Author: Big Mama

You know that expression “death by a thousand cuts”? Well, I’ll tell you what’s happening here. Death by a thousand puppy bites.

They just come at you with their mouth wide open like a couple of piranhas except not as gentle. It’s a good thing they’re cute because I’m worried my arms and fingers will never be the same.

So this past Thursday was the long-anticipated 5th grade talent show. And by last Monday I had never been so ready for something to be over. There was second-guessing about their routine, the costumes, and complaints that they weren’t allowed to throw beach balls out into the audience as planned. I finally had to shut it down with the ultimate mom statement, “You only get ONE fifth grade talent show. You can either enjoy it or spend your time complaining about things you can’t change.”

And so she chose to enjoy it. Which was the choice that allowed her to have the most fun and allowed me to keep the little of my sanity that was left at the end of May.

They did a great job and the glow suits were a big hit, especially with a big group of first and second graders sitting in front of me who “ooohed” and “aahhed” when the girls came on stage like it was Disney on Ice.

But an unexpected thing happened to me in the midst of the show. A precious girl who I don’t even know sang the song “Brave” while playing the guitar and I totally had to fight back the ugly cry. It just hit me all of a sudden how much this group of kids has grown over the last five years of elementary school and how brave they are to put themselves out there in front of parents and peers, but I was also so moved by the audience who was encouraging and supportive and cheered wildly for every single act. It was just the pure sweetness of elementary school in that moment and it made me realize how much I’m going to miss it.

Okay. Dry up the tears, Francis. This doesn’t bode well for the actual 5th grade graduation ceremony that will be held this Thursday.

On Friday morning Gulley and I ventured out for a last girls’ shopping trip before the kids are out of school. Our goal was purely accessories. I needed a new pair of sunglasses and Gulley was on the search for a few good necklaces and earrings. I’m happy to report that we both had success in our respective missions.

We’d originally toyed with the idea of driving to Houston to go the Texas A&M vs. Texas baseball regional game, but decided it probably wasn’t the smartest choice in light of all we have going on here. This shows how much we’ve matured over the years because there was a day back in college when we both dropped out of summer school to go watch the Aggies in Omaha at the College World Series. And maybe forgot to tell our parents until after the fact.

But then the Aggies ended up losing and you could almost feel how hot it was at the game even through the T.V. I would guess the humidity was hovering somewhere in the neighborhood of 148%. And someone remarked on Twitter that the snowcone line ended somewhere in Humble, TX. So we were actually glad that we chose to shop and watch the game from our air-conditioned living rooms instead.

Friday night we just hung out at home and then Caroline had a friend over all day on Saturday. I took the girls to the pool and spent a little time in the sun in an attempt to get some color before I had to give in and move to the shade. It’s too bad I wasn’t that smart and/or heat intolerant when I was a teenager because I could save a lot of money on anti-aging creams now.

Speaking of beauty products, I talked Gulley into buying some Bumble & Bumble Surf Spray for her hair while we were out shopping. I have some and love the texture and wave it gives my hair on days when I don’t want to curl it, but Gulley texted me a selfie on Saturday morning and said her hair looked like she’d been at a fraternity party the night before.

So maybe it doesn’t work for everyone.

Unless you want hair that looks like it’s been subjected to a night of spilled beer and stale cigarette smoke. If so, ACES.

Now I’m sitting here and just watched the Aggies beat the Longhorns to advance to the final game Monday at 6:00. Clearly I’m going to be too wound up to sleep.

And I also might need to text Gulley to see if she’s up for a road trip.

Thanks so much for all the sweet thoughts about Bruiser yesterday. We appreciate it so much.

In other news, I need it to be summer already. There is just something so wrong about having to send a child back to school after Memorial Day weekend.

And speaking of wrong, let’s discuss the Science Fair project that was due last week. While I completely appreciate that teachers are every bit as eager to be out for the summer and have to manufacture activities to keep kids busy for eight hours a day, a Science Fair project just seems harsh.

If you wanted me to be enthusiastic about a Science Fair project, then it should have happened sometime around October. Back then the school year was full of promise and possibilities, but at this point I am a shell of the person I was then. I have written multiple checks to the PTO, I’ve had to watch Youtube tutorials to remember how to convert mixed numbers, and I’ve lost hours of my life in the carpool line. We’ve eaten a healthy breakfast on standardized testing mornings, practiced spelling words, written book reports and I’ve packed somewhere in the neighborhood of 542 lunches. (I might be rounding up.)

So to have to think about Science (A subject that has been my nemesis since I had to memorize the Periodic Table) at the end of this long stretch of school year was almost more than I could bear. This exhibit I saw on Facebook pretty much sums it up.

But Caroline was excited about it. Mainly because it was an excuse to order a pack of ten petri dishes with something called blood agar in them. So this is still in my refrigerator since it’s the gift that keeps giving. She can’t wait to test things for bacteria ALL summer long.

(Sheep’s blood. Pancreatic digest. In my refrigerator.)

In fact, she took the initiative to go ahead and begin testing various objects, starting with one of the dog’s chew toys. She swabbed that sucker, put it in the petri dish to grow and then failed to mention it to me. Which wouldn’t have been a problem except that she chose my laundry room as the best place to leave the petri dish to grow and fester all manner of bacteria. I walked into the laundry room yesterday and began to dry heave. I was certain a rodent had crawled in the walls and died.

If only I’d been that lucky.

But then I spied a bacteria-laden petri dish labeled with masking tape that read “Dog bone”. And now my life will never be the same. I’m not the naive, simple girl I was just 48 hours ago when I didn’t know such bacteria existed.

Anyway, back to the actual Science Fair project.

Caroline decided to test whether or not food preservatives keep bacteria from growing. And so she needed to choose two foods, one with preservatives and one without. She chose a piece of beef jerky and a carrot. And then she left them out in her bedroom for three days along with this helpful sign.

She clearly meant business even if her spelling of “project” makes me want to cry.

Also, that dried up carrot will give me nightmares for the rest of my life. It looks like someone lost their pinky toe and left it lying on that piece of paper.

After they’d sat out for a sufficient amount of time to cause me to question the meaning of life, she swabbed them and put the samples in her petri dishes that we placed in the garage because pancreatic digest, sheep’s blood, I’ve lost my will to live, etc.

And then we brought home the puppies and life got even crazier than it was already and so I was given the task to go to Michael’s while she was at school to buy all manner of supplies for her presentation. It’s moments like these when I am never more aware of my lack of science acumen because I was concerned about things like the color of the tri-fold board and finding sticky letters that matched and even debated if glue-on rhinestones might be a nice touch because while some believe in the science, I believe in the pretty.

She worked on the presentation while we chased puppies around the house and I wished that science wasn’t a real thing until she finally had it ready to bring to school last Friday morning.

Please note that her “Fun Fact” at the bottom is that the most common bacteria on petri dishes is staph and strep.

This is not what I consider to be a legitimate fun fact. A fun fact is that if you wait long enough eventually everything at Gap is 40% off.

And that’s the kind of science I can get excited about.

Well we lost a good one right before Memorial Day weekend.

Our dog Bruiser.

We’d known before we got the new puppies that Bruiser wasn’t going to be with us long. He’d been diagnosed almost a year ago with a degenerative spine and the vet sent us home with the words, “You’ll know when it’s time to put him down. One day he’ll wake up and won’t be able to be a dog anymore.”

For the last year we’ve watched him grow progressively weaker as his condition continued to worsen, but he’d still have a lot of days when he’d bring us his tennis ball to throw over and over again until he finally had to give up and lie down. He loved nothing more than a good tennis ball. He’d carry one around until it was falling apart and go into a depression until we replaced it with a new one. I used to always contend he’d chase a tennis ball until he fell over from sheer exhaustion. And so it was an indicator of how much he was going downhill when we’d throw the tennis ball and he’d just watch it roll across the yard instead of chasing it down.

Bruiser was always the one who would run barking to greet us at the back gate when we pulled into the driveway and, as time went on and our other dog, Scout, couldn’t hear our cars, Bruiser would jump on him in a full body tackle to alert him that the people were now home. Sometimes he was a little overzealous and I often had to roll down my car window as I pulled into the driveway to start yelling “NO, BRUISER, NO!” in an attempt to save Scout from an attack while the neighbors probably questioned my mental state.

But as the last few months have gone by, Bruiser struggled to meet us at the gate and, more often than not, would choose to lie on the back porch because I think it was just too hard for him to get up. He never attacked Scout any more and could only hobble out to get the tennis ball a couple of times before he needed to lie down in the yard. His walk began to increasingly be more of a wobbly, tenuous lumber and was very reminiscent of Fred Sanford.

Then in the last two weeks, he grew weaker every day. By Thursday morning we knew that the time had come when he wasn’t able to be a dog any longer which I think is the hardest part of being a dog owner, making the hard decision to let go of someone that’s meant so much to your family. So P called the vet and we made an appointment to bring him in later that evening. There were lots of tears and we all said our goodbyes.

Bruiser was a good dog. But he was absolutely a dog in every sense of the word. Part of it was just his personality, but I think a lot of it was because we brought him home when Caroline was five months old.

(Please note how pale I am. Just looking at this picture makes me feel like I want to go sleep for days.)

It dawned on me when we brought Mabel and Piper home that I don’t remember one thing about Bruiser’s puppy days. I was still in the fog of having a newborn and in sheer survival mode. I can’t even tell you why we thought it was a good idea to add a puppy to that mix.

When Scout was a puppy, I would come home from work at lunchtime to sing him songs and rock him in my lap. True story. I came just shy of burping him after he ate. He was my first experience with any sort of maternal instinct and I still credit him as being part of what gave me the courage to become a mom to an actual human.

Bruiser just had to make do. There were no lullabies. I never rocked him in my lap. I had a baby and spent Bruiser’s puppyhood barely treading water. But he was a good dog. Loyal to his marrow and always so gentle with Caroline even as she unwittingly taunted him as she toddled around the back yard holding all manner of animal crackers loosely in her sticky toddler hands.

He was never a dog that wanted you to mess with him. Any attempt to check out his ears or to see if he had a thorn in his paw would be met with a growl. Even at the end as we had to lift him on and off the porch steps, he’d growl as we did it. But occasionally he’d give in and put his head in my lap and I’d scratch his ears while doing my best Harlan Pepper imitation and make him say, “I’m the best dog!”

Caroline said it best as we said goodbye to Bruiser when she remarked, “I can’t remember a day of my life that he wasn’t there.” And that’s what dogs do. They come into our lives and share a season or two and then we have to say goodbye to these loyal companions that have taken a piece of our hearts and become a part of our story.

It’s not easy, but they’re worth it. We couldn’t have spent Caroline’s early childhood with a more faithful friend, even if he was a little cantankerous on occasion.

That picture totally sums him up. I can almost hear him saying, “Please give me the duck. Please. Give me. The duck. Look at me. Sitting here. Being a good boy. Waiting for the duck.”

Goodbye, Bruiser. We’ll miss you.

Well, this is definitely an improvement over the one we decided not to use. But in typical fashion, that may not be saying much.

This is a hodgepodge of information about Sophie’s cold she had over the weekend, my plans for some home improvement projects and thoughts about Science Fairs and how they don’t belong at the end of the school year. You’ll also notice I make no mention of our new puppies because I didn’t know that was about to happen.

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