I’ve been attempting to start this blog for weeks. I don’t know why it always seems like beginning is the hardest part, but like a lot of things in life, once you get going its hard to stop (or shut up). Or maybe that’s just my life.
I struggled with how to begin…do I introduce myself and give a synopsis of my life (and explain why you should even finish reading this paragraph) or start off with why I decided to start a blog in the first place (that’s what unemployed housewives and mommies with too much education do, right?)
I guess I’ll start somewhere in the middle and work my way around in my future posts, hopefully in some kind of full circle, but really I make no promises.
It all started with a dog. Well, really a cat. Then a herd of cats. Then came the dog. Then a baby.
A few years ago, my husband and I were living together, happily unmarried, childless (so bliss, really). I was gainfully employed as a paper pusher and customer service extraordinaire at a university and considering grad school options. My husband had just reenlisted in the Navy where he goes out to sea for months at a time on a submarine and fiddles with computers (not really, but its close enough). I decided that if we were going to continue to live apart for long periods of time, I would need a companion. So we settled for Tater our cat. Then came another cat, Chloe (because he needed a companion). Then a third and fourth feline and eventually they all reproduced exponentially. Our episode of Animal Hoarders will be airing on Animal Planet next month.
Just kidding.
The deal was that if he allowed me to adopt two cats (in my way of thinking, two cats constitutes a herd because they’re just as difficult to wrangle than any actual herd of animals), I would allow him to choose whatever breed of dog he wanted when we were in a house with a yard. Looking back, I don’t know what I was thinking. Also, I’m a big believer in karma and I must’ve had it coming for something horrendous I did in my younger years because in August 2012 two things happened:
1. We put a deposit on this:
2. Two weeks later, we found out I was pregnant.
Just in case you were wondering, that adorable lab mix puppy that looks like he’s about six months old is neither a lab mix nor six months old. My husband decided that he wanted the biggest, drooliest dog on God’s green earth. That puppy is a Neapolitan Mastiff and he is six weeks old here.
We were optimistic. Great! A puppy and a baby, they’ll grow up together! We understood that Blue, a Neapolitan Mastiff would grow quite a bit faster and larger than the baby, but mastiffs are supposed to be “gentle giants.” It turns out it doesn’t matter how gentle giants are when within months of getting said “gentle giant” turns into this:
So that’s how it started. Now Blue, our oldest is 160 lbs and two years old (and yes he is going through his own terrible twos which I will get into in future posts) and our youngest, Olive will be two in April. They like to get into shenanigans both together and separately. They fight a lot with me and each other. I tend to enjoy living in the chaos produced when raising a toddler that prefers screaming to talking and uses peanut butter as face paint along with a dog the size of a man that leaves “frosting” on all the furniture and eats cat poop and then licks my face. I get through the day by not taking life too seriously. And realizing that in order to stay sane I have to relinquish any delusion of control I might once have had over my household.
But at the end of the day after my throat is hoarse from yelling at Blue, I’m covered in dog drool and toddler grub, I realize I haven’t showered in two days and I just sat in someone’s urine, its moments like this that remind me that we made the right decisions. Even if they seemed crazy stupid at the time (and still sometimes do). In the end, things tend to work themselves out.
Olive, Blue, and Me Too 