Don't come a knockin'

I've officially been a stay at home mom for a year now and  I am either starting to be kind of ok at it, or my insanity has reached such a level that I just think that I'm ok at it.  One of the most surprising things about being at home all day is the enormous fleet of door-to-door foot traffic that happens during the afternoons. The Baptists, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses have all come on a mission to get us to heaven and I've turned down people selling magazines, pest control, lawn control, and among other things, MEAT.  I honestly don't know why anyone would ever buy meat from a random stranger who comes to your door but apparently it happens a lot because the meat sales people are still in business.  Any time one of these people comes to my door it sets off my dogs and they start barking like we are being robbed, which then upsets/wakes up the babies so they start screaming and I end up climbing over a mountain of barking dogs and crying babies to get to the door just to tell some sketchy dude that no, I do not want his meat/magazines/Jesus and it takes me a good hour to after they leave to get everyone calmed down again, and my kids sure as hell aren't going to go back to sleep.

Anyway, I thought I would stop this problem by using my previous passive-aggressive-office-post-it skills and posting this simple sign over my doorbell:

Of course I was so, so wrong in thinking that these people would get the hint and just turn around when they saw my sign.  Nope, apparently if you are asked not to ring the doorbell then you just knock on the door in  your quest to sell/save. So then, in addition to the sign over the doorbell, I put up this sign:

I thought it was witty and cute and a good way to say "thanks, but no thanks" to the porch pilgrims.

This sign however, did not serve its intended purpose. In fact, I think it just gave the door-to-door people a challenge to overcome.  The first person who disobeyed my request was a tweaker named Timmy from a company called Coastal Concept Sales. Timmy actually acknowledged my sign and told me how funny it was but  that he wasn't "selling anything" and was there to help our troops by collecting money to send them care packages. So while Timmy is giving me his pitch, talking at about 100 miles an hour and having a hard time staying on subject,  Luke is standing in the door with me only wearing a diaper alternating between demanding pizza and saying "bye bye"and trying to leave while Lily is in her swing screaming her head off.  So because I am a softy and I just wanted the guy to freakin leave, I gave Timmy 40 bucks and sent him on his troop-helping way.  It was only after he'd left that I got onto my computer to figure out that the whole thing is a scam. Coastal Concept Sales is a shady for-profit company that may not have ever sent a single care package to our troops but nobody knows because they keep changing their name and they don't report financials  So that ticked me off, you know, just a little.

The second offence was even more infuriating. It was a Saturday morning and Mike was on about day 13 of being out of town and somehow I'd got both of my kids to take a nap at the exact same time which is a HUGE victory in mom land.  I took this time to eat lunch (without having to share!!!) and take a shower that lasted longer than 5 minutes (and OH MY GOD SHAVE MY LEGS). I got out of the shower feeling clean and smooth only to hear somebody frantically pounding on my door. This is a full-fist house-shaking pound and my thoughts were "OH MY GOD THE NEIGHBORHOOD IS ON FIRE" and "PANTS, I NEED PANTS!!" Of course the dogs and babies started their chorus of barking/crying while I struggled to thrown on a pair of dirty yoga pants and simultaneously run to the door. I got there just in time to see a man closing my gate and to find a flyer stuck into my door inviting me to come to his brand new strip mall "church." JESUS CHRIST!!! Either the dude couldn't read or doesn't know the 11th commandment "THOU SHALT NOT RUIN MAGIC TANDEM NAP TIME." Needless to say I was furious and I spent the next 2 hours trying to get the kids back to sleep while writing a strongly worded email in my head to the church, which of course I never got around to sending because really who has time for that?

Anyway, that has provoked me to put up a THIRD sign:

If this one doesn't work, I'm getting a shotgun.

10 Things my Dog Has Eaten (and Somehow Survived)

This is my dog, Herman.

 Herman seems to be a mix of lab/golden retriever/chow/terrier/coyote. We'll just call her "cute." Herman is a girl. Herman is not a goat. Herman has a stomach of steel.  Here are some interesting  things Herman has eaten in her three years of life:

1.  When Herman was a puppy and was still being housebroken she had a few accidents in the house. One day as I was cleaning up one of these accidents I noticed that it caught the light in an interesting way.  As I leaned closer I saw that it actually sparkled.   It was like a little disco ball of puppy poo.  Upon further investigation I discovered that Herman had eaten an entire tube of red glitter.   This is how Herman got the nickname "Glitter Shitter."

2.  Like many young women, there was a point when Herman developed a taste for sexy undies. I would come home from work to find everything but the elastic band eaten on my panties or just one cup remaining of a bra.   It didn't  matter if they were cotton or lace, push-up or underwire -- Herman would eat them all.  Eventually I had to stop shopping at Victoria's Secret and find my unmentionables at more frugal locations -- undies are expensive dog treats!  Ask my boyfriend if he still loved Herman after that one. 

3.  When it got to be winter I deemed it way too cold to leave Herman outside all day and would let her stay in the house while I was at work.  One day I came home from the work to find that a 2ft section of the carpet had completely vanished from the middle of the living room -- and Herman in the corner with her tail between her legs.  Turns out Kibbles and Bits were just too ordinary for Herman and she decided to chow down on the flooring.  This his how Herman got the nickname "Carpet Muncher." 

4.  As a young college student in a kickass rental house I deemed it my duty to have the Halloween party of the century.  It was wild and I kept Herman in my room all night for her safety.  The next morning I let her out to use the bathroom and she came back with her entire snout dyed magenta.  Apparently one of our responsible guests had left a half full cup of "Jungle Juice" (Everclear, Vodka, Sangria, Fruit and Kool Aid) outside and Herman took it upon herself to finish it off.   She then spent the rest of the day wining and hiding behind the couch -- seems we were both a bit hungover.  

5.   One night I decided I would take it easy and watch a little TV  and eat some pizza.  I ordered a large pizza from Papa Johns figuring I would save some for later or share it with my roommates.  I opened the box and went into the kitchen to grab a soda.  When I came back the ENTIRE pizza was completely gone.  Herman was only weighed about 15 pounds at this time but somehow she managed to pull off something I had previously only thought was feasible  by frat guys and the morbidly obese. 

6. One day I came home from work to find that some how my little pooch had dyed her snout a deep blue.  I was completely baffled by this and tried to find any blue foods in the house she could have gotten a hold of -- nothing.  It was only when I  found a half empty bag of Miracle Grow with dog teeth marks in it that I figured it out.  Of course being  almost poisoned to death Herman was in the best of spirits and showed no signs of eating the fertilizer -- and no she didn't get any bigger either. 

7.  Probably the most important tip ever given to new dog owners is to not give dogs chocolate as it can prove lethal to our four pawed friends.  Needless to say I panicked when I discovered that Herman had eaten an entire bag of Reeses Peanut butter Cups.  Since she seemed fine I didn't take her to the vet but I kept a close eye on her for the next few days -- then I started seeing the telltale orange wrappers all over the backyard and I knew she was going to be ok. Then about  a week later Herman climbed up on the counter and ate an entire bag of Hershey's Kisses  -- this time I had no sympathy.  

8.  Because prescription drugs are so expensive I found that it is much more cost effective to order them through a company that will supply you with a three months supply at a dramatically discounted rate.  I had just gotten three months worth of birth control when I came home to find all three plastic cases chewed beyond recognition and not a single pill to spare --I guess Herman was planning a wild night out. I called poison control and they assured me she would be just fine -- my boyfriend and I would just have to be extra careful for the next three months (well it's not like I had any sexy underwear to turn him on. anyway)

9.  Herman went to visit my boyfriend's family a few days ago and they had to leave her in the house while they ran some errands.  When they got home they found that Herman had eaten about half of a bird's nest that my  boyfriend's mom had saved from the spring before.  I guess she got halfway through and decided twigs and mud weren't that tasty after all.

10.  My parents are building  a new house and my boyfriend and I have been going down there to help with whatever we can on the weekends.  Last weekend we took Herman with us and we discovered she has quite a craving for gypsum -- we had to continually stop Herman from eating the drywall scraps lying around the construction site -- she didn't seem to bothered by it -- I could tell she was just thinking "All in all it's just another taste of the wall."

I don't know why my dog eats weird stuff.  I promise I feed her -- a lot.  These are just the things I know about that she's eaten -- I can't imagine what she's consumed when I'm not looking. All I know is that she's the best looking 50lb garbage disposal I've ever seen.