Have you ever been under a time crunch working right up to a dead line to get a project finished and just when you think things are under control and can see the light at the end of the tunnel things begin to unravel. Well that's what happened at this year's Howard Come and Go Christmas and oh my goodness did that stink!
For the past seven years Debbie and I have hosted a Come and Go Christmas party at our house to celebrate the birth of our Savior with my hospital co-workers and have expanded it to include friends, family, church members and neighbors over the years. We have our dear Belizean friend Jo, who is the owner/chef of Blessings Tea Room, cater the event with good old Texas dishes that have a Caribbean twist. Her food is so good it would not only make you want to slap your mamma but knock out one whole side of the family tree. (note to readers: I don't slap my mamma lol). She does an amazing job and many folks at my hospital start looking forward to next year's party by the end of the night. My wife takes about 3 weeks to clean and decorate every room in the house just to make it special for those we care for so much. It's a huge undertaking but we love to do it. Well this year was no different than any other year with Debbie working diligently up to the very last minute preparing to entertain about 80 or so guests. As you have read in the past I have nicknamed our little place the DMZ (Debbie's Mini Zoo). That's because we have had goats, donkeys, chickens, ducks, dove, finches, parakeets, a cockatiel, cats and dogs (all at the same time) not to mention the wild life that wanders through the place like deer, wild hogs, pheasant, quail, dove, raccoon, opossums, bobcats, coyotes, rattle snakes, and skunks. It's a regular Noah's Ark out here and the one who keeps it all under control with tight security is Red Dog who is the head of our home security system. He did have an apprentice for about one year by the name of Rosie but she thought that chewing apart our house was more important than home security so she lives with a new family now. Old Red Dog is responsible for the whole place all by himself now.
On this particular day about 30 minutes before the party is ready to start the plan was to put Red Dog in the back garage for the evening so we didn't have to listen to that SONIC WOOF he has when guests come knocking at the door. I thought it best to let him out in the back yard so he could take care of his personal business before hand and when I went to put him up Red Dog was no where to be found. He's not in the back yard. He's not on the acreage and when I go looking for him I notice the back yard gate was left open after our handy man put up the Christmas lights. Well, I wasn't overly worried that Red Dog was MIA for a few moments because he knows who provides him with food, water, air conditioning and heating year round and I knew he wasn't far off. So I whistled for him and I could hear him running toward the front door because each time he gets out of the yard every dog in the neighborhood starts barking as he makes his way home. At this moment I thought everything was cool but when I opened the front door I was shocked. He was covered from head to tail with a dark green stinky goo that smelt like the south end of a north bound Hereford bull. Where had this guy been I thought to myself but I apparently can't think and hold the front door closed at the same time and Red Dog darted into the house with our first guests only minutes away. At this moment I thought I was a dead man when I heard Debbie scream "OH MY LORD, RED DOG" and knew if I didn't get him out the house and NOW it was the dog house for me!!! The aroma from all of those wonderful Caribbean dishes were becoming overwhelmed by this green gooey cow poop and Debbie was not a happy camper. So as quickly as I could I grabbed Red Dog by the coller, which was saturated in this green glorious gunk I lead him in the back garage before folks thought they were coming to a cow lot and not a Christmas party. Man, did he smell bad but "the party must go on" as they say. With Red Dog securely hidden in the back garage the guests began arriving and for the next five hours we had a wonderful time giving guided tours of our home and showing off Debbie's wonderful Christmas decorations. Mission Accomplished. Everyone seemed to have had a wonderful time and the food was fantastic as always. The catering crew was the last to leave and then Debbie and I collapsed in our chairs completely exhausted, Our feet hurt and our faces hurt from smiling so much. I felt like my fat was even hurting and as we sat there reminiscing about the success of the night it dawned on me. Stinky ole Red Dog is still in the back garage. We started wondering how he got into that stinky mess. Was someone trying to be dog napped and put in the back a cattle trailer? Had he chased a coyote or bobcat back to the Brazos River and ran into some old muddy stink hole? As the old Clairol commercial used to say "Only her hair dresser knows for sure"? But after carefully studying his stinky green colored body I came to the conclusion that old Red Dog just decided to go waller in a big pile of cow manure out in the neighbors pasture somewhere. It was the only logical conclusion because this stuff was every where on him. His belly, his back, his tail, his chest, it was even under his coller. It must have been a regular cow patty slip and slide. In my mind I could see him running and sliding across the yard just like a six year old kid sliding across a yellow piece of plastic in the summer heat but it's winter, he's a dog and that green stuff was stinky cow crap!!!!! Debbie and I sat there looking at each other wondering who was going to volunteer to give Red Dog a bath. I was thinking maybe a coin toss or rock, paper, scissors but no sooner than I started developing a winning strategy Debbie spoke up and volunteered. Luckily for me I was still recovering from an appendectomy only a few shorts weeks ago so I'm sure she took pity on me. Off to the bath tub they both went. As fate would have it our night was still not over. After only a few minutes of being in the tub, I heard Debbie yelling for help so I headed to the bathroom and I was not prepared to see what I was about to see. As I walked through the door I saw Red Dog in the tub soaking wet and standing in a foot of what could only be described as fresh green sewer water. He was cold, wet and shivering like some little chihuahua with a clogged drain. Debbie had used every ounce of Dawn dish washing soap we had in the house and Red Dog still smelt like the south end of that same north bound Hereford bull. Just as I thought that the drain was the only problem I then looked toward Debbie and notice she was covered in shimmering little green dots. They were on her face, her arms, her hair and all over her nice Christmas party clothes. Apparently Red Dog shifted into Taylor Swift mode after the drain clogged and decided to "Shake it off, Shake it off " with the bath tub door still opened. As I took a second look around the room, not only was Debbie covered up in these lovely little aromatic dots so was the whole entire bath room. It was polka dot H. E. double tooth picks in there. At this point all we needed was an accordion and a man dressed in liederhosen so we could start dancing the famous Cow Crap Polka right there in the bathroom, sore feet and all. The defeat in Debbie face was obvious so being the wonderful loving husband that I am, I put on my super husband outfit to finish bathing Red Dog and clean (i.e. clean in man speak means wiping up) the rest of the bathroom. Once I got the bathroom "clean" the odor went away with about 2 gallons of Febreze so at that point it was time to pull the plug on the cow patty party and head to bed because we were beyond exhausted.
I guess the take home message for today would be this. Even though the great comedic country singer Roger Miller says that you "Can't Roller Skate In A Buffalo Herd" but Red Dog proved that you "Can" slip and slide through a pile of green cow crap. We learned that you can still have wonderful dinner party and a surprise hot tub party all in the same night if you let Red Dog "Shake It Off "..lol...Until the next adventure, God bless you all.
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.
Since the recent birth of our first grand kid many old memories of when our kids were born came flooding back to me and over the years I have come to realize that as a parent I didn't have a clue about what I was doing. I am so thankful that Debbie's parents lived down the street a few blocks for helpful advice or I might have been hosing those little goobers down in the back yard with the water hose at bath time and duct taping them to the hood of my pickup to dry them off. Good thing duct tape doesn't stick well to little wet bodies. lol. Clueless would have been an understatement as far as my daddy skills went. The only thing of any real value that I knew about little kids was that they liked to be tossed straight up into the air and caught again. My dad, who was known as "Uncle Alvin" by all of my cousins (which were many), loved this activity. He used to grab them under the arms and basically launch them from a standing position high into the air with his brute strength and catch them on their way back to earth under their arms before they hit the ground. It was amazing to watch young children in perfectly good health leave the ground like a tomahawk missile, disappear into the blue sky then suddenly reappear as a blurred shadowy figure returning to earth. The cousins just loved this and all of them would stand in line for hours begging "Uncle Alvin" for more. I think dad enjoyed it as much as the kids. One important rule that had to be observed during this process was never launch them facing the sun for the obvious reasons. For some reason most mothers had trouble getting their minds wrapped around the thought of someone launching their little darlings into the stratosphere for fun but my cousins were convinced it was nothing less than Six Flags Over Hooterville. On a rare occasion a kid would slip through Uncle Alvin's grasp and have what NASA would call a "Hard Landing". But once the dust settled a cousin would get up and clean themselves off and hurry to get back in line (although some were slower than others because of their newly acquired limp). It became an unspoken rule that if you were involved in one of those "Hard Landings" there was no crying because once one of the Mommas heard their little darlings boohooing it was "Game Over". No one really ever took Dad to task over a "Hard Landing" because everyone accepted the fact that even the great Dallas Cowboy Bob Hayes dropped a pass once in a while. Although my dad taught me many wonderful things about life and how to be a good dad, the skill of launching young children into outer space with brute strength captured my attention the most. It wasn't helping my sweet wife clean house, give baths, warm bottles, wash clothes, change diapers or rocking babies to sleep. It was throwing those little goobers in the air and praying I didn't lose sight of them in the sun. Now that was a cool daddy skill to have.
So the only reason my children have turned out to be anywhere close to normal was because of my wonderful wife's strong parenting skills but weak upper arm strength. I can only recall one failed decision Debbie made with our first born and it was to use cloth diapers instead of disposables. I was perplexed by this because given the choice of throwing a poopy diaper in a trash can verses washing them out with your bare hands I would pick the trash can every time. But since my secret objective was to avoid those stinky baby chores, I agreed to see where this would lead.
Well after three days of rinsing poopy diapers out in the toilet
I noticed Debbie's resolve was waning. I came home from work on Day Three of cloth diaper use to find a pile of brown colored cloth diapers piled high in the toilet. The baby was crying, the bath room was stinky and I knew it was time for our family to start producing our very own "environmental footprint" because she was done with cloth diapers . So I made the thirty five mile drive to the grocery store and walked into the twenty first century by purchasing several boxes of disposables. The rest of the old cloth diapers became cleaning rags (minus the stinky pile I mentioned above) and parenting got a tad bit easier from that day forward. I will tell you that over the years when my kids wore disposable diapers, there were several times I considered suing all of those diaper companies for false advertisement. As you might remember, each box of diapers came marked with a weight limit on it such as "10 to 15 pounds" or "15 to 25 pounds" right? I must tell you that no matter which diaper brand or size we bought, none of them ever held that many pounds of poop between diaper changes and trust me I gave it the old college try. I decided it was all a big con by corporate America to make us dad's look bad. If your bottle of coke shows to contain 20 ounces of soda why shouldn't us dad's expect that those diapers should hold that many pounds of baby poo? I have yet to find a lawyer willing to take my case.
The reason I bring up the subject of diapers is that at age fifty Debbie and I had no clue we would be forced to start buying diapers again and it wasn't for our new granddaughter Zerah or her fifty three year old grandpa!!! It was for Red Dog's pesky little sister Rosie. Yes, Rosie our 10 month old ridgeback. Since some of my readers are youngsters and I don't want to go into great detail about the birds and the bee's (even if most of them already know more about that subject most of us old toads) I will just say that Rosie came into her "special time" so she could have puppies some day. (Note to readers: Please pause at this time so that the youngster can explain to you in more detail what "special time" means lol). With three women living in my house most of my married life I have unfortunately become way too familiar with "special time" over the years and I thought these days were long gone but I was "WRONG". "Great", now Rosie has to have her "special time" and we have never had indoor dogs to deal with "special time" so I'm flat clueless (which is not uncommon for me about females) as to how to take care of this blessed event. My first thought was to banish her to the back of the property until the "special event" was over but then I thought what if some gentleman caller finds his way under the fence and we end up with a gaggle of puppies because it would be just my luck to be stuck delivering those little goobers and I don't recall being trained in puppy birthing during my medical education. So what do we do? Well it just so happened that my oldest daughter and husband were in town and she had the answer for the situation. Baby diapers and little girl panties! That answer wasn't even in my top 100 of solutions. Diapers and panties.....hmmm! Now folks you have to remember I am not necessarily anatomy ignorant and have been in medicine in one fashion or another for almost 30 years so how do we fit two legged equipment on a four legged problem with a tail? And the answer is........(ding)....scissors! Ok, now we have baby diapers, little girl panties and a pair of scissors but we still have a dog, four legs and tail. If we are going to cut off a couple of legs and a tail I have power tools that would do a much faster and easier job than scissors and I think teaching Ms. Rosie to walk on two hind legs will be way too difficult especially given the fact she will have just lost two front legs and a tail. Well my daughter quickly remarked (while rolling her eyes at me) that there would be no need for any type of amputations today. So off to the Dollar General Store went the girls. For those of you who have never heard of a "Dollar General Store", it's the Hooterville version of WalMart (I am now expecting an advertisement check from both companies for mentioning their names on my blog in my dreams of course!) and for those of you who are too young to know where "Hooterville" is, well that's what "Google" is for (there's another advertising check right there, I wish!) so grab your tech gadget and look it up. When they get back from DGS they have baby diapers and little girl pink panties with multiple Tinkerbell characters on them. My daughter eye balls Rosie's rear end then takes the scissors and cuts an x in the center of the panties and diaper. She then grabs Rosie, plops her on her back and slaps the diaper on then tapes it around her middle. She then grabs the pink little girl panties with Tinkerbelle on them and shoves Rosie's two hind legs through the legs holes and we now have a doggie diaper safe and secure. I bet by now your asking what did she do with the tail, well that's where the x came in on the diapers and panties and it wasn't quick and easy to tackle. First trying to poke a wagging tail through the cut in a diaper and panties was like trying to poke a wet noodle through the eye of a needle. It took several tries to hit the bulls eye. What was even more difficult was when poor little Rosie realized that the object of the game was to grab her tail and poke it through a hole she went into immediate tail tuck. I mean that tail of hers was locked down so tight between her legs it nearly took a lift jack to put it into threading position but finally Ms. Rosie caught on as to what we here trying to do and relaxed. So now we have the blood line of a great lion hunter in diapers and panties, how proud her ancestors would have been. But to Rosie's credit she stood up and started prancing through the house with her new homemade pink diaper panties then went outside to sun bathe to show off her new drawers to the world.
I am not quite sure what the take home message is about Rosie and her new "Doggie Diapers". I guess it could be whether you are man or beast wear your diapers with your head held high and keep on enjoying life. But mostly I just find it really strange to see a dog, especially one who's heritage is to track down and kill lions, walking through my house with a diaper and Tinkerbell panties strapped to her rear end. But I guess that's just how we roll at the Howard house these day. Until the next adventure, God bless you all.
