The one where our dog "allegedly" killed a chicken

 Last week I referenced a scandal involving our dog and a dead chicken. While there are some who know the story, there are many who don't. You'll realize very soon why I've never publicly blogged this story, but for some reason 2023 rolled around and I threw caution to the wind. 

The majority of you might laugh. A handful might not. Majority rules. 

A number of years ago, we pulled in our driveway after church to find one of our dogs laying in the front yard with the perfectly intact body of a dead chicken. The only people we knew with chickens lived across from us, which begged the never ending question- why did the chicken cross the road?

At first glance, one might automatically assume that our dog killed the chicken but I don't think she did, and if she did, it was an accident because she's motherly like that.

My theory remains that the chicken was crossing the road (the world has never figured out why) and a semi sped by and launched the chicken into our yard where it died on impact. 

Regardless of how it died, if my dog was craving chicken, she would've been eating the freakin' chicken. But she wasn't. She was just laying beside it. Until like, help arrived or something. 

Anyway, none of that is even the point of the story. The point of the story comes when Ron decided it'd be best for everyone if he quietly disposed of the chicken's body and be done with it.

He'd just dropped the chicken into a trash bag when the neighbor headed our way.

Why did the chicken's owner cross the road?

I think we all know the answer to that one.

She asked Ron, "Have you seen any of our chickens?"

Ron, having just returned from CHURCH and holding in his hand a bag containing one of her chickens answered "No. Why?"

She said, "They seem to be disappearing."

Ron- "Probably coyotes."

Ron's not great at giving answers on the fly. Everyone knows a real coyote would've eaten it. Only Wile E Coyote would be going around planting evidence. This ain't a Looney Tunes episode.

Then she asked it. The question that brought her across the road. Almost like she'd seen what he did or something..."What's in the bag?"

Ron stood facing our neighbor, holding the evidence in his hand, backed into a corner with the truth being his only way out. With no hesitation, he looked her straight in the eye and answered..."A cat."

Aaaand this just became a Looney Tunes episode.

They stood staring at each other until she reached out and took the bag out of his hands.

Dude. Seriously?

For 1, you just told a major lie about what was in the bag you were holding.

For 2, if she reaches for that bag, she's probably gonna look inside.

You didn't even put up a fight? Ask to see a warrant? Nothin'?

As expected, she opened the bag and yelled "That's my chicken!" then turned on her heel and walked her chicken back across the road.

So a few years later when I saw her standing in our driveway talking to Ron, I quickly walked outside and super casual like asked, "What's wrong?"

She asked, "Have you seen our cat?"

A fair question. I glanced over at Ron to make sure he wasn't standing there holding a bag.

The one where we accidentally stole a dog

We have a country block that we frequently walk. It mainly consists of cornfields with the occasional house along our route. Throughout the years, we've encountered many farm dogs on our walks. Some bark at us until we're past their property and others come out for visits and belly rubs and occasionally stick with us until the edge of their property and then they stroll back to their house. 

What we've never had happen, is a dog come out to greet us and then refuse to leave us. Until Sunday.

It takes us roughly an hour and a half to walk our block and we had exactly 2 hours before we needed to pick Caymen up for work, so we decided to go for our walk. 

At the halfway point, we passed a house with an old friendly dog that

we know who came out to greet us and he brought a friend. A younger playful dog we'd never met before. (Emoji to protect his anonymity.) So Ron did his dodge and weave game that all dogs love and then we tried to leave. Except this dog decided that he'd come too and no amount of persuasion was convincing him to stay.

Time was ticking, so I finally walked up to the house and knocked but no one was home. So what do we do now? We could maybe see if the door's unlocked and put him inside? Worst case scenario, he trashes their house. Nah. Too risky in this world of cameras. So with cameras in mind, Ron did hand gestures to the dog making it very clear that we're not trying to take your dog, but we've got a daughter to pick up from work, so the real worst case scenario is that your new dog might be coming with us and we're all just gonna have to be ok with that. I mean, we'll bring him back. We don't actually want your dog.

So "Dog" came with us. (We had to call him something and it was short notice.)

About a half mile down the road, we passed a house with goats and Dog ran up and down their fence wreaking absolute havoc on them. I'm yelling "DOG! DOG! NAUGHTY DOG" while Ron's behind me making wheezing noises. I turned around and yelled "What the hell are you doing?" He calmly replied, "I'm trying to whistle. My mouth is dry."

So if these people are home, they're seeing their goats being terrorized by what appears to be our dog, who we apparently named DOG, while my husband stands in the middle of the road panting like he's in labor.

Well. There's a worst case scenario we didn't think of. 

We decided to keep walking and Dog eventually lost interest in the goats and began chasing after us. 

As we approached the next house, I saw the chickens. Roaming freely around their front yard.

You've got to be kidding me. These worst case scenarios are escalating.

We already have a dog and a dead chicken scandal in our past, but that's a story for another day.

Time was seriously ticking and we officially didn't have time for this. We decided I would continue home by myself to get the van and Ron would go back and wait in Dog's yard until I picked him up. At this point, I'd have to jog the rest of the way home in order to pick Caymen up in time. 

That's when I got a text from Caymen. "Good news, I'm getting off early."

No offense Caymen, but that's literally the worst of the cases of scenarios of all of our worst case scenarios to this point.

And then I remembered that Aubrey and Nick live nearby, so I frantically called her and filled her in with a flurry of words about Dog, goats, chickens, and Caymen, to which Nick replied "This could seriously only happen to you guys." Not helpful, Nick. Not.Helpful.

When she told me they were on their way home and only a few minutes away from where we were, I gave her directions to Dog's house and then I went back to walking toward home. 

In the meantime, a lady who noticed Ron and Dog walking down the road stopped her car and asked if he needed help. He briefly explained what was happening and she generously handed him a piece of pizza out of the box she was bringing home for dinner...presumably to help distract the dog into staying in his yard, but I can't imagine a scenario where Ron would ever willingly hand over an entire piece of pizza to a dog. 

Thankfully Aubrey swooped in and saved the day. She picked up her dad, then caught up and dropped him back off with me before going to pick Caymen up from work for us. Ron told me how Dog chased after them as they pulled away. 

Ok. So killing Dog in front of his house would legit be the worst case scenario.

Good thing that didn't happen either. 

My therapist says I "castastrophize." Whatever.

Anyway, we can no longer take that walking route, for obvious reasons. But according to this Facebook post in our neighborhood watch group I saw yesterday, it sounds like Dog is keeping himself pretty busy. 

Probably out looking for the cool guy he split a piece of pizza with in his front yard.

 

The one where Zac brought smelling salts into the restaurant

Let me tell you a common occurrence that happens in our family. We plan a day out on the boat with 3 dogs and an expectation to dock at one of the many restaurants around the lake and grabbing some takeout to eat on the boat. Then evening rolls around and we start frantically searching for a freaking restaurant with a kitchen that's still open while the babies meltdown, the adults get hangry (and maybe a little mean) and one finally runs inside a restaurant to pee and comes back with 3 penis coladas from the bar that was mercifully still serving drinks.

1. Believe it or not that wasn't me. (This time)

2. Also that wasn't a typo up there, if you happened to catch it. It took exactly one time for Scarlet to accidentally call a Pena Colada "penis colada" for our family to start calling it penis colada forever.

We finally gave up and returned to our dock to drive cars to a Mexican Restaurant that was smart enough to stay open till 8pm on Memorial Day weekend, because they know the difference between right and wrong.

Unlike us, who showed up at a restaurant with smelling salts and 3 dogs who ended up drinking my penis colada and trashing our van while we ate.

So here's the breakdown of how such a thing even happened. 

(The salts, not the drunk German Shepherds.)

Zac gets sleepy at work so he bought himself a bag of "The world's strongest smelling salts", which seemed the better solution over say, going to bed earlier at night or something. He told Ron about the smelling salts he had in his car and Ron told him to go get them.

I didn't hear any of this conversation because Barbara, Aubrey, and I were huddled over my cell phone listening to Kearstin fill us in on how she spent her weekend. That's important to note because I never would've allowed the smelling salts to enter the scene or at the very least would've put up an argument on behalf of common sense.

But instead, I heard a bunch of gasping and laughing, so I turned and came face to face with an open container of the strongest smelling salts known to man and for one split second saw Jesus before the taste of cat piss hit the back of my throat and I bolted from the table just in time to violently vomit in the bathroom. The sound everyone hopes to hear while they're eating in a restaurant, I'm sure.

I returned to our table too livid to even speak. 

If the waiter didn't hate us yet, after dinner Zac took Scarlet to the bathroom and sealed the deal. 

You see, the door to the women's bathroom swings open super easy and that's the hallway leading to the kitchen. Zac was waiting for her out in the hall, noticed our waiter coming from the kitchen and made eye contact with him right before Scarlet burst out of the bathroom and nailed our waiter straight in the face with the door. Zac heard the smack and him yell "Jesus Christ!"

That makes 2 Jesus sightings.

Hold on buddy, we got smelling salts.

'The one where...' Wednesdays

You might have noticed I've taken a bit of a hiatus from writing. Never mind, you probably haven't noticed. Let me change that. I notice I've taken a hiatus from writing and I don't like it.

Long story short: I bought a Younique makeup starter kit in January with the intention of using Facebook Lives to compare it with drugstore makeup to prove that drugstore makeup is just as good, ended up discovering that some of the drugstore stuff I've always used wasn't even close to as good, accidentally became a Younique "Affiliate" (a wearer of their products, not to be confused with an actual seller of their products), started using my Facebook Lives to promote local women in business, began a daily regimen of collagen shots, and now my nails are so freakin' long I can barely type and it's taken me 10 minutes to type these 2 paragraphs because every time I try to type the letter O, I hit the number 9, and I haven't scheduled my manicurist to trim these monsters yet. 

Yes, that is the short version for those of you whose heads are spinning.

But seriously, I'm having fun but also miss the therapy of writing. It's not for lack of material, lest you think my family started acting all normal or anything. Crazy things happen, I have every intention of blogging it, then time gets away, then more crazy hits, and suddenly I think if I blogged all that, people are gonna get super annoyed with a 50,000 word entry and at what point is that considered a book? I tend to have long blog entries anyway, and someone once asked in a comment if I get paid per word. Let me clear something up for everyone. On this particular platform, I don't get paid anything, so every snarky descriptive word I use is like my complimentary gift to you. You're welcome.

Anyhoo. A few nights ago, I had an idea that might solve my writing rut dilemma. Beginning next week, I won't have any of my grand babies here on Tuesdays and I'm going to start devoting that day to writing, like the way it was when writing was my actual job. I need to refocus my discipline in this area and having a day set aside for it should help hold me accountable. Part of that day's writing will be a short story blog entry to post the following day. Those entries won't be an entire day's worth of crazy, but rather just one piece of crazy at a time. That should make for an easy read for you, as well as a less overwhelming writing project for me. 

You know how the Friends episodes were all titled "The one where...(fill in the blank)?" That's what I've decided to try here and see how it goes. 

So today is the official kick-off to 'The one where...' Wednesdays.

I'm excited, first and foremost because the entire purpose of this blog was to document our crazy family for our crazy family. It's so that our kids, grandkids, and great grandkids have something to look back on and remember, learn from, and laugh about someday. I don't want them to get to 2023 and be like, "So, what...the end? Did she keel over? Death by collagen shots?" 

I never imagined this blog would attract the following it has over the years and I really do appreciate each and every one of you who takes the time to read it, comment your support, and especially all the times I hear "I needed this laugh today." Because that is a secondary purpose of this blog. 

I want to make you laugh. I want to lighten your day. I want to give you a few minutes of distraction from something you might be going through. I want to transparently share the stuff that goes on around here- the good, the bad, the hard, the crazy, and show you how it can all be redeemed and how most of it can (and should) be laughed about if you put the 'write' twist on it. 

That's what I'm here for.

So check back next week to read: The one where...Zac brought smelling salts into a Mexican Restaurant.

Yeah. You read that right.