Guess Who's Not Coming to Dinner?

I would like to know why my husband, who simply could NOT wake up to the sound of crying babies, or a fire alarm (when I almost burned the house down boiling LICE combs), shoots out of bed at the earliest "glug glug" of a dog about to vomit. Then he engages in the quick and fruitless boxer-clad, skinny-legged dance of trying to shove a towel under the dog's mouth in the hopes of catching projectile vomit. Priorities, people, priorities.

I got to ponder this a lot this week because I failed on my job of keeping tabs on the dog this week. It's bitter cold out. We don't have a fenced in yard, which no one else in the family considers a problem. I put her out hoping she'd pee quickly while I sipped tea in the kitchen. Unfortunately, I forgot about her, and when she dragged her bloated-bellied self back into the house 45 minutes later she had found a vat of grease to consume. Because apparently some of our neighbors are running an Arby's out of their carport or something.

You may wonder how I know about the grease, but it became abundantly clear the first 8 times she threw up in the next 3 hours. As I cleaned and cursed, I marveled at how a dog could sense that our beloved but long-neglected cleaning lady had come back, for the first time in two months, that very morning. I had planned on basking in the joy of new-found cleanliness for another month or two, or at least until I could scrape up enough money for her to come back. By the time the first night of vomiting was over, Miss Carmen's clean house was no longer. I took daytime vomit duty, and Tom took the night shift.

Not to be outdone by Shadow the Retching Dog, a member of the local rodent population, driven indoors by the chilling breeze, decide to traipse through our kitchen junk drawer that very night. I'm not sure if he was too happy to find the rulers, lip gloss, safety pins, birthday party prizes and cell phone chargers, but hopefully the Juicy Fruit gum fortified him somewhat. Constant crapping must use up a lot of calories.

Two days later, the dog got into OUR trash, which was also my fault, although the neighbor boy who let her out by leaving our door open (in January!) seems somewhat culpable. This latest round of vomit yielded a 3 1/2 inch plastic needle. We are somewhat grateful she survived.

So while I'd like to say I've been crafting and decorating and generally making the world a more aesthetically pleasing place, I've been cleaning up mouse poop and vomit and watching a lot of late night tv.

And I'm guessing you won't be knocking on the door of Chez See anytime soon for a dinner invite.