Animals for sale

I will never again own a cat or a dog.  NEVER.

I was actually a huge pet person before I had kids.  I loved animals.  For pete's sake, I worked at a pet store for 4 years!  When we moved to New Jersey, we had 4 cats and 2 dogs.  We treated them like our children.  But then we actually had children, and suddenly my animals weren't all that important anymore.

Currently, we have 1 dog and 2 cats (the others have died off over the past 7 years).  Don't get me wrong, I still love them, but my children are 100 million times more important to me.  And the more children we have, the less I seem to even notice the animals.  Their care is primparily handled by my husband, which is a good thing, because I am pretty sure I would completely forget to feed them.  I never anticipated falling out of love with my animals, but it is definitely our new reality.

My dog is driving me CRAZY.  She is 13 years old, and she suddenly started pissing everywhere.  EVERYWHERE.  We have wall to wall carpeting, so this is extra gross and disgusting.  Every time I walk across the house, I step in a puddle of dog piss and my blood boils.  I know she is old, and she doesn't mean to do it, but it is still gross!

My cats are also a totally pain in the ass.  They puke and puke and puke and puke.  Every freaking time I turn around a cat is puking on my damn carpet.  When I hear the gagging sound, I run around the house trying to grab the retching cats and toss her outside.  I rarely succeed. 

So, I spend a lot of time trying to spot clean my nasty ass carpet.  It is hard enough to take care of/clean up after my own children.  The animals are pushing me over the edge.  I will never again willingly bring an animal into my house.

Today is not good

My kids have been suffering through a nasty cold.  Although Porgie and Izzy have been sick for the longest, Guppy seems to be the most miserable.  This morning he woke up with a very red, very gunky eyeball.  I took him to the doctor, where he was diagnosed with a double ear infection and conjunctivitis.  Lovely.  We've never experienced pinkeye before, and I am shocked at how awful my baby's eye looks. 

We also had a dentist appointment this afternoon, which did not end the way I was expecting.  A few years ago, Izzy fell and knocked his front tooth out of place.  Over the years it turned grey from the trauma, but it always seemed firmly rooted in his gums.  A few weeks ago I noticed a blister on his gum above that tooth.  He claimed that it didn't hurt, so I didn't rush him in to see the dentist.  His appointment finally rolled around today, and the doctor declared that the tooth had abscessed and needed to be removed.  So, now my five year old is missing his front tooth.

It has been a long day.

Our fourth of July

For Porgie's seventh birthday, she wanted a pool.  We bought her a 10ft Intex pool, which actually cost a pretty penny.  We set it up on a "level" section of the backyard.  I put the word level in quotation marks, because we were just eyeballing it.  I am sure you can see where this story is going.

The pool filled up in a very lopsided fashion, but the kids didn't seem to mind.  They splashed and played and had tons of fun.  But after about two weeks, one side of the pool collapsed and all the water went rushing out.  John and I decided that before we set it up again, we would try to make the ground more level.  We wanted to have it all fixed and ready by the 4th of July.

To remedy the problem, first John tried to dig out the high side.  Unfortunately, there were a million tree roots, which made it basically impossible.  So, John decided to buy some dirt and build up the other side.  I should probably mention that it has been raining a lot lately.  For the past week, there has been a  thunderstorm nearly every afternoon.

On Wednesday night, John went to Lowes to buy some dirt.  He pulled his van into the backyard and started to unload the bags.  While he was doing this, it started raining again.  It was pouring buckets.  John hopped back in his van and tried to pull out of the backyard.  But his wheels just spun hopelessly in the mud. 

By this point, John was livid.  He was screaming and being pretty over-dramatic.  I was really hoping he would somehow manage to get his van dislodged from the mud, but after 30 minutes of pure hell, he gave up.  His van was stuck.

The next morning (the 4th of July), he went back to Lowes to buy some plywood to put in front of his tires for traction. After an hour of rearranging boards and going backward and forward, he was finally able to get his van out of the yard.  But holy crap, our yard was destroyed.

After all of that chaos, it was finally time to put down the dirt and set-up the pool.  John swears that the dirt was level, but when he filled up the pool, we had the EXACT same problem.  It was still lopsided.

So, we wasted a bunch of money on dirt, got a vehicle stuck in mud, and destroyed our backyard for another lopsided pool.  Oh the joys of parenthood.