Woke up early and started shopping for guns

I am really grumpy when I don’t get enough sleep. Everyone looks at me a little sideways around here wondering what random thing I’m going to make a big deal about. Uh-oh, Mom didn’t sleep well…don’t complain about the cold lumpy oatmeal or the over-salted eggs with shells in them. Just smile and be glad there is camp today.

It is true. I have to say that having kids at a later age has taught me why we are biologically supposed to have kids at a younger, much younger, age. It’s the freaking sleep. When I was in my twenties, I would stay up til 4am, regularly. I’d get up throughout the night, answer crisis calls (often involving guns), and then go back to sleep. In the morning, I’d go about my day as a Violence Prevention Counselor as if nothing had happened. Now, I’m up early and I’m the one shopping for guns.

Well, to be fair, they are just Nerf Guns.

We are throwing our kid a Nerf Gun party in a few weeks and I’m looking for the right weapons for our 7-year old and his friends.  Because we are a family who believes in fairness, equity, non-violence and peace, we will make sure each child is armed with the same 20-dart, rotating-barrel automatic Nerf machine-gun. Then we will set those little maniacs loose, with their guns, cheap sunglasses, and homemade vests, to open fire on each other, and, of course, us. It will be a blast.

And in the end, I just feel like such a proud Mama when I get to boast, “I’m throwing the perfect GUN party for my kid! His father and I couldn’t be happier that he’s taken to firearms!”

We start them young with hand guns: http://youtu.be/59LVcwR-bQs

So you want to taxidermy your dog? Me, too!

I’ve got this really old dog. I’ve had him since he was a pup and I was closer to being a pup myself. We’ve lived together longer than me and either of my parents, my siblings, my husbands or my kids. No wonder I’m going to have a hard time letting him go. He’s a pretty cool dog, as well, at least that’s what people say. “He’s the greatest dog ever!” I think the bar is a little low…my dog doesn’t jump on you, bite you, bark at you, or eat your children…thing is, he can’t do most of those things any more.  If he tried to jump on you, he’d fall over or if he ate your child he’d have an awful case of indigestion and we’d be up every night for a week with diarrhea and vomiting. I mean he’s always had a weak stomach and gets sick from table scraps or eating random dead things at the park. I can’t imagine what a kid would do to his digestive problems.

Anyway, my big guy turned 112 recently. That’s 16 in regular years, you know the formula, dog ages 7x faster than people. We made him some carrot pancakes with a dog bone candle and sang him Happy Birthday. My kid taped a happy birthday card to him. It was quite the celebration. In thinking about it,  I don’t know what’s more amazing, Moses being 112 or that everyone knows that dog age formula. Ask for the formula for relativity and we’d all start drooling…

So, my dog and I go on walks to take the kids to school. It’s me with the arm outstretched backwards slowly tugging the slow beast along. I think he really likes it. I can tell by the way he stops and looks up at me through cataract eyes and wiggles his skinny head out of his over-sized collar. It’s such a fun way to be late to school. The kids are up ahead on scooters, bicycles, tricycles, super-fast feet, and here I am pulling along my ancient dog sweetly asking his deaf ears to hurry up on those degenerated legs. Meanwhile, I’m yelling at the kids to wait up. It’s really a delightful way to start to the morning. We all get our needs met. Everyone is happy.

I’m glad I figured out how to make that all work. See, I’m doing it right.

Now, I just have to find a taxidermist.