TRIPLETS. For Christmas, Slogger and I drove to Big Western City, to spend Christmas day with his sister and her kids. That was really great, we spent the night, and then drove back to High Plains City the next day. On Saturday, my brother, his wife, and the triplets arrived in Big Western City and used loads of guilt and manipulation to get me to drive back there. Loads. Slogger, of course, was not to be manipulated in this way, so he stayed home. Brother, sister-in-law, the triplets and I hung out and shopped, had a nice lunch, and then headed for High Plains City.
And then the madness began. Imagine, if you will, four adults (two of whom are over six feet tall), and three five-year-old boys, all in a 1000-square foot home with one bathroom. Now, my brother and his wife did sleep in the basement bedroom, and I’m not including the square footage of the basement in my account of the house’s footprint. HOWEVER. The one bathroom thing was quite interesting, to say the least. Every time my sister-in-law or I saw a young man headed into the bathroom, we would point at them and sternly pronounce “You should lift up the seat when you pee.”
This didn’t exactly work the way we planned it to.
Howsomever, we had loads of fun with the boys and their parents. We went skiing, we went sledding, we went to the movies, we went out to eat. My favorite was the sledding, since it didn’t involve much more work than just plodding back up the hill with the sled after roaring down it. Have you ever tried to get skis on three five-year-old boys who have never skied before? That’s an interesting proposition, involving kneeling in the snow, grabbing a boy’s ski boot, the boy grabbing my head, and saying “point your toe, ok, point your toe, point your toe, good! Now press down with your heel really hard. Press down. Press down with your heel. Press down hard. Ok, great!” And then, when faced with a tiny incline, not even the bunny slope, two of them get all scared and clingy while one races down it backwards. Then you follow them down the hill, get them out of their skis, and trudge back up the hill carrying the skis. Start all over again. Whew. That was hard work. And all of this while their mom and dad were taking a ski lesson. Poor Slogger got so worn out that it took him a couple of days to recover. Sledding was much easier.
AND IN OTHER NEWS, HERE'S ROXY. I wrote most of this post sitting outside the animal shelter, waiting for it to open, so that we could adopt a puppy. That’s right. A Rottweiler mommy and her NINE puppies were dropped off at the shelter. They seem to be a mix of Rottweiler and black Labrador retriever. We adopted one of the runts – a little female that we’re going to name Roxy.
They came up for adoption today, and on the assumption that everyone else in High Plains City would be beating down the shelter door to get one of those puppies, and because we wanted ONE of the puppies, a particular one (Roxy), and because the shelter operates on a first-come, first-served basis, Slogger and I thought it would be a good idea for me to get to the shelter early. So, I sat in my car for the three hours. By the time the shelter had opened, there were about 10 people in line. But since I'd been there for three hours, I was first! OK, it is possible, perhaps, that we overreacted just a bit. But the good news is that Roxy will go to be spayed on Friday, and we'll pick her up Friday evening.
