Waiting for someone to sing me his song

I am so thankful for four whole days of Jon not having to go to work. I never did a proper Thanksgiving post where I tell you what I’m thankful for, and it’s pretty obvious that I am blessed with a beautiful family, a great (at least most of the time) dog (except for today when I turned around and he had his front paws up in Leta’s highchair and was eating crumbs out of the seat: NOT ALLOWED UNLESS I SAY SO FIRST), and we’ve got food and a house and great friends and family who is willing to babysit occasionally. Oh, and THANK GOD for TiVo.

We spent Thanksgiving day at my mother’s house along with two of my aunts, my Granny, my sister and her husband and their five terrifying kids, and of course, GEORGE! And you’d think that with all of those people in one room that there would be SO MUCH to write about, but everyone was on their best behavior, and no one’s head spontaneously exploded, and Aunt Lola only farted once.

Very early on in the day, however, we let my sister’s six-year-old son take Chuck for a walk by himself — very trusting on our part because the kid would seriously lose his own ass if it weren’t permanently attached to his body. They started out in front of the house, and we all gathered around the front window and laughed out loud as Britton just stood there going, “What the?” as the leash got wrapped around Chuck’s neck, two front legs, and then back around his butt. Somehow he figured out that if he kept walking the leash would figure itself out, and when he got back 10 minutes later he came in with a terribly confused look on his face, and he said, “Chuck was being really weird on the walk.”

I asked him, “What do you mean?”

And he explained, “He kept peeing on everything. I would walk a few steps and then turn around and he was going to the bathroom again.”

Perhaps this is only funny to dog owners who, like us, neglected to get their pup fixed before he could figure out how to mark his territory. Chuck would pee on EVERY SINGLE vertical object on a walk if I allowed him to, every blade of grass, every rock, every delicate flower. And when Chuck pees he lifts his leg so high that it looks like he’s trying to wrap it around his ear.

I want to share with you a description of Chuck’s peeing procedure written by my new friend, Emily, who saw The Armstrongs at the dog park one day, and then sent me an email telling me that she saw me but that she didn’t want to bother me, so she didn’t say hello, she just got really close to see if she could get up the nerve to say hello and it never came. Since then she has taken Chuck on two dog play dates with her dogs, AND BOY DO I OWE HER BIG TIME, because she rescued me on days when Chuck’s pacing had reached record new levels. I will not be one bit surprised if Leta’s first words are, “STOP PACING!”

After one of their outings together Emily, who refers to me as I’m Heather B. Armstrong This is My Website, sent me an email that said, “I had no idea Chuck did yoga. I’ve never seen a dog lift his leg SO HIGH to pee in my life! Practically every minute he’s stopping somewhere and doing the most amazing gymnastic pee maneuvers, this alone is sufficient entertainment to make it worth my while to bring him along.”

Emily, your next public drunken citation from the SLC police IS ON ME.

The only other worthwhile quote from Thanksgiving day was my sister’s description of things on sale at Walmart, but I don’t know if I can adequately express its humor here because you would have to hear her accent to really get the full effect. She was talking about how someone in her ward at church was opposed to Walmart and my sister was all (imagine this in the most hillbilly Southern accent possible), “Did you know that you can get Fruity Pebbles for a dollar ninety-eight at Wool-Mort? It’s true! And those are the best because they soak up the milk and get all squishy.”

Friday I took a break from almost everything, including this website. I’m sorry I didn’t clear it with you first, Internet, but I was sick and needed to get some much needed rest. I’m not going to tell you what I was sick with, because then I’ll get all this email with advice on how to avoid bladder infections in the future, and I have heard IT ALL, and have tried EVERYTHING, and they just happen to me a lot, and yes I’ve tried cranberry extract, IT DOESN’T WORK ON ME. So I’ll just tell you that I was sick with a really bad cough, and if you send me email with advice on how to cure a cough I’m so going to tear my eyes out. I’ll just endure the cough in ignorance, thank you very much.

The rest of the weekend was pleasantly uneventful, and we had dinner on Saturday night with our friends from New York, Shan and Sydney, who became engaged to be married over the weekend. Congratulations, Shan and Sydney! I’ve been friends with Shan for over five years, and besides the fact that he is one of the best people I’ve ever known, he happened to chose a fiance who knows all the words to the best song in the history of the world, “You Light Up My Life,” by Debbie Boone.

THANK YOU, SHAN.

Yes, we had a little whiskey and a little wine, but do you know how awesome it is to stand in your own living room and sing “You Light Up My Life,” EVERY SINGLE NOTE AND WORD OF IT, with the person who is going to be spending the rest of her life with your good friend? We even showed each other the dances we used to do in accompaniment with the words. Her dance was remarkably similar to mine, although I’d say hers had much more flair. She is from South Carolina, after all.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. And I don’t know about you, but if I have to eat another sandwich made from leftover turkey I am so going to throw up in a bag and send it to the first person who sends me an email that starts out, “You know, you could get rid of that cough if you just…”