More School of Rock?

But first, revenge of the words:

taxidermy, juxtapose, kabuki, sumo, torso, swami, patina, guru, diorama, rubbish, lackadaisical, typhoon, tsunami, czar, libation, scavenger, cryptic, Argonaut, Minerva, Agamemnon, and most other names from Greek and Roman mythology. I especially like Sisyphus because I know how he felt. That's not to be confused with syphilis, which is also a fun word to say, but I'm proud to say I don't know how that feels. And while we're on the subject, the same goes for gonorrhea and chlamydia—fun to say, but probably not fun to have.

Another old-person word that bothers me: whatnot.

I had to go ahead and post something new so I could start to bury the political stuff which I find less amusing than mindlessness.

Here's a smattering of band names I ran across recently in the San Antonio newspaper: Religious Vomit, Pain Filled Silence, Brass Knuckle Betties, Anal Blast, Blood Stain Carpet, Ballgag, Cancer Whore, Engaged In Mutilating, Psychiatric Regurgitation, Eviscerated, Our Corpse Destroyed, Liferuiner, A Well Thought Tragedy, Malefactor, Drowning Mona, and Chemical Warfare. My favorite is definitely Pain Filled Silence because I can understand that one. The others make me feel pretty good about myself and my mental health. Religious Vomit has a nice ring to it, though. Anal Blast reminds me of the old Saturday Night Live commercial Phil Hartman did for Colon Blow cereal. I can't wait till my kids start driving and take off in the car at midnight with a bunch of androgynous Goth friends to go catch some wholesome undead entertainment. Anal Blast opening for Blood Stain Carpet. Gives you quite a visual there, huh? I remember when Texas' own Butthole Surfers started out back in the early 80s. Apparently, they are still touring. And why wouldn't they, with a classic name like that? There is also a band called the Tex Pistols. Now there's one I may actually go see. It sounds like they might go easy on the performance-art bloodletting and maybe offer up a slightly less intense fear of being disemboweled and tossed into a dumpster in the dive bar's back alley. Does this mean I'm old? Maybe bands with scary names existed back when I was in high school and college, but all I remember are words like sunshine, furs, bunnymen, seagulls, buggles, and bangles. I guess we had Megadeth, Slayer, and Poison, to name a few. Maybe the underground bands of the 80s and early 90s probably with names like Ecstasy Hosebag, Bonesucker, Sorority Gangbang, or Gag Me With a Trailer Hitch just didn't make it. (I bet those could be real band names. I should Google them just to see, but I have to draw the line somewhere in my quest for better time management. That, and the quest for meaning in my so-called life.)

Speaking of time management, I have just been summoned to our neighbors' hot tub. Probably because they ran out of wine and need me to bring some over. And what kind of neighbor would I be if I didn't oblige?

More fun crap later.

Soapboxing

If you want to see what a flaming liberal I can be, don't miss my take on gay marriage in the comments to my last post. My friend Chris -- ever the thorn in my side, the gnat in my ear, the yapping Chihuahua at my feet, and the turd in my punchbowl -- forced me to offer a vitriolic and vehement response to one of his well-researched yet highly disingenuous diatribes. Now I need to get back to making a gay pride banner and applying a rainbow sticker to my car before I go get myself a butch haircut and some new flannel shirts, a big man watch, and hiking boots. Maybe then I can more readily find a partner to help me destroy the fabric of this apple-pie Leave-it-to-Beaver (no pun intended) society. I don't want to start any big brouhaha here, but if someone can change my mind with a reasoned, non-religious answer, I will eat ... my words.

Scraps of Crap, Chunks of Junk & Bits of Wit from the Sea of Debris

"I love the smell of french fries in the afternoon!" Katy said that today after we drove through Chick-Fil-A. She must've heard a similar quote in some kids' TV show or movie. She was serious and had no idea why I thought it was funny. I thought about explaining the original "Napalm in the morning" quote from Apocalypse Now, but blew it off.

****

I'm having a hard time with Tim Russert's death. I won't bother saying everything everyone else has already said about him. I knew this election was going to suck, but in his absence it will suck without enthusiasm. I hate curveballs like this. When Harvey Korman died a few weeks ago, I observed a personal moment of silence, and then moved on after making a mental note to watch Blazing Saddles again soon. Harvey was old. He was supposed to die. We all know that God can push his smite button at any time, but we never cease to be shocked and feel cheated when it happens to someone we come to depend on, someone who really wasn't done with all the things they (and we) thought they needed to do. This reminds me, I should really get my affairs in order.

****

Here's a quote from an E-mail I just received from my sister:

Okay, better go get on with another great dog day of summer and oh the joy it brings me to hear my children with soft voices of angels chirping in my ear almost in unison, "Mom, I'm bored." It is music to my worn out, beat down, frazzled ears. It lifts me up and gives me a second wind to keep going, keep trudging on in the vast jungle of motherhood. Oh the rewards of being a mother. Just knowing that in all my sacrifice, all the debt we go into, just to provide them with another Webkin, every ounce of weight I have packed on to this tired and weary body, every varicose vein, stretch mark and C-section scar, my dark roots from not having a minute to make a hair appointment, my crooked back, my permanent cricked neck, my unshaved legs, and unflossed teeth. All so I can see these sweet, adorable faces look at me and say with heartfelt emotion, "I'm bored." I must say, these are the little gems I never bargained for that dreadful night of conception.

I hope she'll continue to allow me to quote her. She has such a poetic way of summing everything up. In fact, anything original that anyone sends me will be showcased here if it makes me laugh out loud. Sure, I'm easily amused. But that will just increase your chances of publication.

****

I haven't been able to remember most of my dreams lately, and the ones I do remember are not often appropriate for sharing. But last night I dreamt I saved Luke from a bear. This is no doubt because on Sunday, he left for Boy Scout camp for a week. He has never been away from home this long. He's only 11. It's just Tuesday and I can already feel my anxiety mounting. I forgot to put a helmet on him and cover him with bubble wrap before he left. Who will put sunscreen on him? Who will cut his fingernails? Who will tell him to brush his teeth, comb his hair, blow his nose, and change his underwear?

In my dream, this huge black bear tackled me from behind. His paws left puncture wounds in my shoulders. I then made sure to show the scars to everyone I encountered. I love how dreams can gather such a random assortment of people in one place. I saw friends from high school, a college boyfriend, James Carville (or someone equally scary-looking, like Alan Colmes), Haley Joel Osment (the "I see dead people" kid), and the professor from Gilligan's Island. I think Mary Ann may have been there, too. Did I expose my injuries so people would see how brave I was? So people would feel sorry for me? Is this a symptom of my open-book life? Sharing too much in my ongoing effort to feel connected and force that connection upon others? If I found myself interesting enough, I might delve further into this topic. Fortunately for both of us, I find self-introspection somewhat counterproductive, and in my case, paradoxically, both scary and slumber-inducing.

****

Another event to add to the list of deployment-related mishaps: Katy managed to lose her $800 neon-pink retainer. We know that it went missing at a friend's house. I'm sure it will turn up now that it has been replaced at the discounted cost of $350. The new, improved retainer glows in the dark. This will make it easy to find next time it gets lost. At night. I am a little nervous about my daughter going around with something glow-in-the-dark in her mouth. Have they tested these retainers on mice? If the old retainer does show up, it better be in their dog's poop, mangled in the garbage disposal, run over in the driveway, or in some other nasty place that would have still demanded replacement.

****

Some more words that are fun to say: mausoleum, vanquish, parabola, trapezoid, rhombus, parallelogram, albino, sycophant, tureen, ratatouille, bouillabaisse, gazpacho, Tigris, Euphrates, Madagascar, Burma, Persia, Polynesia, Micronesia, amnesia, Saskatchewan, Timbuktu.

A couple of old-people words that bother me: high-falutin' and malarkey. Malarkey is kind of like cockamamie which is already on the list. I think malarkey can be cockamamie, but not vice versa. And high-falutin' -- what is falutin' anyway? Did it start out as faluting before those mispronouncin' low-faluters got a hold of it? I'm sure I could look into the etymology (not to be confused with entomology) of this word, but contrary to what my readers might think, I do have a life here.

****

So gay people can get married now in California. Can someone please give me a satisfactory explanation as to how this threatens every heterosexual marriage? Haven't the straight people screwed up the institution well enough? I wouldn't be surprised if the gays set a good example of monogamy and fidelity for the rest of us. Hell, they are the ones who want to make their monogamy official. Sure, this may hurt an intolerant person's sensibilities, but isn't that the bigot's problem? What if all blue-eyed people got to eat spaghetti, but it was illegal for all brown-eyed people to eat it? What if all diabetics could go to the bowling alley, but it was illegal for all hypoglycemics? What if people with freckles could drive cars, but people with birth defects had to use tricycles? What if men could vote, but women couldn't? What if people with white skin could sit at the front of the bus, but people born with brown skin had to sit at the back?

****

One quick gardening tip: Don't use a big Weed-Eater in a small garden.

****

Sometimes I forget that this dictation software I use tries to pick up everything that comes out of my mouth. I have been listening to the Counting Crows radio station I created with Pandora. I just found myself singing one of my favorite songs, Train's Meet Virginia. I just had to delete an entire paragraph of gibberish and put the microphone on pause while I sang the rest of the song.

****

One more quick story before I go to bed. First, you have to understand that one of my missions in life is to irritate and/or embarrass my father-in-law at every opportunity. Like the time he picked me up at the airport one pre-9/11 October 31. I think it must have been in 2000. He had been waiting at the gate, bragging to a friend about his intelligent and attractive daughter-in-law, looking forward to introducing me. So here I come with my perennial Halloween Bubba teeth protruding from my mouth. He was sufficiently humiliated, and we all got a good laugh out of it. Now, as you may be aware, I have a reputation for taking any inappropriate or crude reference that someone might make and pushing it right over the edge. I pride myself on my ability to take something that is merely in poor taste and turn it into something obscenely vulgar. It is the only form of one upmanship that I have ever been able to engage in successfully. So my in-laws were in town a couple of weeks ago. They took me and the kids out to dinner. We were planning the yard work for the next day. My father-in-law asked, "Who is going to hoe the garden?" When he said the word hoe, he looked at me as if to say, "Please don't make any references." Katy helpfully reminded us that there was already a hose in the garden. He explained to her what a hoe was, and again gave me that look. So of course I said, "I'll be the hoer. I'm a little out of practice, but I used to be pretty good at it." He shook his head, thinking, "I knew it, there she goes…" So he said to me, "Jill … I'm gonna have to spank you when we get home." Poor choice of words on his part. He had to leave the table momentarily after I responded, "I charge $20 extra for that."

Mental Floss

I didn't come up with that phrase. I saw it somewhere, but I don't know who to give the credit to.

It's 11:45 on a Sunday night. I should be asleep or working on the reply brief I need to finish by Friday. I have the brief in my head; I just need to put it on paper. As my boss back in West Texas used to say, I have 'em by the short hairs. But I can't really say it that way in the brief. I've had a long, busy weekend, and I'm not about to start working now. So I'm giving myself 30 minutes to offload some mental clutter.

I took the kids up to see my mom in Hico. On the way, I spent way too much money on flea market junk, but I figure I was making up for lost time. I love to see my mother so busy and so happy with her life as it is now. But that town ... I could (and should) write a screenplay. I need to tell you some stories about that place, but it deserves an entirely separate post. We met a friend of my mom's for dinner Friday night at this little Mexican restaurant. I was mesmerized by a "family" that took over a couple of tables next to us. It included two sweaty, morbidly obese, braless women in threadbare NASCAR T-shirts with their toothless meth/mullet-headed husbands/boyfriends along with a brood of unfortunate children who were obviously not fathered by the Caucasian cretins who were ignoring them. These folks proceeded to light up cigarettes and smoke as they ate their nachos and bitched at each other. (Who smokes and eats at the same time?) Hey, far be it from me to judge, but I'm just saying. I'm certainly not the most classy person, but I just can't help but stare at small-town trash and pity all their babies.

Last night, my mom asked me if I had ever seen the movie Elizabeth- town. She was mortified when I told her that I had not. After she recovered from the shocking disbelief, she said, "Well then you have to watch it." So she pulled it out of her DVD library. I think it was stuck somewhere between Breakfast at Tiffany's and Saving Silverman. Elizabethtown came out in 2005. That was kind of a bad year for me. And 2006 was worse. 2007 was spent recovering from the previous two years, and I don't think I had yet realized that it is now 2008. So that's why I missed Elizabethtown. It is now my new favorite movie. And Orlando Bloom has officially kicked Matthew McConaughey out of my list of five. What's really scary now is -- I'm afraid Orlando is also on my mom's list, and that she may have a better shot at him than I do.

Today, I ran out of gas on my drive home. That OnStar account comes in handy every once in a while. So that took a good hour and a half out of my afternoon. The guy who came to give me some gas didn't take credit cards, and I of course had no more cash. After he poured a few dollars' worth into my tank and then had to jump my battery, he followed me to a gas station so I could fill up his truck with diesel as payment. Sure, I should've known better and stopped for gas before the low fuel alarm started beeping at me. But I kept looking at the "fuel used" numbers along with the trip odometer, and then relied on my own bad math. I figured I could make it to Johnson City, and there perhaps, find gas that was maybe two cents per gallon cheaper. This is what happens when you are both a cheapskate and a moron with two grumpy children and a thirsty dog on a road trip in June in Texas when it is 98° at 3:30 in the afternoon. Needless to say, we were all glad when we finally got home.

I didn't mind waiting almost an hour for my automotive savior to arrive. We had just picked up a healthy late lunch at Taco Bell. There is really nothing better than eating tacos in a hot car on the shoulder of a busy highway. And both kids had an opportunity to pee outside, which is always quite an adventure for them. I needed to go too, but I didn't, as I was afraid that the gas can guy would show up just as I got comfortable squatting over the weeds with my two giggling children shielding me from late afternoon traffic. Besides, I had something to distract me while we waited. You see, the new David Sedaris book came out last week. Had I not pre-ordered it on Amazon, I would have had to camp out at Barnes & Noble the night before. I picked up my mail before we left town on Friday. As fate would have it, there amongst the junk mail, the bills, and various meaningless envelopes from the VA, was the package I had been waiting for. His latest book is called When You are Engulfed in Flames. Normally, it takes me a good year and a half to read a 200-page book. Well, I'll have you know, in less than two days, I am already on page 202. As the kids and I (along with our healthy dog Buzz) sat waiting in the hot SUV, I immersed myself in the book I had been anticipating since last fall when the object of my literary obsession came to town to read selections from this latest oeuvre. The kids finally stopped asking what I was laughing at and went about their bickering without my interference.

More about Sedaris later. I only have about 100 pages to go. Look for my review in late 2009.

A few years ago, I used to get fluoroscopic steroid injections in my lower back in hopes of relieving my constant left-butt-cheek sciatic pain. Part of this process involved intravenous Fentanyl. Afterward, I would always feel like my brain had been to a spa. Like they took it and shook it out and pressure-washed all the creases and cleared out all the debris. I'd get a clean slate. A good kind of amnesia. It was as if my brain had been treated to an aromatherapy massage and bathed in a mineral water whirlpool. Yep, that Fentanyl was some good stuff. It worked great. Too bad the steroid shots never did. Now that I can't get a good Fent fix every few months, I have to clean the dirt from my mind manually from the outside, pulling stuff through the tips of my fingers to the keyboard, not unlike the way Chopin would create a musical masterpiece. Except my stuff isn't musical, and masterpiece would be a bit of a stretch.

So ... I just now got to the point where I was going to list all my latest random thoughts, all the snippets too small to build a story around, but too big to dump or to keep in my head. This blog has become not only a public diary, but the closest thing to Fentanyl that I can find without risking a drug trafficking charge.

Here are just two of the bits and pieces from the lost and found in my cluttered mind:

I recently found out that Peter Cottontail and the Easter Bunny are one in the same, thanks to my sister-in-law. We were at my in-laws' for Easter. Joellen told the kids that Peter Cottontail had been there. I was all like, "What? Don't you mean the Easter Bunny was here?" She practically grabbed me by the shoulders like I was someone who needed an intervention, and said, "Jill, 'Here comes Peter Cottontail, hoppin' down the bunny trail, hippity, hoppity, Easter's on its way.' Does this ring a bell with you?" I wanted to say that I didn't think Beatrix Potter saw her Peter Cottontail as the Easter Bunny, but who was I to argue when it says it right there in that song?

The following is a conversation I had with my daughter just yesterday:

Katy: "What's that?"
Me: (In one of my rare attempts at being discreet) "It's a feminine product."
Katy: "Oh... like, 'I'm not a chick; I'm a woman.' That kind of feminist product?"

God, I love that girl.

"Smells Like Brownies" or How to Spend $600 After Almost Killing Your Dog

First, a little bit of background. Our dog Buzz is a 50 pound Australian Shepherd mix. We think he's about Katy's age, so that would make him 7 or 8. He was named after Buzz Lightyear, but we didn't do that. He came with that name when we adopted him 6 years ago from the local no-kill animal shelter. We decided to go for a mutt this time, seeing as how Buzz's two predecessors (one disobedient inbred AKC-papered Lab after another) brought us nothing but grief.

Our first dog, Boo Radley, was a 100-plus pound black Lab, who found it necessary to bust through our fence and get hit by a truck on the highway before he reached the age of two. His remains are supposedly resting comfortably in a pet cemetery in Lubbock, Texas.

Our second dog was a yellow Lab named Rex. Soon after we brought him home, at the age of about eight weeks (even though his parents were what they call "hip-certified"), one of his hips popped out of joint. The vet said it was the worst case of hip dysplasia he had ever seen. After losing Boo, we were not about to give up on another dog. (Mind you, this was before we had kids, so we had no perspective about how the value of an animal's life declines once you have a human child's life to value.) So of course we took Rex to an orthopedic vet in Austin who charged us about $3500 to fashion and install some new and improved titanium bionic hips. Not long after Rex healed up, he used those damn hips to run away from us at every opportunity. As soon as we would let him out of the house, he did nothing but try to dig under the 6-foot fence, climb over it, gnaw his way through the wood, or tear away enough boards to squeeze through. The puppy Prozac we dosed him with did nothing to make him realize that he owed his powers of locomotion to us, not to mention his life. The electric fence wire we installed acted as more of a challenge than a deterrent. Then he would simply howl as he gnawed at the fence with a mouth full of splinters, leaving his signature bloodstains behind. Anyway, after the kids came along, Rex took a back seat and was none too pleased with the lack of attention. When Katy was a baby, right before we left New Mexico, I had occasion to meet quite a few of our neighbors when they would return Rex to our door thinking they were doing us a favor. Most of them would say, "You missing a dog?" "Not really," I would always say, "but thanks anyway." After we moved, I tried to give Rex away, but I forgot to include a no return policy. It wasn't long before they brought him back. The next time I gave him away, I did it while the kids and I were staying at my parents' house. I removed his tags, left no forwarding address, and promptly took off. If Rex were still alive, which he surely isn't, he would be almost 14 years old. I only know this because he was born the night that O.J. Simpson got away with murder. I'm sure Rex's remains amount to nothing more than a couple of titanium hips that some Boy Scouts will find one day while hiking through the woods of East Texas.

This brings us to dog number three. Katy was two years old when we went to pick out a dog. She was terrified of every one we put it in front of her. We were about to give up when they told us, "Well...there is one more dog you might consider." They told us Buzz had been there for about two years and no one wanted him because he was so standoffish. (And I think also because he has one brown eye and one blue eye, so people thought he was either defective, vicious, or just hard to make eye contact -- and therefore communicate -- with.) As soon as we put Katy on the ground, she ran up to him, put her arms around his neck, and said, "This is my dog." Mike and I looked at each other uneasily, asked if there was a return policy, and decided to give him a try. When we brought home, he was terrified. He acted as if he had never set foot on carpet before. He rejected treats as if he felt unworthy of them. It was obvious that he had been abused. (To this day, he trembles at the sound of gunshots or fireworks, and at the sight of -- of all things -- fishing poles.) So it took a while for him to warm up to people. But since then, he has been the perfect pet. He rarely barks; he's not a crotch-sniffer; he doesn't chew on things; and he's too smart to run away. He usually curls up in a corner and sleeps most of the day. The only problems we have had (aside from the time he brought me a bloody headless rabbit carcass), have been his odd habit of throwing up in Katy's bed, and the few times he has found it necessary to leave a big dump in Luke's floor. We have solved that problem simply by shutting the kids' doors every time we leave the house.

So here's the story of how I almost killed Buzz.

In accordance with the obscure Murphy's Law for military wives, Uniform Code of Military Injustice § 13.666, events such as this are required to take place during every deployment of any duration. This code section mandates the following:

(a) Each child must suffer from a stomach bug or flulike symptoms over the course of at least two consecutive weeks;

(b) Some sort of kitchen mishap is required to occur; (In my case it was a dripping faucet and replacement thereof.);

(c) At least one large appliance must malfunction; (Here, it was a water-heater-overflow incident and its attendant $100-extra water bill.); and

(d) One more dramatic and costly event caused by any seemingly innocuous act that in hindsight appears to be quite negligent must occur.

My military-wife friends can rest assured that I will now be working tirelessly to repeal this archaic law just as soon as I return from an extended spa vacation that I plan on taking not long after Mike's jet lands anywhere in the contiguous United States.

At the end of every school year, I put together these big plastic bins with goodies for teacher gifts. So there were four open bins sitting on our dining room floor. They were filled with things like beach towels, bath products, lotion, candles, sunscreen, cookies, notepads, pens, and anything else a hard-working teacher might enjoy for the summer, including an oversize bar of expensive dark chocolate.

Last Tuesday night at about 5:30, I took Luke to his Boy Scout meeting. He was going to ride home with a friend. Katy and I came home at about 7:00. I went about my business, watering plants and tending to the garden like the dutiful, longsuffering military wife that I am. Katy soon noticed some wrappers in the guest room floor. My first thought, of course, was that one of the kids must have left some food trash out and Buzz got into it. When I took a closer look and saw that these were wrappers from the chocolate bars, I freaked out. The bins looked untouched. It was as if someone had broken in and handed the bars to him, or he grew thumbs and found a way to dig those out and pick them up (all four of them) while leaving everything else undisturbed. I never in a million years would have imagined that he would (much less could) do such a thing. He did not seem the least bit ill, and if Katy had not found the wrappers, we may not have realized that this had happened that night until he probably would have tossed it up in Katy's bed or left a pile of chocolatey diarrhea in Luke's floor.

I immediately called the emergency vet. They gave me an 800 number for a pet poison control advice line and told me I needed to follow their instructions first before bringing him in. After sitting on hold with them a little bit longer than forever, a veterinarian answered the phone, and, after asking what the problem was, told me that there was a $60 charge for their service. So of course I gave her my credit card number so I could get information that I probably could have Googled myself if I hadn't been in such a panic. She told me that the amount of chocolate he ate for his weight was probably less than half the dose that definitely would be lethal. But I certainly wasn't going to take any chances. She told me to give him three tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide to induce vomiting. She said that he should vomit in about 10 to 15 minutes. Well, Katy and I got tired of waiting for him to throw up. I even gave him more peroxide, and stuck my finger down his throat. After all the vomiting this dog has done, I never dreamed that I would want to see him hurl as much as I wanted to see him hurl that night. I even went so far as to consider guiding him to Katy's bed where he would feel most comfortable about puking -- but I didn't. I decided to go ahead and start heading for the emergency vet hospital. Katy and I lined the back seat with towels and hit the road. (Now that I know how much he threw up, I'm glad he waited until we got to the hospital.)

We got there at about 8:30. The clerk and the technicians seemed pretty nonchalant about the whole thing, as if dogs overdose on chocolate all the time and they always see overreacting owners. Well, as I checked him in, they informed me that there was a $300 charge just for walking in the door. What was I going to do? Say "Oh, well then, nevermind," and leave? They took him to the back to check his vitals and do whatever they needed to do. I was shaking and terrified. I was kicking myself and feeling a horrible mixture of guilt and fear, not unlike what I felt when Luke had his motorcycle accident. I was getting that anxiety attack sort of post-traumatic stress feeling that I get every time I see an air-evac helicopter. My head was spinning, and I thought I would be the one to throw up first. I kept it together for Katy's sake, but she was absolutely amazing. This girl is an incredible little human being. Right at first, when we discovered what had happened, she panicked and started crying, but as we rode to the hospital, and as we sat in the waiting room, she was all smiles, perfectly calm, and reassuring me. She said, "Mom, I know he's going to be fine. I feel it in my soul. Buzz and I are like this." She held up her twisted fingers then gave me a big hug. I wasn't sure I believed it at the time, but turns out she was absolutely right.

After we had waited for about an hour, they said he still hadn't thrown up. I started raising hell when I realized that they hadn't given him anything else to induce vomiting, and had just been observing him all that time. I insisted that they make him throw up immediately, because obviously I had not given him enough peroxide, and the caffeine and toxins had been in his system now for probably about three hours. The vet told me that chocolate camps out in their stomach for a long time and does not travel into their intestines and into their systems for several hours. I said, "I don't care; I paid $300 to walk through the frickin' door. The least you can do is make my dog puke!" After another half hour or so, I sent the receptionist back to check on him. Apparently, as soon as they gave him some injection, he barfed all over his kennel. They said it looked like gallons of chocolate syrup. The receptionist came back smiling and laughing. I thought, well that's a good sign. She said that somebody came in there without seeing what had happened and said, "Smells like brownies. Who brought the brownies? Where are they?" The vet and another tech confirmed this story later and said that it indeed smelled like someone had just baked a fresh batch.

So at this point, they told me they needed to give Buzz some IV fluids, some activated charcoal, and monitor his heart rate. Overnight. The vet said that his heart rate was a little elevated (about 140 when 100 is normal) when we first came in. I told her that his heart rate always goes up when we bring him to a vet or kennel or even to the groomer. I explained that he's a bit skittish and shaky even in non-emergent situations. After he vomited, she said his heart rate had gone to 180. I said "Well, maybe that's because he just upchucked. Or is it because y'all let the caffeine and toxins stay in his system for an hour longer than they should have?" She said that in terms of absorption time, we brought him in very early, and considering how much he threw up, and that he hadn't had any diarrhea, the majority of it had not hit his intestines and spread to his system. I said, "Then it should be safe to bring him home, right?" She said that there was no way we would be able to replace his fluids with just water at home, and that she would be uneasy about letting him go without monitoring his heart rate for a few more hours. Of course she said that if it were her dog, she would leave him there. (I thought, well yeah, you work here, hello?) So she brought him in to the little examining room to see us, where he seemed perfectly fine, wagging his little nub of a tail, a little bit shaky, because of course he was in a veterinary hospital. Katy and I gave him lots of hugs and kisses and told him we would be back early in the morning.

So Katy and I got home at about 11:30 that night. Luke ended up spending the night with his friend and wearing his friend's clothes to school the next day. We had to pick Buzz up before 8:00 the next morning, so Katy and I got up and left a little bit after 6:00 a.m. Wednesday. Of course, they said he did fine all night, his heart rate got back to normal and he didn't have any diarrhea, which was a great sign. The only problem was that he would not urinate for them even though they knew he was full of fluid. I told them that he could hold it for days and that he doesn't like to pee when he's nervous or on a leash or when anyone is watching. The final bill for the pet E/R came to about $400. Honestly, I thought it would've been a lot more. They had faxed his records to our vet, and told me that he needed to finish his IV bag there. I wanted to just bring him on home, but then again, there I was with this IV bag and thinking well, I really would like for our own vet to make sure he's okay. Plus he still had the IV cath port in his leg that I wasn't about to try to pull out at home.

So I took Buzz directly to our vet's office. When I left him there, I thought it would just be for a few hours so he could finish the fluids and for the doctor to look at him. I took Katy on to school, got her there on time, then ran by Luke's school to bring him his yearbook for signing that day and to reassure him that Buzz was okay. Then I went home and tried to pretend it was a normal day.

Buzz ended up spending most of the day at the vet under "observation." The doctor did some sort of test and decided to flush him with one more IV bag. He said it took that dog forever to finally pee, but when he did he peed forever. They were able to get him to eat and then make sure that he didn't have any diarrhea. So I guess that extra day of vet care was worth the $130 I was popped with. Doesn't everyone want to pay $130 to know that their dog doesn't have diarrhea? Really, a bargain at twice the price.

So other than a shaved ankle, Buzz appears none the worse for wear. I just recently emerged from self-flagellation mode. Katy just smiles and says, "I told you so, Mama. He's fine." I can't wait to get a flashback when the bill comes so I can pay the $600 those damn candy bars cost me. If Mike had been here, one of us probably would have been home and this never would have happened. So really, I should blame him for being off in Iraq. Come to think of it, this is really George Bush's fault. Good thing he's sending us that tax rebate.