Have you ever had sympathy pain for someone when they were hurt? I have heard many stories of men having sympathy pains for their wives while in labor. Do your eyes water when you see someone get poked in the eye and their eyes are watering? Mine do, I'm a self proclaimed sympathetic eye waterer. People come into the clinic all the time with very red watering eyes and within seconds the flood gates open and there I go. Have you ever yawned after watching someone else yawn? The answer to that question is probably yes. Someone in a group yawns and before you know it, everyone is yawning. Finally someone will yell out "Stop That" like it was someone's fault. Y'all know what I am talking about. Studies show that it's an empathy or bonding response with others that is not completely understood.
Well besides being that guy who's eyes sympathetically water like Niagara Falls at the sight of red watery eyes I unfortunately have a second sympathetic response that is far more unpleasant than your typical red eye. I am in fact a sympathetic gagger as well. If you start gagging or tossing your cookies I am right there with you gagging away myself. I have been in medicine twenty nine years and as soon as I see someone gagging in the ER I jump right on the gagging band wagon with them. It's almost as if two of us are engaged in this at the same time then it some how speeds up the process and the mission is accomplished much quicker. Do any of you remember what the old Double Mint chewing gum commercial once said "Double your pleasure and double the fun" so surely two gaggers are without a doubt much better than one. lol.
The worst part about me being a sympathetic gagger is that it's not subtle. I'm one of those loud gut wrenching toe curling guys. If gagging was made into an Olympic sport I could be a gold medalist for sure. I know this sounds kind of gross and the reason I bring it up (no pun intended) is because this happened at my house several weeks ago but fortunately Red Dog and I weren't the participants. It involves my wonderful wife and our ginormous house cat Mr. Buttons.
My wife Debbie prides herself at being a loving attentive wife and mother. Over the many years of raising kids she has done every nasty smelly gross mommy job under the sun. I have seen her clean up some of the stinkiest little rear ends on the planet and wrestle messy poopy diapers off of those same little bottoms. She has endured white smelly baby vomit running down her chest, washed wranglers that look and smelled like they were drug through a cow lot (which they were I might add) and watched her bathe two large stinky dogs covered in skunk spray without blinking an eye. She is Wonder Woman, Cat Woman, Bionic Woman, and Xena the Princess Warrior all wrapped up into one when it comes to taking charge around the house but the other day I witnessed a chink in her armor and no one was more surprised than I. It came in the form of one of the largest nastiest looking hair balls that a cat has ever produced in the history of man kind. All compliments of Mr. Buttons our two ton lazy house cat. I mean this thing was nasty with a capitol "N" and here is how it all went down.
It all began on a very pleasant warm Saturday morning. We got up and headed off for our regular Saturday morning breakfast date like always. We made our usual stop to the feed store on our way home to pickup some scratch for the chickens. Once home I sat back in my over sized comfortable recliner with a hot cup of coffee to finish my morning with a weekly deer hunt on the Outdoor Channel. My morning was slowly winding down and the plan of hunting until lunch time was coming along quit nicely.
I decided to make myself a sandwich and then see how much nap time I could squeeze in before supper. (Deer hunting always makes me hungry and sleepy...lol). My plan was working out very well until I suddenly (and loudly I might add) heard Debbie scream " No Mr. Buttons!!! No!!!" It wasn't one of those "you are in so much trouble" type of screams that I have personally heard many times during thirty two years of marriage but this one was different.
Out of pure instinct I sheepishly sunk deep into my big fluffy recliner just in case she was screaming at me. I know I said she screamed out Mr. Buttons name but from past experience my wife has called me by all of my kids names, my brother in law's name and she even sometimes goes through the whole family tree before getting to my name when I am in trouble. All you married guys out there understand what I'm talking about, right? Well if your wife hasn't done it I know your mothers certainly have and when we heard our first, middle and last yelled out by our mamma's, we knew there was trouble in River City. But there was something different about this particular scream. It was more of a panic like scream but I still tried to make myself invisible just in case. Then I heard Debbie yell out again "Oh No, Oh No" and she swiftly darted out the front door. Since my back was to the door I couldn't see a thing and heard the door slam shut behind me. I said to myself "self you may not be in trouble here". But before I could muster the courage to come out of hiding I heard the front door open and suddenly slam shut again. I also heard her yell out "Oh No" again as well. By this time I figured out that she wasn't yelling at me so I walked out the front door to see my poor sweet wife throwing up in her flower bed in the front yard.
I must admit that my initial thought was oh crud she's pregnant again and unfortunately for me that was the first question that came running out of my mouth (there are days when my thought filter doesn't work very well and this was one of those day). There she was on her hands and knees in our front yard violently vomiting into her poor pitiful looking flower garden that has been devastated by a four year drought and she looked up at me like I was the most ignorant man on the planet and snarled "No I'm not pregnant, I've had a hysterectomy". Duh! It wasn't one of my finer medical moments to say the least and that old saying about there is no such thing as a dumb question, well, I have news for you, there is!
So after asking her if she was ok I cautiously asked a second question. What made her sick. She told me that Mr. Buttons hacked up the grossest hair ball she had ever seen on the carpet in our bedroom and when she reluctantly attempted to clean it up she started to toss her cookies so she ran outside. Of course I had to ask the most obvious third question which was much safer than question number one.
Why did you run outside to get sick when the toilet was just a few feet away? Her answer was that she did not have time to clean the toilet before she vomited. What!!! She wanted to clean the toilet before barfing in it. I was very confused at this point. Then she told me she refuses to stick her face in a place where people sat their naked bottoms (that's necked bottom if your from the south)without cleaning it first!
I remember her telling me this in the past but just thought she was pulling my leg. Apparently there isn't any leg pulling when it comes to the issue of vomiting in the toilet and as I thought about her clean toilet issues it began to make some sort of sense to me. You don't sneeze on someone else's meal and we don't slobber in someone else's ice tea so I guess it's reasonable to think that we shouldn't stick our face in the toilet before it's cleaned. I think it was Jim Croce who said you don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask off the ole Long Ranger and you don't vomit in a dirty toilet or something like that. Once again I have been enlightened by my wonderful wife.
So what is the take home message of today's adventure. Well first, I would say never own a two ton indoor cat because bad stuff could show up on the bedroom carpet. The second would be to never ask the wife, who has had a hysterectomy, if she is pregnant while she is barfing up her toenails because you will become the dumbest person on the planet in her eyes. Thirdly I would say never use your toilet ever again for its intended purpose because your wife may need to vomit in the next century. And finally, if for some reason your wife does need to go vomit in your front yard "DO NOT" remind her that barfing in the front yard on her hands and knees might have been entertaining for the entire neighborhood or you might find yourself eating bologna sandwiches for the next several days. Until the next adventure God bless you all.
As many of you have read in the past we have quite the collection of critters at our place and I often refer to this menagerie as the DMZ (i.e. Debbie's Mini Zoo). We have chickens, goats, parakeets, finches, cockatiels, doves, cats (oh do we have cats), Red Dog, and ducks. Well just one duck now. For some reason our ducks die like flies after a winter freeze around here so I guess because he is the lone survivor of many ducks that have passed through the DMZ and when I say passed I mean that literally. I call him Super Duck (SD). I have never seen SD leap a small buildings in a single bound but he has survived drought, death, and disease so he must have some hidden super powers or ninja skills. But all of Debbie's critters have little quirks that either tickle or annoy me.
Take for instance Super Duck. Not only has he survived many near death experiences around here but during the summer when we broke out the kiddie pool for him and the hens he was always the first one in the water and the last one out. Each time we fill it up he acts like it's his first time to ever see a body of water he could float in and he would jump in the pool for Tasmanian Devil like swim. Now on the other hand the hens stand around the edge sipping on the water like it's a refreshing cup of tea. It's sip and cluck, sip and cluck cluck, then sip and cluck cluck cluck just like any other group of women at a tea party. They are probably sitting there complaining about their husbands so I'm not surprised when I hear cluck cluck, cluck cluck cluck, cluck cluck cluck cluck cluck and understand what they are clucking about. LOL. As far as the roosters go they are just like any other guys. They guzzle down as much as they can hold and hurry off before the hens get a chance to hen peck them. Isn't it weird how nature imitates life. When it come to the parakeets, doves, and finches they are all thrilled just to get their bird bath filled up. They all jump into that thing like a bunch of stinky ole cowboys who have been riding the trail for months and have finally come up to a tank of fresh water. They whoop and holler (in bird talk of course) and splash around like a bunch of little kids.
Although our feathery critters make me laugh the the goats and cat fall into the annoying category. Our goats (Bert and Ernie) aren't here any longer because they figured out how to escape from their 8 foot tall fence and would go visit the Angus cows down on the Brazos River. After chasing them down two different times in two weeks (and when I say chase that means I send my son and his 19 year old legs to do the job because I am in no shape to exercise) so they were given to my little 6 year old friend Weston for goat roping practice and I think the goats have met their match with him. As far as the cats go, it's like having a school of land sharks constantly circling your feet. You open the back door twenty five fussy chia-pets dart into the house at super sonic speed. It's like twenty five miniature hit and run accidents in 3 seconds hitting my leg. I just stand there motionless praying I am still standing after the frenzy is over with. The most annoying thing about the cats comes down to one very large 35 pound black and white long haired cat called Mr. Buttons. He is the size of a small Bobcat and fears no evil. He roams the neighborhood just daring something to come after him. He is an indoor/outdoor cat and comes in and out of the house as he pleases. All in all a pretty cool guy as cats go but he has one quirk that drives me absolutely crazy. When he's ready to got outside he will start slapping one of the window blinds with his front paws. He looks like George Foreman working a punching bag. I have no clue why that's his signal to go outside but it is. The thing that drives me nuts is that he seems to think he always wants to go outside at three o'clock in the morning. Why? Once again I have no clue but all I know is that this goober will beat on the blind until one of us gets up and if you chase him off he returns within minutes for rounds two three and four. If in the event that doesn't wake us up then he pulls out the big one. He jumps up to one of the posts of our bed which is about 5 foot tall and takes a leap right into the middle of one of us. I don't know if you have ever had a 35 pound cat jump on you at night but I can say it is not pleasant and will wake up even the heaviest sleeper from their dreams. Whatever it takes he is committed to his mission. I'm too old to be missing any sleep so I usually cave in and let him out so I can get some shut eye. I guess that's the price I pay for having a wife who is a critter junkie. All in all I can live with it.
I bet by this time you are wondering what this has to do with Red Dog? Well, Red Dog is the one critter around this place that doesn't get under my skin and he causes me to laugh most all the time. Today was no exception. It was my afternoon off from the clinic and I came home to one of the prettiest October days I have seen in a while. The sun was out, there were few clouds in the sky, temperature a perfect seventy degrees, and no wind. I decided to go for a drive through the country side just to enjoy the day. Ever since Red Dog learned how to load up in the pickup bed, he loves to go riding as well. So after I finished lunch I ask Red Dog if he wanted to go for a ride and man does he know what that means. He started pacing around the room wagging that tree branch of a tail like the checkered flag at a NASCAR event. His tongue was hanging out of his mouth slobbering all over the floor and I knew he was ready to go. He was so excited and darted off toward the garage. As we got to the back door he tried to bolt right through and head out to the truck but because I wanted him to control his excitement I made him sit and stay at the back door a few times. That way he could collect himself (doing the calm submissive thing like Cesar says) and learning not to blast through the door so no ones gets tripped in the future. It was like telling a 6 year old kid to sit in front of the Christmas tree and not touch the presents. It was almost beyond Red Dogs self control but he settled down and sat their until I told him he could go. He is such a good Red Dog. As he walked into the garage his excitement immediately turned into great confusion. There was no truck. His tail stopped wagging and he slowly started walking around the area where the truck was supposed to be. Red Dog looked up to me as if to say "what the heck, am I being punked". I must say I was a little surprised myself because I forgot that I parked the truck in the driveway at lunch. Man that empty garage made us both feel like the only two guys standing in the middle of the Grand Canyon, echos and all. At this point I saw the excitement drain out of Red Dog. His ears drooped downward and tail fell between his legs. He was one disappointed hound dog at this point. So I opened the garage door and we walked out into the drive. Within seconds he caught a glimpse of the truck it was game on again. He ran to the truck as fast as he could. You would have thought that he just guzzled down a 12 pack of Mountain Dew. His excitement was out of control...again. Red Dog stood at the tailgate in launch mode with his legs shaking just dying to leap into the truck bed. He got so excited he had a couple of failures to launch until the tail gate was completely down. When he jumped up into the back I could have sworn I saw him strike a pose like one of those extreme BMXer's stretched out over his bike as he flew over the top of the tail gate. The second Red Dog was in the truck he sat down and looked at me like "come on, quit goofing around, let's go". So off we went. Red Dog sat back there with his nose in the air, tongue and ears flapping in the wind. As the Geico commercial suggests, He was happier than Gallagher standing in the middle of a watermelon stand. At that moment all was right in Red Dog Land as we headed off to go pick up my best pal Mark.
What a wonderful way to spend a beautiful fall afternoon. Taking a drive through the countryside enjoying God's creation, discussing life events in the company of a good friend, and Red Dog slobbering down the side of my newly washed truck. If only there would have been some ribeyes cooking on the grill when we returned Red Dog and I could have really hit the big time. But never the less it was a very good relaxing afternoon for all of us. In the immortal words of Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty, it made us "Happy Happy Happy" to go for a ride in the country on such a beautiful fall day. Until the next Red Dog adventure, God bless you all.
