I don't want to vent here... but holy cow. I thought we were doing so well with budgeting but I guess not as well as I thought. Not to mention all the travel expenses... (Also, on a side note, I need to call Enterprise because I believe they overcharged me for my rental...)
I guess the moral of the story is that we REALLY need to rethink next year. Come up with a better system for doing all of this. (And I just realized, we haven't even paid my sister-in-laws for our share of Christmas yet...yikes!) It's the gifts that keep on giving... until June...
Anyway, I don't want to sound depressing... I should have just waited a bit to recover before I blogged.
Either way, here is what I originally wanted to post:
The Kyliecapates! And all things Kylie.
I have only briefly updated about our little mess of a dog, so here is a full post dedicated just to her. (I know... we need kids. Whatever...)
I am going to go all the way back to Thanksgiving...
We were in the car, on the road to Chicago for Thanksgiving when I decide to get sick. Apparently whatever I ate at Fazollis did not agree with my insides.(This is about Kylie, I swear.)So we stop at a gas station, I stock up on stomach meds and we are on our way again. I say to Luke, "Let me just close my eyes for a few minutes so the medicine can kick in and I'll be good to go". (It was dark out and I really was planning to stay awake with him for the whole trip, I swear.) This is where Kylie comes in...
Now the small back story here is that Kylie started our trip out by standing on the front drivers seat from the back seat while Luke was trying to drive. (I have a picture)
About 20-30 minutes into my "wellness nap" I hear Luke yell " Oh my goodness... our dog has just defecated upon the back seat of our motor vehicle. I am quite upset." (Ok so I cleaned that up a bit... Ok a lot. I don't know who reads this or their age or maturity level, so that was the basic gist.)
So I jump awake only to turn around and yes, our dog pooped the back seat. Wonderful.
Now again, I remind you that it is pitch black outside and we are in the middle of NOWHERE, IL. The picture above was taken just as we left the house around 3:30-4ish. We are now 2 hours or more later. We don't know where to go, what to do and our car smells like,um, poop. Luke is thrilled! He's swearing, I'm trying to wake up and make sense of all this and as I am assessing the situation in the dark I think it's not that bad. She made it on the one side of the seat and now she is cowering on he other. It's just one spot, we can deal with this. So we pull off into some random gas station, again, in the middle of nowhere, and I run in to see what they have to help. Meanwhile, because we are in the middle of nowhere, we are on a gravel parking lot. It recently rained and the ground is covered with mud. Luke is trying to get the dog to "do her business" all the while not letting her touch the ground and the puddles of mud. He's yelling, the dog is freaked out...it was amazing. And I am in the gas station buying what they had...a roll of paper towel and some WetOnes. (Portable wipies for those who don't know what 'WetOnes' are.) In desperation, I ask the poor high school girl behind the counter if she has anything else along the lines of sanitation or antibacterial. She gets her manager and he gives me disinfectant spray from the back room. (THANKS!!!) So I go out armed with my goods and start to clean. Again, Luke is still holding the dog to keep her out of the mud. So as I am starting to clean, Luke takes out his phone upon my request to use the flashlight and make sure I got everything. Apparently at some point Kylie had stepped in her mess and traipsed it across the seat. YAY!!! So here we are. Luke holding the dog, trying his best not to kill her, and me, scrubbing poop off the back seat of my car with Luke's cell phone to guide me. (Again, pitch black outside) I clean everything up the best I can and when I go back to return the spray to the attendant, I ask where the nearest Walmart is to see if we can find a crate for Kylie to ride in. (Apparently there was one about a mile up the road...who knew...) We all get back into the car and off to Walmart we go.
Now we get to Walmart. I am in the car with Kylie reassuring her that "daddy loves you....he just doesn't like you right now..." and Luke comes back with this thing under his arm and a goofy grin on his face. He has purchased the collapsible "box of shame". (For those of you who are not Disney watchers, "the cone of shame" was a cone used on dogs that were bad.) So Luke is trying to assemble this pop up crate and it's still kinda floppy but we figure once the dog is in it, it will stiffen up. So as Luke is trying to get Kylie into the box and it keeps collapsing on her, he realizes that there is more assembly required. (Poor Kylie!) So he pushes her back out, fixes it, and puts her back in. Everything is better and we are on the road again! At this point, Luke calmly turns to me for the first time since the initial poop and says, "You know, it really was our fault. I noticed she was starting to panic in the back. She probably had to go and didn't know what to do or how to tell us. Poor dog." Really???? Tell her that!
So this is the "box of shame". It has an opening in the front and the top. Every once in awhile I would unzip the top to give her some love...
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| I swear these make her look far more pathetic than she really was. She slept for most of the trip back. |
So now fast forward to Christmas. We came home from Thanksgiving and she was doing great! No accidents, she was eating all her food, she's the perfect dog!)
So Luke and I are packing to leave for Iowa. We are going from Iowa to Chicago to Indiana to Missouri in one week. Luke decides that instead of bringing both her big cage and her "box of shame", we should just bring her box. I don't think this is a good idea because while it's a good size, it's not as big as her normal crate and it's nylon. Kylie can't have anything soft in her crate because she eats it. No cushion, no pillows, towels, carpet, nothing. She has eaten it all. But Luke insists so I say fine.
We get to Iowa without incident and when we get there we learn that all dogs have to stay in the work shop because of the new carpet in the house. This concerns me because of the cloth box but Luke says she'll be fine. We go in frequently to let her out and run around with her to give her exercise. (They have a great fenced in yard) So day 1, great. Day 2? There is a small hole in the front of her box and with this hole she made she was able to push the zippers apart and escape. This wouldn't be a big deal if she wasn't an eater of things not to be eaten. I have caught her with a screw before and a shop is no place for her to be her. So we play, put her back in the box and rig the zippers together. Done. Except, she is smarter than that. Guess what she did when she realized the zippers wouldn't budge? Did you guess she chewed a hole in her $50 box?? Why, yes! Yes she did! It is now 9 something at night. We just got back from Christmas shopping and this is what we find. We don't know what to do. We can't leave her to her own devices as it's dangerous for her but we can't bring her in the house. Luke and I handle this really well. He gets snarky and I cry. (I am tired. Sometimes I cry when I'm tired.) So off we go to the Walmart in Washington or Mount Pleasant (I forget) to buy yet another box. Our Walmart in De Soto doesn't sell the crates we need but this was worth a shot. We are out of options. And I feel it necessary to mention that from being in the shop, Kylie has taken a shining to rolling and playing in the dust and sawdust. She's GROSS! So we temporarily put Kylie in Luke's parent's dog's box (which is too small but we are out of options) and off we go. Miraculously, we find the crate we need and $75 later, we are back home with a crate! (The SAME crate as the one we left back in Missouri. Please insert "I told you so" here.) We get back to the dark shop only to hear jingles. Jingles and puppy nails on the floor. Before we turn on the light, we say "Kylie??" and hear more puppy nails on the floor and collar jingles. "No effing way..." (That was me) Yes, she escaped from Besse's box as well. And Besse has a hard box. To be fair, though, all Kylie had to do was stand up tall and she was able to manipulate the box enough to make the door fall out. Urgh!! So we boxed her in the new crate and all was well. Once again, Luke admitted that it was our fault and we should have brought the other crate. Our? We? Thank you.
Now we are in Chicago with my family. She's doing really well and she's all cute and clean! (She got to take a shower with Luke to get all the grime off her and she is clean and pretty now!) She got to enjoy Christmas with Archie and the family. (I don't know how much Archie enjoyed her as she kept taking toys out of his mouth and running away with them. That poor, fat, stupid dog had no idea what to do with himself! That's my girl!) Anyway, she was doing really well so the day after family came over, we took the two baby gates we brought with us (yes, we brought two this time because as I mentioned before, she jumped over the one) and stacked them one on top of the other in the doorway so she could hang out in comfort. Now the gates stacked were about as tall as me. Up to Luke's chest, at least. We walked away and went into the kitchen. Not 5 minutes later, here comes Kylie! What?So we put her back and Luke stood there to watch. Sure enough, she very effortlessly scaled the gates. I swear to God this dog is going to be the death of us...So crate it was! We tried our best... You'd think with her being so smart she'd figure out that if she didn't do these things, she'd have more freedom and be able to do more...puppies.
So that's our Kyliecapades! Long post but it made us laugh. And cry...and argue... She's our little nutcase! (Oh! And a quick update for family: Her leg is fine. She was limping for a few days but we took her to the vet and she said it's just a pulled muscle. We kept her crated like the doc said and it's much better now. Nothing serious! She's back to jumping over the couch...)
Thanks for reading our very long post! I have more pictures of her from Christmas but I haven't downloaded them off my phone yet. Eventually.... Have a wonderful week and enjoy this warm January weather!
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