years have ruined more things than I care to mention, but the one item that chaps my butt the most is my chocolate brown leather sofa.  It has a twin, because for some reason I have this thing about buying two of most everything.  What is even worse, the sofa was ruined by a combination of Abby's cat Fatty, my little dog June Bug (may she RIP) and Alex's dog Roxie.

Fatty decided the left arm of the sofa made the perfect scratching post and so it now looks like I took a cheese grater to it.  Roxie decided the seat cushion was the perfect place to throw up, so there's a suspicious spot there now, and June Bug was slightly more stealthy in her shenanigans, and it would figure, since she was my dog and she just ruined the whole piece of furniture altogether.

June Bug it turns out was one of those canines that loved to eat everything from the corner of my lovely leather sofa to her own excrement.  Well, not just her own, she followed Roxie around outside like she was hiding chocolate Easter Eggs every time they were let out to go potty.  Quite the gross little habit.

I even bought some rather pricey tablets called "No More Bad Habit"  they had cayenne in them.  I'm guessing so the turds would be too spicy to enjoy.  Ha!  June Bug was a chihuahua, pretty sure they're Mexican, so spicy was right up her alley.

And what's with the name?  Bad Habit.  Bad Habit?  I'm sorry but eating shit is a bit more than a "bad habit" dontcha think?  Picking your nose, that's a bad habit.  This is a deficiency of sort, and mental at that because I can tell you she loved nothing better than to snatch up a mouthful of crap and run like the dickens and gobble it down before anyone could grab her up and make her drop it.

Her favorite place to enjoy her morsel of yummy yuckiness was of course, my scratched up, gnawed on sofa.  More crap crumbs that I can count have fallen down into every crack, crevice, and fold of that sofa.  She learned to be sneakier and she got to be a little more stealthy with her snacking.  She reminded me of me hiding in my closet eating Oreos when the kids where little so I didn't have to share.  Yeah, like anyone was gonna want a bite of crap.

No lie, right before she met with her untimely death (may she RIP) she would follow you to the bathroom and sit there at your feet looking up at you as if to say; "You gonna eat that?" 

Sadly, June Bug did not live a long, healthy, shit eating life.  She dashed across our street one day, in an attempt I am certain of scavenging little nuggets of shitty goodness from the neighbors yard, and she met head-on with the tire of a passing car flying up our street.

I miss the little shit eater, sometimes, but I'm forever reminded of her on nights like tonight when I'm working on a project, perched on the edge of this sofa that no matter what I've done to clean, vacuum, or fumigate I cannot get that oh so faint smell of shit out of.  

Tonight is its last hurrah for tomorrow it shall greet the trash pile, thank God I had the foresight to buy two.  Salute!

2:30 am.....My New Best Friend

2:30 am is my new best friend
I did not choose him, he chose me

2:30 is a petulant child and very selfish
Standing by the edge of the bed
Staring at me until I wake up

When I am stubborn and continue to sleep
2:30 am stares harder
nudging the bed
clearing his throat
willing me to open my eyes and acknowledge him

2:30 am is a brat
He is not happy unless we are both looking at one another saying What now?
He is exhausting and restless nudging at me when he sees that I am nodding off

2:30 am is bored easily
He is always plotting and planning and thinking aloud
repeating his argument
talking of the what if's and when I's

2:30 am does not enjoy the time that he has
He longs for a time when he is older and wiser and really gets to live life
chattering about better times

2:30 am is never happy until he finally grows older, but not wiser
thrilled when asked
because he finally gets to say
I am 3:30 am.........

Word Problems

I believe that we are all born being good at something.  Algebra is NOT my something, but more specifically, word problems.  That's a shame since I love words so much.

This past Monday, while enjoying what I like to call my weekly board meeting with some ladies (and I use that term loosely since we go from quite proper to down right Archie Bunkerish at the drop of a hat) that I've had the privilege of not only attending high school with but also renewing our friendships some 30 years later.  We meet at a local Mexican restaurant for dinner and $2.50 margaritas, I call it a board meeting because I consider them to be important members of my board of advisers.

You may wonder what I mean by board of advisers.  Well, we all have a board of advisers, you just may  not admit it.  Your board is the group of people that you consult with during your lifetime on issues that you want to bounce around, and think about out loud.  Your board members give you opinion, advice, warning or simply ridicule you for the topic in general.

During your lifetime the members of your board will change.  Some will drop off your board, others will come on, it's an ongoing thing.  Some are lifetime members and when they're taken from this earth you can still hear their voice giving you advice even on topics you've never gotten to discuss with them.

During our board meeting this past Monday, one of our group received an email from her sister who was needing assistance with a word problem from a college course she is taking.  What better group of people to assist than a table of women who'd  been drinking adult beverages and only had paper napkins and two pens between the four of them to solve it with?  At least we all had access to calculators on our smart phones.

As best as I can recollect the problem went something like this:
John makes $7.50 an hour as a Security Guard and $16 an hour as a Landscaper.  He worked 50 hours last week and made $560.65+/- ( can't remember the exact amount).  How many hours did he work at each job?  Oh, and show your work.

I go to jotting down the basic information while signaling the waiter that I was in need of a club soda and another margarita.  He sees us all jotting down figures and wondering aloud what kind of a goober John must be that he is working two jobs and is still only bringing in less than $600 per week on what I have to assume are before tax dollars.  Perhaps he wasn't good at math.

Either way we are ciphering and chatting and using our Cash Cab lifelines and phoned one of our members son asking him to lend a hand.  Another member actually took a cursory look about the dining room to see if she thought any of the other patrons might have that math teacherish look about them.

We finally end up with the answer with absolutely no help from me..at all...but it turns out there was a bit of skepticism with the "show your work" portion since the Jethro Bodine method of goezintuits was used to solve the problem.

It lead to a night of hilarity and our waiter questioning exactly what we were doing.  He actually said aloud to me, "I thought you were doing your taxes."  Seriously?....on a paper napkin, in a restaurant throwing back margaritas?  I think not.

His assumption shed some light on another type of word problem that we as men and women have tried to solve throughout the ages.  Communication.

I find that I myself am more of a basic math kind of girl when it comes to communication.  1 + 1 must equal 2, shouldn't it?  Texting and messaging turn conversation into Algebra for me.

Yes does not always mean yes and no answer while to me means "no", just means "no answer" or I just got distracted by something and forgot we were talking, or the light just turned green and I can't text and drive.  Technology has really saved us some time by allowing us to really multitask huh!

Emotion and inflection are also missing from words when it comes to texting and messages.  That is unless you decide to go ALL CAPS on somebody and give the impressing you're shouting out your words.

Then there are Emoji's. They can sometimes get your point across, but when you really want just the right one, say a hand shooting a bird for instance, you're let down every time.

Apparently what I need to do is give up on the verbal form of communication, ride the technology wave and give up on trying to convince people to lend a human element to their conversation by actually taking a moment to call.  Instead I should come up with all the Emoji's you ever wanted but were never available before type of app.  That might actually be kinda fun!

What kind of Emoji's would you like to see?