Sprite's Keeper

He-bonics

Sprite's been on a name kick for the past few months. She's extremely interested in everyone's names, nicknames, middle names, last names, name games, you name it. (Ha!)

(Before I go further, let me apologize for being largely absent for the last week or so. My blog needs some dusting now, but so did my lungs so they decided to rent out to a bronchial tenant who thought the penthouse view, or my head, needed some renovation as well. Due to that, and the codiene laced cough syrup, I've been mostly banned by John (and my friend Cynthia who reads this blog) from the computer since drug induced thoughts, while funny to me, may come off in a different perspective to the sober folks out there. So, there's my excuse. What's yours?) (Um, I've only been off the syrup for 24 hours. Snark may still be influenced.)

She's known for a long time that she is "Sprite". Yes, we use her real name at school and around people we really don't know, since, let's face it, trying to explain "Sprite" is harder than it would seem in the age of "in your face" marketing. I STILL get the soft drink question from people I would hope are smarter than to deduce that I base my child's personality on carbonated corn syrup, but her nickname is used quite a bit.

Thanks to her fascination with names, she tries out other names on John and me as well. Lately, she's taken to calling me "Mama". While I don't mind the name "Mama", I am "Mommy", have always been, no interest in the other.

"Mama!"

"Are you talking to me?"

"Yes, you're my mother."

"I'm Mommy."

"No, you're Mama."

Thanks for the memo, kid.

John has been exposed to the possible name change of "Papi" and "Papa". She quickly abandoned the latter, and seems to only use "Papi" when she wants him to speak Spanish to her. (Which, coincidentally, only happens when she's playing with her Dora the Explorer computer game.)

The defaults are still the well worn Mommy and Daddy brands though.

Wanting to throw her for a loop, I told her what her Hebew name was, Sarat Chandel. She immediately clung to it, something which can be difficult for most Jewish American children since the pronunciation of the Hebrew alphabet is different from the ole standard English one they teach at school, lots of phlegm involved at times, kind of like coughing up a spork. But not Sprite. After one request to repeat her name so she could learn where the long "a" and short "a" was, she nailed it and has been offering it to everyone since.

And asking everyone else for their Hebrew name, even the Gentiles.

"What's your Hebrew name, Mommy?"

"Shoshana Yaffa."

"What's Daddy's Hebrew name?"

"Daddy doesn't have a Hebrew name. He's not Jewish."

"Yes he does. It's John Cohen."

Okay, okay, let's not agree with her on the Cohen technicality. Jeez. Sometimes, you give this kid too much credit.

"What's Blue's Hebrew name?"

"Blue doesn't have a Hebrew name. She's a dog."

"Yes she does. It's Blue-see Blue. And Harry is Harry Hee."

Mazel tov, mutts. Here's a milkbone.

I had the chance on Monday to take her to an actual Passover Seder, hosted by my Orthodox leaning aunt and uncle in Aventura. (Anyone who doesn't know Aventura, it's a section of Miami with a LARGE Jewish population. The Joy of Oy is as plentiful as the guilt.) Since John couldn't get out of work, he didn't join us for the trip East to see my family, just an overnighter, but filled with tradition.

I tried to explain to Sprite exactly what Passover was, since this is the first year she can actually retain the information she's given for longer than an hour, but also since my own seders are typically just meals with a toast given before the food is consumed. Oh yeah, and my seders aren't Kosher.

She was fascinated with the name itself, Passover, unfortunately, she was convinced it was actually two words. "When is the Pass Over party?" Trying to explain it was not successful since four year old logic is concrete and OVER is its own word, "Mommyyou'resosillyturnonmymovieit'smyturn".

Once we got there though, I was forgotten as she absorbed the real Jewish side of her gene pool. Sprite, being the youngest in the room, was immediately ignored by her older cousins Bryan and Elijah as 1. she didn't have a DS and 2. she didn't know what a DS was. Dejected and near tears, she quickly found another cousin Gabriel who started to play with her, becoming her partner in crime for pretty much the entire evening. Keep in mind, Gabe is not that much younger than me, pushing thirty, so her skepticism to him actually qualifying as a "cousin" when the rest of her cousins were all born in the late nineties or later was understandable, but since he was willing to roll around on the floor and play hide and seek behind the couch, he got the job.

I packed a ton of snacks just in case since Kosher food can tend toward the bland side, with the exception of bitter herbs and horse radish which every kid must be tricked into tasting at least once in their lifetime, but once she got past the matzoh and a taste of charoset, a mixture of apples and other ingredients which is supposed to be sweet, but my child decided looked better coming out then going in, and of course once I experienced her "no thank you" bite being offered into my hand to keep her from giving everyone a show, I wasn't interested in it either so we were both pretty much done before the meal actually began.(Which, if made well, is delicious on matzoh. Especially if you need to wash out the taste of raw horse radish that one of your cousins SWORE was something else, the jerks..)

 So yes, her first real "Pass Over" meal was a success, the cutest point of the evening being when the children run to the front door to throw it open and look for Elijah, whom you learn has already been by by the telltale empty wine glass an adult filled for him earlier. (Tradition, folks.) Trying to keep up with the older kids, she rushed the door with them only to come back to the table and whisper to me, "Why did they think Elijah was outside? He's RIGHT THERE," pointing to another Elijah.

Again, four year olds. Logic. They blend.

Of course, after trying to explain the whole "Elijah" thing fell through when the guests began to sing happy birthday to the real one, leading Sprite to believe Passover was just a way of celebrating a kid's birthday, just without the presents. As I tucked her in beside me on the air mattress that night, she whispered, "That was a fun party. But my birthday was better."

It's always a competition, isn't it?

Donde estan las picturas de la oficina de John?

Aqui!

(Please do not attempt to make sense of the title. Google Translator may shut down on you after flashing "Gringo" in red. And screaming.)

I promised you office pictures. I gave you the Curious Case of the Vanishing Beagle. Nowhere near as colorful or room makeover related, but it did have a happy ending resulting in tears and hugs, much like the office make over.. (I don't think Disney is going to option the script though, their loss.)

So I give you the (semi-) finished office!

Before showing the pictures, let me just say: I used to hate John's office. If you look back far enough in the archives on this site, and could you dust in there while you're rummaging?, you will find countless phrases that usually end in "I hate John's office." While I had access to every other room in the house and control over where everything went, the office was the space where John was king, after all, if I couldn't identify half the techie crap he had stacked in there, why should I be touching it?

Yes. I was tested. "Thingie" was never an option for an answer therefore I always failed.

So I closed the door and forgot about it. And tried not to come in there unless absolutely necessary, like when I needed him to debug my laptop or when he called me in to show me something, but my level of patience never made it past two minutes before I would be itching to escape.

When we started talking about room switching, he immediately exercised his right to final say over the color, where everything went, etc. I agreed, but only on the condition that he actually organize his shit. Nothing was to come into the office without a place to call home. (No collect calls accepted. Roaming fees apply.)

He kept his promise.

I now love to come into his office and hang out with him.

 

This chair is the design inspiration of the office. This chair is older than ME. My parents bought it when they moved into their first home, just months before I came along. The colors scream seventies. Loudly. My sister and I have broken a few toes over the years when misjudging the pivoting point between the family room and living room. The chair moved with us into where my parents now live, but they finally decided to move on and get rid of the chair. Only problem with that decision was that John had taken to adopting the chair as his main seat whenever we would visit. He thought the chair was the most comfortable he'd ever sat in. (I honestly don't know where he gets the idea from. I really can't stand it.) So, when he heard about their evil plot to excise the chair from their home, he immediately offered the chair sanctuary in our home. Even when it had nowhere to go, couldn't fit in the old office, he refused to part with it.

Now, it actually looks good. (Which means my dream to letting it go to the great curbside in the sky will not be realized any time soon.) (I also offered to slipcover it so it could at least "pretend" to be part of the twenty-first century. I think John was offended on its behalf.)

And yes! Our Once Upon a Sprite painting is right above it, where the light sneaks out from the curtain sides to offer it an ethereal glow in the mornings. Have I mentioned how much John loves the painting? How much we love Michele?

The curtains are from IKEA, colorful squiggles which pick up the brown from the chair, the blue from the walls, and some gray just for balance. The curtains and rod both cost under thirty bucks.

 

A view of the office opposite the window. All of the furniture with exception of the glass shelves in the corner and a folding worktable which John now uses for all of his projects are from IKEA. We bought pretty much the entire line of Expedit, as well as a desk attachment, which is where John's monitor and keyboard sit. All in brown/black, all which were both easy AND a bitch to build, and all which cost less than four hundred dollars. After those purchases, the only thing we bought for the office was the curtains, so counting paint, our total room makeover expense was fifty dollars.

 

Here you can see the worktable and a big blank expanse of wall. John wants a textured art piece or something for this space. He doesn't quite know what he's looking for, just the essence of what he thinks he wants. I'm still trying to convince him to let me just buy a blank canvas and let Sprite go nuts with some paints since the blue walls and brown/black furniture can take a splash of color without it overwhelming the room. He's not quite onboard with it, but when he comes home and sees us in the driveway, splattering acrylic paints on top of dropcloths, he may buy in.. Until then, the wall sits waiting.

 

This is the wall directly opposite the chair. This bookcase sits centered and I absolutely love it there. It feels like this furniture was just made for this room, or vice versa. When we changed out the old furniture with the IKEA pieces in John's old office, it still felt cramped, cluttered, claustrophobic. Now it feels spacious, serene, SANE.
John has so much storage space now, he filled some of the shelves with pictures just to have something there. And that doesn't count the additional cubbie space under his desk or in the printer shelf either. LOVE it!

 

A better view of the office from the french doors. Yes, french doors. Back when Sprite was occupying this room, we had a great peak in on her shenanigans at all hours, but the worry of her breaking one of the panes was a niggling worry in our minds. Now, they are more natural as the entry to an actual office. As my good friend Rachel said when visiting on Saturday, "it feels bigger in here." She's completely right. I've never seen so much open floor space in this room! John can sit at his desk, I can camp out in the chair of salvation, and Sprite can play on the floor without anyone touching anyone else. Personal space for under a hundred dollars? Priceless.

 

I don't even know where we got that vase. It's been floating around the house for a while. Now it's seen the light. (Sorry, that pun's been floating around the house for a while too.)

 

Of course, Sprite has a space in here, along with some of her artwork, including this painted piece which she made for him in 2009.

 

Oh, see that polkadotted pattern in the bottom shelf? That's actually one of four placemats. John's mom had bought them at IKEA and promptly turned them over to us when I mentioned how much I liked them. Seriously, she's like that. (But somehow managed to hold onto all four of her gorgeous children no matter how much people liked them. So, I guess she was selective with her generosity to some degree, no?) After months of gracing our dining room table, John then stole them and has plans to pin three of them to the wall above the big bookcase. After he showed me a sample of what it would look like, I let go of the issue. And am now looking for another set of placemats.

So, there you go. John's office. A former den of disaster is now an office of opportunity.

Coming soon, pictures of the guest room, the last room to be made over! And the headboard I've been hoarding! (Sanding is done, just need to pick the paint and finish it this weekend. Can we say excited? Can we say I now have my eyes on my next project? Poor John. He sees me eyeing our closet and knows nothing good will come of it.)

I was going to post office pictures today, but my dog ran away with my post.

Seriously.

Blue got out again. And as of 5 AM this morning when this post publishes, she will have still been missing. (I would love to check my grammar on that last sentence, but between the worry and the calls from Sprite "Have you found Blue?" "Is she back? Blue is my best friend." "Mommy, when Daddy comes back, tell him we need to find Blue." and my responses "No, not yet." "No, I know she's your best friend." "Sprite, we're LOOKING." "GO TO BED!!" and the fact I just feel so dejected right now, memories of 9th grade English are not coming forth.)

I haven't mentioned that she also got out last Friday. My parents were visiting and arrived at our house while I was picking Sprite up from school. I was in the empty classroom, rushing to shove Sprite into her dance outfit before the other kids came in from the playground, when the cell rang. I glanced at the number and answered. "Hey, Dad. Are you here?"

"Yeah. Listen, Jen, we let the dogs out and now we can't find Blue."

"Shit."

"Mommy, that's a bad word."

"Crap. Um, no, sorry, Sprite." I shooed her into finishing up while I thought about what to do. "Okay, Dad, we're coming home."

No dance class for us. The dog came first. Once we had Sprite's things together, an idea came to me and I called my father back.

"Hey, Dad? Take the container of bones out and look over by Dan's house. There's a thicket of bushes that Blue likes to sniff by. We're on our way."

The phone rang two minutes later.

"Found her."

Dance class was saved.

Of course, two weeks before that, she had escaped through another hole in the fence, not the one we had already patched up from her first jailbreak, or the one she subsequently dug her way through with my parents on watch, aided this time by an armadillo who had been sneaking into our vegetable patch only to realize that we had no vegetable patch, just weeds. No, this was a brand new route. And of course, John was working late and it was just Sprite and me.

Riddle me this. Harry is the smaller dog, Blue is much bigger around. Why is Blue the one escaping while Harry waits patiently to be let in?

Anyway, I loaded Sprite and the smarter canine into the van and started our tour of the neighborhood, helped by the later setting sun. We weaved our way through streets, looking in her usual spots, checking out sources of whining or barking in other areas. John ditched his evening plans and joined the search party. As the sky grew dark, we were about to give up when John proposed one more go around. Driving slowly through, we turned down one street after another, close to our home, calling out for our lost dog.

A cruiser came past us, continuing down the block before turning around at the end of the street. Oblivious to it, I pointed John down another road.

Seconds later, the red and blues were on illuminating our van. What a picture we must have painted, a preschooler in the back seat, out clearly past her bedtime, a terrior who was crying out from the back, and me nagging John, "pull out your license! Oh my God, where did you put the registration?"

John flipped up the interior lights so the approaching officer could see everything within and explained the situation to the thankfully sympathetic County Sheriff who promised to look out for a beagle, but wanted to let us know that a concerned neighbor had called them due to our suspicious activity.

Probably the same neighbors who had seen us in the exact same van for the past three hours calling out for our pup while it was still daylight.

(Why drive to look for our dog? Well, with a four year old, walking and running are not options. Riding your bike is not an option. Keeping the kid confined, preferably with restraints, is the ONLY option. Plus, we live in a rural area, the benefit of this area being that there's a lot of thick brush everywhere making it difficult to hide a criminal who's scoping houses, the drawback of this area being that there's a lot of thick brush everywhere making it perfect to hide a vertically challenged dog who thinks her nose supersedes some stupid fence.)

As soon as the officer walked back to his car, we admitted defeat and headed home, but not even ten minutes later, John decided to give it one more try and headed out on his own with flashlight and the van.

He had her back within thirty minutes, having followed the sound of her jangling collar and the loud chat she decided to have with some neighborhood dogs a couple of streets over.

This time though? Her jangling collar was found snagged on our fence, right where she escaped, the other collar she's wearing has no ID on it. This offered no assistance as we were now looking for a silent dog who, unless she's in trouble, doesn't make much noise.

I took the bike out while John and Sprite patrolled by van, taking different streets, turning down one, then another, winding our ways through in jagged "Z" formations.

Nothing.

I stalked every dark form I spotted from yards away, pedaling as fast as I could before I identified a cat, a duck, a box. (The box wasn't black, but anything low to the ground was getting a closer look.) I followed every noise I could hear, barking dogs a hopeful smoke signal.

Nothing.

I pulled into driveways, finding the very chihuahuas Sprite's been auditioning to replace Blue, yapping like mad just because their shadows were yapping back.

Chihuahuas are definitely off the list for future pets. I don't care how many idiotic movies they make about them.

John thinks he's going to try once more tonight. I can only hope I strike through the five am update with some good news.

She's about to turn 11. She's old, she's epileptic, she has a heart murmur, she's dumber than a milk-bone, yet seems to be a master at escaping, escaping the very home that keeps her safe from a world that is less than sympathetic to the less than strong, she's got a mass growing on her right side, common for female beagles that gets larger every time I check it. She's weak overall and too nice, a perfect victim.

Every time she does this, we claim this is the last time we'll look for her.

Every time, we prod each other into just one more search.

10:30PM: We're both sitting in bed, deciding who will be the one to go to Lee County Animal Services to file the missing dog report tomorrow. We've already checked out the website, already told Sprite that we would try to find her tomorrow, put a forlorn child to bed thinking her beloved dog is not coming back. By the way, did you know "she's my best friend"?

I'm typing this post out when I hear a short little bark, a hound dog pitched bark, a Blue sounding bark.

I turn to John. "Did you hear that?"

He looks up from his laptop. "No. What?"

"It sounded like Blue!" I leap out of bed, immediately shoving my feet into flip flops while John runs about, grabbing a shirt.

I think I heard it from the rear of the house so John heads to the back door, armed with a flashlight to check the fenced in yard, maybe she decided to make good on her bad behavior and squirmed back in under the gate?

While he looks, I call for Harry who's been hiding under the bed. He walks out, interested in going outside, but hasn't displayed any alert behavior leaving me as the only one who heard the bark.

Maybe I'm wrong?

John comes back in, shaking his head. "I'll check out front."

We both walk out the open garage door, looking out onto the dark street.

"I think I heard some barking over there," he mentions, pointing toward the North. Just below his finger, I notice a dark form coming closer, as if she had been hanging out in our front yard for the past five hours all along.

"Blue!"

She walks right over to John as he leans down to ruffle her fur. I promptly burst into tears. What can I say? I love that damn dog. And we're both just in shock that, for the first time, she's come home on her own.

The kid is sleeping right through everything.

We usher her inside, declaring leash only laws on the wayward one until we can finally fix the fence problem once and for all, letting her rehydrate since she beelines for the water bowl as soon as she's inside. "Drink up, bitch," John comments as he walks back into the bedroom.

Blue is now snoring underneath our bed, right where she belongs.

And John and I can't wait until Sprite wakes up in the morning..

RTT: Not the pictures you were looking for, but I don't think you'll complain..

Photos of John's office coming soon, I promise. I just need to finish organizing compiling find the time stop Facebooking get off my mental duff and do it already.

I have also finished the headboard to the point that I can live with it, there's a couple of spots which look uneven, but the pocket hole jig and my willingness to deal with the noise a stripped screw makes when not even with the hole and the resulting "that what he/she said" thoughts running through my mind along with various expletives had turned this project into more of a "if I paint it and anchor it to the wall, I'll be less inclined to try to fix it later" scenario. Now to just sand it, fill it, sand it again, and paint it. (Burgundy red, by the way.) Please ignore the beginning of this paragraph where I claimed to have finished the headboard..

John, Sprite, and I joined the Katz family for a weekend of fun, Disney, and making sure the adult to child ratio was skewed in our favor when we blew into town to help celebrate Abigail's fourth birthday. While we had a great time, there was one negative to the whole trip.

Am I allowed to say it was Sprite without losing my parental rights?

The kid was an absolute lunatic at some points! Not listening, trying to control Abigail and Madeline, who, even at 20 months, knows she doesn't have to take orders from a bigger tyrant, running away from John and me to try to join ranks with Becca and Josh, which, while I don't particularly mind this and am actually glad to see her trust them so completely, flabbergasted John and me to the extent that I had a stare down with her outside the Land where we had just finished dinner and she had run off YET AGAIN, not stopping at my exclaimed orders to stop. (Another child, one who either must be named Sprite or its real alternative, actually DID stop for me, but that's another concern for another time..) She settled herself into one of the empty seats in Becca's tandem stroller, refusing to budge when I told her to get into her own. After threatening to end her fun completely, she begrudgingly switched into her stroller and we had a nice little one-sided talk about who's the boss and who's the child.

Of course, thirty minutes later when we had unleashed Abigail in a store to pick out something for her birthday present, Sprite wandered away from our sights (one backdraw in the Disney stores, it is very easy to get turned around and lose a child near the various displays which only allow so much room for the stroller and abundant hide a seek locations, even if the parent doesn't know they're playing. A recommendation for the powers that be at Disney? Install overhead dome mirrors. Not only does it help with security, but it helps parents get a quick bird's eye view of the immediate area for little Susie who decided to become one with the stuffed Mickeys.) and, scaring herself, quickly found a nice looking cast member to help her find her parents. (And possibly score some of the stickers those employees constantly carry on them..) (Another recommendation? These stickers they pass out are the same stickers I used to pass out as a cast member. Over fifteen years ago. It's time to move on to another design, no?)

*****

"I have a joke for you."

"Okay."

"What do babies have in their collections?"

"Wait, what?"

"What do babies have in their collections?"

"What do babies have in their collections?"

"No, I ask, Mommy. You try to guess."

"I give up. What do babies have in their collections?"

"Diapers!"

".....Diapers?"

She's laughing. I'm confused. She told the joke to John when he came home. He was confused too.

Do YOU get it?

************

Okay, I'm going to finish up with some pictures John took and edited at Disney while we were celebrating Abby's birthday.

 

While I like the photo, I'm not a fan of the hair in the face thing. John seems to think it captures her naturally, which means, yes, she normally looks like she just exited a wind tunnel. The time I've spent in the mornings on her tresses only to pick her up from school sans hair baubles, but now with 10% more mulch!, oh, the time I've spent, you'd probably be getting more posts from me..

 

I don't think John did anything more than crop and edit a bit. Abigail's skin is truly that smooth. Sigh, kids don't know how good they have it..

 

I absolutely LOVE this picture. Madeline is a personality to be reckoned with. Not only does she have a vocabulary that a two or three year old would envy, she's quick on the draw with expressions. John fell hard for her on this trip.

 

See? Told you he was a Maddie fan. He caught her checking out the wilderness outside the Jungle Cruise queue and snapped this photo.

 

Again with the hair in the face! This picture happened on the dock where they load the steamboats. We were waiting for the Katz's to go through the Haunted Mansion and John took Sprite a couple of hundred feet down the street so I could sit down and enjoy my drink. They came back ten minutes later with about fifty shots of Sprite posing amongst a beautiful backdrop.

Okay, enough cute for today.  

Work has been insanely busy lately, but I promise to get the office pictures to you before the end of the week.

 And I think Stacy is still handling the reigns of RTT while Keely is on vacay. A long vacay. I think she went to Canada..