Shedding a Light on Animal Cruelty

Apparently someone in the house has 

found a new use for a book light.

Hmmmm.  I would have never thought of that.

Dunes for Dummies

Ahhhhh the Dunes!  One of our family's favorite places to play.  But somehow, the weekend of adventure we plan on having is quite different than the adventures we actually experience.  Which is probably why it's so much fun.  You never know what unexpected adventure awaits but it's always something interesting.

Here's some Dunes for Dummies basics:

What goes down doesn't always come back up...
We spend a fair amount of time watching certain kids bombing down steep hills in mere seconds only to spend an hour or two trying to get back up the steep narrow trail.  This is a good time to take your helmet off, find a shady spot to sit, and enjoy the poor child's self-inflicted tragedy.

...And sometimes what's down isn't supposed to be up.
Just ask Chloe.  (yes mother, she's fine.)  Some trails make it hard to keep the greasy side down and the shiny side up.

If you crash, your helmet will automatically kiss your forehead better.
Chloe sported this "kiss" streak across her forehead for an hour or so.  She wore it as a badge of honor.

Two tires are better than four.
Boys will always show off.

And just because you're 12, doesn't mean you can't pull a wheelie too.
Just ask Broc.  Not only is he 12, but he's smaller than Connor who's 11 and he can ride a wheelie till he runs out of gas.

Children will find it more amusing to ride on abandoned car parts over riding their expensive quad.
In this case they found a car's hood with ropes already strapped to it.  Looks like they're not the first kids to ignore their good toys.

If your fellow dune rider happens to be a pilot, he will find something to fly.
Even if that means stealing a kid's kite.  In this case, Chloe's.  Danny "claimed" he was only trying to help her but this photo make us all suspicious.

Even the pros get stuck.
This is Brandon Sharp giving the thumbs up pretending he wasn't having trouble, but the second pic shows otherwise. 

When a man has to get off his quad to get unstuck, it's humiliating.  When a woman posts a picture of a man getting off his quad to get unstuck, well, that's just good blogging.  (Sorry Brandon.)

Helping small children across hazards is good form.

Even at the Dunes you may have to wait in line.
This line was stalled because the guy in front ran out of gas.  Someone get the tow strap.

Boys at the Dunes will coordinate their outfits.
This is Mitch's friend Matthew sporting fabulous goggles that match his jersey.  Just don't point out publicly that they're all matchy-matchy or they'll totally deny it.

Boys will always try to look cool in their coordinated outfits while waiting for a ride to resume.

The ride to the beach is always the best.
Connor enjoying an ocean view.

Your invited guests will always be surprised to find out the ride on Sunday requires a white shirt and tie.
It's a shocker for most first-timers.  Not to mention all the other riders on the dunes that see us coming and flee.  They think we're undercover dune cops.  Little do they know we're on our way to church.  We're a dune paradox.

If your trailer advertises itself as a mobile maintenance unit, you're asking for trouble.
This is Danny needing a little roadside assistance for his mobile maintenance unit on the way back home from the dunes.  Unfortunately he was prepared to maintain an aircraft, not a trailer.

It will take six guys to TRY and remove a melted tire.  And two guys to watch.
We girls tried to get them to put the awning down we could sit in our camp chairs and quietly watch the commotion from the shade while we sipped on a soda.  They turned us down.  Bad choice.  That left us with little else to do but spend our time picture taking and mocking. 

And this is the hardest dune issue for many of us...
If Ken Guerra isn't there at the dunes to get you unstuck...sure enough, you'll have a breakdown on the way home, a good two hours down the road, right near his house!  And you'll end up calling him anyway and have him come to rescue you. 
Thanks for the saws-all Ken...and for not shaming us too badly about always needing your help. It's bad Ken Karma if you ask me.  This man lives to humiliate you with a tow rope.

And lastly,
Anything a man defeats, he will proudly display for a trophy photo.

(Just to be perfectly clear, Danny's t-shirt says, "I love my duck."  It's an Oregonian thing not a personal problem.)

Sock Strategies

As usual I've been avoiding the laundry room and sure enough when Monday morning came, we had a full-blown sock crisis on our hands.

Little girls who like to match do not like to go to school with mis-matched socks.  I tried to reassure "miss matchy" that if she kept her shoes on the whole day nobody at school would know one said "Monday" and one said "Saturday" but this didn't seem to alleviate her sock stress.  When I tried to optimistically point out they were both in shades of purple, I was met with a deep scowl.

Who puts days of the week on socks anyway?  These are contraband socks and will most certainly be confiscated during the next laundry cycle.  I know I didn't buy these, and if I didn't, who the heck did?  That's a weird gift to give a kid.  Can you imagine?

"Here kid, I bought you some socks."

It sounds like something a grandmother would do.  I won't name names, but there are two grammas which fall suspiciously into the devious crime category of "fancy name-of-the-week sock smuggler".

To minimize sock stress, my strategy has always been to buy the same socks for everyone except for me; SOLID WHITE.  This way, in the likely event I've avoided doing the laundry, people in the house will always manage to find a quasi-match.  In a pinch, they can wear one big dad's sock and one little sister's sock and, "voila!" they appear to the casual observer as if they match!  One may feel way too big, and one waaaay too small, but nobody at school will ever know!  (Our dirty little family secret.)  And, since mine are different,  there's the added bonus that I'll know when someone in the house has stolen mine.  I know, you may find this both an underhanded and selfish Sock Strategy, but I call it street smarts. 

This is also why I'd never buy my kids the underwear that says the days of the week either.  Somebody would find out that at least once a week, it's very likely that one of my kids would manage to slip through the system and go to school with underwear that would say "Monday" on both Monday AND Tuesday.  Heaven knows we've got enough trouble with socks, we certainly don't need underwear trouble too.

Bad Farmer (an update)

Farmer Mark suffered a serious set-back over the weekend.

Coyote-4      Chickens-"Zip"

Looks like someone forgot to shut the coop.  A basic farming oversight.

I've considered buying this for him, but I'm not sure a good laugh is worth the risk of encouraging him to "get back on the horse" so to speak.

More Animal Cruelty

First, it was the Paper Showdown which the poor cat lost.  And now it looks like the perpetrator is back, this time with a new tactic.

I came into the living room today to find this:

Today's torment à la mode appears to come in the form of a TV remote, legos, three pennies, an X-Box controller, and a stinky sock.

But it looks to me like the devious plan backfired.  Edward Scissorhands was totally unfazed and stayed curled up this way supremely content for hours.  (In my opinion the stinky sock should have been moved closer to the olfactory senses, but what do I know about cat torture?)

I haven't been able to figure out who in the house is doing this...yet.  All I have to say on the subject is; we're on to you, whomever you are... (we're not really in any rush to catch you, but we are on to you.)

Farmer in the DELLusion

Mark goes through these strange tantrums from time-to-time.  Among the many recurring ambitions to seize hold of this otherwise sane man are these alarming ideas:

• Threading his way up the Amazon on a jet ski
• Sailing his way around the globe-with his family as deckhands
• Owning a huge ranch in the middle of Montana-no-where
• Competing in an Ironman triathlon

But the one that has recently reared it's ugly head once again is his delusions of being a FARMER.  Suddenly, he got up one day with a renewed and invigorated hankering to be a farmer.  Go figure.  His "farming fantasy" would be amusing if we were city people living in concrete neighborhoods and could really do nothing about it.  The real pickle is that we actually live on land, land big enough to farm and raise beasts upon.  So when Mark gets these homestead hankerings, whooa!  We're all in trouble.

It started with him bringing home the baby chicks that I recently posted about.  Little did I know that was just the tip of the silo.  Since the chicks showed up his plans have escalated prodigiously-like rabbits, but think bigger in terms of animal size.  Quite suddenly, he has schemed up elaborate garden plots and even brought up the subject of cows.

Cows!

At this point I must confess to you that I am openly against pets, livestock, or anything animal whatsoever.  This shouldn't come as a surprise.  It's not that I don't like animals mind you. I had a dog growing up after all...oh and a couple of cats.  I even liked them a lot.  What I'm against is being responsible for an animal, because quite frankly I'm the mother of four children, which, let's face it, the duties of parenting verses raising livestock seem indistinguishable at times.  Both children & livestock need feeding, watering, shots, and corralling.  In other words, I'm already a farmer so to speak, I'm trying to domesticate children and therefore have no energy left to domesticate animals too.

My other animal theory (a confession that is both frank and somewhat gory) is that you never want to have a pet bigger than a hole you can dig.  Because if something should go wrong you're gonna have to bury the evidence that clearly proves you were really not cut out for animal ownership--the carcus.  I'm not kidding.  Which, quite honestly, puts me OUT of the cow market thankyouverymuch.  This is also why I've only momentarily considered bludgeoning my husband in an attempt to put a stop to his crazy ideas.  He's safe as long as there's a  back breaking 6' x 3' x 6' deep hole to be dug. (Yes, I measured once when he was being particularly insane I thought a moment too long about putting him out of my misery.)

So as of last count, I've got one cat, three kids, four chickens, and one delusional husband who dreams of being a farmer. I'm hoping it will stop here but I caught him researching electric fencing last night when he said he was "Facebooking".  And right now, as I type this post, he's outside tuning up the rototiller. 

For the record, I'm  drawing the line at overalls and a corn cob pipe.

Political Coup Part Deux

Yet another Political Coup has taken place here at the Skillman house.

In case you missed the first unethical saga, "Political Coup and a Dang Lucky Cat", it can be read by clicking here.   At the time of that particular post, I mistakenly thought the whole episode was just a small hiccup in the power struggle of Skillman hierarchy.  It was not.  Pet plots have once again reared their ugly head.

The latest pernicious plot finds me embattled in a rather surly case of election fraud.  Plain and simple.  And since this case also involves the unlawful adoption of more animals, it is a most devious and dastardly plot indeed.

Because of the "Cat Coup" voting regulations here at the house have undergone massive reforms.  Now that Cheyenne is off at college and she is no longer a registered voter at the Skillman house, this means only three votes are possible from the children small citizens who temporarily live here.  AND since the "Cat Coup" largely took place because Mark wrongfully used his two votes to give more "power to the people" and caused me to become the reluctant owner of a cat, I, as the queen consort, viciously superseded Mark's regent status and stripped him of all voting power.  This falsely lulled me into feeling safe once again in my realm, deceptively feeling that the masses could no longer overthrow my pet-free decrees. 

That was until yesterday.

I was upstairs and heard the slightest of commotion signaling the fact that people were coming home.  Strangely, all was quiet downstairs, not a peep.  I wondered why no one had ventured upstairs to say hello.  After a few minutes of dampened frolic from the downstairs, I ventured down to see who was home.

I was met with Mark, Mitchell, Connor, and Chloe, along with two familiar loiterers at the Skillman home: a cousin Tanner and Mitchell's friend Nick.  All of them were frozen in their poses and wide eyed as if they were in a still-life painting entitled "Dogs Playing Poker"  "Dogs Scamming Mother".

Somethings up.

As I hazarded farther into the room they continued their fixed poses.  No one breathed.  Rounding the kitchen table it was then I heard the distinct chirp of baby chicks.  Two steps further and a box came into view.  Another few steps and a hint of cedar shavings wafted in the air.

"Chickens?"

Then the masses caved.  They all pointed quickly at Mark.  To which I hastily pointed out that he's had his voting power revoked so there's no way THREE children can outvote my decision to be a pet-free zone--minus the dang cat.  (Remember, I've now got my 2 votes and Mark's confiscated 2 as well!)

"I didn't vote." Mark said coolly.  Then he shrewdly pointed at ALL the kids and said, "They did!"  He then informs me that Tanner is a cousin which makes him technically part of the family and gives him the right to one vote.  Then he points at Nick and says that because Nick spends so much time at the house that he should have a say in his surroundings and therefore be considered a member of the district and granted voting privileges too.  He officially declares the vote to be 6-4.

I looked at the box of chirping chicks and then at the boys.  I reminded them of all the snacks and sodas I had purchased for them for their gaming weekends.  The countless ordered pizzas and movie rentals.  The days before they had driver's licenses when I acted as the personal chauffeur and cabby.  I even reminded them of the gargantuan and custom made sandwiches that I so willingly construct to appease their monster appetites.  Then I asked them how on earth they could vote down my decree and bring more pets into the house.

Their answer?

The three teen-aged boys, each towering over six feet tall, looked at me and replied, "They're cute."

At this point I had a hankering to scream "Off with their heads!" (the boys', not the chickens'--okay maybe the chickens too.) but instead, I decide to show a sudden (if not misleading) fondness for the stupid cat.  I went to the door and called for my 'precious' Edward Scissorhands.  On cue, he wandered into the house, but to my extreme distress, he largely ignored the box of yummy chicks.  I picked him up and showed him the chicks hoping for an attack of some sort but Edward could care less.

Great.  What good is a cat that doesn't want to eat baby chicks?  Now I am the proud owner of a stupid cat and a clutch of baby chickens.  Chickens that will still need to be cared for long after the excitement wanes.

Couldn't the people at least bring their leader some chocolate to sooth the aches and pains of another coup?  To Tanner's credit, he admits that he did suggest this, though it fell on deaf and marauding ears. 

I am now revoking all voting rights and privileges of the all the people in my realm and adopting a communist rule.  This voting business is...well...highly overrated. 

Seriously. I'm now thinking summer BBQ.