I wanna see you DANCE, Varmint!

I feel like there’s always a grizzled backwoodsman in my life.  He’s off-screen, but constantly saying to me, “Ok, Varmint, I wanna see you DANCE!” as he shoots his olde tyme revolver at my feet.  Pew! Pew!  Tappity, tap, tap.  [That’s me dancing a frantic jig to avoid his bullets.]

Why do I feel this way?  I present to you Exhibit A: Exactly one, single, solitary hour of my morning today.  From 7 a.m. to 8 a.m.  One.  Single.  Hour.

Sonny and I had just gotten back from his cat-sitting duty.  He’s allergic to cats by the way.  So I ONLY let him take this job because Sissy was going to be doing most of it.  ‘Cept Sissy is sick with some extremely painful 3-day stomach bug (which I will VERY SOON be getting.  Lookin’ forward to it.)  So, since Sissy is out of the picture, I now have cat sitting duty and Sonny just comes along as the “familiar face” so the cat doesn’t hiss at me.   All I can say about that is: I’m not getting paid NEARLY enough to deal with nasty cat food while Sonny looks on.  But please, please, please don’t tell the Unemployment Office any of this.  Pew!  Pew!  Tappity, tap, tap.

So Sonny is sitting at the kitchen table, I’ve made him breakfast and just packed his lunch.  (Pew!  Pew!)  I’ve also packed a lunch for Sissy who, I realize, will not actually be eating again today.  Instead, she’s sitting slumped in a chair with her puke bucket.  She’s taken to carrying it around on her hip like an in-need-of-constant-attention baby.

Nor will she be going to school, which means I’ll have to teach her more math-that-she’s-missing.  (And you KNOW how I feel about math.  Tappity, tap, tap.)

And I’m showing the kids a video of the dog that I took at 1:30 this morning.  He’d been acting like HE had the stomach bug, mewling and groaning, until I let him out of his cage.  At which point he SHOT out the back door like I had just opened the ironing board behind him.  And he proceeded to RIP out mouthfuls of grass, chew them frantically and swallow them.  (What?  It’s 1:30 in the morning!  This is soooo crazy I have to take a video.  And don’t tell me YOU’RE getting the stomach bug too, Teddy, in some sort of reverse swine-flu-for-dogs-which-you-caught-from-your-human.)  Pew, pew!  Tappity, tap, tap.

Teddy was so set on grazing that he alluded capture for a full 15 minutes until I tricked him into the house with the complete lie of going for a ride in the car.  It’s 2 a.m.!  Of course we’re not going for a ride in the car!  But I did catch it all on tape so I had to show the kiddies what I’d been up to while they slept.

It’s at this point in the re-telling of my midnight adventure that I hear the sprinklers start up.

Whaaaat?  That CAN’T be the sprinklers because I personally turned them OFF when we had all that rain last month.  And they never got turned on again.  Pew!  Pew!  But just in case we’re now starring in a show where the house turns… against us, I checked anyway.  Sure enough, OFF.  Like I say, they’ve been OFF for over 4 weeks.  So how did they just now turn ON?!?  I frantically call Hubby (who’s on a business trip, natch, to ask what to do.  Uh…turn them off.   I did that, I did that already!!!  Uh…unplug them.  Oh, ok.)  Tappity. Tap. Tap.

The possessed sprinkler then made us late, so Sonny and I SHOT out the door to school like someone just opened an ironing board behind us.  Pew!  Pew!   Before we’re even out of the driveway, I start getting video messages from Sissy asking when I’m gonna be back because her stomach is KILLING her.  (I wanna see you DANCE, Varmint!)

20 minutes and 3 videos later, I burst back through the door and she’s sitting on the couch watching t.v.  Huh? 

“Ok, Sweetheart!  We’re gonna get this under control already!  I’m pretty sure your stomach is hurting because you don’t have anything in it.  How about a banana?  Even if you just force yourself to eat half, that would help.”

So she quietly submits to the plan and nibbles on ½ a banana.  When she’s done, she leans over her fussy baby and throws up ALLLL of the banana she’s just eaten.  She remarks, “Yeah, Mom.  That banana really helped.”

Yes, it did, didn’t it? In fact, Barkeep: Bananas for ALLLLL my friends!  Especially the grizzled backwoodsman with the firearm.  Pew!  Pew!  Tappity, tap, tap…

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