My children are off on their annual adventure on the east coast with my mother. As any mother would be I am on the edge of my seat awaiting the phone call that will announce their safe landing.

The kids were off early this morning. My mom arrived about 8am with Molly, the cocker spaniel, in tow. She dropped off the dog and swept up the kids and away they went. The original plan was for Maggie (my 18 mo. old) and I to arrive at my mom’s to babysit Molly (aka “enjoy the pool) a little later today. My husband, Maggie and I will be staying at mom’s house off and on while they are on vacation. However, since the unfortunate demise of J.J. Brown (the other cocker spaniel, yes, my mom named her dogs Molly Brown and J.J. Brown, and yes, that would be after the “Unsinkable” Molly Brown and her husband J.J.) last year, my mom has been very worried about Molly and rarely leaves her alone. So, at 8am this morning I had Molly and her red and white toile bed plopped in my living room while my kids went off to have fun with their Nana.

Why Molly needed her special bed when she ws only going to be staying for a couple of hours is beyond my comprehension.

Between Zander and Molly frolicking through the house and barking at every concievable sound, it took me until almost noon to get our things together and load everyone into the car. Which was actually quite an adventure in itself…

My husband has trained our dog, Zander (short for Alexander Hamilton) very well, he doesn’t leave our front yard without permission and practically never runs into the street. He’s a pretty easy dog to manage as far as transporting him goes. Once I loaded my bag and the various items necessary for our survival away from home (which is quite a bit because I consider maintaining my sanity to be a necessary part of my survival) into the suburban, I had to put Molly on a leash. Molly is no where near as well-trained as Zander and will take off in an instant. Molly dragged me to the car with Maggie in my arms and all that was necessary to manage Zander was a simple command to “get in the back” which he did very obediently. Molly is fluffier and weighs more than Zander and had to be lifted into the Suburban. At one point I ran around the car looking for Maggie until I realized I had already strapped her into her carseat.

I’m sure there were neighbors laughing somewhere… I must have looked like an ass.

Upon getting into the car I realized I was almost out of gas. It takes quite a while to fill up the Suburban and apparently everyone else in town was getting gas at the same time, so Molly and Zander proceeded to bark at all the other patrons in the gas station, thankfully, Maggie slept through all of this.

I was on the road headed to my mom’s house when she called. My mom and the kids were relaxing at the California Pizza Kitchen in the LAX airport. Meanwhile I was trapped in the car with a cocker spaniel and a chaweiner who were doing their own artistic interpretation of “Cujo.”

I was almost to my mom’s when Mike called to tell me that our appointment with the person handling our refi has been moved from her house (which isn’t far from my mom’s) to her company office near his office. It was 12:30 when I made it to her office. Mike didn’t arrive until 1pm and by that time Maggie had woken up and I was trying to keep her busy by singing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” over and over again - it’s her favorite.

It was after 2pm when we were done and on the way back to my mom’s when Maggie launched into her vocal theatrics making the most high-pitched sounds she possibly could. She wasn’t upset, wasn’t fussy, she was just… practicing or something.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon keeping Maggie out of the dog’s food, and letting the dogs in and out of the house. As luck would have it, both the pest control guy and the gardeners (who my mother swears do not do a very thorough job) spent at least an hour and half roaming around the house driving the dogs UP the walls! I now know why my mom mentioned that there was a bottle of pain medication on a shelf in the pantry.

Sure hope the kids are having a good time (a.k.a giving my mom absolute hell).

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