House of Zathras

There’s a lot of hate in Buck. Right now, he says he hates us (BR and me). Doesn’t like us, doesn’t want to talk to us, can’t wait to get away from us. Says he has a plan for when he graduates high school, but won’t tell us what it is.

We can’t tell if he’s telling lies or just can’t relay ideas clearly. One minute he’s telling us that he’s staying the night with a friend on Sunday, and then shortly after that he’s saying that it’s for tonight, and that he never told us it was Sunday.

We wound up having a yelling match in the front yard tonight (after he slammed grocery bags into the wall when I went to BR to ask him if he had heard that Sunday night was the sleepover…I thought I had misheard, but BR had the same impression as me). It was pretty intense. I was trying to tell him that when he does his chores without being told and turns in his schoolwork like he should we’ll trust him more. He, in turn, kept saying/yelling that he’s made changes ‘in his mind’ and that ‘we can’t see them but they are there and he doesn’t want to show us because he hates us’. The cat didn’t like it…she kept walking around us and meowing.

The argument or whatever the hell you want to call it continued. Then the cat walked up behind Buck and bit him on his leg.

I knew I liked that cat. But we still haven’t gotten anywhere with Buck.

BR and I FINALLY were able to go on our anniversary date (only a month late!!!). We went to our favorite Japanese restaurant in a nearby town. The restaurant is near some sort of waterway. (Creek? Inlet? Bayou? Your guess is a good as mine.)

Then I heard a sound that chilled my blood and made me miss a step. I had a flashback to a time when I was 12 years old…a cool spring night, wrapped in a sleeping bag in flimsy, lake-side tent. Shivering in fear, desperately wishing for daylight. The sound causing me to tremble in the darkness back then was the mating call of an alligator. Yeah, it scared me then, and it unnerved me as an adult walking across a parking lot. Didn’t even have a tent wall between me and the horny beast.

After dinner, BR and I walked sort-of kind-of near the waterway, which was about 10 feet down. We could still hear the bellowing sound, echoing across the water. BR thought he could see some movement on the opposite bank, and that was good enough.

So we came home and I started writing this post. I tried to find a Youtube clip to relay the sound…but none of the clips had the same sound. I listened to several, but no luck. The gators did have a bellowing, ugly sound…but it wasn’t the same.

Then, I started thinking. It was my mean ol’ stepbrothers (my mom and their dad were newly married at the time), were the ones that told me about the gators. Then it clicked. I searched for a clip for a bullfrog mating call. Those bastards. For over 30 years, they’ve had me scared of a friggin’ bullfrog!!!!!

But still…imagine hearing this sound in the darkened woods…when you’ve never, ever been camping before in your life…it is easy to think it comes from a mean ol’ gator. Keep in mind, the rumbling gets amplified travelling across the water.
(more…)

One of these. Yes, you cat-lovers may sigh with envy. I so want one.

The bobcat was curled up in our ‘park’ (what we call the open, triangular edge of our yard) getting some sun, I guess. And gazing towards our backyard. The bobcat let me get within about 30 feet of it before it gracefully loped towards the edge of the forest, ducked under a gap in the fence, and disappeared into the late-afternoon shadows. Maybe if I come bearing gifts next time, it will let me get closer. Like the gift of our annoying pain-in-the-ass doxie. It should make a good meal for the bobcat. He was watching our backyard where the doxie was. Here, kitty, kitty.

(Picture courtesy of The Lynx.)

“Oh, get off of her, you damn lesbian!”

Uttered by BR as he walks out the door to work, and he sees the dachshund curled on top of the Golden Retriever.

As I drove past my yard this morning, I saw a good-sized bunny hopping around my front yard in the middle of a group of pine trees that my m-i-l had called ‘the three sisters’. As I started to point out the fuzzy bundle of cuteness to my daughter, I saw a cat. A huge monster of a cat, Siamese-colored but with a stubby tail. No, not a Manx, just a cut-off tail.

This Hulk-cat started hunkering down, haunches quivering, focused on yet another bunny near the tree line.

I had to step in. Yes, I know it’s nature…circle of life and all that…but it’s my yard.

I stopped the truck and crossed into my yard. Waving my arms in the air, I yelled, “Run, every-bunny, run!! Run, or you’ll get eaten!”

Well, apparently the sight of a pudgy, middle-aged woman, running across the yard with arms akimbo, yelling her fool head off scares the fuck out of everybody. Cat, bunny, and bunny all literally flipped into the air and scattered to three of the four corners of the earth.

My work was finished.

(via email from the Mommy-Who)

FROM THE DIARY OF A KINDERGARTEN TEACHER:

My five-year old students are learning to read. Yesterday, one of them pointed to a picture in an animal book and said, “Look at this! It’s a frickin’ elephant!” I took a deep breath and hurried over to the table and asked, “What did you call it?”

“It’s a frickin’ elephant! It says so under the picture!”

And so it did:

(more…)

…my mom would be Mollie. This is based on the discussion I had with her tonight about Obamacare. She just didn’t care to listen. Just let her go trotting on her merry way because people ranting and raving turn her off.

Oh, and when I asked her about ‘end of life’ care (or lack thereof), she said she would just take comfort in the fact that she would see Robby sooner (her and my stepdad’s only child, my half-brother, who died when he was 4 1/2).

I’m sure Obama would be so proud of her.

And if you haven’t read ‘Animal Farm’, or did so way back in high school, read it now. It’s relatively short, but relevant to today’s times in such a scary way.

Now I need to re-read ’1984′. Big Brother is watching, and he wants all my fish. Oh, and in regards to reporting ‘fishy’ activity, I recently saw a comment where someone suggested sending a copy of ‘H.R. 3200′…the Obama Health Care plan…definitely something fishy about that, wouldn’t you say? Here’s a link to that bill:

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h3200ih.pdf

Yeah…it stinks alright.

Take about 100 pounds of ADHD (otherwise known as ShitDamnDog, our Golden Retriever) to the vet.

She loves going to the vet. She gets more attention than she ever does at home. That’s because it takes the vet and two assistants to hold her down to give shots…take out stitches…etc. She LOVES that attention. SDD wags her tail the whole time she’s at the vet.

And she’s the only one of our animals that truly deserves the attention. Here she is welcoming the greatest pisser in the world:

But SDD really needs 8 year-old twin boys to fully appreciate her and give HER the workout. She’d love that. She deserves that.

We truly don’t deserve her because we don’t give her the attention she needs. At least the little pisser keeps her company.