Flappy

**I wrote this on 5/12 and never posted it because Blogger was down**

My day started badly. Very badly. Never mind that I’d stayed up too late reading last night because I am still annoyingly on Pacific Standard time and I was exhausted, but I had to get Hub up and out the door, so he could be back in time to put the kids on the bus so I could go in for day 2 of my 90 days in the office. It turned out though that in order to be back in time to get FIL to his appointment today, Hub would have had to leave for his job much sooner. And so, I stayed back to put the kids on the bus and to make it in to the office by 9:30 or so.

I wait until the very last minute to get dressed, and at the moment that I am completely naked in my bedroom, the big kids start screaming from the driveway. “Haley got out!! Haley got out!” I hear them, but I don’t move right away. What is my option here? Chase her? Let her go? I’m tired, do I really care? As the screams outside grow more frantic though, I throw on jeans and the t shirt I slept in, and run outside. Haley is zig-zagging back and forth from our side of the street to the neighbors across. The big kids are jumping and screaming “she’s going to get kiiiiiiled!!!!” She is a maniac. One neighbor tries to lure her with bones, and you can almost see Haley laugh in her face. I cross the street and call to her, so of course she bolts. We live 2 houses from the corner of a busy-ish street, and that is right where she headed. She wants to chase the cars! I start after her as she makes her way around the corner. It’s only as I’m walking and the cars were speeding past me that I realized I’d forgotten my bra. So there I was, running down the road in a flimsy t-shirt with my boobs ablaze for everyone to see. People who were likely driving their kids to school. People who might know me.

I have a bit of dignity, you know, and really, after nursing 3 kids, I should not be seen anywhere braless. Plus, I’d basically left my kids home alone while I chased her, which was maybe not the best decision in the world. So I say to myself “Screw this. She has tags and she’s micro-chipped. I’ll come back with the car.” And I turn around. And good old Haley turns around and followed me. She did! All the way home! And when we get to our driveway, she bolts again, all the way down the street.

I call to Lucy to grab me her leash. Our neighbors across the street are watching the kids and I go after her. We have new next door neighbors with a German shepherd who is Haley’s age. I’ve not had much interaction with them because they are impossibly young and cute brand new 1st time homeowners and they make me feel old, but of course, I run in to the guy walking his dog. We exchange quick pleasantries and I, already a sweaty mess from this ordeal feel myself turning red as I imagine him going home to tell his fiancé all about my flappy boobs. I see Haley stop a few houses down, so I speed up. Oh! She stopped so she could poop on someone’s lawn. SPLENDID. When I get to her, the someone who the lawn belongs to is staring at me from her kitchen window. Decidedly not happy. I give her a sheepish grin and corner the dog in her side yard where she is eating flowers, and slip the leash around her neck.

She happily walks me home as if everything that happened was normal. A neighbor drives up in a car to ask if I’m going to beat her when we get home. Seriously. I laugh and say that nope, I will leave that to Hub, thinking “Oh really? You got JOKES right now motherfucker??” She is home in time for the bus to arrive, so we see the kids off, I clean myself up and finish getting dressed, get a bag to clean up the poop, and get Liv in the car and drive to the lawn Haley pooped on. Of course, the lady is no longer perched in her window, so I don’t feel as redeemed as I’d have liked, but, at least the poop is gone. We turn around and I stop briefly in our driveway to fling the bag of poop in to our yard.

Finally I’m on my way to work. I neglect to tell Hub any of this until he calls to ask about the poop bag in the yard. Oh, and to tell me that FIL wasn’t up to going to his appointment, so he could have actually waited to go to work. I decide to not blow a gasket, and instead simply tell him that the dog got out and pooped where she shouldn’t have, so I cleaned it up on my way out.

That’s all he needs to know. Besides, I’m sure he’ll hear all about it from the neighbors anyway.