life

No, you can't watch television. No, you can't have the motorcycle bike. No you can't take that home with you. No, you can't stay up. No, I'm not getting up yet, go back to sleep. No, you can't have the Thing punching hands and smashing feet. Stop that. Don't pull on the dog like that. No, you can't have ice cream until you finish your sandwich. Put that down. Don't run at the pool. Don't dive into the pool. Don't step on my tomato plants. Please don't do that. That doesn't go there.

How do we grow up to be (mostly) normal people?

I remember when I was small and received a "No." when I asked to stay the night at a friend's house. Actually, I don't recall if I was staying at my cousin's for Christmas Eve or wanting to stay over at a fellow Brownie's house after a Girl Scout retreat. I do remember calling Mom on the "No," and answering, "You always say no, even when there's no reason."

I caught Mom off guard and she reversed her no into a yes.

Being with Sam these last few days, I have to admit the first word of most of my sentences is "No." Granted, I think some are perfectly legitimate noes: "No, you can't take my dog home with you." But some are either knee-jerk or for my convenience, not because I have any true valid reason to say no.

Are most parents this way?

At one point today, Sam pulled a deck of cards from under the coffee table and asked, "Can I have these?" For the last three days, "Can I have this?" has been a near-constant question from his mouth. If that kid received everything he asked for, he'd be a one-man landfill. I'm completely shocked at how unbelievably effective big media is at getting this small person to desire completely unneeded items.

See above reference to "No." associated with the Fantastic Four's Thing's Smashing Feet™.

So when Sam asked for the deck of cards, and I recalled the other 11 packs sitting in my office closet, well, that one was easy. "Sure!"

But, apparently not for Sam.

"Really?"

"Yes."

"I can have them?"

"Yes."

"To take home?"

"Yes."

"My home?"

"Yes."

Apparently I had said, "No." so many times he couldn't quite believe his ears.

Um, well, that was a little unexpected.

I wandered over to the Blogher Conference website and discovered my site is listed on the left hand side blogroll. The name for my blog is incorrect, but it's still listed.

Whoops.

For a site that tries to stay out of search engines, that link is money.

Darn it.

"Can we go to Walmart to look for a Big Wheel?"

"I don't go to Walmart."

Sam looks at me incredulously. "Why don't you go to Walmart?"

"Because Walmart contributes heavily to the destruction of the American manufacturing industry."

"Huh?"

"You know how Walmart always has 'the lowest prices'?"

He eyes me suspiciously.

"Yeah?"

"Well, they do that by forcing American manufacturers to provide them with lower prices that they "can pass along to the consumer," while still maintaining their own profits. The manufacturer is forced to cut costs to the point of profit loss for themselves, thereby then forcing them to look overseas for manufacturing, causing lost jobs and lower wages for Americans. WalMart also forces the manufacturers that stay with them to use non-standard accounting and inventory practices that they develop for their internal systems, causing the small manufacturer additional costs to comply with the behemoth's requests. And, they also fail to provide living wages, employee benefits or equal opportunity.

Oh, and the quality of merchandise is poor."

Long pause.

"I guess we'll have to go to the mall."

Good lord, what have I gotten myself into?

Okay, so, for the record, any woman that says she wants a child is clearly uninformed.

And any woman who claims to be informed and still wants a child is clearly insane.

Day two of Sam-a-rooni's visit has been progressing nominally okay. I did have to call Mom today, though, in order to get myself out of a jam with Sam that I had, well, in all honesty, gotten myself into in the first place.

This morning we made waffles for breakfast. When Sam woke up at 7:40 this morning (glory, hallelujah, he slept in past 6:30 am!), he leaned over to wake me up. How that kid slept through Bella's barking, Kris' tripping over the folding chairs in the hallway, my hushing the dogs, and my neighbors carousing outside his window, I'll never know.

We went to purchase buttermilk for the waffles at the Safeway.

Twice.

Turns out, Safeway's buttermilk is packaged in medium green packaging. The low-fat milk is also packaged in green, but a slightly lighter green. The Safeway employees have a habit of misplacing the low-fat milk with the buttermilk. Worse, they stack them on the buttermilk. So, when I find the buttermilk and reach for the one on top, I grab the mis-shelved low-fat milk. I've done this twice now, and it annoys me.

Time for a letter to Safeway and Lucerne.

Anyway, after going to Safeway twice, and finally stirring up the waffle batter and making waffles, we finally had breakfast.

While I was cleaning up after breakfast, I heard Sam ask, "What is she doing?"

Puzzled, I walked out to the living room from the kitchen to discover Annie humping Sam's leg.

Well, not really his leg, as Annie is almost as tall as Sam when she stands on her hind legs. I'd say more like, Annie was humping Sam's back.

Not a good sight.

After I knocked Annie off, and sent her to her crate, I had to explain to Sam the reason "Why was she doing that?"

Starting with the pack mentality (which I had explained earlier when Sam had asked why Annie and Bella were in the bed with Uncle Kris, and where did I sleep, and why were they in my bed (come to think of it, why are they in my bed?)), I explained pecking order and top-dog/bottom-dog and animal's desires to dominate each other. Then I explained that since Annie hadn't met him before, she wanted to make him the bottom dog by dominating him.

He seemed to understand, because later he made some comment about Annie being the bottom dog. He then commented, "I like Bella now."

Heh.