It's Everywhere

My husband comes by it honestly.  You know, that penchant for exaggeration?  His mother suffered from the same affliction.  A bleeding hang nail was hemorrhaging.  If someone spoke pointedly, they were hollering at her.  We learned early on to put it through a reality filter.  My husband and his oldest brother are the same only their targeted victims are the family pets.  Their favorite phrase?  It's EVERYWHERE!

My husband is convinced that the animals in our household intentionally make messes to irritate him.  He is so convinced of this that he has, on many occasions, mistaken something as simple as a wet leaf for a dog pile.  "Your dog pooped all over the basement," he will announce in disgust as he comes upstairs.  If I laugh he follows with, "It's EVERYWHERE."  To which I will dutifully go downstairs and find three or four leaves that came in on paws scattered around the floor looking for all the world like wet leaves not piles of poo. 

You can interchange my husband for my brother-in-law and the conversation is the same.  It's become a code for us Coltman women when we think our spouses are going overboard.
 We will roll our eyes and say, "It's EVERYWHERE."

Last week my husband, Moondoggy, got a true dose of what everywhere really means.

It is important to know that we have two dogs.  Moose, our Bichon is almost twelve, wise and sneaky.  Our Goldendoodle, Porter, is a puppy - eleven months old.  He is the happiest dog on earth and he will tell you so every minute of every day.  He's never really been in trouble so he has no frame of reference for "naughty".

We were in the final phases of moving with the house clear of all furniture when we decided to go out for supper.  These changes had caused some agitation with the dogs to which Moose reacted by moving one of the gates just enough to escape into the basement and torment Porter who could not fit through the small opening.  As furniture disappeared, we were forced to come up with different ways to keep the gate in place. So, on one of our last nights, Moondoggy hauled in a 5 gallon bucket with my basil and thyme plants and set it in front of the gate.  We were gone no more than an hour.  When we returned, I entered to find the basil and thyme pulled from the bucket and the partially eaten plants strewn across the hardwood floor among clumps of dirt. The gate had been moved just enough so that Moose could go downstairs while Porter was stuck in the kitchen.  As I looked around at the mess, I could see Moose giving me that look that said, "Don't blame me, I was downstairs."  I didn't say a word and quietly swept then vacuumed the floor as Dave shook his head, his lips pursed, holding in his mounting anger.

The next night we again headed out to grab some food.  This time, we had a heavily packed box that we dragged in front of the gate, certain that it would do the trick.  We were gone four hours.  Upon return, I opened the door and peaked inside.

The lower cabinet lazy susan was pushed open.  From the cabinet had been pulled a twp pound bag of confectioners sugar and the remnants of a five pound bag of flour.  They had been gutted.  They had been dragged across the room.  They had been been deposited in every nook and cranny available, on the walls, in the cabinet grooves. The happiest dog in the world greeted me at the door, tongue hanging out. It was as if he was saying, "Look!  Look what we found!  Watch.  If I roll in it and shake I can make a cloud.  If I get a running start, I can slide across the floor and if I lick it, it sticks to my fur.  I LOVE this! Come!  Roll in the sweet white stuff with me!"  Moose, on the other hand was cowering in the corner.  He knew he was busted because he is the animal that knew how to open the lazy susan in the first place.

I turned to Moondoggy who was hyper-ventilating and said, "See THIS?  THIS is everywhere."

And The Beat Goes On. . .

Often, during the oppressive days of the summers of my youth, the neighbors with pools would run up a flag signaling that the pool was open.  Like vultures, we would ride around the neighborhood, circling, waiting for the flags so we could pedal home and drag our parents to the neighbor's pool.  We would play games: Marco Polo, Shark, Underwater Tea Party.  And when there was nothing left to do, we’d ask our mom  (who had grown up as the oldest child in her family) to “Judge” our underwater handstands.  Enjoying the poolside herself, she would assign arbitrary numbers to our attempts as a form of judgement without using any uniform criteria.  In other words, she was making it up as we went along.  And it worked.  We would repeatedly attempt to better our score.  As the older child, I caught on to what she was doing so that when I got tired, I joined her at the side of the pool and “helped” her continue to judge my little sister until she was thoroughly spent. I knew the game was over.

When my kids were small and bored and looking to expend extra energy, I would tell them to run around the house and I would time them.  I’d sit on the front stoop and when they returned, assign an arbitrary number for which they would then attempt to beat.  Around the period where my oldest could tell time, he caught on to what I was doing so that when he was tired, he would sit with me and check his watch while his younger brother continued to run around the house in attempt to better his time. (In all fairness, youngest did take the State Championship in the 4x400 at the State Track Meet in his junior year of HS.) My oldest son knew the game was over.

Yesterday, a cold, windy, blecky day, I was home.  No longer a child, my own children grown and out of the house, I pulled the same trick on my dogs.  I stood at the top of the steps and tossed a ball down.  The dogs chased the ball, ran it up the steps and I’d toss it again.  Finally, they figured out they could do it all themselves.  Drop the ball, chase it down and return to the top only to drop it again.  My older dog (12 pounds, age 11) kept pace fairly well, but the “baby” (5 months, 28 pounds) has boundless energy.  On the final toss down the steps, the oldest was in the lead, got the ball, returned to the top of the stairs, ran into the living room (with the baby right behind him) and pushed the ball under the couch where neither of them can reach.  Then, he ran back to the stairs and pretended to drop the ball, sending the baby back down the stairs and on a frantic search.  Older dog curled up on the couch. Game over.