A trip to Northport was on my schedule today.
But we never got there.
How come?
I didn't hear my alarm clock this morning.
How come?
Because for the first night IN A WEEK, I was able to sleep.
It was divine!
At no point last evening did I wake up clammy and sweaty. Nor did I have to move my pillows from the head of the bed to the foot of the bed in order to capture just one. more. iota of fan air. I didn't wake up when, during the deepest of his sleep, Stephen flings his arm around me, adding another layer of unwanted covering, and unwanted, sweaty, body heat.
In fact, the ONLY reason I woke up when I did this morning was because thought I was dreaming about running water.
Which made me have to get up to go to the bathroom.
I really wish I had been dreaming about running water.
I woke up to running water in my room, and Tikka, half on the bed, pawing at me.
Tikka is a 13 year old Belgian shepherd with hip and joint issues.
Her even getting herself halfway on the bed means something is terribly wrong.
Was she ever right about that.
Frankie, for all is foibles, is very fussy about hygeine and toileting. He NEVER pees where you can see him. . .he always heads for bushes, trees, the garden, anything that will provide him with cover.
Tikka pees and poops whereever she bloody well wants to. And the closer to the house, the happier she is.
She is the dog who poops in the middle of the driveway, trail, street, etc. As soon as she has had a bath, she goes outside and poops in the middle of the Queen street sidewalk.
I don't know how many times she has plunked her butt downwards, and taken a dump where any and all can see.
Frankie poops with his back to you, because he doesn't want to look in your eyes when he is busy with number 2.
And I have never encountered a dog who loves to lick himself as much as Frankie.
Normally, we sleep with a fan on. . .all year round. I can't stand silence. It's so loud that it keeps me awake.
While on our sort-of vacation this summer, in the "ecclectic farmhouse from hell", we had neglected to bring a fan.
Every single night, I laid awake listening to Stephen's baritone snoring.
And the dogs licking themselves.
Loudly.
Continuously.
All. Night. Long.
It was to the point of being pornographic.
Frankie also has a bladder the size of a helium balloon. He loves water. All the time.
If you forget to put the toilet seat down, he drinks the toilet water until it's gone.
Cracking an ice cube tray results in him running at you like a ravished lion at a obese gazelle.
And we already know how much he loves sea water.
The water running in my room this morning was Frankie, at his wits end and ready to burst, peeing.
There was nothing to do but clean it up. Three bathtowels and a bucket of hot, soapy water later, the river of pee was no more.
And we couldn't even get upset with Frankie. He has never peed in the house before. It was our fault.
We overslept.
He waited as long as he could.
Next purchase: an alarm clock that sounds like a gong.
As the three hour, one-way, trip to Northport was no longer a possibility, Stephen and I had to come up with an alternate plan.
We decided on the Maliseet Trail.
If you've never been, I strongly suggest you go.
Drive towards Woodstock.
Get off at the Charlie Lake Road exit.
At the end of the exit, turn left.
Keep going until you see the sign for the Maliseet Trail.
It's worth the drive, believe me.
The day was gorgeous. Hurricane Earl has passed and the sky was a glorious blue, with white pillowy clouds. The breeze outside beckoned up, teasing us, tempting us to be outside after the week of heat-wave induced hell we have endured.
Tikka and Frankie know immediately that we are getting ready to go somewhere, and that they are coming with us.
We have to spell in front of them: "f-a-r-m", "M-a-c-t-a-q-u-a-c", "c-a-r", "w-a-l-k."
And even the spelling is becoming problematic.
If I put on a pair of white socks, they know sneakers are coming, and that means they are going somewhere.
Going to the front door and looking at the dog leashes are enough to wreak havoc on the hallway: running, jumping, yipping, repeated turning around in circles.
You'd think they were imprisoned, never let out, and deprived of vitamin D.
Once we managed to get them into the back of our Ford Focus station wagon, we were off.
After Stephen walked Frankie around the house several times, waiting for a deposit.
When Frankie gets really, really excited about going somewhere, he loses control of his bowels.
And this has happened more than once.
The result: shit all over the back of the car, and a stench that simultaneouly curls your hair while it falls out, turns the air in the car a baby-shit green and automatically causes the air bags and in-car oxygen masks to deploy.
Putrid.
So, dogs in the car, seatbelts on, cell phone charged, water, sneakers and two shit-empty doggies, we were finally ready to go.
The drive was lovely. Windows partially down, the dogs were able to stick their snouts out of the dog gate enough to take in the fresh air.
We were not the only ones who suffered through last week's heat wave from hell.
Tikka is very, very furry, with long hair.
We shaved her once and she was so embarrased she refused to go outside for a month, unless she was under the cover of darkness.
She is bred for winter climates, and the heat makes her absolutely miserable.
Consequently the dogs didn't get out as much last week as they normally do, and they really needed a long walk.
As soon as we turned off the highway, they started, meaning, they yipped, paced back and forth in the car, whined, chewed on one another.
They didn't know where we were going, but it was somewhere good.
And for the most part it was.
However, because this little adventure involved me and Stephen, it was already guaranteed that there were going to be glitches.
As soon as we got to the designated parking area, we knew we were in trouble.
There were already 10 cars in the parking area. Its a small parking area. 10 cars means its almost full.
The average car can hold 5 people, and those gargantuan SUVs can hold at least 50 people, so our dream of a leisurely stroll up the trail and to the waterfall. . .
Did I forget to mention the waterfall????
. . . was shattered.
But, we forged on. I didn't drive almost an hour outside of Fredericton to be put off by a few hundred people.
The issue: Frankie.
Frankie has issues. He isn't very trusting, and he reacts to everything with fear-induced aggression.
We wanted a dogs-running-off-the-leash-run-until-they-can-barely-make-it-back-to-the-car adventure.
We got an Oh-my-gawd-there-are-people-coming-hurry-up-and-leash-Frankie-and-hide-over-in-that-clearing adventure.
Every time we saw someone, or someones as was the case, we, meaning Stephen had to leash Frankie, who was already in his harness, and then walk to a clearing.
Some people just don't like to rendezvous with a fear-induced aggressive dog who, upon encountering people he doesn't know, begin barking, whining, lunging, straining against the harness to rid us of the evil that is surely coming towards us.
Imagine.
The entire first part of our walk involved me with the always-off-leash-pleasant-please-love-me-because-I-am-good-and-deserve-it Tikka, walking ahead, scouting for oncoming bipedal traffic.
And Stephen with the neurotic, fear embracing Frankie, ready to move off the trail at the mere hint that there was someone approaching us.
Kids, parents, young women and men holding hands, grandmothers with their grandchildren, a mini-terrier looking dog and a short black dog with a bottle-brush tail.
We encountered them all.
And each time, this scenario was played over and over again, like a scratch in a Lionel Richie LP:
Tikka with me. Stephen and Frankie hiding in the bushes. People seeing me and Tikka standing in the middle of the trail, wondering what was going on.
I realize, now, that I am going to have to t-shirts made for me, Stephen and the kids that say, on the front, the following:
"Ignore the man and puppy crouching in the bushes. Puppy-in-training. We got him at 3 months old. He was horribly abused until we got him. He is getting much better. Please don't take the lunging and the let-me-at-your-throat death stare personally. He is really very loving and affectionate."
And on the back:
"And the 13 year old dog beside the sweaty, overweight woman, is more than willing to take all the love, affection, praise and goodwishes you would have bestowed on the aforementioned puppy-in-training."
I would have saved myself a lot of talking.
And people wouldn't have looked at Stephen as if he was a sniper-in-training.
Luckily, because it took us so long to get to the waterfall part of the trail, most people had left, and the walk back to the car was event-free.
We must be thankful for small favours.
After getting the now tired but happy dogs into the car, we settled in for the drive home. I decided, as I am a responsible parent, to call home and see what was going on.
Upon opening my phone, I noted that I had two missed calls and one text message.
The message, from Meredyth read,
"Where are my keys???"
Mer went away for part of the weekend with her now boyfriend, who is also Keith's best friend, and I am going to now refer to him as Tim, because that's his name and its shorter, for typing purposes than, "Mer's now boyfriend who is also Keith's best friend."
I took her keys, because she is notorious for losing them while climbing around the innards of unfinished houses at one oclock in the morning.
Who KNEW what would happen if she took them on a fun filled let's-drink-and-not-eat weekend.
They'd probably be sitting at the bottom of the Saint John River.
So, I had them.
She gave them to me Friday evening, during my midnight run to Tim's to drop her off.
Call me a crazy, over-protective, smothering mother, but the idea of my almost 21 year old daughter walking to the Northside after dark does nothing for me.
And its a damn good thing I had them, because as we were pulling into the driveway of Tim's apartment complex, she asks me if I could stop at her apartment sometime this weekend because she forgot to lock her balcony's sliding screen door.
On the weekend we are expecting Hurricane Earl.
That's MY daughter.
So, Emily, who endured this joy-ride with me, and I stop at Mer's on the way back to our house.
Because Earl wasn't waiting until I woke up sometime in the morning.
Good thing we stopped when we did.
Mer is a great multi-tasker. She couldn't work in the sevice industry if she wasn't.
But, when she is getting all prettied up for a wild weekend with her boyfriend, her multi-tasking abilities tend to take a back seat to her gotta-rock-his-socks-off pre-meeting ablutions.
Translation: she left the screen door open, her bathroom fan running, her ceiling fan running, her table fan running, a light was on, and a candle was still burning from the unexpected power outage a few hours earlier.
I'm still in shock.
Who is this child?
Where did she come from?
Oh right, she's mine.
She arrived at our house upon her return from her wild and wacky imbibing weekend.
And the first thing she noticed was that we had gotten groceries.
She was hungry.
Keith stood in front of the entrance to our kitchen, blocking her path, yelling that she was a
mooch and leach and she has her own fridge so she can go eat at her house.
I called from the road. Invited her to stay for dinner.
This does make me wonder, however, how Pot Pookie would react if a stranger tried to eat from our fridge?
Title Lyric: Walking the Dog by the Rolling Stones
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