Do You Suffer the Outbreak of Sticky Slider Thigh?

Sticky Slider Thigh, or SST, is a rare condition caused when your sliding glass door gets stuck along the track as the result of prolonged rainy weather, and you find yourself having to press your thigh against the back edge of the door to get the damned thing to close after the dogs come in from doing their business.

When these multiple bruises suddenly broke out on my left thigh, I couldn’t figure out where they came from or how I got them. If I’d stumbled into a heavy piece of furniture hard enough to produce such pitiful patches of purple as portrayed in the posted picture, I’m sure I would’ve remembered.

Mr. Lucky hadn’t been beating me. Nor could I pin this on another brouhaha with the Bear. And the bruises aren’t at all painful or tender. They’re just . . . there.

Only how was I supposed to go out among other humans looking like this? Sure, I could wear long pants, but this is Florida in July. My leg looks as if it’s sporting a tattoo of the Shroud of Turin.

I went a-googling under thigh bruises, leg bruises, multiple leg bruises, and read all sorts of unhelpful things till I worked myself into a lather worthy of George Costanza (“Lupus? Is it lupus?!?) at his panic-stricken worst.

Then this afternoon, Mr. Lucky casually said, “Oh, by the way, I oiled the tracks in the back door earlier, so you should find it easier to open and close now.”

I said that was good, because I was having to use both hands and all my weight on the front of my leg to close that door. And that’s when it hit me like a gong: I realized my bruises were the result of something I hadn’t seen in all my Googling and Binging and Dogpiling. Sure enough, when I went to close the sliding glass door, out of habit (it’s been raining a LOT this past week), I assumed my usual rainy weather position along with the standard grumble of “Why can’t we replace these with French doors?” and my left thigh met the door’s back edge right where the bruises are.

So I have dubbed this condition “Sticky Slider Thigh” or SST.

That’s all it is, folks. No need to make a pilgrimage to my house with lighted candles and whatnot, because you think that’s a holy image on my leg and maybe if you touch it, you’ll be healed of whatever ails you.

You may, however, bring me chocolate.

When My Husband Cooks, I Always Realize Smoke Gets in My Eyes

A long time ago, in another house we lived in far, far away, I clipped a Family Circus cartoon from the newspaper and stuck it on the refrigerator. It had one of the boys, probably Billy, commenting that the smoke alarm in the house always went off only when Daddy cooked.

It was one of those “it’s funny because it’s true” things. That clipping disappeared in the next move, but it remains with us in spirit, since it continues to happen in fact.

For every time Mr. Lucky uses the broiler—which is several times a week—the smoke alarm goes off in a loud, piercing shriek.

Every. Single. Time.

Once he turns on that broiler, he also runs the fan over the stove full blast. I’ll open the sliding glass door leading to the patio. Mr. Lucky even waves the removable lid from Baby Bear’s toy box at the smoke alarm, which is on the ceiling in a hallway just off the kitchen. And still it goes off.

He always has to jab a broomstick at the smoke alarm to shut it up. Sometimes it’s like watching a kid trying to whack a piñata. It’ll break open and the battery will bungee out, dangling by its wires, yet the alarm continues to screech. This is usually followed by his standard rant about the hypersensitivity of the alarm (at least we know it works), that segues into a litany of everything he did to prevent it from going off, and then he wraps up with the same old empty threats (not that I can describe his threats any other way) to just remove the alarm altogether.

Meanwhile, the beagles go ballistic. Jasper flees outside, partly to escape the alarm and partly to avoid Mr. Lucky’s yelling, while Bart shakes as if he just swallowed a full bottle of Acme Earthquake Pills. Once dinner is served, he takes refuge beneath the dining room table, where he treats my feet to a massage with his vibrating torso.

The smoke alarm never goes off when I use the oven. Then again, I don’t use the broiler.

Yet I’ve noticed recently that even when I turn on the oven just to bake something, the dogs go into panic mode. Jasper dashes to the back door and does his gotta-go-now-before-I-explode dance, while a whimpering Bart trots around the house all atremble. They hate the sound of the fan over the stove. They know it’s a harbinger. They just haven’t figured out yet that they only need fear it when their master takes over the kitchen.

Oddly enough, Baby Bear isn’t bothered by it. In fact, he doesn’t even seem to notice when it goes off, possibly because it fits so smoothly with his regular program of routine chaos as to be nothing out of the ordinary to him.

Now that I think about it, I hardly blink myself when it goes off. I just wonder if it’s for the same reason, and if I should be worried about that.

Does My Dog Hate Vivaldi?

Baby Bear has a Yamaha keyboard that plays a wide variety of popular melodies across the music spectrum, from children’s favorites to classical. He seems to have a decided preference for classical music, and has favorite pieces that he’ll make the keyboard repeat over and over until I’m hearing them even when the keyboard is off and he’s asleep. Once it was Beethoven’s Turkish March that was Flavor of the Week. The other day it was Antonio Vivaldi’s “La Primavera” from The Four Seasons suite.

That first allegro evokes images of dancing and skipping through fields of wildflowers, chasing butterflies and rejoicing in the return of spring. It’s bright and happy. Who could possibly object to this masterpiece of baroque?

Our chocolate beagle, Bart, that’s who. Each time Baby Bear activated that first allegro, Bart started whimpering, then baying and howling. This upset our Bear, who communicated his displeasure and desires in his own inimitable fashion by grabbing me, gesturing to the dog, and then gesturing to the door. Translated, “Mom, put that dog outside so I can enjoy Vivaldi in peace.”

Bart was only too happy to go outside. But this got me to thinking: Does he really hate that particular tune? Is there something in it he can hear that no human can, something annoying? Yet the other beagle, Jasper, didn’t seem to be bothered by it.

So after Baby Bear went to school, I thought I’d conduct an experiment. We have Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons on CD, as played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with Seiji Ozawa as conductor and Joseph Silverstein on the violin. It was part of Mr. Lucky’s vast CD collection when we got married way back in 1987. According to the text in the CD insert, Vivaldi also wrote a series of sonnets describing in words what he thought or saw in composing this quartet of famous concertos.

The Spring sonnet includes a reference to a sleeping goatherd’s faithful dog at his side. The second movement of “La Primavera” has repeated notes from the viola that according to the composer, were supposed to represent a barking dog. (At least we’re assured that someone was keeping an eye on those goats.) But it wasn’t this second movement, called a Largo, that upset Bart. It was the first Allegro that disagreed with him.

I played the entire suite on the stereo three times in a row to see what happened with Bart.

First Play: Bart didn’t make a sound. He did, however, head for the back door and wag his tail. Jasper did likewise. Of course, he tends to look up to Bart, but will quickly disavow him and go into hiding anytime he suspects they’re both in trouble. I let them outside, and they came back in during the Autumn movement.

Second Play: Bart was lounging under the coffee table when the dreaded first movement of Spring kicked off. I got up from my chair. He also got up, and wanted to go back outside. He didn’t make a sound. Out he went, and again I let him back in around the autumnal equinox. Jasper slept through it.

Third Play: Upon the return of Spring, Bart was back under the coffee table. This time I remained seated and turned to look at him. He looked back at me. I got up. He didn’t move. Clearly he was bored with my silly experiment.

Could it be he simply found the keyboard rendition annoying? There was only one way to find out. I turned on Baby Bear’s keyboard, found “La Primavera”, and played it.

No reaction from Bart.

I even tried starting it over and over, letting it play for no more than a dozen notes or so each time, just like Bear does. Maybe that was what annoyed Bart. It certainly annoys me.

Still no reaction from Bart. In fact, he was practically snoring under the coffee table.

It’s quite possible he’s desensitized to it by now.

Otherwise, the results of my experiment: Inconclusive. But I did learn a few interesting things about Vivaldi and The Four Seasons that I hadn’t considered before.

Mom and Apple Pie (and Ice Cream and Chocolates)

One of Mrs. Smith’s frozen, ready-to-bake apple pies has been taking up valuable real estate in our freezer since the holidays. I meant to bake it for New Year’s, but Mr. Lucky and the Crown Prince went up to Georgia to spend that holiday with the in-laws---leaving me to deal with Baby Bear and two dogs scared out of their wits by the next door neighbor's fireworks. At the time, I didn’t think it was right to bake that pie and eat it all by myself, so it remained in the freezer alongside a carton of vanilla ice cream.

Eventually Mr. Lucky couldn’t resist digging into the ice cream, leaving only the pie. Occasionally he’d ask, “So when are we going to have that pie, Karen?” and I’d mumble something about pie being “a weekend thing.”

Trouble is, Mr. Lucky works most weekends, and his overall schedule is such that, believe it or not, there’s never been an ideal time to take it out of the freezer and throw it into the oven.

I finally found the time this last week . . . when he and the Crown Prince returned to Georgia for another visit with his kinfolk. I remained at home for four days with two barking dogs and a roaring, rampaging Bear.

On the first evening with his dad out of town, Baby Bear emerged from his room in a deceptively cheery mood, bounced up to me in the middle of the kitchen, and with his trademark yell he pushed all five feet, eleven inches of me flat to the floor! I was barefooted on ceramic tile, so I had no traction to keep me on my feet, and because I happened to be in a part of the kitchen where there was nothing nearby to break my fall, down to the floor I crashed like the Colossus of Rhodes.

That hurt. But at least I came out of it better than old Colossus did. I think he broke into pieces at the bottom of the Aegean. I only got banged up (nice big bruise on the outer thigh), and was in a bit of pain for the next few days.

Since there’s no liquor in the house, I did the only other thing I could to maintain my sanity. I baked that apple pie and ate it with French vanilla ice cream.

I enjoyed a slice for every day Mr. Lucky and our firstborn were gone. That’s a quarter of a pie every day, covered with at least three scoops of the ice cream. I ate it all.

And I did not allow myself to feel so much as a scintilla of guilt.

Oh, and I consumed a whole bag of chocolates, too.

No guilt. Still no sanity, either, and certainly no weight lost, but NO GUILT!

In My House: The Creature From the Black Lagoon

The beagles have been digging more holes beneath the fence.

Meanwhile, the next door neighbor ran his sprinklers long enough that the water seeped over to our side of the fence, and flooded the beagles’ escape tunnel, making for deep puddles that have since turned into mud pits.

Add to the equation a back door left unlocked (Mr. Lucky pleads guilty), and one Bear with a knack for finding crisis in every opportunity, and what do you get?

Crime Scene Photo A: Paw prints from beagles observed in mud pit.

Crime Scene Photo B: Paw prints from Baby Bear visible on fence.

This is right outside my office window, and if the blinds hadn’t been closed against the glare of the sun against the neighbor’s formerly pristine white fence, then I most certainly would’ve seen Baby Bear.

As it is, I did hear a strange noise outside the window, reminiscent of those cheap sprinklers that go choop-choop-choop while they slowly jerk around in a semi-circle, spewing long jets of water over the grass, then go chuchuchuchuchu as they whip back like the return carriage on a typewriter.

I assumed the neighbor must be using that model sprinkler because the built-in system that came with his house was malfunctioning. Granted, the choop-chooping was more erratic than usual for such a sprinkler, but I thought little of it until I suddenly sensed a presence behind me, and turned in my chair.

Standing there just waiting to be noticed was a creature over six feet tall, made entirely of mud from head to toe.

I screamed for Mr. Lucky. The Mud Monster did not even flinch or attempt to pick me up and carry me back to his swamp like he might have back in the fifties.

Mr. Lucky found this very humorous. Fortunately Baby Bear’s bathroom is equipped with a handheld shower. Mr. Lucky applied it to the Mud Monster, and eventually the mud washed away to reveal our youngest son.

I’m just thankful the back gate was locked.

Not My Jasmine Tree!

Once upon a time, in its most glorious full flower, it looked like this:

At the time I posted my last blog entry, my beloved jasmine tree was still very green and leafy, with only a few hints of brown here and there. In fact, it was in such splendid condition following the big freeze that I suspected it of being a weed doing a very convincing impersonation of a jasmine tree.

But my jasmine is--or was--quite real. Look at what's happened to it since:

A stark, reverse oasis amid the verdure of lush crabgrass and flourishing dollar weed!

Now, before anyone clubs me over the head and hollers, "Deciduous!" let me say we've had this tree for several years and it's never done this. In fact, the last time I saw a jasmine tree like this was several days after a certain beagle who shall remain nameless dug up the tree we had before this one. Mr. Lucky, knowing how much I love jasmine, drove all over the county before he finally found a nursery that had another jasmine tree.

When he planted this second one, I wanted him to dig a moat around it and stock it with gators to keep the dogs away. Instead he put some rocks and a decorative wire border around it until it took enough root to stand up to the dogs.

Whenever it bloomed, Mr. Lucky would break off small sprigs and bring them to me so I could have sweet smelling jasmine at my work space.

Now what? Say it ain't so! Say it will rally and come back.

And if not, just club me over the head.

A Midnight Visit from the Police, OR: Let's Scare Karen to Death, OR--Just a Thanksgiving Tale

If your husband happens to be out late one night on a job, and a police car pulls up in front of your house past midnight but you didn’t even call 911, what are you supposed to think?

If you’re like me, you’ll think the very worst and go into Maximum Panic Mode.

I went to bed around 11:30 pm the night before Thanksgiving, only to be jolted awake less than an hour later by our two barking beagles. My first thought was they were calling out to a neighbor taking their own dog for a midnight stroll, but when the barking persisted, I had to get up and investigate—especially since I was afraid they would wake up the Crown Prince (who was staying with us for the holiday) and Baby Bear.

I carefully lifted a slat in the blinds covering the living room window and peered out. Terror slashed through me as I saw a police car parked right in front of our house. The silhouette of a very tall officer stood at the foot of the driveway, feet apart, facing our house, looking very much as if he were trying to ascertain if anyone was home. There were no cars parked in our driveway, and all the lights were off.

I could only think of one reason for him to be out there. My critique partner, Jean, who writes romantic suspense, has described this very scenario in a few of her books, and it usually includes dialogue along the lines of, “We’re very sorry to inform you . . . we need you to come with us so you can identify—”

NO-OOOHHH!!!

The cop remained standing at the end of the driveway, arms akimbo. Why didn’t he come up and ring the doorbell and put me out of my—or rather, plunge me into further misery? Perhaps I should go out there to meet him. “Excuse me, sir, would you mind telling me why you’re in front of my house? You’re making my dogs bark and you’re scaring the hell out of me.”

If only he didn’t look like Gort standing outside the flying saucer. I could almost hear the menacing theme music from the theremin.

But I wasn’t dressed to meet anyone save Mr. Lucky, so I ran back to the bedroom to throw some clothes on. Whimpering and trembling all over, my heart hammering, I returned to the living room window and . . . Gort and the police car were gone.

Now what? Was he on his way back to the station because he thought there was no one home except for the dogs? But he hadn’t rung the bell. At least I hadn’t heard the doorbell; maybe I was still asleep when he rang it and that’s what started the dogs barking.

I didn’t know what to do. Should I call up 911?

“What’s your emergency?” the dispatcher would ask.

“Well, I don’t know that it’s an emergency,” I would say in a tremulous voice broken with panicked sobs, “but my husband is out right now and I just saw a cop parked in front of my house like maybe he was here to—” Scratch that.

Instead I called Mr. Lucky’s cell phone. To my dismay, all I got was voice mail.

By now I was totally freaking. I tried his work place. Maybe he was still there, or maybe someone else there would tell me something . . . or would they?

One of his co-workers answered the phone, and to my everlasting relief, Mr. Lucky was there, safe and sound. His cell phone, he said, was out in the car. But he couldn’t explain anymore than I could why that cop might have been outside our house. The sprinklers hadn’t been running, so it couldn’t be because we were watering on the wrong night.

I was about to go back to bed when the dogs started barking again. I returned to the living room window and—GORT WAS BACK!

At least he remained inside his car, but now what? Was this part of a stakeout? Were we under surveillance? But for what?

I wondered what would happen if I just went out there to ask. Would I get shot? Thrown across the trunk of his squad car and handcuffed? Or be chided with a mere, “Ma’am, get back inside your dwelling, please, and stay there until further notice.”

At least if he came after me like Gort on Patricia Neal, there were no folding chairs in the driveway for me to stumble over and get tangled up in, and no conveniently placed partition for me to trap myself against, instead of just dodging around it and running like hell.

I didn’t want to go out the front door for fear the overexcited beagles would shoot past me and escape. So I turned on all the exterior lights and came out through the garage.

Fortunately, he turned out to be more like Klaatu than Gort.

He met me in the driveway, and politely explained. A neighbor called to complain of a barking dog. I’d heard this same dog several houses over as I fell asleep. But the neighbor seemed to think it was coming from my house. My dogs had been inside all evening, and only started barking when the cop showed up. After determining there was no barking dog outside my house, he’d moved on to see if he could find it elsewhere in the neighborhood, but by that time the owner had apparently wised up and brought his yappy little mutt inside.

The cop then returned to my address to make his report that the complaint was unfounded and our house appeared secure. He remarked that my dogs were actually doing their job very well, and apologized for scaring the bejabbers out of me. He was very nice and professional, and I’m just relieved that my initial fears were as unfounded as the neighbor’s complaint.

Plus, this gave me something to be grateful for on Thanksgiving.

The Real Baby Bear Comes Back--and Strikes Back

On my bookshelf is a well worn book club edition of The Second Lady by Irving Wallace, published in 1980. It’s a Cold War political thriller about a KGB plot to abduct the First Lady of the United States and replace her with an almost perfect double in hopes of gleaning a vital piece of classified information from the President.* Needless to say, the imposter made a few blunders that nearly blew her cover and raised a few suspicions among certain members of her staff.

But not the President. A typical husband in the grand American tradition, he didn’t notice anything the least bit different about his wife.

The First Lady’s mother would have known something was amiss—if she weren’t conveniently deceased.

Which brings us to Baby Bear. I recently blogged about his uncharacteristically good behavior this summer. I’ve been wondering if he was replaced with a Second Bear these past two months, only to be switched back last week when Mr. Lucky took our older son up to Georgia to visit his grandparents. Baby Bear suddenly went back to being his old rampaging, pillaging, plundering self. Do I detect a sinister KGB plot, or a mere reaction to his father’s absence?

I wanted our chocolate beagle, Bart, to go to Georgia with them. Mr. Lucky agreed, until the night before his departure when his father called to declare, “No dogs!” Showing no fear of his own wife, Mr. Lucky complied. He was gone four days, leaving me with the Bear, two dogs, and no car. And—perhaps worst of all—no chocolate.

So what went wrong in his absence? An homage to the late Mr. Wallace and The Book of Lists of which he was co-author:

1. Bart is the same dog who balks at going outside when his master is away. I suppose I should be thankful that when he expresses his displeasure, at least he does it on the bathroom rug.

2. Barely an hour after Mr. Lucky left, the remote controller for Baby Bear’s Playstation went kaput and I couldn’t get it to work again, not even after charging it up or with the cable still plugged in. I had to call Mr. Lucky on his cellphone for advice. Well, okay, not so much for advice as to cuss him out for having the temerity to leave me when he should have known the controller would die an hour later. He instructed me to turn off the Playstation, unplug everything, then plug everything back in, and reboot the Playstation, talking me through a convoluted process that reminded me of when they tried to restore power to Jurassic Park and get it back online. And while I didn’t have any velociraptors chewing my arms off, I did have to contend with two barking dogs, one angry, frustrated Bear, and a thunderstorm that caused a sudden power surge, briefly knocking everything out and ending our phone conversation in a burst of static. Mr. Lucky probably thought I slammed the phone down on him in rage, and I wouldn’t have blamed him for making the assumption.

3. Later, the controller decided to work properly again. Then Baby Bear dropped it behind the entertainment center. Retrieving it was a job for Indiana Jones, complete with huge clouds of old dust, falling objects (note to self: next time, remove framed photos from top of entertainment center before venturing behind it), and sights no human has seen for seven hundred years.

4. Baby Bear has rediscovered water. When he isn’t dumping it on himself, he’s The Human Fountain, throwing and spewing it all over the house.

5. He’s figured out how to turn on the shower in his bathroom. The shower makes almost no noise compared to the tub faucet, and he seems to know it. I lost count of how many times I found him sitting in the tub beneath the shower spray. Sometimes he was clothed, sometimes not.

6. He loves to rock back and forth. He rocks hard enough on the family room sofa that he can actually make the sofa itself rock back, and a new hole in the drywall behind it.

7. Mr. Lucky called the next morning from his parents’ house. His father had taken his mother to an appointment, and since he didn’t have a key to their house, he and the Crown Prince would be stuck there for a few hours until the parental units came back. I was hard pressed to commiserate with his dilemma.

8. Not surprisingly, I have 0 words to report at the weekly check-in for the TARA Book Challenge.

9. I had no chocolate.

10. And I still have no chocolate. I AM OWED CHOCOLATE!

*Now why can't I write blurbs that concise for my own books?

Another Day, Another Flood . . . Another Drink, Please

Last week I found a wet spot on the carpet, in the hallway leading from Bear Country to the kitchen. I chalked it up to a certain boy dumping cups of water onto the floor, and laid a towel over it.

Yet the spot wouldn’t go away. Or it would dry up the next day, then mysteriously appear again, usually in the evenings. Was it possible Aquaboy was pouring water in the exact same spot at about the same time every day? Mr. Lucky and I agreed this was quite likely; it was just a matter of catching him but we never did. Then I made a horrifying discovery yesterday morning, after nearly a week of drenching rain over the Sunshine State.

The wet spot had grown and spread—or actually, the spot had spread from an even larger splotch in the adjacent linen closet. I didn’t see it at first because I had about a hundred old worn out bed sheets stacked on the floor of the linen closet. That’s right, I never throw out old sheets because of some nutty idea I have that I might find another use for them one day.

I alerted Mr. Lucky and told him we had a serious problem. He’s been wanting to replace the hallway carpet with tile, and now that he had a good excuse, he promptly ripped up the carpet and padding beneath. Neither of us could find the source of the leak anywhere.


There was no way Baby Bear could have dumped that much water, only to have it soak straight through the carpet to the foundation and underneath all those sheets on the closet floor. The water would have had to show up on the kitchen floor, too, and surely I would have noticed it when I slipped and went flying onto my tush.

No, this was caused by something else, something infinitely more sinister, and what with all the rain we’d had lately, horrible visions filled my head—of plumbing doctors coming to the house with their fancy diagnostic equipment to detect leaks that can’t be seen with the naked eye. Of some guy in a hardhat taking a jackhammer to my floor to reach the pipes underneath, and of water spewing up through my roof like a geyser. Of a sinkhole forming beneath the house, threatening to suck our entire home and everything in it into the muddy bowels of the earth.

Worst of all, of having to move all my books YET AGAIN!

It only took about five minutes for me to become thoroughly freaked out, while Mr. Lucky counseled patience as the floor dried and he watched to see if the water returned.

Sure enough, it did after dinner last night. And he traced the water to this source:

A perfectly harmless canine water cooler

I’d filled it for the dogs about an hour before the water showed up in the linen closet again. It had a crack I never saw when filling it. The water just couldn’t flow across the kitchen floor where I’d be most likely to spot the problem right away, now could it? Oh no, instead it had to seep behind that knotty wooden object (which holds the garbage), beneath the molding and into the linen closet on the other side of the wall.

And here I thought the dogs had been slurping up so much water recently because of the hot summer weather. Lately I’ve been filling it every single night, about every twenty-four hours. Yet I never made the connection between the dogs’ water supply and the mysterious appearance of the water spot in the hallway each evening.

Thank heavens that’s all it was—and for once it wasn’t even an Act of Baby Bear.

We now return to our regularly scheduled insanity in progress.

When Dogs Attack Window Blinds

When Mr. Lucky and I came home from shopping yesterday, this was what we saw in our front window:
This was obviously the work of our beagles, who attack the blinds in this way only when a stranger comes to the door.

We don't know how many times the stranger rang the bell, but it wasn't the postman, as no packages were left behind, nor did we find any notices in the mailbox.

It wasn't one of those people who hang advertisements on the doorknob, because nothing hung there, nor did anything hang from the neighbors' doorknobs.

Most likely it was one of those pesky salespeople who thought the better of leaving his or her card for fear I'd track them down and make them pay for new blinds. Especially since I probably won't be kindly disposed toward buying their vacuum cleaner with 64 attachments, all of which will end up at the bottom of Baby Bear's toybox.

It may even have been that red-headed woman from some carpet cleaning company who shows up every few months, asking which room of our house gets the most traffic. I keep telling her "the whole house" but she insists I pick a room and she'll clean it for free--after which I should be so amazed by the results that I simply can't let her leave the premises until I sign a contract agreeing to let her do the rest of the house for as much as we're paying on the mortgage.

I took both these photos. The first one is crooked because--well, sheesh! YOU try finding a picture in that LCD screen when the sun is glaring directly behind you! Mr. Lucky might have done better with it, since he's a photographer by profession, but alas, he tends to take after the cobbler with the barefoot children.

By the same token, I didn't think the interior shot was much better. He told me afterward that I should have used a flash (I thought I did); still, the artistic side of him said he liked this shot because of what he called the play of light (call me an Impressionist photographer) spilling through the blinds:


Mind you, we used to keep these blinds raised above the six bottom panes for the sole purpose of allowing the dogs to bark at passers-by and callers without destroying them (the blinds, not the callers). But recently the cord broke and we could no longer raise them.

The dogs left these in such a tangled mess of destruction that Mr. Lucky took scissors and cut off the bottom half of the blinds.

"But now I can't lower the blinds when it gets dark out," I told him. "And I won't be able to sit in my reading chair in the evenings, unless you don't mind people looking through the window at my legs."

"Put on those fishnet stockings I gave you for your birthday, and wear a lampshade," he suggested.

In his dreams and my nightmares. My plan is to replace the sheer curtains--which are more decorative than functional--with more opaque ones.

The same goes for those fishnet stockings.

Mr. Lucky Saves a Dog

Every morning Mr. Lucky takes the beagles walking around the subdivision. Sometimes, if he leashes up after Baby Bear leaves on the school bus, I go with him.

About a dozen doors down the street is a two-story house with double front doors of frosted glass, one of the nicer homes on our block. As we strolled by, we could make out the blur of a barking little dog who would jump up and down on the other side of the frosted glass. Sometimes Mr. Lucky would take the beagles all the way up to the front door “to say hello” to the little dog. The front yard was ragged and weedy, but we assumed since there were curtains in the windows and a dog barking inside, that there must be people living there, but they were at work all day.

But on Sunday morning, Mr. Lucky discovered those ornate front doors were unlocked. As it turned out, the house had been abandoned by its owners some time ago. Most of the furniture was gone, but whoever had lived there had left the dog behind. Someone across the street said the people who’d lived there were going through a divorce, and the house was in foreclosure.

That explained the sadly neglected yard, BUT WHY DID THEY LEAVE THAT POOR LITTLE DOG TO FEND FOR HERSELF?

It’s one thing to leave a few pieces of furniture behind, but a helpless pet? Mr. Lucky surmised that was why the door had been left unlocked—perhaps the owners had hoped that someone would venture inside and either take the dog, or even set it free to roam the neighborhood and ultimately get hit by a car. I guess they didn’t want that much on their consciences. But why didn’t they try to find a new home for the dog, or at least take her to a shelter? I wonder how much their divorce plays a part in this; if one spouse who didn’t really want the dog kept it anyway, only to abandon it out of sheer spite to the other spouse who may have wanted it. I witnessed similar quibbling when my own parents were divorced more than three decades ago, but theirs was over inanimate dust collectors.

Mr. Lucky brought the dog back to our house, and tried to clean her up. She was a little Shih Tzu, and as shaggy as a dust mop. I’m no expert on this breed—or any dog, for that matter—but Mr. Lucky said when properly groomed, she should look like me (see photo at right)—with long, straight tresses hanging all over. Oddly enough, instead of being offended by the comparison, I was actually amused. He likes my hair long.

The poor little thing was infested with fleas and her fur was matted in places, with a few pink patches. Her teeth were blackened. She had a collar but no tag. We didn’t know her name. I went through the whole gamut of names commonly given to female dogs—Lucy, Abby, Molly, Polly, Sophie, Betsy, Suzy, Katie, even Fifi (which we sometimes called our daughter Fiona), but “the little furball” as Mr. Lucky took to calling her, answered to none of them. She must have had a very unusual, exotic name.

But we had to remember what Mike Wazowski said to fellow monster Sully in the Disney/Pixar cartoon, Monsters Inc., when Sully found himself befriending a fearless little girl he should have been scaring instead: That once you name it, you become attached to it.

The little furball was adorable, and so loving and trusting. She wasn’t the least bit afraid of us, and was eager to be cuddled and loved. She fit very nicely on my lap. We were tempted, oh, so tempted, to keep her and make her a member of the family. But she needed more rehabilitation and maintenance than we had the means to provide, so we concluded we’d have to take her some place where she could get the care she needed, before finding a new home.

Because she was going to the bathroom all over the house, that night Mr. Lucky took some old towels and made a bed for her in the laundry room, which serves as a passage between the kitchen and garage.

From 11 pm to 2 am, she did nothing but bark in that laundry room, and it echoed all over the house. I dozed off and on, but always with high pitched yapping in the background. Finally Mr. Lucky moved her to the garage, where we keep an old futon. Things quieted down after that, but I tossed and turned till about 4 am. I got very little sleep that night, and I had to be up at 7:30 to get Baby Bear ready for school.

Research revealed that all the local animal rescue places were closed on Monday, save for the county animal shelter, so that’s where we took Ms. Shih Tzu, and told them how and where she was found.

The county animal shelter is the same place where we adopted our beagles last year. When we started visiting there in search of a dog or two, the smaller breeds were always spoken for already. They seem to be more popular than big dogs. The staff is optimistic that Ms. Shih Tzu will find a good home very quickly.

I only hope it’s better than the one where Mr. Lucky found her, and that she lives happily ever after.

A Different Kind of Picky Eater

Our smaller beagle, Jasper, isn’t really finicky about what he eats. He’s only finicky about where he eats, to the extreme that he’ll refuse to eat until we set the bowl exactly where he wants it. We can’t just set the bowl down somewhere and leave it until he gets hungry enough to stop being such a prima doggie; otherwise the other dog—who’s bigger and finicky about nothing—will gobble it down.

To make matters more interesting, Jasper insists on a different spot every time, and we never know from one meal to the next where in the house he wants to eat today. Just because he ate in one spot this morning, doesn’t mean he wants to eat in that same spot come evening. He always appreciates—nay, demands—a change in scenery. Lately his favorite dining areas have included the following:

1. Underneath the end table between the living room window and the sofa. I don’t like him eating in my living room, because I worry about ants. (While stationed at an Air Force base in California, we lived in a house under constant siege from ants, so I have this complex.) Nothing ruins my day like sitting on my sofa, only to glimpse an ant crawling along the sofa’s arm; or worse, to feel one climbing up my leg. And since there’s no such thing as a single ant, I have to get up and find out where his million and one friends are.

2. In my office. I don’t like this either, because I’m afraid of ants conducting maneuvers in the hundreds of books I keep in there.

3. Out on the patio. I’d be happy if the dog food bowls could be out here all the time. But Mr. Lucky won’t allow it, mainly because the ants would be all over the bowls all the time. When Jasper is in the mood for dining alfresco (once in the rain), we keep it out there just long enough for him to eat, then the bowl comes back into the house. Still I worry a few ants might sneak into the house by hiding under the bowl and clinging to the bottom like escapees beneath a truck leaving a prison camp. Sure, I can always check the bowl before bringing it back into the house. But will Mr. Lucky?

4. Mr. Lucky’s office. No chance of ants coming in here. It’s so cluttered, they wouldn’t be able to find the bowl.

5. Inside Jasper’s crate. If he doesn’t mind sharing his own space with ants, I suppose that’s his business.

Does he ever lead me to the spot he wants? Of course not. I’m supposed to read his mind. I have to wander all over the house with a full dog food bowl in my hand, from the end table in the living room, to the patio, to Mr. Lucky’s office, to Jasper’s crate, and back to the patio, setting down the bowl at each place only to have Jasper turn up his nose and slink away in scorn, until I finally find the right place. When I do, he scurries forward to eat, and I can move on with my life until his next meal.

But if he ever wants to eat in Baby Bear’s room, he’s just going to have to go hungry.

In Praise of Cats

Baby Bear’s Newest Trick: Spitting Spaghetti! This is what happens when you don’t keep Silly String in the house. If only the red sauce splattered all over the walls didn’t make my dining room look like a crime scene.

I told Mr. Lucky to put the dogs out while we ate dinner. I don’t know why he doesn’t do that as a matter of routine, since he spends half the meal ordering the dogs to get away from the table.

As soon as he was done eating, he left to go to work. I cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher before letting the dogs back inside. I opened the back door, and they were nowhere to be seen.

They’d escaped. The entire back yard is fenced in, yet I couldn’t find a hole anywhere, unless they’d secretly been working on one beneath the air conditioning unit a la The Great Escape.

I whistled, though I’m not a very good whistler. I yelled. I cursed. Not a single dog came running back. I was going to have to go out and chase them down before some surly neighbor yelled at me for letting the dogs run loose, as they (the dogs as well as the surly neighbors) are wont to do if Mr. Lucky isn’t at home.

I had to chase down three dogs, and I had to do it on foot. Mr. Lucky recently sold his playboyish Buick Riviera, because it requires premium unleaded and in recent months has done nothing but sit in the driveway looking snazzy. After some discussion we decided we could get by with one car.

The dogs obviously listened in, took note, and hatched their fiendish plot.

Only I couldn’t chase down three dogs and a boy who always runs in the opposite direction from where I want to go, casting off every article of clothing he wears as he makes his mad dash to the nearest dangerous place. So I did something I really don’t like doing—I apologized to Baby Bear, assured him it was for his own safety and my sanity, and locked him in his room.

As I pulled the dog’s leashes out of the hall closet, already the house was shaking from Baby Bear’s pounding thumps of protest. Certainly I could have left him loose in the house and just locked the front door, but then the ensuing damage would be more widespread, and the possible injury to himself more serious. At least this way any disaster would be contained.

We’re in Florida and it’s ninety degrees shortly before 6 pm. I’m not dressed to be seen outside the house, at least not by my standards. I haven’t even had the chance to check my teeth to make sure there are no bits of basil or parsley stuck in the gumline. I have to remember not to smile if I meet anyone.

At least I got some much needed exercise. I swiftly walked all around the block in search of those dogs, but didn’t see them anywhere. I cut through several yards, and crashed a couple of backyard barbecues and pool parties. On my way back to my house, I finally spotted them in the next door neighbor’s yard—the first place I’d checked, as the neighbor (who wasn’t home at the time) keeps a yappy little dog chained up in their lanai.

I rounded up the dogs, put them on the leashes and took them home, where Baby Bear had kicked a new hole in the drywall in his room—and this only six hours after a parent-teacher conference at his school, where Mr. Lucky asserted that Bear hadn't damaged any walls in quite a long time.

He forgot to knock on wood when he said that.

At 8:30 pm that same evening, the dogs were agitating to go back into the yard, presumably to do doggie business. I let them out and went to check on Bear. I swear not more than two minutes went by before I went into the backyard to discover all three dogs were gone again.

Lock up the boy. Grab the leashes. Venture into the neighborhood as dusk is falling. I found two dogs. The other returned on his own a half hour later. I didn’t let them out again until Mr. Lucky came home, and determined that they’d dug a new hole under the fence.

“How could they have dug a hole in less than two minutes?” I asked. “I swear they were out there less than two minutes when they escaped.”

“I guess they’ve been working on it for some time,” he replied. Just like in the movie.

“But if it isn’t under the A/C unit, then why didn’t I see it anywhere at the 6 pm breakout?”

Mr. Lucky couldn’t answer that. But can three beagles dig an escape route that quickly?

The Salesman Cometh--And Refuseth to Go Away

When our three beagles started barking and clawing at the open blinds on the living room window Saturday morning, I assumed they were barking at someone out on the street, because I hadn’t heard the doorbell. I yelled at them to get down from the window before they destroyed the blinds, but to no avail. As I pulled one dog out of the bent and battered slats, I glimpsed a man at the front door.

He wasn’t one of the neighbors, nor was he wearing any kind of uniform. He was well dressed and sported the telltale padfolio.

If he didn’t see me, then he certainly heard me, no thanks to my hoydenish voice that can be heard in three counties even when I’m not yelling (Mr. Lucky says anytime he's on the phone with me, he has to hold it away from his ear because I talk so loud). But the salesman knew someone was home.

“He already knows anyway,” Mr. Lucky hollered over the cacophony, “because there are two cars in the driveway.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” I shouted. “For all he knows, we have a third vehicle we took to go out for donuts. Or we flew somewhere on vacation and left both vehicles here to make people think someone was home.”

“Well, that’s why he’s out there,” Mr. Lucky bellowed. “Because he thinks someone’s home.”

Certainly the racket was a major tip-off. And it got worse in a deafening, nerve-shredding chain reaction.

Baby Bear charged in, shirtless and screaming, and threw himself on the sofa. The frenzied dogs continued attacking the blinds as if they were made of USDA prime beef. Then, since I had yet to lose my mind, the phone rang. The answering machine kicked in, and on came a chirpy voice congratulating me for winning a thirty day free trial membership at a ladies’ fitness club.

Mr. Lucky decided this would be an excellent opportunity to conduct an impromptu obedience class for the dogs. He started commanding them to get down and sit. Perhaps the salesman would get tired of waiting and leave.

I joined Baby Bear on the sofa, and tried to soothe him. I nearly lost my teeth and six vertabrae for my trouble.

Meanwhile, the perky voice on the answering machine promised me a fabulous bod just in time for the summer. Wouldn’t I love to go to the beach and attract so many hot looking guys I’d have to beat them off with my surfboard?

A howling Baby Bear had me in a headlock and was ready to flip me over the coffee table, but I managed to steal a peek under his armpit, and saw through the window that the salesman wasn’t going anywhere. He really wanted to make that sale, convert us to that religion, or secure that vote. Why didn’t he give up and try our more hospitable neighbor? Was he nuts, or just desperate? I know if I didn’t live here, I would’ve run for my life by now.

I somehow got the upper hand on Baby Bear, and wrestled him into his room. My husband, who has a lot more patience than I do, finally calmed the dogs and got them to sit. He cracked the door open and slipped out to talk to the man, who wished to impart some “good news.” He wasn’t about to give up and let us suffer all that pandemonium for nothing. Oh, no! We, more than anyone else in the neighborhood, had earned the ultimate payoff for all our troubles: The promise of going on forever, in exchange for some money, our souls, and what little remained of our rational thinking.

I thought we were already doing that. I think Mr. Lucky told him as much—or at least, “No thanks.”

As I stood there panting for breath, sweat trickling down my brow, the gushing lady on the answering machine finally wrapped it up. “So why are you just sitting there, girlfriend? Get off that sofa, get out of your rut, and call now—and discover how you can enjoy a more active, exciting life today!”

As If My House Doesn't Stink Enough Already . . .

Mr. Lucky has acquired yet another dog, a chocolate beagle. Unlike our other two beagles, this one has a brown nose.

When I said I wanted more chocolate, this wasn’t exactly what I meant.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t like dogs. I do. In fact, last Friday night we watched I Am Legend with Will Smith, and for me, the most heartbreaking scene in that movie—the one that nearly drew tears from my eyes—was canine-related.

I just don’t like having to do extra housework to keep down the odor. Unless you’re one of those clean freaks (pardon the redundancy), who amongst you cannot appreciate my dilemma?

Mr. Lucky proposed we use potpourri to keep down the odor. The words were barely out of his mouth when I started having visions of Baby Bear dumping baskets of potpourri and scattering trails of it all through the house.

After I vetoed that idea, he suggested scented candles. NO WAY! I will not have open flames of any kind in the house because of—who else? Baby Bear.

Mr. Lucky argued that scented candles didn’t have to be lit to be effective. I countered they had to come with wicks for a reason.

We used to have “plug-in” deodorizers, until Bear figured out how to unplug them.

In the end, we went shopping in search of a compromise, and decided to try some jars of “odor absorbing gel.”

Our new chocolate beagle is a good dog who's bonded well with the other two beagles. Mr. Lucky is happy, and I’d rather have a happy husband than not. He says he likes having three dogs. “There’s just something about the number three,” he said. “We had three kids, now we have three dogs.”

Methinks I'd better keep my mouth shut, lest he gets some harebrained notion about having three wives.

Who Really Lives in the Doghouse?

I don't mean to whine, but I can't help feeling my husband spends more money on the dogs than he does on me.

He completely reorganized the utility shelves in the laundry room--not because I could never find whatever household cleaner I needed at any given time (though that's always made a handy-dandy excuse for not doing housework)--but so he could make room for a large assortment of dog treats. I had no idea there was such a shortage that he had to buy in bulk.

We can't keep them in the pantry, because that's more easily accessible to Baby Bear, who's been known to confuse doggie bacon bits and biscuits with his own supply of Cheetos and Triscuits.

Mr. Lucky tosses the dogs treats for every occasion you can think of. They get a treat when he comes home. They get a treat for going to the bathroom in their designated spot. They even get a treat just for sitting and doing nothing.

So where's mine?

Don't I deserve a chocolate when my husband comes home? He says I'm always in the bathroom. And I'd be just as willing as the dogs to sit around and do nothing.

"Yeah, but you don't get as excited as they do when I come home," he said. "You don't wag your tail or lick me all over my face like they do."

Maybe I'll get chocolates if I stop certain bad behaviors. Like always barking at him about the dirty socks and wet towels on the floor. Jumping all over him to take out the garbage. Digging holes in the backyard to bury the remote and that DVD he found in the "Please Take This Inventory Off Our Hands!" bin at the dollar store and always wants to watch every Saturday night.

As for the tail wagging and face licking, I guess we'll have to work on that, though it might mean going through some back issues of Cosmopolitan and a visit to Victoria's Secret.

Hey, it's for chocolate.

Our Dueling Disruptors

Buddy (top) and Jasper (bottom). Buddy is the bigger and more playful. Jasper is smaller and, when he's somewhere he shouldn't be--like on our bed--and I tell him to get off, he rolls onto his back, thumps his tail, and gazes upside-down at me with those big brown eyes that say, "But I'm so cute!" At that point, I feel as if I would do anything for him.

Just don't tell Mr. Lucky. He might try it and next thing you know, I'll be up on the roof clearing sludge out of the gutters while he's inside watching the football game in peace--or at least as much as the dogs and Baby Bear will allow.