Monday, January 14, 2008

A series of unfortunate events

We were out and about in the evening Friday and when Offspring opened the door to come in - I was still getting Wheeler off the ramp in the van - I heard him wail like his heart had been ripped out of his chest. I flew into the house to discover that Dogette had eaten one of his beloved, expensive, multi-hundred-piece, Lego Mars Mission contraptions. He started crying his eyes out, he was completely despondent. My heart broke into five million pieces, I picked him up while he hugged me hard and just cried. He is 7, he doesn't really cry like this hardly ever, not even when he falls down and hurts himself. He was SO upset. After that I noticed that not only had they eaten one of his lego sets, they ripped open a box containing a new lamp, chewed it to bits and drug it all over the house. Cardboard was everywhere. Offspring's backpack was in another room, they had pulled all of the jackets out of the basket, they munched tupperware bowls, and scratched the hell out of the inside of the front door. To say I was mad would be the understatement of the year. I snatched Dogette up and shoved her butt outside, I yelled at Dog for a long time, tied him to the stairs and then we tried to clean up. I had to get a broom from the garage, one of those huge ones, to sweep up all the stuff they had destroyed. I will never proclaim to have the magic of dog training again. The thing that was funny (it wasn't then but it is now) is that Offspring upon inspection of the mess said "WE ARE MOVING TO CALIFORNIA NOW!" I asked him why, and he said "So that Dogette and Dog can be trained by Cesar Milan! Mom, will you please call Cesar, please?!!!!". 

So that was Friday night. Saturday, the dishwasher crapped out. Again. Then we went to the Canes game and lost a game we should have easily won. We left a little early to avoid the traffic, but somehow we got stuck in traffic. Then Wheeler started backseat driving me, which he never does, so I don't what got stuck in his craw, but then started really pissing me off. He kept telling me what lane to be in when they were all sitting at a dead standstil. Then I wanted to listen to one station's post-game show and he wanted to listen to a call-in post-game show which consists entirely of variations of: "They fell apart in the third period. ... uhhh, I can't believe we blew a 2 goal lead". Well no shit sherlock! After about 30 mins, we made it out of the parking lot. 

Got home, I wanted to put Wheeler in bed. He wanted to play on the computer. I glared at him. He glared back. It was 10:30 and I was tired, and it takes a fair bit of time to get him out of the chair, undressed, cathed, positioned etc. So I wanted to do it then, not "in a few minutes", which for him on the computer translates to at least an hour and a half. He acquiesed, grumbling and looking grouchy. I put him in bed, discovered a whopping big pressure sore on his butt. Again. So I spent about 20 minutes debriding it, cleaning it, medicating it, and then it took alot more time to position him properly. It was about 11:45 when I finished it all up. That's when I found an enormous pile of dog diahhrea all over the living room floor (thank god, it was on the hardwoods). Just as soon as I finished cleaning it up, the cat barfed. 

This would be very funny if it were a slapstick comedy with Steve Martin - BUT IT IS NOT!!!

Woke up Sunday and had an argument over the cable box. Fast forward to today: it is defective, the TWC guy came out and its not working properly. Rewind to yesterday: it was my fault, I was not pushing the right buttons, I was doing it wrong obviously, just show it to me, do this, do that. NO I AM NOT WRONG, I DID IT RIGHT! Of note, I have several advanced degrees and more to the point, have operated a cable box just a few times in my life. But that was to no avail when trying to convince Wheeler. Simultaneously, my computer hung and I had to reboot several times. A minor nuisance in the grand scheme of things, but it served as kindling for my mood. Then around this time, Axel decided to not recognize the word "yes". I won't go through all of the shenanigans, but trust me when I say that this makes it impossible for Wheeler to do things with it. Case in point is that Wheeler could not retrain the word 'yes' because Axel asks you "do you want to retrain the word yes?". Wheeler would say "yes", Axel would say "Excuse me?", repeat this 5 times, then Axel says "Cancel, click, click, click". Argh! Then there is utterly no way to get anywhere. So my computer was farked up, Axel wasn't working, the cable box wasn't working and my blood pressure was through the roof. Decided to go with my parents for lunch to get out of the house. Came back and felt somewhat better.

Then we spent 1 hour and 11 minutes (not that I was counting) retraining Axel totally from scratch since it was so stupid, plus we needed to update it since we got a new TV. But Axel is from a decade ago at least, and so the functions are rudimentary at best. Trying to get it to work with a fancy new HDMI tv, a dysfunctional cable box, the stereo, the DVD, dish washer, electric fence, toilet and vacuum cleaner was challenging. I had hold the book up in front of Wheeler, then push various remote buttons while pointing at Axel, all the while hoping it would not cancel itself out after we got 6 sub-menus deep. 

Around 8 pm last night I realized the house cleaners were coming today and I had to clean up what was a horrific mess. That took until 10:30 pm. Then it was clean wound, cath, reposition, feed, medicate, give water to, time. I was wide awake until 2 am after that point. 

It was not a good weekend. Let's hope today is a wee bit better.

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