Pawcurious Vet Blog: With Pet Blogger and Veterinarian Dr. V

Pie eatin’, dog and kid abandoning mom here

I opened Facebook on Mother’s Day morning, shortly after my chubby fingered kiddos brought me (and Brody) toast and eggs in bed, and saw this oft-repeated quote:

“A mother is a person who, seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.”

And I sighed. I really don’t like that quote.

It’s like what we talked about on Friday all over again. Hey, unless you’re cutting off your limbs and giving away all your pie and raising free range human children in a yurt, YOU AREN’T A REAL MOTHER.

Sure, it seems like a nice sentiment on the surface, but underneath it reeks of that judgy, who’s the most sacrife-y woman out there kind of martyrdom. And what kind of pie are we talking about here? Because if it’s berry pie, I will gladly say, “I never did care for pie,” and it would be true. But if it’s a banana cream pie, and I’m sitting there with my kids and my husband and some other person, I would cut a sliver off each of those four pieces and make me a Franken-slice. Because I like banana cream pie, and I would want some too. And there is nothing wrong with my solution, which leaves no one in the corner without any pie.

My sister and I were raised without any sort of qualifications on our growth, without any assumptions that gender would figure into our career choices. I wanted to be at various times a palaeontologist, an astronaut, a Blue Angel, the next great American author, and a neurosurgeon. It never occurred to me that I might one day have to negotiate the minefield of family and career, and that my choices about one might influence the other. And yet it has.

I know that some women have managed to figure it out, how to have it all. I envy them that. For me, family and career has been like a downhill slalom, weaving back and forth across the slope, putting my weight on the left leg, then on the right, trying to slow my descent enough so that I don’t fall and break my neck, trying to make it through all the gates; now school plays, now continuing education conferences, making toxic matchboxes, keeping the dogs in good health. I have given up trying to do one thing perfectly in favor of doing lots of things pretty well, and that is how life seems to go for people (men and women alike) who spend a portion of their lives in a caretaker position.

There were a lot of cool things I thought about doing as a veterinarian. I wanted to be a radiologist, or a dermatologist. Instead, I decided to dial back on work to focus on the kids a little more, and once they grew old enough for me to seriously wonder if that was something I still wanted to pursue, knowing what that would mean for the family, the answer was no. Instead, I dusted off that old rarely-used corner of my brain that delighted in writing, and worked on that. I’d say that worked out pretty well.

I have no regrets about the decisions I’ve made, no resentments. But one of the most important things I’ve learned while figuring all of this out is that we are allowed to take care of ourselves every once in a while. It’s not selfish to want to do that. Sometimes it seems like you can’t win; if an exhausted new mom goes out in sweats and greasy hair, she’s mocked as a slob, but if she decides to take time to herself to work out or go get her hair done, then she’s self centered, because of course all real moms know you should never put yourself first, not once or ever. And apparently, you aren’t allowed to ask if one might share a treat, either.

My husband did not really want me to go to Africa (I leave one month from today!) The timing is terrible. I will miss my kids’ last day of school since they inexplicably added three days to the end of the school year just a month ago, we’re in the middle of selling the house, and I just realized I will also be gone for Father’s Day. Yup. Bad, bad, bad mom. I am taking off and missing all of those things because I’ve wanted to do a trip with World Vets for years, and the opportunity presented itself. And once my husband realized just how excited I was to get to do this, he was happy for me too.

Kids are half a world away and I manage to work up a small smile. We all survived.

I suppose I could have just not gone. That is what a real mom would do, right? Sacrifice. Or would a real mother teach her kids that you should take a leap of faith every now and then and go do something really extraordinary? Ten years from now, will my daughter be emulating a woman who consistently choked down everything important to her, or one who said, ‘I’m going to go climb a mountain and then go hang out with some Maasai and some donkeys, because I worked really hard for years and years and I want to do something meaningful, and you will hang out with Dad and be just dandy.’

I really don’t feel horrible about it. I just spent five hours making a birthday party invitation for my son in Photoshop in between shuttling my daughter back and forth to play practice for the last month. I spend the other 50 or so weeks of the year staring at the empty pie plate of my free time, so this one time I am taking a slice for myself, taking it into the corner, and savoring every mother-loving bite.

Have a Happy Mother’s Day- and don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise

A few days ago, my friend Dorian at Catster pointed out a rather mean-spirited post over at Huffington Post entitled, “Pet Parents are NOT Moms.” I am trying to give the author the benefit of the doubt here; maybe she intended it to be sort of tongue in cheek. She starts by pointing out all the sometimes over the top things we do in the name of love- and I get that, been there, bought the membership card- but the overall tone of the post just skewed off left and went straight to mean. And that just rubs me the wrong way.

I don’t know if Susan Maushart requires one to provide their credentials before pontificating on motherhood, but just to be sure, yes, I have human kids as well as some furry ones. I still refer to myself as Brody’s mom. I like that better than owner, though that works too. I go back and forth. I guess that makes me a monkey (though I would prefer to be referred to as a great ape.)

I need to make one thing clear: We all know that pets are not small humans in fur. They are, in fact, dogs, or cats, or ferrets or whatever. We relate to them differently than we do humans. I have yet to meet one person, and I’ve met a lot of people, who seem unclear on that distinction. Even the ones who dress them up because it makes them happy- yes, even those people know that it is an animal in a dress and not a human. So what? It’s not hurting you. The day I see one of those people wheeling the said dress-wearing cat into the pediatrician’s office for an MMR, then we’ll talk. Who cares if someone relates to their pet in a maternal way and wants to call them their kid?

Maushart’s main reason, as far as I can tell, for objecting to calling pets kids is “you and I both know that pets are stupid.” Is that the only criterion? Because I have to tell you, and this is confidential, but I’ve met a lot of stupid kids too, the kind who show up with peanuts lodged in their nostrils or pencils shoved through their eardrums because they want to know what lead sounds like. If I were to fall unconscious on a railroad track, for instance, this is the only eight year old I want by my side.

The author with her eldest, who will never ask to borrow the car or wonder why the other kids get more posts on the blog.

So who anointed Maushart Grand Vizier of the Ministry of Motherhood anyway?  And what are the membership requirements exactly? Is it as strict as, “you must have birthed a human child from your own loins, and the child must then be smart, and raised on organic produce after you’ve nursed him for four years“? Oh yes, those moms are a blast to be around.

Motherhood is not a black and white concept. It just isn’t. I’ve spoken with adoptive mothers, who have shed tears when their child was asked who their “real” mom was. I’ve hugged women who have wept after a miscarriage and been told, “Well, you don’t get to celebrate Mother’s Day, you’re not a mother.” That hurts. It hurts because they felt that bond, regardless of whether or not you were empathetic enough to acknowledge it.

Some people, like me, have pets and kids. Some have pets instead of kids, because they don’t want them, haven’t gotten around to it, or maybe they can’t. I had clients once who were unable to have children of their own. They shared this freely when they brought in their Akita Bonnie, and laughed as they told me, “Bonnie’s our only child.” And was she ever.

Bonnie was involved in an accident. I have never seen two people so devastated. For a month, she was in the hospital, and for a month, her mother came in. I watched as she rotated her to keep her lungs inflated, massaged her legs to keep the musculature from contracting, listened to her whisper in her ear as she stroked her fur in order to get a happy thump of the tail. Every day she came in, and nursed Bonnie.

And when she unfortunately died, I leaned over Bonnie’s mom as her head was buried in her motionless chest, put a hand on her shoulder, and whispered, “Calm down. It’s not like you’re a real mom.”

Oh wait. I didn’t. Because I’m not that cruel. Couch it however you want in smug rolly-eyed condescending cheekiness, that post was mean.

So wear your Mom badge proud, moms of the world, and if anyone tries to tell you otherwise, pity them. Because one day their kid will roll their eyes at them and tell them they hate them and do all sorts of other pleasant human-child behaviors, while yours will lick you on the face and pull your body off the railroad tracks. And have a happy Mother’s Day!

Never work with children or dogs. And especially both at once.

My daughter has joined the local youth theater’s production of Annie. As a seven year old, one of the youngest in the cast, her role is to stand in the back and look cute. This is good. A good intro to theater.

While I was gone, my husband got to attend the parent meeting. We learned that there is no sliding scale of parental volunteer requirements based on the number of lines in the play, so the parent of the silent kid picking his nose in the back has to do just as much as the parent of the lead. Which is fine, but hoo boy, I’m bad enough juggling commitments as it is. As the mother of a cast member, my job is to paint sets, sew costumes, take pictures, sell tickets, attend rehearsals, and man concessions, and probably a few more things I forgot.

So now I’m trying to be sneaky and figure out alternate ways to get in my mandatory 20 volunteer hours. I’ve already volunteered my husband to do candid photography from rehearsals. Why not. He just treated himself to a new camera. I’m thinking of offering to help out with their social media, because let’s face it, given the choice between that and sewing, I think we all would be happier for it.

My friend, who is quite involved in this theater, asked me if I knew any dogs that might be available to play Sandy. I was impressed with their dedication to bring a real dog into the mix, because shoot, those FurReal dogs would be a heck of a lot easier to deal with, would not pee on Ms. Hannigan, run into the audience, or pull Annie’s wig off her head mid-song like a bad reunion episode of Real Housewives of East County.

I noticed she did not ask if my dog would be available, but that is because she’s met my dog. I don’t know of any highly trained scruffy terrier mixes at the moment, but when they find one, I am pleased to offer my volunteer services as Official Show Vet. They need one of those, surely.

A restful weekend

Normally I take the weekends as a time to unwind, refresh my brain, and get ready for the next week. Usually this is a doable thing. But, sometimes things get kind of nutty, and in those times there’s not much to be done except deal with it and let all the other things you’re supposed to do- like blog- fall by the wayside.

My husband left on Friday for a weeklong business trip overseas. It happens, that’s part of his job description. But it certainly provides for certain, shall we say, logistical difficulties when that weekend happens to be the same weekend as the annual Father-Daughter dance at school. Fortunately we have grandfathers who are happy to step in, and all is well.

I thought that would be the biggest challenge of the weekend, until I woke up yesterday to my son- who has been sick for close to a week with a nasty cold- holding his ears and screaming in pain. Being the typical health care provider that I am, I had to resist my normal inclination to say “If nothing’s falling off, you’re fine, here’s some Motrin” and actually consider that maybe he was really sick. Being without an otoscope at home, I had to suck it up and try to figure out where the nearest Urgent Care facility was and just how I was going to juggle that trip in to the day.

Which was fine, until same sick child looked up from his tear filled fingers to point at the water dripping from the ceiling, which unfortunately was not from anyone’s tears, but from what appears to be leak number 8,465 we’ve had in this horrid house. And I just did NOT have time for it, so I shoved a bucket under the faucet that is likely the source and crossed my fingers, and left the house. (more…)

Dr V, purveyor of poisonous crafts and ideas

I like spending time with my family. We do crafty things, because they’re fun and everyone enjoys them. One of our traditions, started back when my daughter was in kindergarten, is to make little Valentine’s Day trinket boxes to send to school on Valentine’s Day- a craft I found on the Martha Stewart website and immediately fell in love with. It’s a cute craft- you take empty matchboxes, cover them with scrapbook paper and ribbons, and fill them with conversation hearts. It’s simple, sweet, and it’s always gone over well.

Until this year.

Last Friday, as I was at home recovering from the jetlag of my Westminster trip, I was interrupted in my reverie by a phone call from the school principal, who called to let me know that she had received “multiple complaints” about my little craft. My immediate thought was, oh no, the kids forgot to remove the matches from some of the boxes, but that wasn’t it. Some parents were just mortified that I used matchboxes for a craft. The principal patiently explained, in the same tone one might explain to a kindergartner why gargling with Drano is a bad idea, about the dangers of sulfur residue. Then she said the part that really killed me: “You need to think about the message you are sending here.”

The message I had sent, or so I thought, was, “I care enough about your kids to spend a day running around gathering supplies to make a cute and time consuming re-purposing project.” But people being the contrary types who like to assume the worst read something else into it, what, I don’t know exactly. “Hey kids, pyromania is fun!” “Crack is cool!” Empty matchboxes are the gateway craft, y’all. (more…)

Them cookies are serious business, people.

One of the reasons many vets give for choosing their profession is, “I like animals better than people.” It’s not a good reason, mind you, and those with misanthropic tendencies learn to cover it up pretty quickly or else have a rotten career, but I will tell you from experience that well, it’s true.

I’ve been working on it. I actually get along pretty well with people, as far as I can tell. But every once in a while I experience one of those penultimate human experiences that I’m supposed to relish, and all I can do is run away screaming and bury my face in the dog and not want to talk to another person for at least eight hours, possibly ten. I had one of those this week.

In an attempt to raise a good citizen, I enrolled my daughter in Girl Scouts. I did it when I was a kid. I tried to find my picture of me in my Brownies uniform to prove it, but I think it’s in the storage facility somewhere, at least that is my excuse. Anyway, as far as I could recall, it was fun: we made some ribbon barrettes, colored, got to wear those badass brown sashes to school and strut around every Tuesday, and I think one time I sold some Thin Mints. It was low key.

And I look around at the second graders these days dressing like Miley Cyrus and singing all the words to “I’m Sexy and I Know It”, and I realized something with horror: I’m apparently an old school prude. And I’m really not, but compared to what’s out there, I kind of am. And I had two main choices for after school activities for my daughter: Girl Scouts or the local dance studio, and if you saw what the eight year olds were wearing at the last recital you would understand why I went with the scouts.

Because the Scouts are the answer to all the things we bemoan about being a woman today, right? It’s about teamwork and solidarity. It’s about empowerment. Equality. Buoying your fellow woman instead of throwing her under the bus. Girl power and all of that, embrace your brain, etc.

Well. (more…)

I’m only *kind of* violent

Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve been particularly sensitive to depictions of violence against animals. My mother learned early on that I couldn’t handle Tom and Jerry, the Roadrunner cartoons, or Sylvester and Tweety. “But he’s a carnivore!” I would cry sympathetically. “He’s just hungry! Turn on the Snorks, Mom.” And that holds to this day.

But apparently I was much less bothered by anything involving humans wailing on each other. Shortly after graduating vet school, my husband bought an XBox. After four long years of labor and toil, I needed a little decompression, and one day I turned on a game called Morrowind. For several months, I would grab my longsword, beat other characters over the head, and steal all their stuff. I was heady with my virtual strength, pillaging and intimidating my way through the lands. It was fantastic.  (more…)

I swear we have better toys here

My daughter had her first sleepover this weekend.

It was a long time coming. Her very best friend, a girl she has known since kindergarten, is near impossible to arrange any sorts of playdates with. Her mom works full time. Her dad, a retired police sergeant, is busy running the older son around to after school activities but has a rule that the daughter cannot have playdates without her mom or dad there.

Given this statute, let’s just say I didn’t even bother pursuing a sleepover with her. I’m sure we wouldn’t pass a background check.

Anyway, we have other options. We have family friends who have a lovely daughter a year older than mine, and they have known each other for years. They are a little less picky about where they leave their kid, apparently, even going so far as to trust ME of all people with her. Fortunately for me. My daughter was delighted.

I had all sorts of activities set up- movies, popcorn, fashion shows, crafts, I don’t know, all that giggly stuff little girls do. But this little girl doesn’t have a dog, so of course Brody was the center of attention. Not that he minded.

Aside went the crafts, the popcorn, and the Barbie movie, all in favor of giving Brody some much craved attention and love. He was eating it up. He was eating everything up, including this girl’s pillow pet, her burrito, and some kettle corn. They are getting a dog next month. I consider this a valuable learning experience for her about living with a canine. I hope she realizes the value of that, someday.

.

Anyway, I heard them upstairs giggling and laughing and Brody tromping around. Then a squeal, and down the girls come, flying down the stairs. They had been playing tug-of-war with Brody. He has lots of toys laying about for this purpose, but in the interest of some semblance of order, I guess someone had put them away. So he improvised.

It took the girls a few minutes before they realized they were playing tug-of-war with a pair of underpants he retrieved from a hamper. Oh, dear god. At least it wasn’t the cop’s kid who was over. I would probably be in jail.

So if they are reading this, I swear, we do have actual dog toys around here and I don’t force them to use soiled undergarments for lack of better options. Promise. Please let your daughter come over again. She was lovely.

Merry Christmas, kids. I poisoned the dogs.

Let me preface this by saying it isn’t Christmas in my house until it looks like an elf exploded in the foyer. It doesn’t excuse what happened, but it’s important to the story.

On Saturday, my husband and I went out to dinner while the kids spent the night at the grandparents’ house. Before we left, I surveyed the mess that is “middle of Christmas prep” with some trepidation. There was trouble everywhere. Breakable ornaments, garland, boxes piled to the ceiling. Most of it is pretty innocuous, but tasty red wax candles can be messy, so I put them up high. Not seeing anything amiss, we left.

We came back several hours later. Someone had shredded a construction paper Christmas stocking. Oh well.

Then I looked more closely. My laptop bag, which normally lives in the hall closet but had been pulled out along with everything else, was tipped on its side like the crime victim it had become. Its contents spread over the floor like entrails.

I examined the evidence: a name badge, a Hilton key, a Newsweek. All chewed. No biggie.

Then I saw it: a gum wrapper.

Oh, !@$!@$.

I don’t normally chew gum, but my ears were bugging me so I grabbed a pack at the newsstand before my flight on the way out to Kansas. I have no idea what kind it was, even. It is possible it could contain xylitol. Xylitol, the toxic substance I had posted about not one week prior as a Really Bad Thing for dogs.  I had no way of verifying its presence in this particular gum, as the packaging was no longer in existence. I don’t know how much was left in the pack, either.

In the chaos that was the afternoon, the hall closet had been emptied out. The laptop bag which normally lives there was out on the floor, hiding along with all the other stuff that’s normally tucked away. I didn’t even remember that it was out, or that I had once placed gum in it.

All I knew was that my dogs ingested an unknown amount of what might possibly be a xylitol containing substance, and one of the last things I had read before we departed that night was a story about a Great Dane who died of xylitol poisoning. So I panicked. Fortunately the dogs still looked fine, but hypoglycemia can strike out of nowhere, and for all the raving I do to my kids about not leaving grapes laying around, I just couldn’t fathom explaining that Mom accidentally poisoned the dogs two weeks before Christmas.

This is how I wound up out in the cold at midnight making my two indignant dogs throw up. Neither one vomited a gum wrapper. After watching me perform this with some distaste, my husband retired for the night, leaving me downstairs with two nauseated dogs and a pile of guilt bigger than the stack of boxes. So I went to Level Two.

I don’t know if you’ve ever administered activated charcoal to two less than thrilled dogs while you’re shivering and under the influence of a few glasses of pinot, but let me tell you, it’s not fun. Lesson learned.

Then I had to go to bed, but I couldn’t sleep wondering if I had killed one or both of them, so I woke up every hour to check on them. Have you ever done the “Are you dead?” poke on a sleeping dog? They don’t appreciate it. Brody woke up right away, but Koa snores and passes out like a zombie on a normal day, so each time she woke up with a confused “You again? What the heck? I’m fine, really. Stop poking me.”

They got full physical exams on the hour until sunlight, at which time all three of us got up, exhausted but physically fine.

My point is this: everyone makes mistakes, myself included. The vision of me chasing the dogs around the backyard with a bottle of Toxiban at midnight on a Saturday is only funny because it, thankfully, turned out fine. But man, that was not a pleasant reckoning for any of us. It’s stories like this that make me very sympathetic to owners who feel they need to apologize for being human when they have an incident like this- but it’s life. Mistakes happen to all of us.

I’m sure there are those out there who are perfect and never do stuff like this, and to them I say: congratulations. You are clearly handling life with a bunch of kids and dogs with more grace than the rest of us. Now go on and be perfect somewhere else and let the rest of us commiserate about the stupid things we have done and learn from them.

From now on, it’s Juicy Fruit for me. This beats the time Emmett ate a box of truffles on Christmas night with the same result. What’s the worst thing your pet has eaten?

Everyone’s a cynic

“Come to my store!” exalted my daughter, pulling me up the stairs. I obliged, wondering which of my possessions she was going to try to sell back to me this time. That one has always been possessed of an entrepreneurial spirit.

” I have bracelets,” she said, gesturing to an array of beaded items she had crafted using the bead kit she got for her birthday. “And neck-a-laces,” picking up a pair of Mardi Gras beads she inherited at some point.

I picked up a bracelet. “How much?” I asked.

“5 cents,” she replied.

“I think you should up your price structure,” I told her. “To at least a quarter.”

“OK,” she said, taking my quarter and depositing it into a paper bag.

“What does that say?” I asked, squinting at her writing.

“Money for the pet store animals,” she said.

“You mean shelter?”

“Yes,” she said. “I want to donate all the money to a shelter.”

And oh, when she said that, my heart melted into a million little pieces and I realized I could die happy. I’ve never instructed her to fundraise, not for pets or for anything, really, so to see her do all of this out of the goodness of her heart just made my Grinchy heart swell two sizes.

“I have twelve dollars so far,” she said.  Apparently before coming to me she had shaken down my husband, my son, and both sets of grandparents.

I gave her a dollar. ”Thanks,” she said, pocketing the dollar. Then she eyed me furtively. “You ARE letting Santa know I’m doing this, right?”

Ah. It all makes sense now.

In the corner, Brody eyed all of this while chewing on a 50 cent bracelet. Despite his proclivity for naughtiness, at least he is pure of heart in his intentions. Nuaghty, nice, or somewhere in between, whatever he engages in, it’s with the most direct of intentions. I wonder if Santa cares about intent.

Faith in humanity, restored

Among one’s many obligations as parent to a school-aged child is that most universal of school experiences, chaperoning a school field trip. My number got called this week, when my second grader’s class went to the zoo. She of course volunteered me, assuming- correctly- that this was the sort of thing I was up for (as opposed to the kindergarten trip to Sea World), and for the most part I was happy to do it.

Until I heard it was going to be raining.

Now, laugh all you want, but we San Diegans are not used to anything that isn’t sunny and 70 degrees. We have thin blood and a certain fear of atmospheric precipitation that borders on Wicked-Witch level paranoia. As soon as we heard it was going to be raining, the e-mails started to fly:

“Are they cancelling the trip?”

“No! And I can’t imagine why! This will be disastrous!”

It was with this sort of apprehension that I arrived, with an umbrella and a cup of liquid courage in the form of a Gingerbread latte, to commence duties as kid-wrangler.

There they stood, running in circles like puppies at doggie day care, yelping, whining, waving umbrellas at each others’ faces like pointy ended spherical light sabers. And I was supposed to keep them from getting hurt, lost, or injured. All off-leash.

The troubles began quickly. “I’m cold,” said a small girl in shorts. She had taken off her jacket and tied it around her hips, sarong-style, to protect her legs from the biting 60 degree winds, leaving her torso exposed to the elements. In addition to forgetting to check the weather report in advance of this blizzard, she had also neglected to bring an umbrella.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was, because it was kind of cold. But commiseration was all I had to offer.

I had grand ideas of sharing with them the wonders we were seeing, the Maasai giraffes and the incredibly endangered black rhinos I spent hours searching for on the other side of the world, served up to them within mere feet of their little hands. “Aren’t they beautiful?” I asked the boy next to me, who stopped picking his nose long enough to stare at me blankly. “When’s lunch?” he asked.

“I’m cold,” said the cold girl again.

And so it continued, the herd shuffling and shivering through the zoo like a bunch of Chinese Cresteds without our requisite cold weather gear, soggy, crabby, and hungry. Somewhere along the way Cold Girl had buddied up with a kid who had an umbrella large enough to share, so she at least got to stay somewhat dry. I stayed towards the back, herding the errant outliers back to the main herd so they wouldn’t be picked off by predatory tour buses.

At lunchtime, we found a relatively dry spot and plunked down to eat. Cold Girl tugged on my sleeve.

“I don’t have a lunch,” she informed me. “And I’m starving.”

I looked through my bag, pulling out an old packet of cheese crackers and a granola bar, the only food I had to offer. She took them morosely.

I wandered off to find the teacher, hoping they might have sent along an extra lunch or two for such emergencies, but of course the school had not. I came back to my table, planning on making an unapproved run to the concession stand to buy her something- which was sure to cause much angst amongst the rest of the kids- only to find her happily chowing down on a huge pile of food.

With no prompting, the rest of her class had taken it upon themselves to divvy up their own lunches to provide for their friend. Sure, the selection was heavy on the fruit and light on the chips, but those soggy little primates had decided to embrace the concept of community and take care of one of their own. I’ve seen wild chimps take in orphans but also abandon the weak and sickly, so I really had no predictions as to which direction this would go.

Hence the title of the post.

Don’t leave the vet in charge

I have a new Baking With Brody post ready to go that just needs a couple more pictures. I’ll have it up this weekend, just in time for Halloween. So in the meantime, a corollary to yesterday’s post:

One of my tasks as kindergarten room mom, a job I grudgingly agreed to despite my better judgment, is to decorate the booth at the kid’s Halloween carnival. I thought we would be provided with games and we would simply be in charge of manning it, but oh, no, we need to actually come up with an activity ourselves, and then execute it. Under a pop up tent we were in charge of procuring, decorating, setting up, and taking down.

I panicked, being one who does neither creative games nor camping. So I consulted my friend, the Brownie troop leader, who despite her always on top of things demeanor never manages to make me feel like the slacker I am.

“We did something great last year,” she said. “You make a coffin with different things in it and let the kids put their hands in it and guess what they are feeling. Like, grapes for eyeballs, spaghetti for intestines, that sort of thing.”

And that could work, but I figured hey, why not up the ante and make it a real house of horrors?

I thought of the things I could bring in from work:

• Brody’s testicles (I kept them. So sue me.)
• A glaucomatous eyeball I enucleated in a bloody surgery worthy of Wes Craven;
• a tapeworm
• A jar of ticks
• Pictures of heartworm disease