Pupdate

No doubt, by now, you may have seen the glorious dog shaming website. This site allows you to take pictures of your naughty dogs and try to shame them into submission. It never actually works, but it allows pet owners to laugh and commiserate.  If you haven't, check it out, STAT: http://dog-shaming.com/

A few nights ago I was reading the website for, admittedly, way longer than I should've been (Just one more page... No, really, Just one more page now... I mean it this time, this is the last page!...), when I started thinking-- I should totally submit my dogs to this thing! I mean, the dogs accepted by the website eat underwear, steal food from babies and fart, while mine can open the door, knock on the neighbors' doors, get neighbors' kids to come outside to play/give treats and destroy an entire bedroom's worth of carpet all in one day-- I win! I hope they accept me!

And then I kept thinking... oh my god. I have my own web page! I'll accept me! I do what I want!

And then I realized I hadn't posted anything for a long time and that it was finally time for a PUPDATE! Drumrolllllll please....

After the carpet was destroyed by our dogs in an effort to escape our apartment, we knew we needed a new plan, so we started by doing some internet research. The internets assured us that the only way a dog could open a lever handle was by jumping up, pulling down on the lever, and pulling back. Surely, this was how our dogs were escaping! So, we did this:

No way you're escaping now, you naughty dogs!

The wire shown above is attached from the edge of the handle to the screw towards the top of the handle mount, making it impossible to pull down on the handle and in essence, locking our dogs in the apartment. That evening, as we were at dinner with some old friends, at the very moment of explaining our newly "fixed" door, proudly basking in the glow of our genius, and raising our glasses in a toast for finally outsmarting our dogs, Mr. Kate's phone rang.  

It was our neighbor. The dogs just knocked on her door, she said. They apparently decided they wanted to play with her children. Don't worry about a thing, she said. They were rolling around on her living room floor right now and having a blast. After we regained our composure and rediscovered our humility, we put our wine glasses down, finished our meals and rushed home.  

 24 hours, a trip to Target and multiple apologies to neighbors later, we had a NEW plan. 

That's right, 3 different locking measures. We kept the original wire that prohibited the handle from being pulled down. Then we tied a peice of rope to the handle that was just longer than the distance to the floor. At the end of the rope we put an empty medicine bottle. Now, every time we leave the apartment, we pull the bottle out of the apartment, under the door, preventing the handle from being pushed up. For good measure, we added an additional device around the handle itself that provides extra resistance if the dogs manage to get through the first two locks (which we decided they inevitably would).

While the dogs didn't get out the next few nights, the final test of the door locks occurred during the visit of our very dear friends, Celina and Gavin. 

After a fun-filled weekend at the beach, our friends took a cab to the airport very, very early Sunday morning. To be nice, they engaged all the locks so the dogs wouldn't get out while we slept. Unfortunately, engaging all the locks also meant that we couldn't get out. Sure enough, we woke to find that we had been imprisoned alongside our dogs, who looked at us with ironic amusement as we spent the next 20 minutes clumsily removing the doorknob to make our own escape.

We had become the hapless victims of our own creativity, but we knew, in that moment, that we had finally won.

Mr. Kate goes to Delaware

Mr. Kate and I went to Delaware last weekend. This should really be both the beginning and the end of the post, because that's how boring Delaware was. A LOT of time was spent bird watching. There is only so much "birding" a girl can handle. Seriously.

Much like any other person (most of you, I'm sure), when bored, I dress up my dogs. Below is the result of this boredom and the accompanying dialogue.

I may have had an accomplice...

Mr. Kate: Is the dog wearing my underwear again?

Me: No! He's DELAWEARING your underwear!! HAHAHA!!** Good dog!!

Mr. Kate: You know I'm allergic to the dogs! And that was my last clean pair!

Me: I DelaLOVE you!

Mr. Kate: That wasn't even a pun.



**Mr. Kate included a special part in his wedding vows just for my jokes.
It went something like this " I promise to always laugh at your jokes... even when they are not as funny as you think they are."
I certainly make him live up to this promise.

French or foe?

I started my French class a few weeks ago. I am in a class with some really fun people, and we have an awesome time. Some of us are newbies, some have been around the FSI block a few times, and many of us are headed towards West Africa.

For our first full week of French, we were told we would focus on health, and we should learn as much pertinent vocabulary as possible. The professor asked for examples.
"HIV," said one student.
"Hospital," shouted another.
"...And one that will be très important for us," I added. "Stool sample!"
"Ugh!" the student to my right said with a groan. "We just ate lunch! That's gross!"
The classroom fell silent as we all looked at him, amused and stifling our laughter.
"Tell me again where you think you're going..." I began.
"Dude, you're going to poop your pants within a week of getting to your post, guaranteed!" chimed in another classmate.
The look of horror and disgust that washed over the face of our disenchanted classmate made all of us howl with laughter. To his chagrin, we decided then and there that we would refer to him from now on as "Poopy Pants."

Unfortunately, Poopy Pants was not alone in eliciting uncomfortable laughter during our class. In an unfortunate demonstration of my feeble attempts at French pronunciation, I would soon inadvertently introduce my class to several inappropriate words.

The first incident occurred when I misspelled a common word while trying to explain something to my class. I was confident that I was spelling it the correct way, and asked my instructor to write it on the board to assess my pronunciation. He resisted and tried to change my spelling several times, before giving in to my insistence and writing it on the board. Proud of my obvious linguistic progress, I emphatically explained the definition of the word and the pronunciation (the way I understood them) to the class.

He erased it dramatically, said "non!," and would not discuss it further.

Remember when your parents used to say "end of discussion," when you were old enough to understand that you had apparently crossed the line, but still too young to know exactly why? That's how I felt. I knew my teacher wasn't mad, he was just disappointed in me. And the shame that accompanied that disappointment was so great, I shut up for the remainder of class and hung my head while recalling memories of having to sit at home, grounded, while all my friends were hanging out without me. Thanks a lot, mom.

Of course, after class we all immediately rushed to pull out our dictionaries. We turned to the correct page and found... "boobies." Yes. "Slang for breasts." In our first full week of French, I had taught my entire class of diplomatic professionals how to say "boobies."  Hi five, guys!

The second incident was my introduction of a verb that roughly translates as "to benefit," which I came across in an article about malaria. Apparently, this verb has many uses, and some of them are graphically sexual. I found this out by saying the word in a very loud manner while practicing pronunciation with Mr. Kate in a restaurant that many FSO's frequent for lunch. After being on the receiving end of several uncomfortable glances, we looked up the word in my online dictionary and were astonished to learn that "benefit" was far from the only definition of this seemingly innocuous word. Thus, we assumed the glances in our direction were solely the result of our impressive mastery of the French language.

As we were reviewing the same article in class, I emphasized that there were several X-rated ways to use this verb and to make sure you were using it in the appropriate manner, lest you receive dirty stares in a restaurant. But I told everyone they would have to look up the specifics themselves, because I wasn't going to be the cause of another boobie incident. The teacher looked at me with a grimace and shook his head in what I can only guess was an attempt to convey his disapproval. Nevertheless, I suspect he was at least somewhat relieved that I had not involved him by asking him to write it on the board this time. You're welcome, Monsieur le professeur. You're welcome.

A few days later, our professor asked us to write and bring in sentences for the class. Most of us had simple sentences with simplistic translations along the lines of the following:

Hello, my name is Kate.
I wake up, shower, and dress myself in the morning.
I have two naughty dogs. 

Poopy Pants was having a hard time coming up with original ideas, but happened to be listening to the radio while doing his homework. His sentences ended up like this:

Hello. I just met you.
And this is crazy.
But here is my number.
So call me maybe. 

Our French teacher had no idea what was going on, but it was certainly the highlight of our day. In reward for his hilariousness, we allowed Poopy Pants to pick a different nickname- one he didn't hate quite so much... as long as he promised to keep using song lyrics for his sentences.

So far "Scooter" has performed spectacularly (sometimes with the assistance of some superb suggestions from our other classmates). Thus far, we've been treated to several fantastic sentences such as:


I wear my sunglasses at night.
I have 99 problems, but a female dog is not one. 
The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire.
Apple bottom jeans, boots with the fur. 

Unfortunately, despite his general lack of familiarity with bad song lyrics, it appears our teacher might be starting to catch on.... What is "le jean de pomme derriere"?

DodgeBALLS

"Let's join a dodge ball team," Mr. Kate suggested. "It'll be fun," he said.

I am not known as well for my athletic skills as I am for my many other amazing talents, but Mr. Kate tried to coerce me by telling me how wonderful, versatile and naturally athletic I am. After which he compared a dodge ball game to a game that my siblings and I might play together. I have to admit, between the compliments and the fact that he thought that my siblings and I ever engaged in any physical activity other than beating the crap out of each other, I was flattered.

When we arrived, a woman in front of us with a broken hand was signing in and explaining to the lady behind the desk that she broke her hand at the last dodge ball game.
They laughed.
I looked at Mr. Kate. He winced and glanced away, avoiding my glare.

Seconds later, a boy walked into the room from the gym where a different dodge ball game was currently taking place. He walked up to the lady behind the desk.
"Mom!" He exclaimed, interrupting the laughter over the the broken hand.
"Yes?"
"Daammmn! Those white dudes are throwing those balls HARRRD!"
As she scolded him for swearing, I turned around and darted for the front door. Mr. Kate grabbed me at the last second and pulled me back in, insisting that everything would be fine. "And besides," he said, "I've already paid for this."
"You PAID for this? You PAID to be decapitated by balls thrown by some crazy dudes?!? Have you forgotten that we share a bank account??!!"


As I laid into him, explaining that now I get to buy the dogs some dog costumes without consulting him the next time the urge strikes me, our teammates approached, handed me a shirt, game me a pat on the back and a high five and, moments later, I found myself in a dark, scary little gymnasium, filled with large, full-grown men who were using ball-throwing as an anger management outlet. Then the fun began.

That's me at the left edge of the photo. The pigeon-toed one.

Moments after this picture was taken, I was slammed in the stomach with a speeding ball, at which point my slightly raised pigeon toe caught on the back of my grounded foot, causing me to face plant into the floor. Yes, I tripped over my own pigeon-toed foot.

I became the "back-up" player shortly thereafter. Weird?

So, yeah, I'll definitely get MVP.

On the other hand, it turns out I'm pretty good at playing flip cup after the games, and I was proud to lead my team to our first victory of the evening. Redemption.

Hairy Houdinis

So, what are dogs scared of? Any responsible dog owner can tell you: loud, abnormal, shocking things such as thunder, fireworks, or the K-Fed wannabe who rolls down all his windows and bumps gangsta rap in the parking lot below our apartment on Saturdays. Therefore, good dog parents wouldn't normally leave their doggy offspring alone at home on a night full of loud scary things... Like perhaps, the 4th of July?  

But Mr. Kate was hungry that night, and insisted we walk to dinner. Despite my best arguments, pleas, and threats to call doggy protection services, we drew the shades and turned on the TV to shield the dogs from the horrifyingly-loud explosions of light & color that, inevitably, would soon fill the night sky.

About a mile into our walk, as I was guilt-tripping and lecturing Mr. Kate about the responsibilities of dog parenthood, we stopped for a sweet moment on an overpass to watch the grand finale of the DC fireworks show explode above the traffic on the interstate. Suddenly, Mr. Kate's cell phone started ringing incessantly. After ignoring the first few calls from the unknown caller, he answered. A frantic caller was on the line, insisting we return home immediately-- our dogs had somehow escaped and were roaming the halls of our apartment complex.

Mr. Kate looked at me, wide-eyed, and said, "What are we going to do?"

I looked up at him, gave him a kiss, and wished him a wonderful run home: "Told you so."

Mr Kate found the dogs in the lobby of our floor, waiting for the mysterious electric doors of the elevator to open, so they could walk in and be magically transported to the ground floor. During their adventures through the hallway they apparently had garnered some attention from the neighbors, by wagging their tails next to front doors, making a knocking sound. Some neighbors answered their doors and came out to pet them, and at least one was conspicuously frozen in fear, hiding in the stairwells with her chihuahuas.

When I got home, I asked Mr. Kate how he thought they had opened the door. He was sure that we (I) hadn't shut the door all the way, because they were clearly not smart enough to figure out how to open the front door. Silly Mr. Kate.

The next three nights, our dogs got out. Each night we received frantic calls, and each night we had to apologize profusely to multiple terrified chihuahua ladies.

Me: "Too dumb, huh?"

Mr. Kate: "Well, there must be some explanation. Maybe something is wrong with the door. Maybe maintenance came by and accidentally left it ajar.  Maybe..."

Me: "Maybe now is when you should stop talking."

Mr. Kate had to admit it. Our (gifted) dogs knew how to open the front door. He also had to admit how awesome and smart I am.

To fix the problem, we built a barricade of chairs in front of the door when we left the next morning. This process took a good 15 minutes, with us (me) lying in the floor of the hallway, reaching our (my) hands through the slightly cracked door to pull all four chairs as flush with the front door as possible.

Wait, Mom! You're blocking the door! How will we get out?

That day, we made it until about noon before receiving a phone call.

That's how. 

Next, we took the doorknob off of the bedroom door and turned it around so that it could be locked from the outside. The dogs would just have to stay in the bedroom while we were out. We figured this plan was foolproof, at least until the next time my family visits and we all start locking each other in the bedroom.

Alas, our dogs were not to be outsmarted. And we were not to go unpunished.

What?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen: for their final magic doggy trick, they made the carpet disappear!

Maybe we can sell them to the circus?

Urine for a treat

First things first. M is boring. The name, not the man (most of the time). M lacks depth, character and creativity, and I consider it an oversight on my part that I even started referring to him in that way. From now on, I will refer to him as "Mr. Kate," a much more accurate title. I on the other hand, will dispense with such formalities and remain, simply, Kate.

This weekend the temperature in DC was about 106, with about a million percent humidity, so Mr. Kate and I decided to head out of town for the weekend and play in Shenandoah National Park, where it was a little cooler.

Saturday morning, we started the day by driving along the breathtakingly beautiful Skyline Drive. Mr. Kate was driving, I was reclined with my feet and hand hanging just outside of the open window, and slobber was splashing around and along the back of the car as the dogs' tongues were blown around by the rush of the cool mountain air pouring into the car.

Suddenly something smacked the bottom of the toes on my right foot. I immediately thought of the time the vet told me not to let the dogs stick their heads out the window, so they wouldn't get hit in the eye with a bug and go blind. Yeah, right, like that happens. But it was a big bug that hit me, and maybe I was beginning to see his point. As I reached to pull the bug out from behind my toes, my entire foot started pulsating with pain. I panicked. I grabbed my foot and pulled it into the car, screaming. Mr. Kate had no idea what was going on, and I did not have the willpower or motivation to stop screaming, so upon his third inquiry I thrust my foot in his face to help him understand my predicament.

"Well, flick it off!" he yelled. I stayed there, screaming and staring at him, frozen in fear. Why would a bug hurt so bad? Something was wrong. I was dying. It was a death bug.

"I can't do anything, I'm driving!" he yelled as we rounded another turn and the dogs started to try and climb in the front seat, since there was obviously a lot of fun and excitement happening up there.

"I can't either!" I managed to squeak out, in what I was sure was my last breath with a functional foot.

Then, while driving, my wonderful husband reached over, pushed the dogs out of the way and flicked the bug of death through my toes, freeing it from my contracted, pedial grasp.

We both exhaled, Mr. Kate resumed his grasp of the steering wheel and the dogs returned to the back of the car and into their slobber-spraying positions. As I started to express my deep love for my husband, my life and my foot, the top of my toes started to melt with pain. The insect of terror had made it through my toes, onto the top of my foot. Again, I began to scream. Surely this bug had given me toe ebola. It was spreading fast- and it HURT. This time Mr. Kate wasted no time, he leaned over and started slapping my foot like a sorority girl in a cat fight. You go girlfriend.

All of a sudden it was done. The insect was gone. Mr. Kate made a remark about how the perpetrator was probably just a deer fly as he pulled off to the side of the road and I pretended not to hear him. As he came to a stop, I opened the door, rolled out of the car and lay on the ground holding my foot in the air while groaning in pain. Mr. Kate called it dramatic. I called it necessary.

We are in a fight, wasp.

Mr. Kate retrieved the arthropod of destruction from the car floor. It was a yellow jacket wasp. It had stung me four times all together. I remained on the ground writhing in pain (still necessary), hoping the gods of wasp venom might have some pity on me soon.

Mr. Kate went to the car and sacrificed the last of his Mountain Dew to give me some ice. For those of you who know Mr. Kate, you know that that is true love. He started mumbling to himself about home remedies from when he was a kid. Suddenly he stopped. "If we put some meat tenderizer on it, it'll take the sting away!" he exclaimed, brilliantly.

"Okay, gimme some," I mumbled.

"Oh, I don't have any," he promptly replied.

"I know we don't, Mr. Kate! We are vegetarians in the middle of a national park! Why the hell would we have meat tenderizer?!"

He looked away, realizing that had not been his finest idea. 

We sat in silence, interjected by an occasional whimper from me, while I iced my foot.

"You know how urine helps jellyfish stings?" I began. "What if you peed on my foot?"

"I'm not sure if that will help, and why wouldn't you just pee on your own foot?" Mr. Kate responded.

"Because it's physics, Mr. Kate! I can't pee on my own foot! And you wouldn't let me buy a Go Girl the last time I saw them at REI, which would have completely facilitated the my-own-urine-on-my-own-foot situation. This is your fault. So start peeing."

Who wouldn't want this?

"There is something wrong with you. Are you serious? Do you actually want me to pee on your foot? You're kidding, right?"

"Yeah, I'm kidding. That'd be gross. Ew." But I wasn't kidding. I wanted some pee on my foot. Stat. For reals. Anything to help. It hurt that bad. 

We sat there in silence while I iced my foot a while longer. Eventually, Mr. Kate wandered off into the woods to pee. I wanted to follow him and plead with him, "Please pee on my foot! I'll do anything! Just a little bit, I'll never ask again!" But that would've been awkward.

State of Emergency

When we woke up this Saturday morning, we woke up without power. So we lazed around, waiting for the power to come back on, not thinking much of it. Finally, in the afternoon we decided we should probably get out of the house and go see a movie and grab some food, since I guess the power's not coming back on for a little while. Also, the internet was out so I couldn't Facebook and M couldn't read political-junkie stuff, so we were bored.

When we walked outside, we were amazed at what had happened due to the storm the night before. Trees, phone lines and power lines were down all over the place. Not a single stop light was working. We decided we should drive to the surrounding areas and see if everywhere was hit as badly as we had been by the storm.

Oh, just a downed power line. No big. 

Remember when I told you that traffic was bad in DC? Well, traffic without stoplights and a bunch of panicked jerks is even worse. People were basically running over each other to get in line at the gas station and to try and get to grocery stores (which were all closed). The single open restaurant, a McDonald's, had a line of cars backed up a half a mile and a crowd of people falling out the door, trying desperately to get as much high-fructose-filled, artery-clogging food as they could during this time of turmoil. Priorities.

All of a sudden I got panicked. Why is everyone freaking out? Why is the gas line so long? Its actually the end of the world, isn't it? Thank god I bought all that food! Where can we get some water? We need to get some gas and a generator STAT! 

I didn't have to say anything. M just looked at me, saw my panicked face and my mind going a million miles a minute and said: "Stop."  I couldn't help but rub it in. "I TOLD you so!! Now you can never, ever, EVER get mad again about the amount of money I spent on our end-of-the-world kit! I saved our LIVES!!"

He turned on the radio and listened to the updates as I sent this email to my parents.

Dear Mom and Dad, 

There was a really big storm and DC is in shambles. This is why you can't get in touch with us. 
Basically, I think its the end of the world. It should be coming your way soon. Prepare yourselves. 
I love you all. Remember us fondly.

The radio confirmed my worst fears. The Governor of VA had declared a State of Emergency.* We were all doomed. I started taking a mental inventory of everything in our apartment, and how long we would last. Meanwhile, M was sure that if we kept driving, we would find somewhere with electricity and a movie theater. Movie popcorn is always M's priority.

No movie popcorn for M!

Because everyone but M was aware of the severity of upcoming apocalypse, all the movie theaters and restaurants were closed. So we went home and did what any normal person would do when faced with certain doom: we sat on the porch, ate PB&J's and drank.

* Apparently, I was wrong and state of emergency does not mean we are going to die. I had no idea.