- You could wake from a nap to find that your son has poured an entire bottle of wood seal on your new dog. He got to it by ripping the eye hook out of the pantry door, then scaling the shelves
- You could find that the wood oil has been tracked on the carpet, on both rugs, and all throughout the house
- You could then find that you are completely out of dog shampoo
- You could, in a panic, try using, say, Pantene—only to have the wood oil laugh at such a feckless lather, repelling it like a Kos reader repels facts
- Your new dog—a 7 month old Shepherd mix you adopted from Pet Smart—could react to being sprayed with a hose like Teresa Heinz-(Kerry) might react to being served meatloaf or franks and beans
- The new dog could feel that you are trying to torture it, and so crawl under your bed and refuse to come out
- You could then bundle your son in the car, run off to Pet Smart to buy industrial strength pet shampoo, and hope nothing is destroyed when you return home
- Upon your return, you could find that, having tried to lick the wood oil off her coat in an attempt to clean herself, your new dog has vomited all over your office. Which could force you to try to remember where you left the stupid steam cleaner. Not that you know how to use the thing
- But before you can ferret out the steam cleaner, you might have to make dinner: ravioli for your son (which he promptly spills on the rug) and grilled salmon for you. Only your propane tank could give out about a third of the way through cooking the fish. So you could pitch it and have a handful of Cajun trail mix, instead
- All of which could have caused you to miss your “Blog Week in Review” taping, because you completely forgot about it while you were rushing around like Martha Stewart on ketamine blotting shit up with paper towels. And so you inconvenienced three people who never did anything to deserve such treatment, causing you to feel like a heel and hit the single malt. Which will probably leave you with a vicious hangover.
morning after update: Hangover achieved!
Then your satellite could go out, and your son could have a diaper rash so bad it might require a skin graft to repair it.
Hypothetically, of course.
Regards,
Ric
tw: a moving63 post…
After all that has happened to the floors, I suggest you let the child go pantsless for the rest of the wife’s trip. There probably won’t ever be a better opportunity for the sink-or-swim brand of potty training.
And rashes need air.
Oh Lord – sounds like a normal day to me. Except the nap part…I don’t get any of those cuz I’ve got three little beasties.
But listen: this is why carpet really sucks. The kids just destroy that shit.
And I have 6 bottles of wine lined up on my counter, ready to go as needed.
genealogy?
Ow.
I sure hope you were exaggeating for effect. If not…I can see why the single malt would be calling. Uh, cheers, and try the Desenex.
You actually had TrailMix? Man, you’re really overprepared for life, ain’cha?
Where did the post go??
Boy, am I glad Jeff never saw what we did to the other house.
But look on the bright side. In fifteen or so years, you could rip out the carpet, refinish the floors, descale the bathrooms, repaint the walls, fumigate the crawlspaces, replace the ravaged cabinetry, and finally live in your own house at last. But by then you’ll be arthritic.
I’m guessing the hitting-the-single-malt bit is the part that is most closely modeled on actual events.
Oh well, it could have been worse.
That just happens sometimes. It’ll eventually come back. I’ve gotten in the habit of opening comments in a new window.
oh. I get it. As in this begat that. I think maybe I need to get my sugar levels checked or something.
Yeah, thanks for the compassion, pal.
Dear God, why me? What have I done to deserve this?
I’m not too familiar with hard liquor. Wouldn’t a double or triple proof malt be more expedient?
Happyfeet: genealogy in the Nietzschean sense.
Cynn: single malt has nothing to do with the proof. In fact, one of the cask strength single malts I have weighs in at a pleasing 118 proof.
And it tastes kinda like chocolate!
Jeff Goldstein’s internal monologue during today’s events (based on actual events)
(Spaces added to avoid borking formatting – ed)
“AUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”
You had me at the dog vomit.
Er, ed in the last post refers to me, not Mr. Goldstein.
11. Causing you to feel droopy in the middle of the day again tomorrow. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Take the son to the pound, or Grandma’s, and keep the dog. ROFL
I think I recall having a viscous hangover once…
I’d say one day you’ll look back on this and laugh…but you might ban me.
Just understand that one day your son will call you up with almost this exact story of his son…and THEN you’ll laugh.
(infact, I just had one of those laughs today as daughter called up to relate the latest of 4 1/2 y/o twin shennigans)
It’s just so all about you, isn’t it Jeff? Then again, it is your blog.
At least you’ve got company at your pity party.
aaaaaw. I don’t have kids, but dealing with a shepherd mix has been entertaining. don’t leave the sexy rimless glasses out. or your camera. or anything that might fit in the dog’s mouth. on the plus side she may be able to herd the little one eventually.
Welcome to fatherhood. And homeownership-hood.
You’ll notice that problems tend to become logarithmic, not arithmetic in nature
TW: leaders79. As in “if we had actually had a competent leader in 79, this past week might have never happened.”
Bonus part of having kids: The only food they ever like is food that’s extra stainy, usually orange. Like, oh I don’t know…..ravioli. Which is why I have cats. When they throw up the kibble, it’s usually in a nicely formed, well, turd, for lack of a better word, that you can pick up with a paper towel.
How come dinner’s not ready?
I work hard all day and then I come home and the place looks like hell, the kid has a rash on his ass the size and shape of Asia, and you are having a little drink…. or four. My mother told me this would happen but did I listen… nooooooooooo
Projectile vomitimg could be fun. There were times I felt like putting up targets to see if the kids could hit them. Why not stay amused?
It’s yet another example of where the panic can be worse than the problem (although the problem didn’t start out too good in the first place). There are many opportunities for second-guessing, both internally and externally—e.g. After (4), you could have gone with dishwashing soap; after (5), you could have bundled the beast into the shower (assuming you have a shower door instead of curtains). And step 9 really looks like a call to Domino’s—does the little tyke do pizza?
But doing all the second-guessing and self-castigation accomplishes little. Instead, after the single-malt wears off, you should borrow a technique from the business world and do a post-mortem, come up with corrective action plans, and execute them.
Get a better lock on supplies cabinets. Block off under the bed. Put together an emergency kit. Put Domino’s on speed-dial.
…’cause that way you’ll feel much more under control right before your kid lights the patio furniture on fire.
After all, what else can you expect82?
It operates on a field of entangled and confused paper towels, on rashes that have been scratched over and remoisturized many times…
Well, nearly thirty years later, my parents still love to break out the old chestnut about how I drew all over their brand-new cabinets with a magic marker, so I guess you could at least get some mileage out of this. Though the little tyke will probably be a jagoff like me, who rolls his eyes and tunes you out at sentimental stories that he’s heard a million times, like I have at that point. Expect snide and snotty remarks to follow.
I guess you take the good with the bad and add a dash of the prescription meds you’ll doubtlessly be on once you reach that age, and it’s almost a wash.
This is why I make it a policy never to awaken from a nap, if at all possible, Gregor.
jeff, it sounds like you hit jackpot with the bad luck lotto *with* matching powerball.
hope the weekend goes better, man.
Or, you could have tangible difficulty pasting
your your ass back on your carcass after another
mad bomber blew it off in a Green Zone marketplace.
Although, narcissism can be troublesome.
I like Jeff (fuck his burning inner idealism, his joyous gift for language and his keen sense of audience) because when no one else will speak up for the piss and spunk stains in the carpet he stands and delivers the goods.
Of course, it could have been worse.
Two words:
Duct tape.
Not the old “wood oil on the dog” excuse. Why, if I only had a nickel for every time I heard that one . . .
Awful diaper rashes can turn into yeast infections, so fill the tike up with yogurt.
As for naps – shesh, what are naps? I haven’t taken a nap since I was pregnant with my second, and I could convince my first (still a baby) to curl up with me.
Sorry, fella, naps are not allowed.
What in the hell is wood oil? I mean, I’ve heard of wood alcohol, but wood oil?
Moral of the story, though (assuming that wood oil is something oily and messy, never mind where it comes from or what it’s for):
1) Always keep an industrial-sized container of dog shampoo handy.
2) Also (trust me, here) a rather large supply of skunk scent remover. The shit doesn’t actually work, but it does take a lot of the harsh off that skunk smell. I had a dog that was completely unfazed by skunk scent, and thought that skunks were fun to play with. He would basically play with them until well after their scent glands were exhausted, which is about when the wind would shift and drift that smell toward the house.
3) As noted above, duct tape.
4) Lock everything not edible in a metal cabinet with a combination padlock, then wrap the whole works with several layers of duct tape, just in case.
5) Tile floors. Or, possibly better yet, linoleum. If you can swing it, that stuff they use for indoor tracks is probably a good bet; it’s really, really hard to break anything on it.
6) Next time, have the floors slope down to a center drain in the middle of each room. It’ll simplify cleanup. Replace that lovely leather sectional with PVC patio furniture. I haven’t yet figured out how to make a big-screen TV out of PVC, but you can always put all your electronics in a locked, watertight closet, replace the TV with a projector screen, and have the entire works operated by remote control. Then you can just hose the whole room down. With solvent, if needed.
7) Always keep a few spare remotes in that metal cabinet.
8) Oh, almost forgot: electric clippers, for both the dog and your kid. And possibly yourself; you never know what the kid is going to do to you when you’re dozing.
9) Get rid of all your chewing gum, or keep it in that metal cabinet.
That’s it for me.
Semanticleo,
Go fuck yourself.
JG,
Hope the evening went better than the afternoon.
The above list is good, and I second it.
I actually had to leave work this week in response to a call that that the dog had decided to eat ant traps, which I had thought had secured out of reach.
The dog survived; my checkbook alas, did not.
Don’t complain about checkbooks. My beagle decided she was a whippet a few months back; now we find that she basically has a blown ACL, and the repair (which is already a done deal) set me back about three large.
In the old days, we’d just have fed her a bowl of beer while sharpening the hatchet. A little betadine might be involved, too.
Man, I’ve had some pretty rough days as a stay-at-home dad, but nothing that compares to that. When the wife comes home, you need to cash in some points for a night out on the town. Farm junior and the pooch out to Gramma, or whoever, and make Mama show you a good time.
PS. I’m absolutely bowled over by all the love and support shown here. Jeff’s a lucky guy to have such sympathetic readers.
Geeze. What a day, huh?
Y’know, until your little Sir Edmund is older, maybe having rugs on the floors is just a little too much to expect… I suggest newspaper instead.
Hell of a climb, though, wasn’t it?
Note to self: buy an elizabethan collars for all pets for emergency situations before the twins are born.
Maybe one for me too. Definitely one for the wife.
Well, he didn’t feed hair dye to his sister. Or go over the freshly painted walls with a stick of margarine. I don’t remember any of that, but certain stories keep cropping up when the family gets together.
Jeff, I feel for you. I’d tell you to get rid of the rugs, but..
Last week while the wife and kids were on vacation I spent the time at home finishing the wood floors we put in over Christmas. Three hours after I put on the last coat I was outside grilling my dinner when I noticed a cat staring at me through the French doors off of the dining room. The cat that I had locked in a spare bedroom.
Freaked me out.
Kid’s came home, I put most of the furniture back except for the dining room chairs because I hadn’t put felt pads on the legs yet. Yesterday, I found found all of the chairs back in the dining room, the kids sitting on them and the floors scratched to hell. So between the cat prints and the scratches, I have to re-do the whole dining room floor.
And I’ve had that cat for sixteen years and it has hissed at me and tried to scratch or bite me every freaking day .
Slart —
Wood Oil = Natural Wood Finish, for the teak outdoor furniture (which is today covered in ice).
Got lucky. Looking at the bottle just now I see that it is “safe, non-toxic, and biodegradable.”
According to the label, it is a “unique blend of all natural oils that penetrate the wood to seal, preserve, and bring out the beauty of wood. The beauty and protection of wood is effectively achieved without harsh chemicals or solvents. For any indoor or outdoor wood.”
Ingredients: “Natural wood oil and vegetable oil.”
LMC–
Fix your floors when they move out. Otherwise they’ll be 1/16” thick by the time they’re done putting the hurt on it.
I haven’t taken a nap since I was pregnant with my second,
Well, yeah, but what are you up to now, about fifteen?
Don’t mind me, I’m only obtuse on the outside.
Ok, sometimes I’m obtuse all the way through, too.
So just keep an eye out for the patio furniture going rancid. Not when it’s covered in ice, though.
Five, Craig, only five. It only seems like 15 when I do laundry. Which is EVERY FRICKEN DAY.
This sounds like a hideous Satanic remake of If You Give A Moose A Muffin. Which I assume you read to your son.
My wife has traveled to care for aged parents, and left me to my own devices. I have two dogs, stuborn, ill trained westies with a penchant for mischief. Yesterday, whilst in fit of dementia, I decided to take them fishing with me for the first time ever. No wood oil down at the lakeside, and we avoided the gators, but flyline entangled barking dogs, finger impaling sharp hooks, and mucked up puppies took a heavy toll. My return home and the inevitable chaos of two wild beast loose in the house have left the carpet smelling like lake mud. Which by the way will apparently wash off leaving only the odor. I am hoping my wife will not notice.
What kind of blackmail has that cat got on you LMC!?!
There is no way a cat would live sixteen years AND take cheap shots at me. One or the other. Never both.
Are you telling us you’re p**** whipped?
Blue,
Um..yep.
It’s the wife’s cat. She dropped it on me Junior year of college. It’s been trying to kill me ever since.
Kinda like the wife, now I think of it…
And how do you discern the difference betwixt the two?
Sure fire tip for keeping the cat servile: When I had a Labrador, i would throw something over the cat’s head, then tell the dog to fetch. The ensuing stampede would cause the cat to lay low for hours.
I had an even better one, but I’m no longer allowed to teach the dog to fetch the cat.
I can only help with one part. Boudreaux’s Butt Paste.
Isn’t alcohol a pretty good solvent? I might have tried moving step 10 up to step 2 and liberally spilling the single malt on the dog just to see if it would put a dent in the wood oil. Or maybe cause the afflicted pooch to spontaneously combust.
I have a bottle of wood oil, but I keep it in the shower. It’s one of the adjustments you make when your marriage gets well in to the double digits.
Not to minimize your pain, but my wife and I checked the cell phone bill last night and found that my 17 year old daughter has resumed her phone relationship with a 20 year old felon which we thought we had stamped out a year ago. I’m just saying that the joys of child rearing seem to elevate exponentially as they approach adulthood. I guess I could write a 10 step geneology of what happened at my house last night, but it would be neither funny nor entertaining.
TW: over41 Yes I am. Thanks for asking.
You forgot to add yet.
Between the dogs and the kids, my wife and I are seriously considering expoxying the entire house and installing a floor drain. Just get out the pressure washer twice a week…
Oh, and Miz Cleo,
Have a nice day.
She is that, indeed.
Precisely what we use.
My son likes it, too: used it to decorate a standup mirror and his toy Rescue tower and helipad.
Although I, thankfully, never endured any such troubles when my two were young, my daughter paid me back in spades when she hit 12 and my son, all of 17 now, has consistently challenged my mental stability since he could walk. Enjoy the easy toddler stuff now, Jeff, cause like Sticky B stated, the shit gets worse as they get older and you lose the ability to stop or even fix the stupid crap they do.
See, Jeff, this is why it is so important to convince the little nippers that the death threats are serious at a very early age. You usually don’t have to wing them with your pistol more than once, and they get the idea.
Oh, and two more words:
Sleep Lightly.
Wouldn’t have worked on the family cat we had when I was young. Actually, not family cat, but farm cat. She had an average of two litters a year until she died—of an infection acquired while giving birth. She had an extended clan that’s probably still the dominant strain of feline in that area, kept the front half of the farm free of rabbits, and cowed every dog that crossed her path.
We had a German shepherd mix that had a scar on her nose from her first encounter with the cat.
Robert, at first I read ‘extended clam’, and I said to myself ‘no shit, after all those friggen kittens’, and then I reread.
Jeff, on a serious note, those ‘As Seen On TV’ door and window alarms work great on kids. You can attach them anywhere, and move them around as needed. The little booger opens the wrong cupboard or door, and the alarm shrieks and scares the crap out of them. Aversion therapy. And it wakes you up before they can do their evil.
I keep the door to the spare bedroom closed because it houses the expensive bean-bag chair that the neighbor’s cat has peed on thrice. (Cat flap in door.) Every time I open the door, the cats have to go in and sniff around.
Yesterday morning I went in for a moment, then closed the door, then didn’t open it again until 12 hours later. Out bolted one of my own cats, followed by the pungent odor of cat feces and urine. She left about a dozen “prizes” in the corner, plus soaked the sleeping bag that covers the beanbag chair. At least it wasn’t the carpet.
But having an official cat pee room? Not recommended.
I suppose a little tumbril, miniature guilloutine, and the placing of an offender’s head on a kebab skewer outside the cat flap would be too much, dicentra?
Based on the psychology of the situation I think it might work with cats.
Of course it is possible73 that the cats might organize a putsch.
I suppose a nice Swedish au pair would be out of the question?
Don’t beg for sympathy. I just returned from 10 days babysitting gig in L.A. with my 22 monthold grand daughter, who–come to think of it–has the same athletic abilities and sense of adventure as your son. For the sake of the world those two should never, I mean never, get together.
Jeff, you need to do two things immediatamente.
1) Change your story for the wife so it does not include that you were napping while alone with your son, your dog, and toxic chemicals. That ain’t gonna go over at all. She’ll gently remind you of all the worse things that could’ve happened than oil-on-the-dog (like oil-in-the-baby’s-mouth, oil-on-the-$2000-sofa, dog-on-the-sofa, dog-in-the-baby’s-mouth… the permutations are virtually endless in the mind of the woman).
2) Delete this post to erase all evidence!
As a right of passage we all have to go through the “while I was sleeping” expierience. I awoke with my daughter bringing me a gift that I could not at first identify in my stupor. In short order I realized it was a present from the cat box.
Its amazing that most of them actually make it through fatherhood.
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You are a fucking asshole. And THAT is a fact.
Signed, Kos reader.
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Every cat found a toy that suited their needs- big cats, little cats, playful cats, not so playful cats, young, old– you name it! The cats went crazy for them. Even the toys that I looked at and said “A cat will want to play with this??” The answer was a great big Yup!