Dogs and Cats, Living Together, Mass Hysteria, etc.

Those that know me, understand that I'm anything but religious; oftentimes to an annoying and pragmatic fault.  This in and of itself isn't particularly unusual save for the fact I have a fair amount of superstitious tendencies and after this week, a decided fear of Karmic retribution.

I'm running an enormous Karma deficit as it relates to family disasters.  I've been deployed for so many months (either combat or field time) that Mrs. Jackalope has had to deal with virtually every major family blowout and has made a number of major financial family transactions all by her lonesome.  There have been stitches placed in children's lips, parent teacher conferences, mortgages signed and major family illnesses all handled by my better half while I was off getting all expenses paid vacations to warm sandy places.  Dodging bullets is not exactly the best way to spend your time, but I'm here to tell you, over the long haul, the wives have the harder duty.  No question.

So when it came time for the missus to take a little trip out yonder (you should all visit out yonder someday, the hamburgers are delicious) and for me to take charge of the family, the visiting nephew, and all of the entertainment planning necessary to have a good time, I said:

The weekend didn't get off to a strong start with me completely muffing the punt and getting my love to the airport late and forcing her to miss her flight.  Well done me.  She was forced to charm her way into a flight change (luckily there is no shortage of charm to be had there) but still had to wait for a few hours at the airport.  I knew I would have plenty of time to feel shame for my transgressions during my run in the afternoon, having missed my window earlier in the day.  Eh, really just cared about getting wifey out to the aforementioned "yonder".


Eventually American Airlines made good on their promise to fly from here to there and all was well.  I was officially the Entertainment Director.


All was progressing normally with trips to the local pool, movies and even a trip to the National Mall to expose my nephew to the sights and sounds of our nation's capital.  It was hot but I was prepared, toting 8 bottles of water along.  All went as planned; Metro, dinner at the burger joint, baths, etc.  That was until the littlest Jackalope complained of a headache.  And by complained I mean, screamed at me with all the power her lungs could generate and created a deluge of tears simultaneously.  She was hurting.  So a few tylenol and a couple of head strokes later, she was resting peacefully.  Until . . .uh . . . she got a little sick.


Which is to say that she sat upright in bed, and went Linda Blair like it was her job.  Awesome.  As an aside, it apparently takes longer than three hours for a 7 year old to completely digest a hamburger.  That's totally not what they taught me in 9th grade Bio.


Now granted, this incident being considered "payback" is a bit like sending the US Treasury a buck to chip in towards the national debt, but this . . .this, was a solid buck.


Flash forward to today which began pretty well:

I tried to convince the youngest that the first attempt at a heart (essentially a misshapen standard pancake) was totally a heart, just anatomically correct, but she wasn't buying it.  While these seemed more like a mutated moth, they nonetheless passed the test.  Woot me.


The girls wanted to head to a water park today as a result of an impromptu, meeny-miny-moe session on the deck.  They told me that the water park won outright.  While I attempted to declare the decision-making engine null and void based on a lack of "pre-defining the meeny, the miny or the moe", I was overruled.  We sallied forth.

Ah yeah . . .plenty of lifeguards to watch the kids, a few clouds to temper the heat and plenty of time to read my Hal Higdon book.  Until . . . 

Doody.    Doody.    Doody.


*Scratchy teenaged announcer voice*  


"Er, uh, Ladies and Gentlemen, we will be closing the pool for an hour due to uh, er, Fecal Contamination."


Pardon the pun, but you've got to be shitting me.  But here we were, watching teenagers scrambling for buckets of bleach and brooms like some kind of lifeguard inspired chinese fire drill.


So yeah, poop in the pool.  And this was no Baby Ruth.


Plenty of silver lining to be had though.  For one, the refunds or free passes were being handed out with sheepish looks.  And for two, you can only imagine the type of high stakes rochambeau that was happening for the dude that needed to make the ultimate rescue.


Tomorrow we're considering the beach.  What could possibly go wrong?


And oh yeah, I ran today.  8 miles.  9:12 pace.  Felt strong, but whatever . . . the poop in the pool story was better.

By Marcus with 2 comments