making friends

Geekydaddy and I are both social animals. In fact there was a time when we could have been described as party animals. We like to be surrounded by people, and have both always been part of a strong, close knit group of friends. In fact I thought long and hard before introducing Geekydaddy to my circle when we first were dating. Bringing a date into "the gang" meant that he was being seriously considered as a potential mate.

Since kids we have struggled to find time to hang out with our friends. Babysitting being expensive, and our time with the kids rather limited, we are not free to go out to meet our single or child free friends in bars and nightspots, and we never got into the habit of going out seperately on "boys nights" or "girls nights", outings are always with the whole gang. Throughout our lives we have always been open to forming new friendships, and indeed we did find some lovely new friends through Geekygirl. But recently we have been feeling a bit antisocial. Too tired to make new friends, too wrapped up in keeping up with the people we already know and care about. Then a mother from Geekboys daycare suggested we get together, and I found myself excited about potentially making a new mum friend.

Tonight we hosted geekyboys first 'playdate/dinner' with this friend from daycare. Now that our house is overrun with toys and their housewrecking owners, and the animals get groomed far less often than they ought to, so the floors tumble with hairballs, I am a little anxious about having new people over to the house. The new couch helps a little with my "do other people think we live in squalor?" fear, but still I was inspecting the tablemats for dog hair, picking up toys in a futile attempt to keep order as the children, delighted by "new toys" unearthed by my "display the more educational toys and hid the ones that came with the happy meals so as not to give the guests the wrong impression" rummage through the toy bins, thwarted my attempts to bring order to our home, and I was still swiffing under the table when the doorbell rang.

It turned out to be a lovely evening, I hope the first of many. I was surprised by how excited our little boy was to have a familiar friend come and visit, he was quite excited, running in circles and calling his name. The boys parents were easygoing and fun to talk to, drank wine (not a requirement for friendship, but something we have in common with most of our friends). They were quite happy for their son to join the activity that has become a post meal habit of our children at dinner parties, couch bouncing, and most importantly, were completely unphased and indeed amused, when our overly rambunctious dog and our son contributed a party trick designed to test out any new friendship.

After running laps of the lawn with various stolen items in her mouth, Geekydog must have eaten a bellyful of grass. I was watching our guest on the slide, when I turned to see Geekyboy dancing in his socks in a damp puddley spot on the patio. "Where did that water come from", i thought, realizing as that thought formed that what he was actually dancing so gleefully in was a puddle of grassy dog vomit.

Here's hoping that they still want to know us after this evening, because we really liked them!

How easy have you found it to make new friends since becoming parents?

why every mum needs a dog

Dogs often get the short end of the stick (or no stick at all) when a child enters a family. In that new parent's sleepless, hormonal fog the precious, helpless infant seems so very vulnerable, and dear fido, previously viewed as a harmless goof, is suddenly seen as a germ ridden, slobbering, dangerous beast with big teeth. Many good dogs end up in shelters (or worse) in the first few weeks after a new baby arrives.

We were fortunate that our dog, who came to us from an animal shelter in Oakland, reacted with gentleness and acceptance to our children from the day they were born. She is invaluable for cleaning up under high chairs, and for providing endless amusement for the kids as a walking aide, face licker and hide and seek partner.

As well as this, Geekydog is now an essential in my parenting tactic armory. You see Monsters, which lurk in the darkened house across the steet, are afraid of dogs. And Geekydog is an expert monster sniffer outer. And bugs (particularly those daddy long legs ones, which can sometimes fly into the face of a small girl, inciting terror), are delicious to dogs. If a little girl is afraid to go to sleep because there might be a leggy bug lurking behind the curtains, Geekydog can be summoned and will 'eat up' the offender.

I have taken advantage of Geekygirl's love of our dog in a new way, too. At the moment she gets angry, when things don't go her way, when her sleeves are too tight, or a puzzle too tricky. And her way of dealing with the anger is to hit out at the nearest person, or to scream ear penetratingly loudly. Screaming is preferable to hitting, I suppose, but it is not ideal. We're working on an emphatic "I'm angry", a foot stamp, or another satisfying yet PG rated exclamation.

When she screamed this morning because her socks were uncomfortable, Geekydog came running, anxious about the noise. I was inspired, and said "Look at poor Geekydog. Dogs have very very sensitive ears, sensitive enough to hear those bugs flying in your room. Screaming really hurts her ears. Much more than it hurts a person's ears. Look how worried she is about your screaming, I think her ears hurt." Geekygirl was instantly contrite, and hugged the dog, stroking the offended ears. I'm hoping for a breakthrough on the screaming. And I'm thinking other ways to use her love and respect for our dog to our advantage. After all, the beast needs to earn her keep, the amount of hair I'm swept up from the floors this week!

hair dog season

Here in the bay area it can be hard to figure out exactly what season it is. If you landed here from another planet or awoke from one hundred years of sleep in January, June, or October you might find very similar weather. But a surefire way to know that it is spring in our house is the presence of tumbleweeds of dog fluff, hairballs roll across our wood floors, stick to our shower wet feet and appear in our cereal.

Other than the dog fur plague, Bay Area old timers such as ourselves can tell spring is here since we have noticed that it is getting lovely and warm, warmer than it usually is in the summer, in fact, reaching the 70's during the day, with clear fog free skies. Our yard, landscaped at the end of last year, is coming into its own, and another sign of spring, my jasmine, is beginning to bloom. This inspired us last weekend to have our first barbeque of the season, after spending most of the day outside in the backyard (yes, its a tough life, I know!).

Now one thing many non parents do not appreciate is the sheer lack of time to oneself a working parent has. This became apparent when I decided to peruse recipe books for barbeque ideas. I realized that we had three brand new untouched recipe books on our shelves, all generous Christmas gifts from friends and family who recalled the great love of all things food and cooking related that Geekydaddy and I share. Despite calling to me occasionally from the shelves, in the time between now, the end of March, and last December, I had not found a moment to read them!

We fondly recalled lazy Sundays spent reading the paper, scanning recipe books, then shopping and cooking gourmet meals. But between playing with the kids in the bright sunny newly landscaped garden, and fending snotty fingers of the glossy pages of the new cookbooks, I did manage to select an excellent marinade for our Arctic Char and tried a recipe for grilled zucchini with fresh mint both of which turned out very nicely.

I admit to a certain sense of pride when our three year old eats barbequed fish and zucchini with relish, and declares it "really yummy. And it will make your bones grow".

Let them eat kibble.

With cats, dog and kids constantly clamouring for sustenance, I harbour a secret desire for a big bag of "Family Chow". Something nutritious and delicious, oh, and organic of course, that can be poured into a bowl and served to either animals or children. It would save me so much time and mental energy.

I dither so much, wondering whether I should feed the cats before the kids. The advantage of feeding the cats first is that I don't get tripped up by leg winding, apparently famished cats meowing "I'm emaciated, my ribs are showing, feed me or I'll expire right now" while I make the kids dinner. The disadvantage is that leaving the cats alone with their food while I make something for the kids gives the dog a chance to sneak over to the cat food, (and oh yes, a 60 pound dog can sneak) and gobble it all up.

The dog gets fed last, since it doesn't matter how much food she has already consumed, she will still eat the cat food given half a chance, and hover around the kids table hoovering dropped food. (How do people without dogs keep their floors clean?) Or these days, getting an offering of a pureed chicken coated spoon; Geekybaby loves to share. (yes, it gets licked by the dog and goes straight back into the babies mouth. It's five against one here and I don't have eyes in the back of my head. Besides, it's good for the immune system).

This morning the inevitable finally happened. Geekygirl was happily enjoying her bowl of cheerios and allbran. The morning almost went badly, since she had requested raisin bran (something I have only bought once, but for some reason has stuck in her mind). Fortunately, though I had no raisin bran, we did have raisins, so I sprinkled a few of those in her bowl, and breakfast got off to a good start. I was making coffee, feeding the dog, and eating my own breakfast all at the same time, when I heard

"What's this mummy?". Geekygirl proffered a small, brown, milk coated item from her cereal bowl. "That's a raisin" I replied. "Remember, I put raisins in your cereal today". She put the item back into her mouth cautiously, the removed it again.

"Mummy, it's not a raisin, it's a kibble" she said indignantly.

I inspected the item more closely, and sure enough, it was a dog kibble.

"I already ate one!" She said.

I had to laugh that it has finally come to this. I am feeding the kids kibble.

happy turkey, peacock, warthog and grizzly bear day

Yes, the geekyfamily visited the zoo this Thanksgiving.

before regailing you with the tale of our trip, I must pause to think of everything I am thankful for. The list is long, but in the interest of brevity I'll stick to the biggies:

My family. To have two such wonderful children, Geekygirl so lovely, so bright and full of ideas and life, Geekybaby, so happy, and such a blessing to arrive through an easy pregnancy and joyful delivery, despite my advancing age, completing our family so perfectly. it is only on reflection that I appreciate how lucky I was to meet such a fine man, and to squeeze in our two incredible kids against the tick of the biological clock. I'm so thankful for Geekydaddy, the best husband and father any family could have. Though my dad thinks he does too much housework, I know I am fortunate to live every day with that rare creature, a man who is also a feminist.

Which brings me to my extended family. I'm thankful for my dear Mum and Dad, that they are able and willing to get on a plane and fly half way across the world to see us, and techno savvy enough to embrace skype, so we can see each other across the atlantic. And I'm thankful for my sister and brother, and their lovely spouses and families. I only wish that San Francisco could be located just a tad closer to the UK. That or maybe those NASA folk could hurry up and invent teleporting.

Our trip to the zoo reminded me to be thankful for the amazing and incredible variety of life on this planet (Warthogs are very weird looking animals), for the opportunity I was given, many years ago now, to live in this wonderfully diverse city, and for the great and true friends that I have made here.

As for our trip to the zoo, well I think we may have started a new tradition. There were two high points to an all round superb day. The first was that we arrived early enough to see the grizzly bear feeding. A crowd of small and large folk gathered around the glass window dividing us from the swimming pool in the grizzly habitat. When the zookeepers came they released live fat brown trout into the water, and we got to watch a National Geographic special, as the two bears, huge, golden, and well, grizzly, gallumphed through the water, one of them finally pinning his trout with a determined paw right by the glass. Nimbly transferring the flopping fish to his mouth, he proceeded to bite off its head, and crunch the whole thing down in a mess of blood, saliva and irridescant scales, inches from Geekygirl and I, who had a prime spot by the glass. Geekygirl was wide eyed, but surprisngly un-phased by this display of Nature in action.

As we left she told me "the bears have a restaurant in a swimming pool"!

The second high point of the day was our restaurant lunch at the zoo. Not in a swimming pool, but right by the flamingo pond, the 'leaping lemur cafe' is the only place to eat if you are ever at San Francisco Zoo. Geekygirl considers it the finest restaurant in town, since it serves lovely french fries and chocolate milk. Today it also put on a nice Turkey dinner, which, since Thanksgiving fare from my pescaterian kitchen is the "traditional roasted salmon" rather delighted geekydaddy, and was an unexpected bonus to an already wonderful day.

To top off the day, on our way home from the zoo, we picked up our darling geekydog from the vet. She was bright eyed and pleased to see us, and is now resting, shaved and be-coned, at home with us. Now all we have to do is relax and finish our wine, and look forward to three more whole work free days of kids and friends. And maybe a little shopping.

all I want for Christmas is a new dog knee

So, it seems that our annual donation to our Vet's mortgage fund has come due once again around the holidays. let me back up here and tell you that last year, on a beautiful crisp sunny day between Christmas and new year, geekydog was running along the beach when she fell, yelped, and hobbled over to us on three legs. She had blown out her cruciate ligament. Several thousand dollars and a long rehabilitation later she seemed in great shape. Geekygirl still remembers the incident, one of her first full sentences was "geekdog hurt leg running too much".

We had been warned that that if one knee goes, the other is probably on its way out too, and I had noticed her limping a little on her "good" back leg. Sure enough, this weekend I let her off leash for a quick romp, and once again witnessed fall, yelp, followed by three legged hobble. Geekgirl keeps asking "what happened to Geekydog?" and says "take her to the vet right now".

She saw the vet today, who confirmed that she has ruptured the other knee, and that instead of going to Tahoe tomorrow for romping in the woods our poor dog will be going under the kinife. And we will be foregoing expensive Christmas gifts instead giving each other dog orthopedic surgery for Christmas this year.

Its not just the expense of this which is depressing though, it is the trauma of the surgery for our poor dog. She does not like the vet, and I still remember how hurt and changed she was after the last surgery, eyes turned feral with fear, muzzled at first, since any hand hear her injury provoked a snap. I'm just hoping for a fast recovery, since this is complicated even more by the fact we are going to South Africa for Christmas and are planning on boarding the animals.

So much for our cheap, low maintenance dog from the pound!

garden party

One of the reasons we have parties is to force us to tidy up. Saturday was spent in a whirlwind of organizing. Geekdaddy was in charge of shopping for last minute necessities (who knew that Whole Foods refuse to sell maraschino cherries because they consider them unwholesome?. Party poopers!), making the marinades and setting up the bar. I tidied and cleaned, using the opportunity to get all the toys into their respective organizer bins (dolly's clothes, baby dollies, toy pots and pans, vehicles, legos, baby rattles, soft toys, puzzles). While geekybaby took his morning nap, and Geekgirl was ensconsed with her Charlie and Lola DVD I got the whole place ship shape, with enough of the aesthetically attractive yet inviting toys displayed to entice the small guests, but not so much hideous noisy plastic tat on display that we would horrify the childless guests.

Then I heard a gasp of horror from Geekydaddy, returned from his garnish gathering. Geekydog, who up until now had been treating the new yard with respect, had attacked and uprooted one of the newly planted euphorbias! Dirt and roots covered the previously perfect patio. And to add insult to injury, we found that orange geek the cat had peed on the kitchen counter. We think the nasty beast was expressing his anger that he was unable to get to the salmon skin in the counter top composting bin.

We cleaned up after our errant animals in time for the first guests to arrive. My mood was much improved by Geekydaddy's most excellent pina coladas, The barbequed chicken and shrimp were just perfect, and a great time was had by guests both large and small.

Though we are realizing that the decorative pebbles our garden designer used between the patio slabs, though they do look very stylish, are not the best choice for a garden frequented by toddlers, especially toddlers whose parents are drinking pina coladas. Inspection of the lawn the next day revealed that the pebbly contents of the patio had been collected and rolled down the slide into a big heap in the grass!

cruelty to animals?

We refer to Geekydog as 'the dog of love'. She is a snuggler, a dog who craves human affection. She weighs 55lb but secretly wishes that she was a tiny lap dog. She has been with us since before the arrival of the children, and though we love her as much as ever, the amount of attention she gets from us has diminished quite dramatically over the years. It was an incident this weekend that brought home to me how neglected our poor dog must feel.

On Saturday I gave her a much overdue bath. Like most dogs, geekydog is not fond of being bathed, but she puts up with it, hops into the tub willingly, and tolerates the shampooing and rinsing with a hangdog expression.

On Sunday, Geekydog followed me into the bathroom and hopped into the tub again, wagging her tail hopefully. Yes, the poor beast had decided that if the only place she gets attention is in the tub, she would gladly take another bath!

I think this a reminder for us to slow down a little, smell the roses, and pet the dog.

you can take a dog to a tree but you can't make her pee

Before our garden landscaping project started, we had a few struggling plants in our flowerbeds. Only hardy shrubs that could withstand dog urine, and being leapt on by the hairy beast stood a chance of survival. The yard was Geekydog's oyster.

Now that it looks like a picture in 'Sunset' magazine, we plan to treat it a little more kindly. I am not sure how we will communicate this new need for respecting the plants to the dog though. We have optimistically desgned in a special 'dog privy area' (as the designer calls it.)

On returning home to the newly verdant back yard, I let Geekydog out as usual. Something about the new smells and sights turned her head and she started to rampage through the freshly planted beds. One plant got rather trampled before I could get her back inside. Though I am sure that some of the new flowery gorgeousness will fall victim to a crashing dog pouncing after a ball eventually, we do want to try and give the plants at least a few weeks to get enough roots to put up some resistance.

I took geekydog outside on leash and tried to get her to pee and poop in her 'privy spot'. Several times. The poor dog just didn't get it.

So instead, when I get home from work, I am now taking her out for a quick walk on the street. This is easier said than done with a baby and a toddler in tow. My first mistake was asking Geekygirl if she wanted to walk or to ride the stroller. She chose stroller, so I pulled out the double umbrella and strapped them both in. We set off down the street. Oh, and to make things more interesting, our street is one of the steepest in the city. It is so precipitous that it is used for the 'street louge' competition in the X games! We got halfway down the block, geekydog still has not peed, and Geekygirl now wanted to walk. So I was left trying to push an asymetrically laden double stroller with one hand, hold the dog with another hand and hold onto Geekygirl's hand with...oh wait, I only have two hands.

We compromised by having her hold the stroller instead, which worked fine until a well intentioned dog loving passer by called out 'can I say hi to your dog', at which Geekydog's ears pricked, and she darted toward him, pulling me off balance, causing the stroller to swing around, almost knocking poor Geekygirl down. Tears ensued, and the passerby sheepishly apologied for the mayhem he had created.

The dog finally found a tree suitable for peeing on, and we made it back to the house without further incident. But it made me wonder about starting a 'mummy X games', we're certainly in training for the one handed double stroller dog walking event.

the power of cheese

Once, a long time ago, when geekydog and the cats were my only dependents I tried to become an expert dog trainer. Geekydog was obtained from an animal shelter, 9 months old, loving and willing but completely wild and untrained. I read books, watched DVDs and took classes. It was a lot of fun.

Geekydog will do anything for a food reward, so after obtaining her many diplomas, she can now sit, heel on both sides, drop into a down 40 paces away from me in response to a hand signal and even execute a series of jumps and run through a tunnel on an agility course. What she won't do is reliably come back when she is called. The fact that I have failed to train her in this most basic and important command has led to some heart stopping moments.

A year or so ago, realizing that something about her chow chow genes, my lack of dog training chops, and the lack of time to even attempt to train her any more made it unlikely we would ever truly master this skill, I bought one last DVD. 'Really reliable Recall'. The principle behind this is quite simple. You know how your dog will come running when she hears the kibble being poured, or in our case when she sees the cheese grater being pulled out of the drawer (maybe it will rain cheese again!)? What this trainer has you do is create a reflex response like that to a word. You pick a word you don't already use as a command (we picked 'Now') and when you say it, your dog gets the best treats and love you can bestow. You treat your dog like she has just been swept from the jaws of death every time you say this magic word. And you rarely ever use it as an actual command, that way you don't dilute its power.

Yesterday afternoon we had a series of events that could have led to disaster. One of the guys working on our yard project came in to use the bathroom and left the french door unlatched. Orangegeek the cat miaowed at his friend Geekydog, who nosed the door open. The doors through the garage to the street were open, since the garden guys were bringing in plants, and Geekydog bolted off for the freedom of the street, completely out of sight in a moment. I called 'Now', and after a tense few seconds I heard the jingle of her collar as she bolted back through the garage and into the kitchen. Where I fed her about a pound of smoked gouda, and locked the door.

good fences make good neighbours

We are in the midst of a garden landscaping project here at geekyhouse. Neither geekydaddy or I are in the least bit handy, so we have called in the professionals.

Our house is built into a steep hill, and the small yard is in two levels. From the top yard we can see over the top of our house. This means that the yard has very high fences. Rotting, swaying fences, painted with a dubious flaking red paint. Parts of fence have fallen down in every storm over the past 10 years. It was the sorry state of the fences that prompted the garden remodel, and today is the day the much anticipated new fences are being put up.

This meant that yesterday the old fences came down, so last night we could trespass into our neighbours yards! The site of the yards next door, one beautifully tended; the envy and inspiration for our own remodel, one urban jungle furnished with rotting kitchen chairs and rusty barbeques, reminded me of newsreel pictures of apartment buildings torn apart by disasters. The view seemed an intrusion into something personal. The fence just creates an illusion of private space, creates little pocket worlds seperated by boards.

It also prevents geekydog from pooping in the neighbours yards, so I didn't let her out when I got home.

Now, keeping everyone fed, cleaned and contented in our house, in the 2 hours between getting home time and bedtime, is a very fine balancing act, and it doesn't take much to tip the equilibrium from harmonic to horrific. Somehow that lack of fenced yard made last night one of the less succesful ones.

I tried taking geekydog out on her leash, at the same time attempting to keep geekygirl away from nails and heavy machinery strewn around the yard, but apparently the novel contents of the yard needed to be sniffed, and the dog would not pee. The neighbours dog was out having a good sniff too, so I relented and let geekydog roam free with him in the new territory. Now geekydog is quite a well trained and obedient dog, but she suffers from a selective deafness when exploring exciting new things. And the neighbours dog suffers from actual deafness. The dogs romped off and would not come in.

By the time the dogs were returned to their respective residences, the kids were starving. For some reason I had decided to make chicken stew from scratch for Geekygirl, (every now an again my guilt at too many fish stick and tater tot meals kicks in and I become toddler gourmet for a day, but this was definitely not the night to do it).

Geekybaby is a recent recruit to the world of solid foods, but he demands them with menaces. He had already been sitting in his high chair, dribbling with longing, for far too long. When I took a break from shoveling pureed carrots into his mouth in order to fetch an equally hungry and impatient geekygirl her much delayed dinner, the shriek of protest he let out caused her to burst into sympathetic and even louder howls. As I sat the table surrounding by tearful, bellowing children, I felt like bawling myself. Then as Geekygirl spooned up her chicken stew with gusto, and I resumed the carrot shoveling, the din turned to blissful silence for a few moments. I caught my breath, looked at the clock and counted the minutes until bedtime.

the hair of the dog

It was a Saturday morning in the geeky household. One of those Saturday mornings when you need your coffee so badly that you are actually incapable of successfully making a pot of coffee (common caffeine deprivation induced mistakes include incorrect counting of scoops of coffee, use of cold water, oatmeal in coffee pot instead of coffee, failure to screw together french press plunger or combination of the above).

While concentrating very hard on the challenge of generating a drinkable pot of coffee, I heard the voice of 2 year old geekygirl saying

"mummy, I have hair dog?"

I did a double take. Did my sweet child just ask me for a morning cocktail? I know that it is 'dance party' day at daycare on Fridays, but surely the toddlers are not sneaking in booze in their lunchboxes.

Turning to look at geekygirl, I saw her holding up a long black hair that she had discovered in her oatmeal. I explained to geekygirl that yes, you do indeed have hair dog. I mean dog hair. I explain that geekyhound's hair gets everywhere, but that hair in our oatmeal is a small price to pay for the joy and love that a dog can bring to a family.

"mummy, you have hair dog?", geekygirl responded.

I looked at the clock: 7.15 am. It was tempting, but perhaps a little too early to start drinking.

I realized though, as I contemplated the overwhelming list of things to do that weekend, that hair dog in the breakfast is my metaphor for what happens when I try to do it all. I can nurse an infant, feed a toddler and play fetch with an overexcited, underexcerised dog all before my first cup of coffee of the day, so I am bound to end up with hair dog in the food.

And you know what? I think that is OK.