Martin and I were sitting out on the deck this morning, enjoying the beautiful weather. I had a book, but Martin kept talking to me, so I wasn’t reading much. Suddenly, he asked me if I wanted a foot massage and informed me that he was pretty good at them. “Do you want me to give you one?” he asked. We were sitting at either end of the deck couch, so my feet were right up next to him. “I never say no to a foot rub,” I said, “but were did YOU learn to give foot rubs?” He cocked his head at me. “Well, one day at school I gave Malin* one, and ever since then all the girls want them all the time.”
“I bet they do,” I replied, trying not to laugh. “Girls love foot rubs.”
“You don’t have to tell ME that,” he said.
***
Karin and I were in the kitchen, and I was fixing lunch, when 2 flies starting up buzzing around us. “Arrgh!” I said, “Where’s the swatter??” Karin looked horrified. “No, Mama! We can’t kill ALL the flies. We have to save SOME of them.” I boggled at her. “There have to be some left in the world,” she explained. “Karin,” I said firmly, “There are 42 million billion kajillion zillion gigillion flies in the world. Killing a couple of them won’t make any difference, believe me.”
I paused. “Well…except to these particular flies.”
Then I had the brilliant idea of giving HER the fly swatter and the task of swatting them. Dood! That kid thwacks as hard as I do!
***
In the “This is Not Actually About YOU” category:
Everywhere I go there are people walking their dogs. Every family on our street has a dog. I find myself thinking jealous green monster thoughts at them all. Little thought arrows shooting out saying “It’s not fair! We can’t have a cat and now we can’t have a DOG either. And YOU have a dog. And YOU. And you and you and you.” Everyone has a dog but us, and it’s still making me mad and sad. I don’t think getting the fish tank fixed up is going to help. I’m sure this will pass, since the not being able to get a cat thing eased (except way down deep inside), but if everyone could please just keep their dogs inside until it does, I’d be very appreciative. 😛 I entertained the idea of having Anders sleep in the garage which would allow the rest of us to have a dog, but strangely, he balked.
I did, however, delete all the emails I sent to myself over the past year that had the subject line “Name the dog …” with every great dog name idea I had come up with. I know, I am a total geek. You know what name we had decided on the day before we found out that Anders was allergic? Because we were going to get a flat-coated retriever with a black coat, and had just had that Star Wars marathon, we decided that Anakin would be the perfect name. You know…Dog Vader. HAHAHAHA! Me so funny!**
There was an old brown dog today, with grey all around his muzzle, party crashing at the AWC fest. He thumped his tail whenever anyone came near him and tolerated the patting and petting and loving the children heaped on him. Everyone kept asking everyone else, “Is that your dog? Whose dog IS that?” but he seemed to belong to the neighborhood or something. There were 2 farmcats, too. One grey stripey youngster with a white face and a very loud and insistent PET ME NOW MEOW, and an old fluffmonster giant black tom, who hopped right up to Anders, and thunked his giant paws into Anders’ lap, pushing his head authoritatively under Anders’ hand to get the head scratching he wanted. We took none of them home with us.
***
The last few items are nearly finished on my to-do list. Packing is almost finalized, pending bathroom bags and pillows for the car. I’m only procrastinating a WEE bit by posting, honest! We are heading out early in the morning to drive over the bridge from Sweden and then 3 hours through Denmark to catch the ferry to Puttgarden, Germany. From there we will be making our way over to the Netherlands and down to Giethoorn. We are hoping to hook up with bezigebij on Monday, if everything goes well. We’ll be gone for 2 weeks, and I suspect that I may not be able to update until we return as my brother has a fried motherboard.*** So, y’all be good and don’t write too damn much while I’m gone or it will take me another 2 weeks to catch up on my return. 😛 The alarm system on the house is set on phasers to stun and our neighbors are cops so don’t get any funny ideas either.
Rilly Rilly Rilly Wonderful Birthday Wishes to totte!
And since I’ll be gone: Happy Upcoming Birthday Wishes to shazzerlive, idahoswede, kejn, chimerakitty, natooke and paradisecowgirl! Wow! that’s a lot of LJ friends having birthdays all at once!
*a girl in his class
**Anyone who steals that and uses it for their next puppy TOTALLY OWES ME royalties!
***like bacon! or toast! yeah, toast! hahaha! French toast is fried, right? sizzle sizzle****
****ok, sorry, it’s not funny. I would die if it happened to me.