Dog Parts

Gibby got herself snipped on Monday.

She had to be there by 8:00am and she had to spend the night.  We picked her up on Tuesday afternoon at 3:00.

It was a long time to go without having a crazy puppy running around the house, especially with it being the first week of summer.

When I mentioned this to the boys on Monday - that it would probably feel weird not having her around for so long - I got some very insightful and revealing comments from each of them:

Miles - Who will I play with?

Calvin - Who will I snuggle?

Isaac - Who will I make-out with?

Its going to be a loooong-funny-terrifying summer.

Gooooooooal!

The World is cup crazy.

We're crazy for the World Cup.

Or, the World Cup is crazy.

Any way you slice it, everybody in the entire world is going bananas for soccer right now.

That is, everybody but Americans.

Oh sure, we all like to pretend that we are getting into it a little bit more every time the big tournament rolls around. And I would say that is true. However, getting a little bit more into it each time doesn't really mean that much if we never really were that into it in the first place.

Yes, its progress.  But when progress is this darn small, how can anyone even count it?

Its sold as a global event:  Everybody's Doing It!
And as a chance for peace:  Nation and Relation-Building At Its Best!

But I think at the heart of our people, The American People, neither of these ways of selling a soccer tournament are going to work.

We need to see how its going to benefit us personally.  Is our team better than every other team so that we can brag about it to the rest of the world?  Can't we just drag it out into a tournament that occurs every year for weeks and weeks on end so that we can sell as much television commercial time as possible?  Can we get The Hoff and Simon Cowell to be the broadcasters of every match?

I think the more it fits into our way of doing things, the more it moves away from why the World Cup appeals to everybody else in the first place.

Its quite a booted soccer catch-22.

However, a couple of things popped into my head over the past couple of days that makes me think there might be a glimmer of hope.

One is an amazing commercial (more like a mini-film) that Nikeh as put out to be played during World Cup matches as well as news recaps, game analysis, etc.  Its stunningly beautiful.  Enough to make me actually want to watch some country that I've never heard of play against some other country that I'm not supposed to 'like' in a game that I totally don't get.  Check it:

http://www.examiner.com/x-24394-Kobe-Bryant-Examiner~y2010m5d20-2010-FIFA-World-Cup-Nike-Write-the-Future-commercial-featuring-Kobe-Bryant

Nike is headquartered in my hometown.   But that's not why I love this commercial.  I think its a brilliant mix of how the rest of the world loves soccer with things Americans can relate to such as Kobe and Homer.

Plus, its got hot guys.

And that's the other way World Cup soccer is going to finally click in America.

Somebody's going to make it trendy.  And that's going to make it hot.  And then that's going to make it cool.

And I think that's all its going to take. I know you're asking...but who is the trendsetting group of people who will get this ball rolling (pun intended)?  Think about it.  It should be so obvious to you.  Especially in 2010 America where this group has gone through the same exact transformation to coolness.

I'll let Samantha take this one (since she so rightfully points this out on the TV version of Sex and the City:

First its the gays.  Then its the girls.

Watch out Ronaldo.

Here They Come Round Again

Just saw Hanson on "The Today Show".

I forgot that the oldest is named Isaac.  Hoping that I didn't subliminally pull that name out for my Isaac because of how much I loved the song 'Mmm Bop'.

Uh-oh.  I should have never written down the name of that song. Its made it automatically go straight to the turntable in my head which will now proceed to play it for the next five hours.  It is a good song.  I just don't want it in my head from now until "Oprah".

Snark aside, they were very gracious and I think really kind of cute when I saw them on tv this morning.  And my main point of bringing them up in the first place is that their new song was good.

Really good.

And with a bit of internet digging, I found out that the whole new album is getting great reviews.

So once you get 'Mmm Bop' out of your head (the best way to do this is by uttering 'MaMaMaPokerFace' several times to yourself, that should just about do it...no haters, its the lesser of two evils), go and download their newest.  Its impressive and you won't be disappointed.

Hey Jo Bros!  You payin' attention?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmG0DqhfDbY

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/36606816/vp/37684161#37684161

Really, Dude?

When Miles was in grade school, one of his best friends in the world was a girl named Alice.

We all love Alice. She's super-smart and doesn't take any crap from anyone. Just the kind of girl I always pictured with Miles. Of course they both insisted (and why wouldn't they, this all happened during their ages of 9-11) that they were just friends. He would go to her house after school and they'd watch 'Sponge Bob' and trade Pokemon cards, or she would come over here after school and they would trade books to read, etc.

It was a great friendship.

Last May, when they were still in grade school, Alice's birthday party was on the same exact day and time as his buddy Nathan's. And Miles chose to go to Alice's.

This was a quite shock to everyone in our family.

Not only was Nathan a good friend to Miles, but he also bridged the gap to Calvin, managing to be great friends with him, too.  Even at the same time as Miles.  This is an impressive accomplishment that their little brother hasn't even managed to achieve.  Heck, I'm not sure I've even pulled it off.


Our entire family loves Nathan. He's sweet-natured and hilarious. I went to high school with his parents. And, he lives just around the corner. Nathan is our family's version of Eddie Haskell, but without everything coming out of his mouth sounding like it has a double meaning.


He's Eddie Haskell without the kiss-assiness.

There was a three-year time-span, when they were all in grade school, when the boys would get off the bus and seven minutes later, exactly seven minutes - I literally could have counted by seconds until it hit the precise seven minute mark - there'd be a knock, knock, knock on the door by Nathan. And he'd come in, take off his shoes, pet the dog, and head for the phone to call his Mom to tell her he had gotten here safely.

And while he was doing that ritual, either Rod or I would ask him - every time - "What's up, Nathan?" To which he would reply, shyly in the beginning and with knowing amusement after a year or so, "Goooood."

Me: "What's up, Nathan?"

Him: "Goooood."

It was awesome. It, for lack of a better word, tickled us. All of us.

But apparently not enough for Miles to choose Nathan's birthday party over Alice's party that year. But this was also during the last six weeks of grade school. I wondered at the time if things with Alice would start to feel a little funky to Miles once they got into Middle School.

I got a good preview of this worry at the end of the summer. Alice went on vacation with her family to Hawaii. And, according to her Mom, she spent a good chunk of her time and spending-money looking for a specific shell-type necklace for him with his name on it.

Which, of course, when you are looking for anything with the name 'Miles' on it, you are in for a pretty serious/disappointing shopping trip (unless you plan on stealing a mph traffic sign, which I'm pretty sure they would not have allowed on the airplane for the trip home). So, she settled for one with a cool wooden surf board on it which she gave to Miles with sincere satisfaction.

And which he received in the same exact manner. He wore it for weeks (which is saying something for him). He wore it to Middle School Orientation.  And on the first day of school.

Then he just stopped.  I haven't seen him wear it since.

And so, as so many boy-girl childhood 'friendships' go, Miles and Alice grew apart during this first year of Middle School. I think she was all-for still hanging out with him. But Miles is like any boy his age: he only wants to hang out with the guys.  Or, he wants it to look like he only wants to hang out with the guys.

It totally reminds me of that part in 'Grease' when Danny and Sandy spend all summer together at the beach and then when they see each other unexpectedly at school several weeks later, John Travolta acts all cool and dickish to her in front of his buddies after she gets SO happy and excited to see him.

 

Danny: That's cool baby, you know how it is, rockin' and rollin' and what not.

Sandy: Danny?

Danny: That's my name, don't wear it out.

Sandy: What's the matter with you?

Danny: What's the matter with me, baby, what's the matter with you?

Sandy: What happened to the Danny Zuko I met at the beach?

Danny: Well I do not know. Maybe there's two of us. Why don't you take out a missing person's ad? Or try the yellow pages, I don't know.

Sandy: You're a fake and a phony and I wish I never laid eyes on you!

I personally like to repeat that last line of Sandy's whenever I'm feeling particularly dramatic. Its especially effective if I have a pair of pom poms to throw down on the ground as I say it. But, I digress...

The bottom line is that Miles spent this year having his free time being all about dudes. The only time he spent hanging out with a girl was the time I think he went on his first date. I wrote a post about it which you can read here:

http://www.missmeinthemiddle.com/2010/03/moms-protect-yourselves-mshb-is-serious.html

Everything else was dude-time. And not a minute with Alice.

So, I wasn't too surprised this year when we once again got two birthday party invitations with the dates and times being exactly the same, that Miles immediately chose to go to Nathan's party instead of Alice's.

The whole thing prompted me to sit him down to have a little chat (which was totally premeditated by me, a fact that I hope I didn't let on to him, otherwise he would have never done it...you Moms know what its like). We talked about appropriate ways to cool-off a friendship, and ways to get your point across without hurting people's feelings, and the different ways that girls feel and react to situations than boys do, etc.

Basically, I reiterated something I always encourage all the boys to do. And this is to try and handle all situations with grace.

I say it at least once a day. In my opinion, if you don't do something with grace then what you do doesn't matter. And I've been saying this to them since they were babies. So you can imagine my surprise when, at the end of this little learning moment/conversation with Miles, he said something really shocking.

And yet also quite self-explanatory.

I asked him what exactly made him decide to go to Nathan's party this year instead of Alice's. And his answer totally threw me. I didn't know whether to smack him in the head, or to do a coffee spit-take from laughing so hard...

"Mom, its really simple. Middle School is all about Bros Before Hos."

He immediately assured me afterwards that he doesn't generally call girls hos. He just said it this way because he knew I would think it was funny and because it gets his point across. And the thing is, he's right.  I trust him. I know he feels comfortable enough with me to say that kind of thing to crack me up. Considering some of the notes, comments and awards he's been getting from Middle School, I do trust him to know his audience and to make good decisions. 
I trust him enough to let him be himself.

So, I chose the spit-take. And then I laughed for about five straight minutes.

Plus, even though the word-choice is a little off, the bottom line of what he's saying is right. When you are a twelve-year-old boy, it IS bros before hos. And considering how fast that statement is totally going to flip and be the other way around, I'll take it for as long as I can.

So, you can think about him having fun tomorrow night at Nathan's birthday party, hanging with the bros.

Thankfully without a ho in sight.  And hopefully when they all get back to school on Monday, Miles won't be using his new, updated Dany Zuko line so that Alice won't have to yell that he's fake and phony, wishing she'd never laid eyes on him.

Here Comes Summer...

Isaac was the only child potty-trained in this house, not our old one.

So, considering the low-flow and (I want to say 'crappy' but it just seems too obvious) horrible toilets we have here, he spent a lot of time learning to pee outside.

He would just rip off his diaper or his training pants and let it flow out in the back off of our deck.  And considering the fact that one or more of our toilets are clogged at one time or another, it just seemed like the easiest solution at the time.

Oh, what I have created.

Lately he has been getting off the bus, crossing the street, throwing his backpack and jacket over the fence into our backyard, and then walking around the house to go through the gate to get his stuff and then come into the house through the back door.

All of which he finds terribly hilarious since I am usually in the kitchen right where he walks in through the back door and therefore I usually get a terrible little jolt of surprise/terror when he pops unexpectedly through the wrong door.

He doesn't do it every day.

Oh, no no.  He's too diabolical for that...I would then start to expect him to pop in through that door and therefore he wouldn't be able to scare me when it happens.

He keeps his options open.  He's no normal, sweet, six-year-old.

Yesterday he attempted to pull-off this little trick on me. However, a couple of variables were different than the usual day, and so things just got thrown totally off.   So we then got an outcome that was even more unexpected and therefore not good.  Not at all good.

The two older boys, however, were thrilled.

First of all, when he got off the bus, I was in the TV room, not the kitchen, as per usual.  Also, the dogs were in the backyard when he came in through the gate.  They are usually in the house.  Finally, the back door he usually pops through was locked.

So he was bombarded by dogs the minute he went into the yard.  And he saw me sitting there, watching the news, the minute he got onto the deck, so he knew he wasn't going to get to scare me.  And with the door being locked, he couldn't run right into the house and do the thing he normally does when he first gets home.

OK, wait...it looks like I forgot to mention one important thing about his routine.  Isaac has to pee.  Every single day when he finally gets into the house, that's the first thing he does.  Big pee. Like he's been drinking Gatorade all afternoon, holding-it since lunch, and having Calvin step repeatedly on his bladder on the way home on the bus.  Big pee.

So, these changes all led to one thing.  And I hope you see where I'm headed here...

That's right.  I looked out the window from our TV room just in time to see him standing there with his pants and underwear dropped to his feet, peeing off our deck.

Which, OK, its not the best thing in the world, but, like I mentioned, that's how he learned to pee without a diaper, so its not the worst thing in the world, either.  Plus it looked like it was going to rain soon.

But what didn't fit in with this excuse, or anything else I've described here was this:  not only was he half-naked and peeing in full-view off our deck, he also just-so happened to be peeing on the dog.

You heard right:  Isaac peed on the dog.

Can you imagine how many times I heard that sentence yesterday?  I can't believe Isaac peed on the dog.  Do you remember when I peed on the dog?  I can't wait to tell people at school that Isaac peed on the dog.  Its like that time Isaac peed on the dog.

Which all would be funny if it weren't so soon.  Just too soon.

But what's even possibly more reprehensible is the fact that after I saw Isaac pee on the dog, I had a very serious choice to make.  I could immediately grab her and run her up to the bathtub and clean her up (and make Isaac help me, natch).  OR I could wait until this morning when I miraculously had her first-ever grooming appointment scheduled, but which would mean that we would have to keep her overnight knowing that she had been peed on.

Guess which one I picked?

That's right.  During the trip to get to Aqua Dog, I will not only be holding my breath for the three minute drive it takes to get there, but I will also be holding my head down in shame.

And later on today, when he is walking from the bus stop to the front door of our house, Isaac will also, hopefully, be holding his pee.