What I learned this week…
- Some things just never work out well. For example, 6-year-old boys and Scotch tape. I don’t want to talk about it.
- Did you know 13-month-olds can climb bunk bed ladders? All the way to the top? In the time it takes you to transfer two loads of laundry?
- Yeah, neither did I. Until yesterday.
- Our dog Pete likes to dig holes but stick around the yard. Our dog Odie does not like to dig holes, but he also does not like to stick around the yard. So together, they result in two equally irritating phenomena: ruined yards and lost dogs. Isn’t that cute?
- I’m sorry, but PETA people (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) are weird. I don’t generally, um, generalize in such a blatant manner, but I have never once met a PETA person who struck me as stable, or somebody I’d be willing leave my kid with for an hour. My dog? Totally. But not my kid.
- You know what’s a sad thought? Someday Bob Dylan will die. I was listening to him the other morning and kept thinking “My God, Bob, you’re just so good.”
- Our goldfish died because its bowl got too dirty to sustain life. That officially makes me an animal killer and I’m sad about that. I didn’t mean to kill it, and I suppose there’s a slight chance the kitty whacked it with a claw, causing terminal damage, but I’m pretty sure it was the not cleaning thing. Go ahead, hate. I know I suck. But please don’t call the PETA people.
- Not really. I don’t suck that bad. You know who does suck that bad, though? Casey Fucking Anthony. Nobody’s going to weep the day that woman kicks the bucket.
- Okay so I KNOW somebody has to give a shit about lab animals and bunnies and whatnot, so thanks for that, PETA, but in my experience y’all have odd social skills and are a bit extremist in your judgments of others and their animal-related choices. For example, I once bought a purebred dog. A PETA acquaintance heard about this and flipped her cookie that I purchased a dog rather than adopted one from the shelter. I mean she was worked up. My thing is, with all the violence and famine and social injustice in the world, are we really going to get our panties in a knot over something like THAT?
- Anyhoo, have I mentioned I love Autumn? I LOVE OCTOBER. I don’t know why, but pumpkin patches make me happy. It’s as close as I get to festive. Although, I hate adult Halloween. I loathe dressing up. Annoying effing holiday.
- Pumpkins, though? And haystacks and cornfields and wagons and my kids in little costumes collecting junk food? Love it.
Happy almost October. By the way, how cute is this little number?
Dee
Sunday, 25 September, 2011 at 16:20She is too cute. I love her jacket. #2…I knew. My boys have bunkbeds. We move the ladder sometimes so she can’t climb up. #4…We had a dog who would run away all the time. Eventually, I wished he would stay gone. #5…PETA is headquartered near here. I’ve heard some interesting stories. I fear #7 will become us soon. But Speedy Eiffel Tower (our beta) is hanging in there. I also love fall, and even dressing up for Halloween, just not in slutty costumes.
renegademama
Tuesday, 27 September, 2011 at 11:43I love that jacket too. Got it for a dollar last weekend at a thrift store. Your fish is named “Speedy Eiffel Tower.” I love that so much I’m nearly speechless.
Our kids named the rabbit at the ranch “Midnight Bok Choy.”
Clearly our children are creative geniuses. Or something.
Stephanie
Sunday, 25 September, 2011 at 16:20I, too, love October, for all those reasons, PLUS it’s birthday. And I, too, bought a cat instead of adopted, and caught flack for it. So, you know what I did? I bought another one.
renegademama
Tuesday, 27 September, 2011 at 11:44Well done. Rage against the machine. AND, the PETA people. I mean seriously, who gives a shit? And what, the purebreds don’t need homes too? 🙂
sherilinr
Sunday, 25 September, 2011 at 16:36i have never understood people who think that plants are more important than people. call me arrogant, but it seems to me that we’re at the top of the food chain for a reason.
super cute baby! that first one with the hood rocks!
renegademama
Tuesday, 27 September, 2011 at 11:45Thanks. She’s an angel and I adore her.
Michael Ann Riley
Sunday, 25 September, 2011 at 17:08I’m gathering that PETA did something to really piss you off! Not surprising.
RIP Mr. Goldfish.
YES, your little number is VERY cute!
renegademama
Tuesday, 27 September, 2011 at 11:47Thanks.
And no, not really. I just think they’re weird. Although, Mac’s dad used to run the local auction yard (many many years ago) and I guess some PETA fanatics got pissed and burned it down one night, unknowingly killing a bunch of live stock that were unusually housed there.
Uncool.
Stacey
Sunday, 25 September, 2011 at 18:49Oh my lord, the cuteness. That first photo makes me melt.
renegademama
Tuesday, 27 September, 2011 at 20:56Hee hee.
Erin
Sunday, 25 September, 2011 at 23:13I love pumpkins. And kids dressed up. But I do not dress up. Nope.
That child is adorable. She is cute enough to be friends with my girls. Let’s make that happen. Unless she is going to teach them to climb ladders. They’ve already learned enough ways to injure themselves without adding that one.
renegademama
Tuesday, 27 September, 2011 at 20:56Please can we make that happen? PLEASE?
Like yesterday.
MizFit
Monday, 26 September, 2011 at 3:56OMG YOU HAD ME AT THE PHOTOS.
I miss having a little one.
I learned THAT this past week.
renegademama
Tuesday, 27 September, 2011 at 20:57Ain’t that the truth. As soon as they’re gone, we miss ’em. But while they’re in that baby stage, we think it will never end.
Summer K.
Monday, 26 September, 2011 at 10:26I thought PETA meant “People Eating Tasty Animals”? 🙂 I have the shirt, haha!
renegademama
Tuesday, 27 September, 2011 at 20:57Haha! Awesome. PETA would love us. I just know it.
LenaGal
Tuesday, 24 December, 2013 at 6:49Ok, janelle. I’m going to tell you a story, and it’s going to make you feel like a better person. Although, a PETA rep. will be at my door within approximately 60 seconds after I hit send.
When I was in college, I had a fish named Dorian. I loved her. I was never allowed to have pets so getting one was one of those “statements of creating my own personhood” or some such non sense. Anyway, I went home for spring break and transported Dorian in a giant ziplock Baggie because… I was in a dorm, and that’s pretty much all I had. (She lived in a non-transportable tank.) So I get home. I run inside to hug my family. We hang out, we have dinner,we catch up, and go to sleep. Then, at like, 3 in the morning, my eyes flew open. Dorian was still in the car. It was 20 degrees out! So I run outside (probably in my underwear) and grab the fish. The whole entire ziplock Baggie, is one frozen hunk of ice. And the fish inside is frozen as well, looking like a cryogenic experiment gone somehow horribly wrong.
I bring her in the house, put her in the freezer, (because somehow, letting her thaw seems odd to me I guess.) I stay up all night, going back and forth between sobbing over what a cruel heartless person I am, and trying to tell myself that all is well because, really, freezing to death is a fine way to die. Everyone says it’s like falling asleep! But then crying again because she is dead, and I, with my thoughtless selfishness, have killed her. Kind of like Nietzsche and God. But not.
So anyways, my mom comes downstairs in the morning to find me asleep on my folded arms on the kitchen table, wakes me, asks me what’s wrong, and is trying to comfort me. She says she has to get ready for work, so come to her bedroom with her so I can still talk while she’s getting ready.
Dorian is still in the freezer. My 10 year old (though really about 6 because of some major mental disability/learning disabilities he’s got going on) brother comes into moms bedroom, wanting to know what’s up. I told him. He shrugged and said he had to get ready for school.
A few minutes later, we walk I to the kitchen. My brother was making some breakfast – oatmeal in the microwave – when we smelled something gross, at which point Greg goes “the fish is alive again! See?! She’s wiggling!”
Turns out, he was NOT making oatmeal. He was trying to Frankenstein the fish by nuking it, thinking, rather adorably, that if he could just UNfreeze Dorian, she would be alive again. My mom and I ran over to the microwave and looked inside just in time to see Dorian explode. It was possibly the most disgusting and scarring thing I have ever experienced. My brother started sobbing, I started screaming, and my poor mother just started laughing uncontrollably, because, seriously, what the heck else can you do?
And that’s my story 🙂