Cleaning house

As I have described, one of my recurring dreams is about packing to move, and not having enough time.

Last night, I had the dream, only this time Rob was behind schedule too. Not only were we running out of time, but we didn’t have enough room in our bags. “I need another bag or I’m leaving some of this behind,” I said, looking at shelves full of clothes that hadn’t even started to be packed.

Among the things that needed packing were Rob’s T-shirts, which all said “Muay Thai” or “Red Bull” on them in Thai letters. I know where that came from. For several weeks, Rob has had a broken dresser drawer on the bedroom floor. I normally have trouble putting all his clothes away anyway, and last weekend, I literally couldn’t fit them anywhere in our room. I carried them back to the laundry room and set them on a chair, and refused to put any more of his clothes away.

Eventually, I plan to turn our bedroom into a master suite, with a walk-in closet and a jacuzzi bathtub. Can’t do it yet, because I haven’t actually built any equity after just 10 months of mortgage paying. And even with my 1.9 % cost of living adjustment, my debt ratio is still too high. Rob wasn’t too excited about my moving forward with those plans anyway, because they have nothing to do with his plans to build a full-size boxing ring in our backyard.

I’ve come to terms with postponing my master suite dream, except it really infuriated me to watch Rob’s dirty clothes get piled up on the broken dresser drawer. I told him something must be done, and tonight, he came home and announced that he was cleaning everything.

“That looks like crap,” he said, pointing to the “clutter table” in the big room, “The kitchen looks like crap,” which actually offended me because I’d cleaned it 48 hours earlier, but yeah, dirty dishes had piled up again. “The computer room looks like crap…”

And while I lay on the couch watching “Reunited, The Real World: Las Vegas,” he really cleaned up some stuff! And fixed the dresser drawer.

Why does this always happen to me?

Having recovered from the bump from the eyebrow bash against the dog run latch, followed by a dog head butt…I decided to maim myself by standing up while cleaning poop from Stew’s habitat. The upper door, which is basically a wood frame on top of plexiglass (as opposed to around it), was in mid-swing, making contact with my temple at a most injurious angle. I described the plexiglass/wood situation as above so you understand that it was the corner of the plexiglass that hit me. Not a nice soft wood frame.

It hurts like a mo-fo. I’m not kidding. I had to stop poop cleanup to put an ice pack on my head. And then blog about it.

Conspiracy

Taco Time wants you to eat meat.

It’s one thing to give Rob a crisp beef burrito instead of a crisp bean burrito, cus those sorta sound alike. That’s happened at multiple Taco Times. Though he’s a carnivore, for some reason he can’t stomach the beef burrito, and always makes a face, puts it down and goes for the phone book (when we’ve brought the food home) and calls the restaurant. He complains and gets them to write down his name so he can get a free bean burrito next time.

But there’s no way I said anything close to the word “chicken” when I ordered my junior quesadilla with black bean and corn salsa. I also said I didn’t want the combo, but they gave me Mexi-fries (aka tater tots) anyway. At least they got the diet Coke part right.

After I took a bite and spit out the chicken chunk, I drove back through. I’m not really that lazy, but there weren’t any cars in line. When the guy handed me back my meatless quesadilla he said something that sounded like, “Sorry, we got our signals crossed there.”

I gave a meager smile and realized a second after I drove away that what he’d said was, “We put some crustos in there.”

Oh, free dessert. Thanks.

So Taco Time wants you to eat meat and if you won’t, then they want you to be fat.

Spar

I don’t like to spar. Something about punches and kicks coming my way when I do not have a specific plan to deal with them makes me uneasy.

I enjoy combinations and drills. You hold pads while I kick and punch. We both wear gloves and you punch me in this choreographed fashion and I will block and evade like a pro.

Yesterday we were doing a sparring drill, where my partner was to come at me real quick and then back away. For some reason, I thought she was supposed to aim at my torso, but wouldn’t you know it, she went for my head.

I should mention here that we have two girls in our class and I am way tougher than they are. And I’m not so tough.

Anywho, her glove pushed my glove toward my head (because if I’ve got one thing down, it’s always to keep my gloves near my face. It’s why my face breaks out a lot. From touching my face with my stinky gloves.) My own glove pushed my contact lens out of place. Not out of my eye, but up in it so far that it took me about 5 minutes to locate it and I had the whole class looking on the floor for the blasted thing.

When I found it, I had to put it back in my eye without saline solution, putting myself at risk for the amoeba infection.

So that’s why I don’t like sparring.

Rob enjoys sparring so much, he does it with the dog. I said to him sweetly yesterday, “Let’s try this, next time she gets snappy at you like this… Wait, are you enjoying this?”

She had her front paws on his lap and was yelping. He had a huge smile on his face.

“She just gets me so excited,” he said sheepishly.

“OK, but if you let her think it’s all right to snap at you, she’s going to keep biting little girls in the face.”

I suggested we try holding her down when she gets hyped like that, until she calms down. Every time. So she learns it’s not OK to snap.

I demonstrated this by grabbing the 62.5-pound dog and flipping her off of Rob and onto the floor. She lay there submissively.

“You’re grappling with the dog!” Rob said. “You’re the Dog Grappler!”

Normally, I don’t like grappling either, but I wish Rob had seen the move I did this morning, when Isis made a move for his sleeping head. I — accidentally — judo-tossed her off the bed.

Customer service

If you’ve ever taken a dog to PetSmart, you know how annoying it is to be accosted and offered a free training session or nail clipping in every other aisle. Actually, I was psyched to get two free nail clipping coupons out of one visit, but still, I’ve always preferred to shop without help.

I’m used to all the attention my supermodel of a dog gets, but the salespeople are annoying even if you leave your dog at home. I went during my lunch break yesterday to get food, jumbo rawhide bones and antiseptic for her mysterious owies. I also got these peanut butter flavored Better Than Ears. Rob discovered these on his mass shopping extravaganza before Isis and I flew home in November. They smell really good and he keeps saying he wants to eat one, but I bet it lacks sugar. The PetSmart in our town told us that they were discontinuing the peanut butter flavor (yet no one told the Web site). The bacon flavor doesn’t agree with Isis’ sensitive tummy, but the PetSmart near work still has the peanut butter flavor, so I go there to stock up.

The woman in front of me was buying a box of milk bones or something.

“Oh you have a doggie!” the saleslady squealed.

“Mmm,” the woman said.

“That’s cool,” the saleslady replied, because she wasn’t given enough information to come up with a better response. “What kind of doggie do you have?”

“Just ring me up please,” the woman said softly.

Burnnnn! I actually did that once at the grocery store, when the checkout dude wanted to know all about my social plans for the weekend.

Strangely, I was willing to tell the checkout girl all about my doggie, but all she asked me was if I found everything all right.

Fitness

Isis and I were a little rusty at dog class last night. She was distracted, and let’s be honest, I’ve never corrected her as harshly as I’m supposed to. So she can’t walk perfectly on a leash, but she’s pretty good at stay…as long as she’s on a leash. At home, it’s a whole ‘nother story…Although I did get her to down-stay on the floor when I changed the sheets Sunday.

Where she really shines is running. She must get it from Rob, because I can’t even run around in a circle in our martial arts studio. It’s pretty embarrassing. Sometimes Rob starts class with a jog around the room and I opt out. I can’t explain it, something left over from my childhood? I never ran in junior high, either. I got a doctor’s note for it, but I don’t think that really explains why I can’t jog for 2 minutes in a circle. Am I afraid my heart is going to explode, or that I’ll look stupid or that I’ll fall down? Doesn’t make sense, because I have no problem shadowboxing and a person can look pretty silly doing that. Rob asked if I wanted him to work on it with me and I said, “No, I want you to stop having us run in class.” That’s reasonable, right?

Anyway, back to Isis, who is much more interesting than me anyway. She is the fastest runner in the world. Like a damn cheetah. We let the dogs run around off-leash yesterday and no one could catch her. Best of all, she didn’t scream and cry when the other dogs were on her tail, and she actually turned around and chased them right back.

I was sure she was going to be so pooped when we got home that she’d just lie on my feet and I could brush her and apply medicine to these mysterious scrapes on her legs. But no, she was amped, and in the mood to bite the brush. It didn’t help that Rob was in the other room with a friend and didn’t want Isis in there with him, because she kept knocking their beers over with her tail.

Where’s my rubber cement?

So I’m stenciling letters onto some foamboard, for a little display I’m making for work. I’ve blown up some photos and gluesticked them to the board–they look great at least. So anyway, I’m stenciling away, and the “a” is a little far away from the “l” in the first word, but whatever, it looks pretty good even though I’m using a dry erase marker instead of a sharpie, because that’s what I had in my desk drawer, and boy, I hope this doesn’t look unprofessional.

And in a million years, I never thought I’d have an advanced degree and be sitting on my office floor, putting together a foamboard display.

Spit Bugs

I’ve noticed a foamy white substance on the stems of my roses and also the blackberries in the backyard. I asked my mother, a prolific gardener, and Rob’s mother, who has lived in this region her whole life, and yet it was Rob who had instant recognition, “Spit bugs!” he said. “There’s a bug in there. You didn’t know that?”

We assumed that was just what he called them, so I was googling things like “foamy cocoon,” but wouldn’t you know it, Huntington Botanical Gardens identifies them as “Spittlebugs”

Often this time of the year gardeners will see foamy, disgusting-looking masses on the stems and leaves of soft herbaceous plants. The nymphs of the appropriately named Spittlebug cause this. Once winter is over and Spittlebug eggs have hatched, the newly emerged nymphs begin feeding and produce the frothy spittle masses to protect themselves from predators. Even a bug will not eat a Spittlebug so protected! Not usually seen on roses, an infestation of Spittlebugs can be cleaned up with a strong spray of water washing away the foamy spittle masses.

‘Course it says not usually seen on roses, but then, I’ve always been special.