This is from a blog I used to have on myspace... I deleted my myspace account when it became whattheheckisthisspace.com Now I facebook and.... obviously blog elsewhere.
This happened about three years ago...
So yesterday I'm at work and the phone rings. It's my daughter.
Once the pleasantries are all out of the way she asks me where do I go to look for the puppies when they run away? She asks this really nonchalant, sort of like "where did you put the milk?" Like it's really no big deal. After a lot of wrangling about exactly how the puppies get outside, it is finally determined that my niece and her friend came over and so the kids got to go swimming. The dogs followed the kids outside. Of course, this is not in any way, shape, form or fashion due to any wrong doing on the part of my highly intelligent and competent children. No. The dogs are just "stupid".
So finally, I name off every possible location that the puppies might be hiding and hang up the phone leaving my poor unsuspecting niece and her friend to help them find the dogs. I am feeling a mixture of emotions. I have to make the boys play with these pitiful dogs yet they can't get enough of the lab puppy, Roscoe that my oldest son brought home. I think maybe these dogs realize that there is life out there somewhere with little boys who will want them and they have decided to make a break for it. I am ashamed to admit that I'm secretly glad that if they are going to run away they didn't wait until they had been groomed the following day at thirty bucks a pop.
About a half hour later, after they all loaded up, went to Sonic (I can only assume to brainstorm and coordinate the search effort) they call me back to let me know they found the dogs. I strongly suspect that the dogs got hungry and came home though the kids will never admit it. I'm more relieved than I thought I would be.
So I finish up my day. I've changed my shift a bit so that I can have some "pool" time with the kids. I go in at 6:00 a.m. and get off at 2:30 p.m. I had to run home to pick up the library books and return them and then get home and get supper started and all that good jazz. As I'm driving up my street, I see my old Shitzu ,Daphne wandering down the road. My blood begins to boil. I open my car door and she jumps in. I pull in the driveway and get out to tell the kids that they have messed up again. They think this is funny. Apparently the sun was in their eyes or I don't think they would have been so amused. Mama wasn't happy. So I come in with my poor neglected dog only to find Roscoe the wonder pup running rampant through my house. Now Roscoe is part black lab and part beagle and you don't have to know much about much to know that it's a REAL bad idea for this puppy to have access to electrical cords without human supervision. Visions of my husband’s blown forehead blood vessels dance through my mind as I picture the puppy chewing the cord on his big screen TV. Puppy stew anyone?
The excuse. He was asleep when they got ready to go swimming and apparently once puppies are woke up... they can't go back to sleep.
Thank God I needed to go to the library. It gave me time to brood... I MEAN COOL DOWN.... and I was able to come up with a plan of discipline.
I got back in my car after spending thirty minutes at the library, feeling pretty good in a sadistic kind of way when my daughter calls. She has decided to throw herself upon the sword of justice and spare her brothers by taking complete responsibility for them and any an all mistakes, oversights, neglects and possible puppy harm. I inform her that this is not necessary, as I have no intentions of grounding anyone. I did ask while I had them on the phone to please finish the dishes from the night before when we had the youth group over.
I walked in the door, feeling positive. Like maybe... just maybe I had a handle on this thing. Not so fast. I walk in to the house to the sound of my daughter's voice informing me that the dishwasher didn't "run properly" and it was necessary to run it again. Oh yeah... and there was LITERALLY a three foot teetering TOWER of dirty dishes in the sink balanced on a juice glass in the bottom of the sink. Had I not been so angry, I would have been impressed. After an entire ten seconds of investigation I discover that it wasn't that it didn't run properly.... it wasn't run at all.
I sat all of the kids down at the kitchen table with a pen and a piece of paper and told them that I wanted a two page letter explaining to me what had gone wrong, what they intended to do to fix it and an apology. I also explained that for the remainder of the evening they would be in their rooms where they were welcome to read a book or watch CNN.
watch re-runs of Three’s Company.
What did we learn yesterday? The pen is in fact mightier than the sword or at least the belt or grounding for a week. Mainly because I have discovered that my kids HATE to write and that they have a really hard time finding enough things to say to fill up two pages of notebook paper.
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