Back from the Brink (Otherwise Known as Being Buried in Work)

The Picket Fence Post family has not fallen off of the face of the earth, nor has it been swept away in the winds of the hurricane.

We've been here, in the Picket Fence Post domicile in the suburbs of Boston, with our three middle schoolers who've been busy doing their adolescent things (including busting a cell phone, overdoing it with the noxious and likely toxic Axe body spray and testing their, uh, independence). We've been here with our freshly emboldened canine thief who aggressively dives at any unattended food with surprising swiftness given his stout build (like that slice of apple pie Max stole from my plate the other night the second I got up from the sofa). We've gone to soccer games, hockey games, band rehearsals, basketball tryouts, and I broke my left ring-finger (I think it was broken but I didn't go to the doctor to confirm because I'm an idiot) while "helping" the kids prep for said basketball tryouts.

We shelled out a healthy fistful of greenbacks for a hideously stupid-looking orange bodysuit (see above), also known as our 11-year-old's Halloween costume. We mourned the horrific conclusion of a Red Sox season which, sadly, resembled the kinds of seasons I used to experience when I was but a young Sox fan in my Sox jacket decorated with my Dwight Evans button, never imagining I'd have to wait until I was the mother of three to see a Boston World Series victory.

Together, the five of us in the Picket Fence Post family have shared laughs during the new episodes of Modern Family (loved the bit about Luke besting Phil at magic) and The Middle. The Eldest Boy and I are still catching up on the new season of The Mentalist, a show we like to watch together.

But I haven't been doing any writing. For weeks. And it's been driving me crazy. It's like trying to hold your breath for too long. It's unnatural and not at all good for you, at least it's not good for me.

Likewise, I haven't done a few other things that I normally do at this time of the year, like take the family apple picking, visit a pumpkin patch where we pay too much for giant gourds, carve said gourds and leave them to rot in a moldly heap on our front doorstep until Thanksgiving, or go to the Big E, the New England fair held in western Massachusetts and indulge in overly caloric, fried grub that would make Michael Bloomberg woozy.

Why? Why have I been off of my writing game and missed my celebrate-my-favorite-season-of-autumn-activities? I've become a full-time assistant professor teaching writing and journalism at a local institution of higher learning. In short order, I needed to craft not just a syllabus for the writing course, but create a new course about online and social media. In addition to teaching/grading and researching/designing a class, I've been helping to advise the staff of the student newspaper two nights a week.

The other big thing that has rendered me exhausted to the point where I don't think mere flavored coffee alone is potent enough to keep me awake over the long-term (I may have to look into those Turbo shot thingies at Dunkin' Donuts) is a non-fiction book project I've been researching for months. I'm in the process of conducting dozens of interviews as well as observing an educational process (can't give you the details now) three mornings a week. We're talking EARLY in the morning. Six o'clock hour early. The if-I-don't-get-caffeine-into-my-system-NOW-somebody's-gonna-get-hurt early.

However, despite sleep deprivation, autumnal celebration deprivation and coping with pediatric complaints about my new gig (one of the kids accused me of ruining this individual's life by taking a full-time job because, you know, I have nothing better to do than to concoct ways in which I can wreck his life, right?), I'm hopeful that things are becoming somewhat manageable right now, or maybe it's just the sleep deprivation talking.

Image credit: SuperFanSuits.com and Jordin Althaus/ABC.

My Dog is a Thief

Don't let that cute face fool you. That fuzzy, "ain't I cuddly?" mug is a simply facade. It's a front for a stealthily sinister thief who's becoming more brazen with every passing day.

Take, for example, a few weekends ago when we were having company here at the Picket Fence Post domicile. Seeing as it was a beautiful summer's afternoon and the pressing humidity had lifted, The Spouse and I decided to entertain his folks on our backyard deck. To keep the bugs from gorging on our food, we placed mesh covers over the plates of appetizers that we'd placed on the table, including a platter of hearty Vermont cheddar cheese and tangy slices of pepperoni.

But we'd forgotten that we'd left Max outside. The dog, lured by the aroma of spicy meat and rich cheese, hopped up onto a deck chair, climbed onto the table and removed the mesh covering. (It may stop flies, but not Havanese-Wheaten Terriers apparently.) At this point, we're not really certain about what happened next because we were still inside the house while Max was wilding on the deck.

All we know for sure is that several minutes after leaving him alone outside, The Spouse returned to find the green marble plate empty but for some oily smudges and a sad looking, slightly sullied pepperoni round that was curling up on one side. I was livid because my plans had suddenly been hijacked. All I saw unfurling before me was an afternoon and evening filled with taking care of and cleaning up after a sick dog who I didn't want to let back into the house until his ill gotten gains had passed through his system.

However a short time later, The Eldest Boy discovered a curious mound in our backyard: A pile of cheese and pepperoni slices -- largely unchewed -- covered in tasty combination of saliva, lively ants and grass, a not-so-expert attempt to camouflage the food for snacking later on the down-low. How he got all of that food from the platter to the yard is unclear. He couldn't have fit that large pile of cheese cubes and pepperoni slices into his small mouth, so he had to have taken multiple trips, all executed while The Spouse and I were cluelessly mixing up another pitcher of iced tea in the kitchen.

Although Max's thievery was ultimately foiled -- he kept returning to the spot where he'd left the food and rolled around in the grass so as to drive the pepperoni scent deep into his thick hair so he smelled like a muddy pizza -- it seemed to have whet his appetite for all things sneaky.

Since then, for example, he's developed an unhealthy affinity for a fuzzy gray, white and black stuffed lemur that he keeps stealing from one of the kids' bedrooms. He frequently grabs "Jack" by the neck and races around the house almost like he's advertising the fact that he cleverly got away with stealing the lemur but he just can't afford to hire a skywriter.

He's now figured out how to force my home office door open (it doesn't latch solidly so one push opens the door) and has been going in there, knocking over the trash can, eating the trash and then puking up what he'd consumed. He's stolen hair ties and dragged used tissues throughout the house, which is awesome when you have company over and you unexpectedly find one of those babies (or several of them) lying in the middle of the floor.

The Spouse thinks we need to bring Max back to doggie training school or start re-training him ourselves. I think we need to lock up our trash cans and not let him out on the deck unsupervised. What say you guys?

The Twins, They've 'Come of Age'

Okay, here are the deets on why I've been in cone of blogging silence in this space: I've been super-busy helping The Eldest Boy and The Girl prepare for their Coming of Age ceremony -- and their accompanying service projects -- at our local Unitarian Universalist church. In the Unitarian Universalist (UU) church, the Coming of Age ceremony is like a low-key confirmation or a waaaay extremely mellow bat/bar mitzvah when the kids reach at 13, although the ceremony only happens once a year, regardless of the dates of the kids' birthdays.

What did this "Coming of Age" stuff entail? Each kid had to select one of the seven Unitarian Universalist principles that resonated with him or her then design a public service project to go along with it and write a speech to be delivered in front of the congregation. Mommy got to be alongside them through it all with the exception of prepping the Power Point presentations, which The Spouse handled.

The Girl immediately seized upon the principle related to the "interdependent web" of life and decided to research and support no-kill animal shelters. Our resident animal lover used our rescue dog Max (see above when he was a puppy), whose litter was originally found in the trash, as her inspiration.

We twice visited Buddy Dog, a local animal shelter that's been in operation for decades, for the first time on Valentine's Day. The Girl interviewed Buddy Dog's director, gathered info about shelters in general and toured the facility. She then organized a pet supply drive through our church to benefit the shelter. It was during our second visit when, while dropping off donations that we saw the puppy that we very nearly adopted but alas, did not. (I'm not dropping the second dog subject though, especially now that Coming of Age is over.) Thus supporting no-kill rescue shelters to help dogs and cats who've been abandoned through no fault of their own became the theme of The Girl's Coming of Age speech.

The Eldest Boy selected the second principle about "justice, equity and compassion in human relations." Inspired by an extremely sad image he'd seen of a malnourished Kenyan toddler in the Wall Street Journal (see above), he decided that he wanted to do something to help hungry children in Africa. He became quite passionate about the subject.

So we, the Picket Fence Post family trekked down to New York City to the Unitarian Universalist Association's United Nation's office during the February school vacation and met with the man who runs the Unitarian Universalist Association's program, Every Child is Our Child, that helps orphaned children in Ghana with food, clothing, health care and an education. Thus The Eldest Son became an advocate to our congregation for this program, which became the focal point of his Coming of Age essay. (The kid wrote a compelling plea for donations. He's got a way with persuasive writing I tell ya, though I'm not always keen on him training his persuasive arguments on me.)

Prior to the kids' speeches, The Spouse and I had to "introduce" them to the congregation. We divided the duties with The Spouse introducing The Eldest Boy and me introducing The Girl. Our goal was to try to not get too emotional because, in the past, I've teared up watching other parents present their children and I didn't want to start blubbering. (I was stressed out so starting to blubber was a distinct possibility when you're talking about your child entering youth adulthood.) The Spouse and I made it through our speeches dry-eyed, but our relatives later told us that they were grabbing for tissues. (I didn't notice that because I was trying not to drop the microphone or flub my lines.)

Couple the public service component and the speeches with preparing a tri-fold display board for each child which photographically traced The Eldest Boy and The Girl's 13 years (this is where I needed my tissues, both for the passage of time AND for the fact that I suddenly realized that I hadn't printed out any family photos since 2009 and had to pay a rush shipping fee to get hard copies of the photos) and feeding our immediate family at our house afterward and the past week was kind of a blur.

Today I had planned on decompressing from all the excitement and actually working on some writing, but those plans were thwarted by a medical issue with my other child (the one who has asked me to refrain from writing about him on the internet). Suffice is to say that it's been very dramatic here.

Nonetheless, with the Coming of Age projects and ceremony behind us, I'm hoping to resume my regular blogging schedule, that and to actually exhale. I can't even imagine how stressful it must be for parents of children having a bar or bat mitzvah. The twins have been to a couple of them already and they were both very well done. (The Pajama Diaries comic has recently featured a humorous storyline about bat mitzvah planning.) Luckily, the UU Coming of Age isn't as involved as all of that.

Image credit for second photo: Rebecca Blackwell for the Associated Press via Wall Street Journal.

Quick Hits: Clothes Shopping Hell, Oodles of Braces & No Second Dog (Yet)

Clothes Shopping Hell

The Picket Fence Post kids keep doing this growing this, lately in giant, sudden spurts. The amount of time in which they have to wear their clothes before they turn into high-waters or become so tight that they look like something the Hulk might wear seems to be shrinking. It seems like we're buying new shoes and cleats constantly. The boys' pants aren't worn enough to get rips in the knees.

Thus I took the three kids to Old Navy this week in order to pick up some inexpensive shirts and sports shorts, given that they said, "Nothing fits anymore!" It proved to be bad timing. Did every other mother with kids home for spring vacation have the same idea? The place was mobbed. Between following my offspring around to make sure they picked out the right sizes and nothing too expensive (or inappropriate, like 2-inch long shorts that the store was peddling to girls), it got chaotic, prompting me to start sweating and my patience to evaporate, which is why I think was of the kids who shall remain nameless, was able to sneak in a Lakers shirt without me realizing it. I'm not much of a shopper anyway, so having to go clothes shopping with three children in a packed store . . . well, let's say I'd rather have my teeth cleaned.

The spring shopping excursion then led to another one of my least favorite tasks, one I avoid as much as possible: Going through the kids' clothing to find items that no longer fit, determining which items can be passed down to someone else and making the kids try on certain items, even when they swear that they didn't fit when, in reality, they're just trying to get rid of the unwanted item so I can no longer bug them about why they don't wear it any more. (When I make them take the item back, they resort to cramming it in the back of a drawer hoping I won't see it until another clothing purge session.)

And we didn't even have an open bottle of wine in the house.

By the time all the sorting and shouting was completed, and after I'd uttered my version of "money doesn't grow on trees" and "do you know how much these clothes cost?" parenting classics, we all so needed the laughs that Modern Family afforded us. I love Manny.

Braces, We've Got Braces

Adding insult to the whole shopping debacle was the fact that The Eldest Boy got braces on his lower teeth before our Old Navy trip. Plus, his top braces were tightened. The kid was in some serious pain. And Tylenol didn't really help.

The Girl, meanwhile, was informed that in two months' time the palate expander on the roof of her mouth -- which has been pushing her teeth outward to make more space -- will be removed and replaced with a full set of braces on the upper and lower teeth. Cue the groaning and teenage complaining. Times two.

This ought to be fun: Two pubescents enduring frequent pain in their teeth, begging for milkshakes, soft food and Tylenol. I think I'd better buy the Tylenol by the gross.

No Dog #2 (For Now)

This searching for a second dog is stressing me out.

We've tried several times in the past month to adopt rescue dogs I've seen on PetFinder -- dogs the Picket Fence Post family thinks will fit in nicely and get along with our 3-year-old, 25-pound Max -- but our efforts have thus far been fruitless. We came close last week to getting an adorable Havanese puppy mix (Max is a Havanese/Wheaten mix), but alas, we submitted our application after another nice family who eventually adopted the little guy.

A few days ago, I scared the pants off of The Spouse when, after bringing some donations to a local dog shelter with The Girl, I wound up placing a $25 deposit on a puppy with whom The Girl absolutely fell in love. She'd insisted on returning to the puppy area multiple times, after I said it was time to go, and snuggled with this one adorable, silken puppy. Although I can now admit that the puppy, whose lineage is unknown, would grow to be a fairly large dog, larger than what The Spouse and I had agreed upon, I was in a vulnerable place having lost out on the other puppy last week. I foolishly acceded to The Girl's request to put a 24-hour hold on the puppy and even allowed myself to begin thinking of names for her.

However when I showed The Spouse photos and a video of the dog, he said aloud what I was thinking but didn't want to admit: The cuddly dog would be bigger than we wanted. I sheepishly followed The Spouse up to The Girl's bedroom and informed her that we wouldn't be adopting the puppy. I think I took it harder than she did.

I've decided to stop trolling the PetFinder web site for a while. I need a break.

Image credit: PetFinder.

Max the Dog Looks Like a Fuzzy Caterpillar

Max really, really needed to have his haircut.

However our favorite dog groomer had left a message on her answering machine saying that she'd taken ill and wouldn't be tending to any canines for a while. We decided that her recovery was worth waiting for. We really like the way she groomed our little Wheaten Terrier/Havanese, plus she didn't make us feel like negligent dog owners.

The Spouse and I have endured some unsatisfactory experiences with other groomers during the past two years since we got Max. When we've asked groomers to please shape his hair and not just shave him (because it's way easier to shave him than shape his hair), they'd seem put off, give us attitude and later chastise us because they said we didn't regularly or adequately brush the little guy. (We do but his hair is prone to knots. We do the best we can.)

So we decided to cool our heels as we awaited word from our nice, patient and thorough regular groomer. We waited. And waited. But we never heard from her, despite leaving messages. Meanwhile, Max's hair grew longer still and mats began forming all over him with frightening regularity. We tried to keep up with his grooming but it was very difficult. We would brush him, remove the knots/mats if we couldn't brush them out. Inevitably though, within a few hours of being brushed, Max would get new knots and he'd soon look like an unkempt, homeless canine looking for a spot of food from a kind stranger.

Yesterday The Spouse finally gave up on the waiting and brought Max to yet another new groomer. I crossed my fingers that Max wouldn't be: a) Shaved, rendering him looking like a big-eyed rat and b) That the groomer didn't get all haughty about the fact that we'd waited so long in between haircuts.

And although the groomer was kind and did not shave our pooch -- she shaped his hair with scissors -- he emerged from his doggie "spa day" (if I were to name a living being in our house who needs a spa day, it wouldn't be him . . . but I digress) looking a tad like a fuzzy tan caterpillar, at least when he lays down and spreads out.

Is he still adorable? Yes!

Soft and fuzzy? Most definitely.

But Max no longer looks like my scruffy little dude. He looks like a different pup. But that's okay. Hair grows back.

'Stop Blogging About Me Mom!' So It Has Been Uttered, So It Shall Be Done.

I've officially been given my pink slip. By my 10-year-old son.

I've been put out of work as the chronicler of his childhood. I've gotten the hook. His life story, or so I've been told, is his and his alone, so I need to just step away from the laptop. Immediately.

The kid's got a point. I can completely understand his feelings of vulnerability, his fretting that I'll, in my power-mad mom mode, mortify him on my blog or in a column. He doesn't like not knowing what little humorous chestnuts I might share with my readers. So this week he issued a blanket cease-and-desist order. I can only write about him from this point on, if he gives me explicit permission to do so.

What the kid doesn't know is that, for some time now, I've been trying in earnest to protect his privacy, as well as the privacy of his siblings. I no longer use their names in my parenting columns and blog posts. I don't post photos of them. I no longer write about subjects that I think will prove embarrassing to them (which means a ton -- and I mean A TON -- of funny and sometimes poignant pieces never get written). When in doubt, I keep it out.

I've been trying to delicately balance my family's privacy concerns with trying to write honestly and forthrightly about modern parenting in an era where there are over-involved helicopter parents and hockey dads who aim laser pointers at opposing players' eyes in an attempt to help their kids' teams win.

But now that The Youngest Boy has thrown down the gauntlet, I'll have to respect his request and only write about material he thinks is okay.

Maybe I SHOULD just suck it up and get a second dog to join my 2-year-old Wheaten Terrier/Havanese dog Max (against the vigorous opposition of The Spouse) so I'll have new, humorous fodder which I can mine for columns and blog posts. At least the dogs can't read.

Jonesing (Again!) for Another Cute Canine

It was the perfect storm with which to rekindle my dormant interest in adopting doggie number two, on Valentine's Day, of all days.

During Valentine's Day afternoon, I took The Girl to a local animal shelter as part of a service project she's working on for church. As part of the tour of the shelter, we got to see where all the animals who are available for adoption are kept and met the critters, big and small, young and old. It was then that I became interested in an absolutely adorable 7-year-old mutt of a thing and a three-month-old, energetic mutt puppy who would likely be a ton of work. I then had the powerful urge to do something completely out of character for me: Impulsively take one of those furry balls of love home.

Some context: The Spouse and I have prided ourselves on having a cooperative partnership. We almost always check in with one another and discuss -- ad nauseum sometimes -- big decisions, purchases, etc. Well, almost all of the time. There was one instance when The Spouse bought a flat screen TV for his home office/man cave without speaking with me beforehand. He just showed up at home with it. On another occasion, he placed a bid on an Orlando vacation rental at a charity auction (and won a week at the rental) without first sending me a quick text about his bid. But other than those two pricey examples, over the course of nearly 20 years, we've made the bulk of our decisions together.

As for this whole second dog thing, it's been an on-and-off discussion which I've spearheaded for some time, a subject upon which I get all hot and bothered for while, then something happens (like Max eating baking chocolate and almost dying) when I can't envision how hard it would be to have two dogs, plus two parents with careers and three kids with all their various and sundry activities and I'll drop the notion like a bad habit. But inevitably, the interest will build again and I'll say over dinner, "I think Max is lonely. He'd really like a friend." The Spouse typically humors me. He not-too-subtly ignores the listings for rescue dogs that I e-mail him on occasion as he waits for me to drop the matter.

I really didn't want to drop it yesterday though. I wanted to go rogue as I looked at those two dogs and imagined one of them playing with good old Maxie boy, whose hair is still way too shaggy. (Mental note: Book a groomer's appointment ASAP.) But I didn't act impulsively. I restrained myself and simply thanked the woman who ran the shelter and headed home with The Girl.

However that night -- after enjoying a candlelit dinner with the family, comprised mostly of stuff I'd just picked up at the grocery store -- I couldn't find anything in the vein of a romantic comedy or a plain old romance (because it was Valentine's Day) on TV, and happened upon the Westminster Dog Show. And when that Purina ad (see above) was aired repeatedly throughout the broadcast, I got all sappy, cuddled my non-show mutt of a dog and entertained some more rogue thoughts about going back to that shelter.

Christmas, Hanukkah & New Year’s Came & Went…and No One Died, Got the Swine Flu or Went to the ER

Believe it or not, aside from a short period of time during the Wednesday evening before Christmas (that’s my personal hell day), I made it through the entire month of December without a significant incident. You might think this is no biggie. Lots of people make it through December without incident, illness or catastrophe. But to me, emerging from December relatively unscathed felt like a major accomplishment.

The month of December and bad stuff has precedent in the Picket Fence Post house. Last year, as I’ve mentioned before, I missed Christmas because I came down with the swine flu on Christmas Eve and on, the day after Christmas, The Spouse severely injured his ankle while playing basketball, during a snowstorm I might add, and had to be driven to the ER by a neighbor because I felt like death not even warmed over. (The only plus from the whole thing was that I lost some weight . . . which I eventually gained back.)

The year before that, The Spouse broke his wrist on New Year's Eve Day while ice skating with the Youngest Boy and we rang in the New Year while my husband was high on morphine and The Eldest Boy had a raging fever. That was delightful, I'm telling you. A couple years before that, both my father and I came down with either food poisoning or the same stomach bug on Christmas Eve night and essentially spent Christmas Day feeling and looking like something you accidentally stepped on and then scraped off of the bottom of your shoe. Several years before that, my grandfather died on Christmas Day.

Luckily none of those things happened during December 2011, so once it officially became 2012, I felt as though I could finally breathe, and let go of the Yuletide Zen upon which I had a death grip throughout the month, determined to enjoy the season no matter what happened. I’ve even decided to extend the Christmas spirit by allowing the holiday decorations to remain up in the house until this coming weekend and have still been playing Christmas music . . . quite unlike me who’s normally an up-on-December-1-down-on-New-Year’s-Day kinda person.

So, how was Christmas et al, you ask?

X-Box Wars: Well, Santa brought the boys (*godhelpme*) an X-Box which became not only the focal point of their Christmas vacation, but the source of many a lively, uh, discussion, yeah, discussion’s a good word for it. (Sounds a lot better than "heated screaming matches.”) The Spouse and I told them that there was no way in hell that we were going to allow them to buy any video games which were rated M (for Mature), like Call of Duty, even though they swore up and down that EVERYONE they knew had that game. We, they claimed, were being unreasonable, overprotective control freaks.

After we celebrated Festivus with two other couples with whom The Spouse and I used to hang during our UMass days, along with all their kids (nine juveniles, up way too late, trying to comprehend what the adults found so amusing about the Seinfeld Festivus episode and why The Spouse brought an aluminum pole to the gathering), The Eldest Boy started to grill us and ask if we thought our college buds were good parents. It was a set-up because my pals had gotten their children a rated M version of Call of Duty which the kids played it on Festivus night. It was an annoyingly torturous lobbying campaign that the two young bucks waged, culminating with The Spouse proclaiming that they could only buy games that were rated T for Teen or E for Everybody. The knuckleheads felt as though they’d pulled a fast one over on The Spouse when they found a Call of Duty game that was rated T the following day. Of course they did. They excitedly ran up to me as I was scrolling through my e-mail in our local Game Stop, clutching the coveted video madness in their sweaty hands and declared victory. They’ve been obsessed with the simulated shooting and mayhem ever since.

Cell Phones: We, as Liz Lemon might say, went to there, that place we’ve been trying to avoid for so long.

The Spouse and I gave The Eldest Boy and The Girl cell phones for Christmas. And yes, they can text. The Spouse dropping The Girl off at a gym where he thought she had basketball practice on his way to run The Eldest Boy's practice, then learning, after he'd left her, that she didn't have practice and was in fact stranded, alone at the gym at night (and he couldn't abandon the practice he was running so I had to go get her) was what motivated us to finally make this move.

And since December 25, it’s as though we’ve unleashed a technological monster as far as The Girl is concerned. She's already composed and received hundreds of texts. (Thank God for unlimited texting packages.) The Eldest Boy, by contrast, seems genuinely pleased to have a phone but isn’t crazy about texting, at least for right now. When his sister kept texting him when they were both in the house, he would yell, “Just talk to me!”

Forget Brand a New Bag. Mama’s Got a Brand New iPad: I now own my very first Apple product. Everyone else in the Picket Fence Post family, except Max the dog, has some form of an iPod or an iPod Touch. And, until this year, I’d never really been jonesing for a tablet or Apple product. Now that I have my own iPad, The Eldest Boy is in his glory explaining to me, the Apple virgin, how it works and frequently informs me that I’m “doing it wrong.” That’s because I’m an ancient, know-nothing, power-mad, anti-X-box kinda mom I suppose.

Gone in 10 Minutes: Max the dog consumed one of his presents in, literally 10 minutes. While the dog toy that we gave him for Christmas was edible and meant to eventually be eaten, it was intended to last for more than the time it takes to listen to two songs on an iPod. Watch the video for the Spinz Bone and you tell me that it’s normal for my 26-pound dog to eat that product in 10 minutes.

Oh, and as of New Year’s Eve, Max had also killed the stuffed, faceless toy we called “Dough Boy” (after the Pillsbury Dough Boy). Max gutted Dough Boy, removing his squeaker and much of his stuffing. I kept thinking that this was an apt metaphor for . . . something, but, as Dick Clark counted down to 2012, I couldn’t put my finger on what metaphor for which I was grasping and fell asleep.

The Braces are Coming. The Braces are Coming. The Eldest Boy and The Girl got “spacers” put in between their back teeth a few days after Christmas, rendering their mouths sore to the point that they didn’t want to eat very much for a few days. I whipped up milkshakes, soups and other soft foods and doled out ibuprofen to no avail, especially for The Girl who was in a lot of pain. The spacers are a precursor to actual braces that The Eldest Boy will get in the next week or so and the palate expander The Girl will get (to which I’m not looking forward because The Spouse has declared that I’m going to be the one who’s going to have to turn the key to expand it every night, but more on that later).

Their younger brother’s response to this development? To grab the container of gum that he got in his Christmas stocking – the 13-year-olds can no longer have it – and pop a bunch of pieces of gum into his mouth. Right in front of them. “What?” he asked mischievously when I called him on it. Let me tell you, there’s no question that The Youngest Boy’s will need braces and, as my mom noted, payback’s gonna be a bitch.

Happy New Year Picket Fence Post peeps.

Christmas Card Photos . . . DONE!

We had a not-too-stressful photo session with the Picket Fence Post trio and Max the dog yesterday. I dressed them all in red T-shirts that read "Thing" and then a number on it.

The dog got "Thing 1," because the kids were uber-sensitive as to which one of them would be perceived as the literal "number one" offspring and get to lord his or her supremacy over the other, lowly siblings. The Eldest Boy had "Thing 2," his brother got "Thing 3" and The Girl, obviously, got "Thing 4." (There was some minor drama before the session started because I couldn't find the "Thing 4" shirt. I had to search through everyone's dressers, closets and beneath beds, though everyone, including The Spouse, swore they did not have it. After about 45 minutes of harried hunting around I found it stuffed in the back of The Eldest Boy's pajama drawer.)

The kids were, ultimately, cooperative (as long as I didn't ask them to locate any missing item in the house) and the photos looked cute, not of the Awkward Family Photo variety.

But as for Max, he refused to look at the camera when he was seated with the kids. Every time I brought the camera up to my face, he turned his head to the side as though he was some camera-averse celebrity who couldn't deign to look my way because I was lowly paparazzi. Either that or he thinks he looks best in profile. The only time he did look at me when I had the camera in front of my face was after the group had broken up and the kids were all standing around me, as in the first photo above.

I've ordered the photo cards through an online service, so I'm waaaay ahead of last year when I didn't get my act together on the Christmas card front until late December and was sweating over whether the box of cards would be delivered to my house in time for me to address them all and mail 'em before Christmas.

As for my Christmas shopping . . . well, it hasn't even begun. But I've thought about the gifts at least.

*reminding myself that this is going to be a STRESS-FREE December, no matter what*

Living a Dog’s Life & Other Observations

I was awakened at 3:45 this morning by our dog Max, who was scratching and whining at our bedroom door because he wanted to go to outside. Again. (The Spouse had already gotten up earlier to do the same thing. It's a bad habit of Max's that is becoming more frequent.)

I didn’t crawl back into bed until 4:15 following several failed attempts to coax Max back in 15 and then 20 minutes into his middle-of-the-night exploits. There’s only so much quiet, hushed "yelling" you can do outside in a residential neighborhood at 4 in the morning without causing a ruckus. Even the promise of giving him a generous helping of doggie treats couldn’t top his interest in whatever he was messing around with under our deck under cover of darkness.

This can’t be good . . . except for the coffee farmers whose business I’ve been enthusiastically supporting in the hours after Max decides to play outside at 4 in the morning.

***

The Youngest Boy was moving his hand up and down in the breeze while we were driving around this weekend when something occurred to him. He leaned his head of the window and opened his mouth as wide as it would go and faced the wind. “Why do dogs do this?” he shouted.

After 10 seconds or so, he found the answer. “Hey, it’s actually kind of cool.”

When we got home, his curly hair had been blown back away from his forehead as though he’d just emerged from a wind tunnel. “Don’t I look like Elvis?” he asked.

***

At an autumn town event this weekend, The Spouse and I gave the kids some cash and let them run around patronizing the various booths and buying lunch with their friends. While in the company of his posse, The Youngest Boy decided to stop at this one booth where, while other kids bought trading cards, he bought a plastic machine gun with blinking lights and a plastic bayonet at the end. It makes noise too. Bully for us.


As he handed me the box covered by the photo of the gun, I couldn’t help but wonder what the other parents at the fair thought as they spotted that little gem under my arm. Perhaps something along the lines of, “Peace out Mother of the Year?”

***

The Girl is slated to attend a bat mitzvah this weekend. That means . . . *cue the sinister Jaws music* . . . we’ve got to go buy her a dress. A real dress, not a cotton skirt to be worn with her “nice” hoodie and knock-off Uggs.

Needless to say, my sporty gal and her ubiquitous ponytail is none too pleased about the upcoming shopping excursion where, instead of warm-up jackets and sports shorts, we’ll be looking at items with hemlines. With her seeing this upcoming trip as just a tiny notch above doing a “poop check” in our backyard to pick up Max’s deposit’s, I’m bringing low expectations with me before we step into any stores.

My question: Should I bribe her with a big sundae before or after we get a dress?

Max the Dog Broke the 'Cone of Shame'

Because things were apparently too dull around the Picket Fence Post household for Max the dog, he had to go and start biting at his tail area so hard and so often that he cleared off a pink spot, giving himself an angry rash.

I brought him to the vet and, after the vet discovered the root cause of his itching (something that was easily, albeit grossly, remedied), she suggested that I put the “cone of shame” back on him to stop him from hurting himself. We still had the transparent, plastic cone from last year’s chocolate incident (when Max nearly died after he busted into our pantry and ate a whole lot of concentrated cooking chocolate and had to go to the doggy ICU . . . twice).

So I put the cone around his furry little neck on Wednesday as soon as we got home. And damn was he ticked off. The moment he saw the cone, his shoulders literally fell and he started to book out of the room.

Then there were the battles I had with the kiddos who thought it cruel to put that thing around his head.

“But Mom, he won’t bite his tail. I’ll watch him,” The Girl promised yesterday, pleading with me as she was working on her homework. Within minutes, after The Girl got distracted by something else, I heard the sounds of chomping. I poked my head out of my office. “He’s biting his tail!” I shouted. Realizing that being the tail monitor is a terrible job, she promptly put the cone back on him.

Her brothers also had their moments of pleading, followed by the realization that they too didn’t want to spend the rest of the afternoon watching him and preventing him from irritating his tail more than he already had.

This afternoon, Max took matters into his own paws by busting the cone. (I swear his face looked brighter and happier when I discovered that he’d detached the plastic cone from the part that goes around his neck.) So, for now, he’s coneless (see photo above where he's anxiously looking out the front door waiting for the kids to come home from school). Whether I have to run out to the pet store and buy another cone is entirely up to him.

Quick Hits: Youth Hockey ... Already, School Shopping, Doggie Rescue Part 2 & Like This Blog? Vote for It!

Youth Hockey

Yes. Hockey. In August. When we’re still going to the pool, eating ice cream cones outside, running the air conditioning and having barbecues.

And I’ve already received several e-mails from The Youngest Boy’s new hockey team about upcoming practices for the August-through-April youth hockey season (because, you know, you need to GET READY, you know, for THE NEXT LEVEL, therefore you need to play 447 games per year to perfect your game, when you’re in elementary school and are still losing your baby teeth). Not that I’m bitter or anything.

I’m so not in the right frame of mind for the season to begin at this moment. However this time, I’m not going to be caught unprepared, I'm not a rookie hockey mom any more. For example, before the games begin in earnest, I think I’m going to buy some of those folding stadium chair thingies, the ones that provide back support, for those freezing cold games which I’m convinced kept me persistantly sick through much of last winter.



School Shopping

I have done approximately . . . nothing. Nada. Zippo.

I still, surprisingly, have The Youngest Boy’s school supply list that he got from his teacher in June. (Or I think I have it. I remember putting it away for “safe keeping.” If only I can recall where “safe” is.)

The supply lists for the twin seventh graders are available online.

Those pesky flyers advertising Back to School Sales have been everywhere. But I haven’t looked through them. I don’t want to.

I’m in denial.

No . . . I’m . . . not . . . ready for the madness to begin anew.

Doggie Rescue, Part Two?

When we brought Max the dog to his doggie camp during our Cape Cod vacation week, he was thrilled to be dropped off at “camp.” He simply adores playing with the other dogs. In fact, as soon as we pulled into the driveway, he started going nuts and scrambled to go outside. Once outside, he pulled really hard against the leash, never looking back once he was taken by one of the staffers to go into the yard to play with the other canines.

After relating this story to The Spouse he asked, “Do you think we should get Max a friend? Maybe he’s lonely. I feel bad.”

*palm smacking forehead*

We went through this last year, when I was telling him that I thought Max would thrive if we got another companion dog as he often looks bored when he’s home with me and I’m sitting with my laptop computer all day. Whenever another dog is around he simply lights up. But The Spouse was resistant. Energetically resistant. Then after the awful chocolate incident, I dropped the matter entirely.

And now The Spouse is raising a second dog as a possibility, the notion he thoroughly dismissed as yet another one of my hair-brained ideas. Which means I’m now finding myself irresistibly drawn to PetFinder.com, the web site where we found Max (it features listings from dog shelters) and am e-mailing said dog listings to The Spouse.

No, I have no idea what I’m thinking. As if things aren’t already chaotic enough around here.

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This blog – along with my pop culture blog, Notes from the Asylum – has been nominated in Boston’s Most Valuable Blogger contest held by the local CBS affiliate, WBZ.

If you’d like to support the Picket Fence Post goodness you see here from yours truly, you can vote for it (and, unlike in real elections, you can vote once a day).

Here’s the link to vote for Notes from the Asylum. Thanks for your support!

Quick Hits from a Nutty Homefront: Midnight Hound, Orthodontist X 2, 'Hunger Games,' Room of One's Own, B'Day Mania

Midnight Hound

Max the dog has developed a very bad habit of getting up in the middle of the night and demanding to go outside. I don’t know what he does when he's out there under the moonlight -- and neither does The Spouse who, to be fair, is doing the most of the letting the dog out – but Max stays out there for up to 15 minutes while we yawn and rub our eyes waiting for him.

Now we are fortunate enough to have AC in the house, so it’s not as though Max is overheated at night. And he hasn’t been ill, so we don’t know what to make of these middle-of-the-night rousings. But I do know that we don’t like it. Not one bit.

Paging the Orthodontist, Times TWO

Yes, I realized that when I had twins I’d be buying twice as many diapers, twice as much baby food, twice as many clothes (as the twins are comprised of one boy and one girl), pay two pre-school tuitions and later, two college tuitions simultaneously. What I temporarily blotted out of my mind was the possibility of paying for two kids to get braces at the same time, something I’d been putting off.

But after our recent family trip to the dentist, I realized I can put it off no longer. The Spouse and I were told that both The Eldest Boy and The Girl need to see the orthodontist. Oh goody. Let the braces games begin.

Hunger Games, Here I Come

So as to keep current with all that’s beast (i.e. – cool) with the young adult set, I’m planning on reading The Hunger Games three-book series by Suzanne Collins. While its premise is a dreary one – teens have to participate in a kill-or-be-killed televised competition – I’ve been told by The Girl and The Eldest Boy that I’ll really like it. We shall see . . . I'm still busy mourning the loss of new installments in the Harry Potter series.

A Room of One’s Own

When my parents took my brother and me to summer vacations on Cape Cod when we were kids, they rented a tiny cottage within a five minute walk to the ocean. It was a very rustic cottage, meaning there was one bathroom, no dishwasher, no cable TV (there was a TV with a VCR that didn’t get any channels), no AC and two bedrooms, one for my parents and one for the kids. Sharing a bedroom with my younger brother – who I nicknamed “Scum’s Rash” because he didn't like to bathe – wasn’t exactly fun, but hey, we were at the beach on vacation. We got to swim, build sandcastles, go mini-golfing, eat ice cream and maybe go to the drive-in movie theater depending on what was playing. It was all good.

Flash-forward 30 years and you can understand why I have a hard time sympathizing with The Youngest Boy when he squawks about the fact that when the Picket Fence Post family goes on vacation to Cape Cod -- to a rented house with AC, cable TV, wireless internet and three bedrooms – he’ll have to share a room with his brother while his sister gets her own room. Cry me a river kid.

Birthday Coma

In the days leading up to The Youngest Boy’s 10th birthday, the kid worked himself up into such a frenzy that he could no longer take the anticipation. And, frankly, he’d become supremely over-excited. So he said he wanted to be placed in a coma until his birthday . . . not that the child was building up his birthday to such heights that anything short of a parade, a fireworks display and the arrival of the Stanley Cup accompanied by the entire Boston Bruins team would be a disappointment . . .

Image credits: Meredith O'Brien, Amazon.

Notes from the Picket Fence Post Homefront

The velcro, plastic cone is back. Back around Max the dog’s neck. Why? Because the knucklehead bit the heck out of the inside of his right paw down to his pink skin because he appears to have two mosquito bites that are aggravating him to the point of compelling him to gnaw at his skin. I’m trying not to make him wear the plastic cone 24/7 -- as he’s quite sullen and listless when I do -- but unfortunately he needs to don the terribly unattractive accessory for a bit of time to keep the fluffy pooch from giving himself an infection.

***

The Eldest Boy was initially stung when, after his school’s band performed at a school band competition this week, one of the judges offered lengthy, constructive criticism of his drumming in front of the whole band and parents as the poor kid blushed. However his hurt feelings evaporated when he was later honored for being an outstanding musician. (*glowing as one proud mom*)

***

The Youngest Boy has been really pulling at my heartstrings lately, trying his very best to make me feel like a guilty mom, which, sadly, isn’t a very difficult feat to accomplish. Just today when I told him I wouldn’t be able to take him to a sporting goods store so he could spend some of his cash on a Miami Heat cap and jersey (yeah, I have no idea why he wants this unless he just wants to rub in the Celtics' loss to a house of Celtics fans), he yelled, “Mom just ruined my day!” Later he amplified his feelings, “Can’t believe my day’s so ruined!” I responded by telling him that I’m mad with power.

***

Speaking of The Youngest Boy . . . I need to start checking his alarm clock every night when I put him to bed because he’s clearly not setting it (or if he is, he’s ignoring it) because this previously early-rising child has been getting up very late on school days and hasn’t been able to get ready in time to make the school bus for more than one or two days over the past two weeks. That means I wind up driving all three Ungratefuls to school in my pajama pants and a sweatshirt, with a baseball cap pulled down over my hair. It’s not a pretty picture.

***

The Girl is irate. She’s distinctly unhappy with the casting decisions made for the upcoming film The Hunger Games, based on the first book in the Suzanne Collins popular series. She plucked the brand new issue of Entertainment Weekly out of our mailbox this afternoon and, when she saw the film’s lead actress on the cover, proceeded to explain to me why Jennifer Lawrence is all wrong to play the pivotal character Katniss. The Girl cannot stop talking about this book, so I guess, as a connoisseur of pop culture and the mom of two 12 ½ year-olds who loved the books, it’s incumbent upon me to tackle this series, I’ve just got to finish Pride & Prejudice first.

Image credit: Amazon.

Dogs Really Do Bury Bones, Just Like on That Commercial

The Spouse gave Max a bone the other day to chomp on when Max was left in his crate when no one was home. When I got home, I didn’t immediately notice that, when Max dashed out of the crate and headed toward the back door that he had the bone in his mouth.

While Max was outside, I saw him digging in a corner of the yard and actually putting the bone into the dirt and covering it with shredded weeds and dirt, like that dog on the Travelers Insurance commercial.

Later that afternoon, Max decided his hiding place wasn’t good enough so he unburied the bone and tried to sneak the dirt-covered mess into the kitchen . . . a move upon which I put the kibosh.

Mother's Day & the 'Road of Pain'

Never let it be said that The Youngest Boy lacks the humor gene, or, to put it more accurately, the sarcasm gene.

During our very active Mother’s Day – we first went to church and participated in a cool thing called a flower communion and then played a cut-throat family game of Scrabble (seriously, there were tears, shouts and accusations of unfair play) – we decided to take advantage of the break in the rain to take a long walk, bringing Max the Mini-Wheat with us.

Both The Spouse and I had warned the kids ahead of time that we’d be going up and down some steep hills on this here walk of ours and that bringing their scooters might not be the best idea. But did they listen? Of course not. Walking's boring, or so I was told. Halfway up the first hill, The Youngest Boy declared that I had lead our pack down “the Road of Pain.” Dramatic much? The Spouse wound up walking The Youngest Boy’s scooter up that first incline.

You’d have thought that we were torturing them as we scaled yet another hill in our residential neighborhood as two of the three Picket Fence Post kids huffed, puffed, rolled their eyes and grimaced. For his part, Max was panting so heavily that his tongue was hanging out of one side of his mouth like a cartoon character.

Miraculously, by the time we made it back home, the children's energy level rebounded and they wanted to play a family game of Wiffle Ball, because what’s Mother’s Day with Wiffle Ball? Max, not so much. His stubby little legs were worn out and he promptly made himself into a first baseline hazard. The bottom line of the backyard contest: My team (me, The Girl and The Eldest Boy) did about as well as the Red Sox are doing.

Notes from the Picket Fence Post Homestead: Pet Grooming, School Projects, Shorts Obsession & 'Wimpy Kid' 2

Max Gets Groomed

Our dog Max was in dire need of a haircut. His hair had grown so long that when I was out walking him in our neighborhood recently, a woman remarked that he looked like a really short sheep on a leash. And she was right.

However bringing a dog with extremely thick hair like our Havanese/Wheaten Terrier to the groomer’s can be tricky because no matter how many times you try to make sure that you’ve combed through your dog’s hair (with a comb) with some degree of regularity, there’s inevitably a knot or a mat (or several) somewhere on his fuzzy body. And when the groomer finds it later she'll make you feel like a negligent pet owner for not attending to it.

I knew for a fact when Max was dropped off at the groomer's that he had some tangles near his hindquarters. When I'd attempted to comb them out, he’d growled and physically resisted, so I’d wound up giving up or enlisted someone's help to remove the mats with scissors because it was easier and quicker.

Well Max got his much needed grooming this week and the groomer was kind, though she did mention, as she raised her eyebrows slightly, that he had some mats and that “someone” had obviously been cutting them out, making his hair uneven. At least she didn’t shame me as much as other groomers have in the past.

School Projects from Hell

All three of the Picket Fence Post kids are in the midst of working on school projects. And, frankly, I'm starting to feel a bit stressed out about all of it as I’m dreading the inevitable melodrama that has accompanied these sorts of things in the past.

The Girl just completed a series of trials to determine in which liquid a Tylenol capsule would dissolve the quickest: Orange juice, grapefruit juice or lemonade. She collected all her data and is putting them into a spreadsheet as I write this blog entry. And she’s still got a long way to go in completing her tri-fold display board. The whole project is due Tuesday. What’s the over/under on whether she’ll get it finished without parental harassment and/or drama?

Meanwhile, her twin brother has also been running trials to see whether the temperature of the water inside a water balloon will affect whether and at what height from the ground it breaks. (He was channeling his inner Calvin & Hobbes when he devised this project.) He has already completed his data spreadsheet but has yet to start his tri-fold display board. When I suggested to him this morning (after he slept until 11!!) that he start working on it, he replied, “Later.” I predict major drama in the near future given that his project is also due Tuesday.

As for The Youngest Boy, he is supposed to invent something that uses a "simple machine." His big idea is to create a dog food feeder that he wants to teach our dog Max how to use in time for his school's Invention Convention, for which the item and a tri-fold display board are supposed to be completed. However he’s hit several snags. His original prototype was completely unrealistic (it involved taping a shoebox to a table, before it was filled with dog food). Then, at my urging, he revised it and concocted a more workable design but The Spouse refuses to get the supplies the kid says he needs until the kid comes up with a physical prototype. However The Youngest Boy says he needs supplies to make a prototype. Meanwhile, I’m going to go buy ear plugs so I don’t have to listen to the two of them continue to bicker about which should come first.

What is It With Kids & Shorts?

Every day this week . . . I repeat, every day this week, either The Spouse or I have gotten embroiled in a gigantic argument with The Youngest Boy over the fact that he insists upon wearing shorts to school like everyone else.

Now keep in mind that during the past week, it snowed twice and the temps were largely stuck in the 30s and 40s, yet the kid still harangued us for being power-mad parents who made him wear long pants. (*insert sinister cackle here*) Every day, multiple times a day, it's, "Why can't I wear shorts?"

This morning when it was in the 30s, I allowed The Youngest to don shorts (along with a short sleeve shirt and a jacket) when he went to play outside. (It was a moment of weakness because I was working on a column that was already past my deadline and I didn’t want to hear him whine any longer about the damned shorts.) He came inside some 20 minutes later, freezing cold, telling me his hands were so chilled that he felt like they were “burning.” He wanted me to help him warm up, but just his hands though, he assured me, as he said his legs (which were ice cold to the touch) were just fine, thank you very much.

About two hours later, The Spouse and The Youngest Boy were arguing about the exact outside temperature after I’d told The Youngest Boy that I wouldn’t let him go outside again in those shorts. It was 42 degrees.

Since The Youngest Boy claims other kids are going to school wearing shorts, and I've seen some of them when I've dropped him off at school, I ask you, are you having the same issue with your kid(s) regarding wearing shorts when it's snowing outside?

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules



The Picket Fence Post kids are all jazzed up about seeing the second installment of the Wimpy Kid series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules.

The first movie was okay, they were sufficiently entertained, but they agreed that it didn’t hold a candle to the actual book which was much, much funnier. After the original movie, we all decided that our favorite character is Rowley, not the self-absorbed and morally ambiguous Greg who seems much crueler in the movie than he did in the book.

Wonder if the second film will be even a fraction as amusing as its original source material which had me laughing out loud when I read it with The Eldest Son?

Waving the White Flag to Mother Nature

I wholeheartedly concur with the sentiment expressed on page one of today's Boston Herald:

Look at my front yard, it's like a sea of snow. There's actually a front walk that's been shoveled repeatedly, though you can't tell. There's part of a driveway there that's also been plowed but it doesn't look like it's been plowed:

If you look out the window of our family room, the snow piled on our deck is now higher than the window sill:

Plus, I've been, personally, under the weather and getting better incrementally, which is much too slow for my overanxious, normally highly caffeinated self. As I'm impatiently waiting to feel like myself -- I couldn't muster the energy or enthusiasm to watch last week's "State of the Union" speech, unheard of for me -- it has literally felt like Groundhog Day over the past week+ as the snow has kept on coming, and coming, and coming, and school has wound up being canceled, and the kids complain that they're bored. (Seriously kid, I have a blanket over my head, dark circles under my eyes, am as pale as a sheet of paper and you're telling me you're biggest complaint is that you're bored? You should be feeling lucky you're not in downtown Cairo right around now.)

This is my long-winded way of explaining why I haven't been blogging in this space in several days. The family melodrama around the Picket Fence Post household has pretty much gone like this: Mom's not feeling especially perky but still does some stuff around the house (cooking, dishes, tidying up, ordering groceries online) and assisting with homework. Dad's trucking the kids all over the place to all their activities, doing all the laundry, shoveling paths in the snow for Max the dog, driving through wretched weather to work and slaving over the ice rink to keep it smooth for the Picket Fence Post kids who have been enthusiastically using it.

In fact, The Youngest Boy, all dressed in his hockey gear, just burst into the house in tears this afternoon because he and his brother were having difficulties clearing the latest round of rain-soaked, extremely heavy snow from the rink and had given up. "It's just too heavy!" he cried. The Spouse, he of the bum ankle, will have that back-breaking goodness awaiting him when he drives home in what forecasters are saying with be treacherously icy conditions.

Mother Nature, if you're out there, if you're listening: This winter sucks. I hate it. I, like the Herald, cry Uncle. No mas.

Notes from a Snow Day: Ice Rink, Movie Surprise, Chicken Stir Fry & Max in the Snow

Hey, What's This? Could It Be . . . an Actual Skating Rink? In Our Yard? YES!!!

I present to you . . . the ice rink as the foot-and-a-half of snow that fell from the sky since early this morning was being shoveled off of it.

The rink is brought to us by many, many hours of hard work and loving maintenance by The Spouse for his three children.

This week, I've added "buy skates" (for me and The Eldest Boy) to my "To Do" list this week.

The Spouse, who broke his wrist last year while skating on a public rink, is still shying away from skating, in spite of this great effort.

Eat, Pray . . . Whoa!!!

While the males in the family were snuggled up in front of the fireplace this weekend watching NFL playoff games, The Girl and I retreated to my room to watch the PG-13 rated film Eat Pray Love on DVD.

I'd read the book, so I figured that there might be one questionable scene near the last third of the film when the main character Liz is in Bali, which might require fast-forwarding or for me to mute the TV while The Girl averts her eyes. While I waited for Liz's relationship with Felipe, the man who would become her spouse, to commence, I totally did not expect a twentysomething male to drag Liz down to the waterfront and suddenly strip naked as he was trying to entice Liz to go skinny dipping.

Both The Girl and I shrieked as his butt was in the center of the screen and I hit, "Stop." The irony is that when Felipe and Liz were about to physically commence their love affair I suggested that The Girl go fetch a snack from the kitchen, only there was nothing she couldn't have seen, no nudity, no sex.

'Delicious' Chicken Stir Fries

More irony . . .

Whenever I pull out my wok, the Picket Fence Post kids roll their eyes. They're not fans of anything I might create inside of that thing. I've tried making them sweet stir fries, garlicky ones and even plain, soy sauce-based ones. But no matter how I prepared a stir fry, the kiddos usually take one bite, wrinkle their noses and wind up having cereal for dinner while The Spouse and I eat what I made.

Unless, of course, The Eldest Boy and The Girl happen to be the ones who made the stir fry. They're both currently taking Home Ec in their middle school -- which has been relabeled with the politically correct moniker, "Family Consumer Science" -- and in the past week they've both come home from school with a container of a chicken, vegetable noodle stir fry that they'd made. They were absolutely delighted with their creations and gobbled them up while I watched, amazed.

My new plan: The next time I pull out the work, I'm also going to pull The Eldest Boy and The Girl into the kitchen with me so the "experts" can show me how it's really done.

Cute Max Snow Pic

Max the dog -- who still spends much of his time rooting around the house looking for non-edible items that he can eat or gnaw on (tissues, dryer sheets, ball point pens, socks, etc.) -- was startled when we let him out onto our deck this morning and the snow was nearly as high as he is tall. He tried pushing his body through the snow, but stopped after traveling only a few feet and tried to get back into the house. (If snow was up to my eyeballs, I'd want to retreat too.)

However once The Spouse shoveled out several pathways for him, he romped around his little paths as though he were in a hedge maze. 'Twas very cute. The wet dog smell he has now that he's drying off, not so cute.

No Longer Campaigning for Two Canines

A while back, readers might recall, I was somewhat obsessed with the notion that Max, our 1 1/2-year-old Havanese/Wheaten Terrier -- we call him a "Mini-Wheat" -- needed a friend. Not a friend of the human variety. He already has those in the three Picket Fence Post children, The Spouse and me, whom he follows around the house while I work from home, though watching me work at my laptop all day is dreadfully boring.

You know how a person can sometimes be described as a "people person?" Well Max is a dogs dog. He absolutely perks up when he's around other dogs and stays that way. (He perks up when he encounters new people or when the kids return home from school, but the effect doesn't seem to last.) Maybe he'd have more fun with another dog to pal around with, I thought.

In spare moments, I would browse through the pet adoption site PetFinder -- which is how we found Max -- looking for an appropriate canine companion or him. Over a period of weeks during the summer and fall, I must've e-mailed The Spouse a dozen links to buddies whom I thought might get along well with our pooch. The Spouse, who was solidly against having two dogs, would either find a reason why the dog wouldn't work well with our family or just beg off from my e-mail saying he had too much work to do to look at the link.

The Picket Fence Post family was, in fact, divided over this second dog issue. The Girl was in her father's camp, asserting that Max likes being the one and only dog in the house, the king dog if you will . . . but I can't help but wonder if that's not somehow related to her feelings about being the only girl in our house and the only granddaughter on one side of the family. Both The Eldest and The Youngest Boys, however, were on my side and would sidle up to me at my computer to look for potential new dog buddies.

Then the chocolate incident occurred last month where Max got into some concentrated cooking chocolate and wound up spending a collective total of two days being cared for by professionals, first in an animal hospital, then at our vet's office. It took him weeks to return to his normal, friendly, goofy self after nearly being poisoned to death and having to sport a cone around his head to stop him from scratching at the shaved areas where he'd had his IVs and the EKG pads. (That plastic cone came off only last week and there's a nice ring of matted hair around his head with which I'm currently contending.)

After all that craziness, I hopped off of the "We should have two dogs" campaign, at least for now. When I tried to imagine what it would've been like had TWO dogs gotten into all that chocolate . . . well, let's just say that that scenario put the kibosh on my dog shopping. And quick.