* So, walking the dogs today, I met the doggy version of me.
She was perfectly loaf shaped, with a tiny head and tiny legs and a tiny tail, poking out of a body that was half as wide as it was round. In short, she was like a can of Crisco with appendages. Her muzzle was graying, her little tail was whipping around ecstatically, and she really wanted to be friends with Geoffie and couldn’t understand, “Why all the barking!”
And she was wearing a red acrylic sweater shot through with silver Christmas sparkles, for no other reason than she thought they were pretty.
I looked at the dog, utterly entranced, and told my friend over the phone about our red-sweater wearing little friend.
“Why don’t you take a picture?” she asked.
“Because I’m juggling the umbrella, the phone, the leashes and a poo bag,” I told her, trying really hard not to drop anything!
“Oh, yeah. No picture–the first thing going in the poo is the phone and that’s bad news.”
I love it when friends get me.
* Squish came home today completely enraptured. Her class had an “auction” and the kids got to use their “good behavior tickets” to buy stuff.
And what fun stuff!
It was a garage sale on the best sense of the word–an antique jewelry box, a picture of the ocean, a ceramic fish–lovely kitschy little gifts that kids could take home and look at and say, “I was a good kid–and look what I got!”
For a kid as good as Squish, her haul was quite impressive.
One of her items was a picture–and it’s exactly the same size as a picture we have at the end of our hallway. “Should I put it there?”
“Yeah, get some thumbtacks, go for it!”
So she did.
And I could hear her making noises from where I said–desperate little squeaks and pants, until I was like, “Uh, Squishy, everything okay down there?”
“Yeah,” she said, out of breath. “But I am SO SHORT.”
I admired her handiwork–picture in place! But I also admired her self-reliance and resourcefulness. She is short–for now. But her heart is as big as the world.
* So this week has been pretty busy, and one of the hardest parts has been Squish’s schedule. It’s been a nightmare because, FINALLY ZoomBoy is getting picked up at the same time she is–but THIS WEEK and this week only was conference week, and she was getting picked up three hours early.
It’s time consuming and exhausting and no–it doesn’t make it easy to get into a pattern at all for work.
Anyway, this afternoon I was happy. I could bring Squish home, take a nap, and go pick up ZoomBoy and I might finally feel like I was catching up.
It was a near thing, folks.
I crawled into bed at 1:25 and thought, “Hey, I can set the alarm for 2:45 and get a really decent nap.”
And I don’t know what made me do it, what made me think it, or what made my body do this, but at 2:00 sharp, I shot upright in bed and went, “OH FUCK IT’S THURSDAY!”
Because, as those of you who have kids in schools can attest, schools don’t get out at the same time all week anymore. Our district gets out about an hour and fifteen minutes early ON THURSDAY.
Oy.
But I got there and ZB only had to wait a little long–which was good, because he’d forgotten his phone.
And oh fuck it’s Thursday–the Thursday before Friday, the Friday before Thanksgiving break, when I’ve got a deadline again.
*yawn*
Night everybody!
