Sunday, November 24, 2013

lessons i have (recently) learned

The grandkids and granddog are here this weekend, and as usual, they are teaching me some important life lessons:

1. No matter how fast I work, two hands and a container of Clorox Clean-Ups cannot keep up with the drips and messes that three 8 year olds, a 3 year old, a 66 year old, and one 6 month old Golden Retriever can make.  The math simply doesn't compute.  I was outnumbered before I picked up the container.

2. Lucy the Golden Retriever holds a grudge.  No matter how lovely her bath experience is, complete with mood lighting and incense, said dog will still get up in the middle of the night and urinate in the carpet to show who has the last word (or pee).  Then she will smile about it.

3. Gramps will cook breakfast for the kids, but he won't clean up the dog's urine.  But he will be considerate enough to wake me up at 6 AM on my day off to tell me the the dog peed the carpet. AFTER I clean up the pee spot, Gramps will tell me it probably happened because he closed the bedroom door during the night.  Too many night lights (read every lamp in the house on) disturbed his sleep, and he forgot that the dog would need to be able to get to ME to let me know she had to go out.  So peeing on the carpet was all my fault.

4. Telling the grands they stink is not an effective way to shame them into taking a bath.  They take pride in stinking.  The only effective tool is withholding cookies until they do get up and hit the shower.

5. Kids riding 4 wheelers in the yard is an effective way to exercise Lucy the dog.  It also keeps Lucy's attention and prevents wandering.  Until you want her to come in.  Then she turns into a greased pig and you can't lay a finger on her.


6. Guilt over forgetting your granddaughter's antibiotic will cause a return trip a day later to pick up the medicine for the cure.  Seventy miles of guilty road trip.  Although I still have to bear the burden of missing a couple doses.  (The bonus: all 4 kids get to stay with son and drive him crazy for a few hours.)  

7. Grandchildren will never spare your feelings if it means lying.  Maddie yesterday: "Grammy I hate to tell you this but this gravy doesn't taste good and I can't eat it."  I made that gravy from scratch, rather than the packaged crap Gramps fixes.  Maddie prefers the packaged crap powdered gravy.

8. It never pays to clean up my house before the grands arrive.  Five minutes after they get here, it looks like it did five minutes after they arrived for their LAST visit.  Which actually adds some symmetry to my life.

9.  I am the only one who can hear in this family.  The grands, Steve, Jim, and the granddog are all deaf to the sound of my voice.  But their noses all work fine.  They can smell a meal cooking from a mile away.

10. Maddie makes awesome meatballs.  Especially when I remember to tell her to go wash the dog hair off her hands before she gets too far into rolling them.  (We only had a few fuzzy meatballs in the pot, not even enough to cause a hairball in the throat.)

11. If you take a nap at my house when Sunday
dinner is ready, be prepared to eat tuna fish out of the package and gingerbread cookies.  Gramps might cook enough to feed us all, but when the spoon starts dipping servings, it is every woman for herself.  Even if the only reason you had to have the nap was because the dog kept licking your arm all night because she was lonely. 

12. Lucy can outrun us all.  So Steve doesn't even try.  He lets her in, waits until she's run mud all over the house, then wipes her paws off.

I give up.  I'm outnumbered.   I have medication somewhere to help me get through this. :)


...life is good. ~cath
 @jonesbabie on Twitter

12 comments:

  1. Again, you have made me laugh out loud. You are a brave or foolish woman, but I know you love having them all with you.

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    1. Well Fran, even though this is the unvarnished truth, I do enjoy knowing I have made someone smile or laugh. I think I am a bit of both, but yes, I do love it when they are here...and the silence is deafening when they leave.

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  2. Cathy, I'd swap any day with you! You can have my home, no stinking grandchildren, no dog peeing all over the carpets (forgot: I have no carpets) but something tells me you'd be bored out of your mind. What a lovely story, full of heart warming incidents and a husband who knows to cook, well ....

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    1. I don't think I'd be bored for a bit Barbara. Maybe we can so a house swap, and give us both a change for a little bit...I am betting you'd be wanting to go home before I would...well maybe not. :)

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  3. Replies
    1. I've read your wonderful blog long enough Marie to know that your life mirrors mine in some ways. I nod many times and think, yep that could be my kids saying or doing that, or they HAVE done that...

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  4. I can see every bit of this story sister! Still laughing...

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    1. Of course you can, since we all invaded your house just a few months ago. Too bad Lucy wasn't with us...wait, did I just wish for that dog to go cross country in a car with us? I need more medication I think. You would have really cracked up to see my trying to control Lucy like you-know-who controls Milly. It was ridiculous, and Lucy proved how ridiculous the idea was. :)

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  5. Haha what is it with men and NOT cleaning up after dogs! Or getting up to let them out to go to the toilet at 5am. Or wiping up their vomit when they vomit. Or cutting the dags from their butt...or maybe that ones just me!

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    1. I don't know about other men, I just know I married a slob, a small failing in my eyes really, since he did earn a living for over 30 years for us. Well, it was a small failing until the pee incident. :)

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  6. I don't want to ask what a dag is. But I have a pretty good idea.

    What would this family do without you, Cath?

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    1. They'd probably wander aimlessly Eli, without me to keep them focused. :)

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