Who peed in the vacuum cleaner?

Sure, you think you can trust Fido around your appliances…

Okay, I admit my life is far from boring. But every once in a while I would like something to be “normal” in my world. Well, I guess that wont be happening today.

So we got this really cute vacuum cleaner as a gift. (It’s a long story). It’s called a Bumble Bee and it’s a hot little yellow and black Miele canister vac. It worked great…the first time I used it. Then, about a week later, I went to use it again and it wouldn’t even turn on. I thought maybe it was the bag because these little vacuum bags fill pretty quickly. Of course I didn’t have any new bags so I had to order them from Amazon and wait two days…blah blah blah.

Cut to yesterday. I put in the new bag and the vacuum still doesn’t work. So I call Miele to see what’s up. They say it’s under warranty and send me to this vacuum repair shop on Scottsdale Road and Shea. I drop off the Bumble Bee this morning and wait to hear from Sean about what the problem is. Around 4:00 I notice that Sean has left a message. But when I retrieve the message I am literally dumbstruck.

I think he says on the message that my vacuum motor was destroyed by urine. I play the message again. Surely I misheard him. Urine? Nope. That is definitely what the man said. And surprisingly, urine is not covered under the warranty. It’ll run over $300 to fix this stupid sucking machine. I call back immediately. But Sean has left for the day. I am in a tizzy. How can my vacuum motor have been destroyed by urine? That is outrageously weird.

I ask my kids if either of them happened to have urinated on or near the vacuum cleaner. Both vehemently deny any urinary involvement. Now I am looking suspiciously at my dogs. I truly cannot envision a scenario in which this ridiculous situation makes any sense at all. My adult dogs haven’t peed in the house in years. Plus, how did the guy determine that it was urine? Did he send it to a lab? Do they have some kind of dip stick at the repair shop? Does this happen often? I mean, listening to the message, the guy sounds sort of ho hum, like “…oh, it’s urine…so the warranty isn’t going to cover the new motor.” Like this sort of thing happens on a daily basis.

I am dismayed and baffled at the same time. I call back the manufacturer and explain the strange diagnosis. A very nice young man, Danny, puts me on hold for a long time, I suspect he is trying to stop laughing and recompose himself. He tells me he will get to the bottom of this but it may take several days and serious supervisory involvement. He urges me to wait on the repair until I hear from him.

More to come as the saga unfolds…

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Where have all the Cowboys gone?

For once I have the perfect gift for our upcoming Anniversary!

Our dog, Maggie, is a lot like Lassie. So the other night while my youngest son, Eli, was sleeping, it wasn’t at all surprising to see her perched in the threshold of the office barking a series of short staccato yips at my husband, Mark, while he typed away at his computer. “What is it girl?” he asked a la Timmy Martin, “Is someone in trouble?”

Maggie voiced a few more Morse Code like woofs and gestured with her head for my husband to follow. He quickly complied and Maggie led him down the hall towards the living room and courtyard. She stopped abruptly at the archway to the living room and yipped another string of urgent yelps. Our other dog, S’more, had joined her in the portal. They wouldn’t extend a paw beyond the threshold.

Mark opened the French doors and walked into the courtyard expecting to find some wayward quail or other lost desert creature. He found nothing and re-entered the house.

“There’s nothing out there, sweetie,” he calmly replied. But the yelping continued as both dogs stood frozen like guards at Buckingham Palace. Mark knelt down and tried to ease their heightening panic. That’s when he heard the unmistakable shake of a rattle behind him. He slowly stood and turned towards the sound. There, in the middle of our living room, stood a 3 foot uninvited Rattle snake.

Secure that our youngest was sleeping soundly down the hallway and the dogs wouldn’t approach the venomous intruder, he methodically backed away and moved stealthily into the garage to retrieve the first long metal object he could find. It was a rake that proved to be the ultimate asp destructor. Once it was officially deceased, he carefully speared it on the sharp end of the rake spokes and shot-putted it into the desert wash behind our property.

When I came home with my older son, Levi, I noted particular nervousness in both of our normally easy-going pups. S’more was barking at every sound and motion, while Maggie just sat curled up in a corner of our bedroom. “Is everything okay with the dogs?” I asked. My husband nodded and tried to smile, “Yep. Everything is A-OK.”

After Levi went to sleep I returned to our bedroom to find the two dogs and my husband cuddling eerily on our bed. That’s when he confessed his murderous crime. I didn’t ask for the details. The thought of my gentle husband smooshing the life out of any creature, be it in self-defense or not, was too much for me to bear.

I chastised him mercilessly for failing to do something sensible like calling 911 or scooping up our son and canines and rushing madly from the house. “I had to protect my family,” he told me bravely, “I had no other choice.” I admit I kind of liked seeing him as a lone cowboy standing guard over us, his unprotected herd. After all, most of the time he’s just the big lug who leaves his dishes in the sink and socks strewn across the bedroom floor.

I found myself texting everyone I knew. “Nerdy Jewish doctor or ruthless Rattle snake slayer? You decide.” He caught me mid text. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Aren’t you going to bed?”

“Oh yeah,” I stammered. “Just had to finish a few emails. I’ll be right in.”

He took a few steps towards the bedroom a la John Wayne, then stopped and turned back to me, “Well goodnight, little lady.” he declared in a low manly voice. Then with a tip of his mythical hat he added, “And remember; Don’t squat with yer spurs on.” And with that, he sauntered off into the distance, leaving me with only the shadow of his courageous smile and the memory of his selfless bravery.

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Coyote smorgasbord

Have you ever done something so completely idiotic that you even surprise yourself by your total lack of judgement? Well, welcome to yesterday morning.

As is often the case, I walked my 8 year old son, Eli, to the bus stop about two blocks from our house. I also chose to take our two dogs, Maggie and S’more along with us. Not surprisingly, I’ve never managed to leash train the two canines, so a “walk” with them is more like an amateur wake boarding competition.

We were the first to arrive at the bus stop. But we were quickly joined by several of the usual grade school suspects. I was the only parent. Suddenly, I looked up and spotted a vicious predatory mountain lion aggressively racing towards us. Well OK, it wasn’t exactly vicious, and it wasn’t actually a mountain lion. It was a…coyote, a mean looking, mangy coyote. But mangy means hungry, doesn’t it? And on second glance, it wasn’t really racing towards us, it might have been minding its own business. But it was like 20 feet away from us and didn’t seem at all put off by me, my dogs or the little folk beside me.

I grabbed both leashes tightly as my dogs yelped and pulled towards the wild beast. Clearly they weren’t afraid. But I was. It felt like a situation on the verge of going horribly wrong. I struggled to hold the dogs back and avoid a wildlife confrontation. The coyote passed us without incident and turned the corner a few houses down. “Eli,” I said, my voice still shaking, “I have to get the dogs home so they’ll be safe. I can hardly hold them back.”

Then I corralled my two pups and headed off in the opposite direction. As I approached our house, I breathed a sigh of relief realizing we were out of harms way. But then it hit me. I had just left a cadre of elementary school children unarmed and unprotected with a rabid coyote on the prowl. What the heck is wrong with me? Sure the dogs were safe. But Eli might have been served up as Wile E’s second breakfast.
I dropped the dogs at home and turned tail to head back to the bus stop. But a few yards down the block I caught sight of the yellow school bus leaving the neighborhood.
“Phew,” I relaxed knowing that the children were safe and on route to school. Unless of course one had been eaten prior to the bus’s arrival. I heard my therapist’s voice in my head insisting I employ logic when “worry brain” starts to take over. “Nonsense,” I reasoned, “I’ve never heard of a single case where a lone coyote chowed down on a school child.”

Just in case, I drove by the bus stop on my way to work. There weren’t any entrails or blood stained concrete. I was relatively certain that no child had met with an untimely fate. But I will confess that I felt a whole lot better at 3:30 when Eli bounded off the bus surrounded by his entire posse of bus stop buddies.

Well, you know what they say, parenting is one third knowledge, one third judgement and one third luck. So in those instances when you come up a little short in the judgement arena, just pray that you’ve got a surplus of luck to fall back on.
p.s. To those of you feeling the urge to report me to child protective services and write chastising letters to the magazine: no children were actually endangered in the writing of this article. Our local coyotes are as timid as mice and as vicious as common house plants.

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Establishing boundaries!

It’s high time I started establishing healthy boundaries.

I have boundary issues. I never really knew this until recently when we invited our dog trainer to come to the house and assist us in curtailing some of our dog’s negative behaviors. I thought it was silly when she asked me go toe to toe with the sleeping pup at my feet. “But I’ll wake her,” I insisted.

“But she’s lying on your feet.” The trainer countered. “Just come around to the front of her and tell her to move.”

I reluctantly did as instructed and my adoring fur ball barely looked up at me. “Come on,” I said, “Move.” Nothing. Then the trainer walked up to her and sternly commanded her to move and she was up and out of there like a shot. “She doesn’t respect you,” the trainer determined. “You need to set boundaries. What do you do if she’s lying right in front of you usually?”

I gazed at the floor for a moment, like a child whose hand had just been discovered wrist deep in a decorative jar of Oreos. “Well…I…walk around her,” I confessed. “Especially if she’s sleeping. I never want to wake her up.”

“OK, here is the problem,” the trainer offered in a voice teetering on the edge of judgmental. “You are the leader here. She thinks she’s in charge. She is running the house right now. Frankly, she’s trained you.”

I felt embarrassed. I mustered all of my internal leadership qualities and strode up to S’more. “Move!” I announced in my best leadership tone. “Move!” She once again looked at me askance. “I am serious. Move.” I gently pushed her paws back with my feet. Still she lounged restfully. Finally, I clapped my hands, wedged my toes under her paws firmly and insisted, “MOVE.” She reluctantly arose and sauntered a few feet away to seemingly appease my unusual behavior.

“I did it,” I said gleefully. And that’s when it hit me. This isn’t a new problem. If you think of this microcosmically, this represents a much bigger issue affecting parents today. You see, this is the same problem I, and so many of us, have with our offspring. We’ve put their needs so high above our own that we’ve lost all sense of leadership and control in the relationships.

I never want to wake my sleeping dog. Even when she’s lying in the spot on my bed where I want to lie. That’s ridiculous. I see that. But it’s true. Likewise with my children. They want to go to the park when I need to work. What happens? We go to the park. They want to play games when I need to grocery shop. What do we do? We bargain. “OK,” I say. “Let’s play a game and then we can go to the grocery store.” In essence, I am living in a world of constant negotiation and cow-towing to other creature’s needs and wants. And I’m tired of it.

It is time to do what I want to do. Being a parent or an owner should not mean that you always have to do what everyone else wants. Sometimes I want to decide whether we go to CPK or SouperSalad for lunch. I want the choice of what we listen to on the radio. I want to be the monarch and all other creatures can be my loyal subjects.

So I’m turning over a new leaf. From this point forward I am in charge. I get to say what we’re doing, when we’re doing it, and how it’s going to be done. I’m serious. As long as nobody minds me taking charge. K?

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It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood…

Not such a beautiful day in our neighborhood

OK, I couldn’t make this stuff up. We live in this neatly polished Scottsdale community. What bothers me most about it, is the neatness and the polish. It’s just not who we are. But you’ve heard all the reasons why we make the compromises we make; “it’s a beautiful, safe, gated community where the kids can ride their bikes and play across the street at the neighbors.” Only problem is that our kids don’t ride bicycles and in the decade we’ve been here, we haven’t met a single neighbor — until now.

About three months ago we got this email from one of our thoughtful, considerate neighbors: (Please note that the names have been changed to protect me from further litigation – already had to learn that lesson the hard way — and also name changing entitles the writer to make a far more interesting and evocative name selection with much greater potential to rile and enrage readers.)

“Mrs. Gettleman,

I reside directly behind your house. Over the past few weeks, both my wife and I have heard your two dogs barking several times.

Today at 3:15p.m., I walked back in the common area to ascertain if the dogs were barking due to a snake or wild animal. I saw none. I also rang your doorbell, but no one was home.

Please see that the barking is remedied.

Adolf”

I wrote back:

“Dear Adolf,
We are very sorry about the dogs. They are puppies who get very excited when they hear things they cannot see. We are trying out several anti-barking devices and have recently hired a new trainer to help us curb their barking. We have been very successful controlling the barking at night and while we are home. But apparently there is still a problem when we are out.

We apologize for the disturbance and will do our best to rectify the situation.
Mrs. Gettleman”

But of course the story doesn’t end here. We’ve gotten a slew of emails over the past few months and the gloves have definitely come off. Adolf’s apparently formed a posse of noise Nazis who patrol the neighborhood and report back to the HOA every time a dog barks, a child cries, or a husband and wife have too volatile an argument.

Here’s the latest email from one of Adolf’s comrades (I’ve left in all the punctuation and spelling errors for your amusement):

“Mrs. Gettleman,
Your dogs are out of control and the barking all afternoon today was terrible
I understand that other neighbours have complained and that they all have a program of documentation. I don’t really want to document and call the scottsdale police but i must tell you that noise reached a brutal level today.and we may not have a choice
We have been here for awhile and have heard the dogs bark and bark
without any adult intervention. It is not right nor fair in such a nice
earea asthis. I am asking you as nice as i possibly can to control the dogs and their barking. I heard from another neighbour that they are young but that was
like months ago and as soon as they go outside they bark and bark. My wife wants to record the barking for the police however i told her that if you know how bad it really is and how upset all the neighbours around you are getting you
will take some action. Unfortunately some dogs are meant for farm areas
where they can roam and bark unlike this little
community and the houses so close.Please keep them inside and stop the barking .
Heinrich”

We promptly responded:

“Heinrich,
Thank you for alerting us to this situation. Except for rare occasions, when we are not home, they do not bark at all. So we could not have known it was still an issue. We have installed a dog run away from the rear of the property. We have installed an anti-barking device. And we have methodically trained them using proven behavioral techniques.

We also agree that noise pollution needs to be controlled. There are at least two other dogs that we hear with loud barking which need to be restrained. When we are outside, we often hear other dogs in the neighborhood. We are wondering how you know that only our dogs are barking? More importantly, we find the incredibly loud voices of he Goldberg’s in their backyard very difficult to handle. The regular conversations are loud enough, but when the laughter gets going it is very disturbing. I believe the positioning of the houses causes an echo chamber effect that magnifies sound amplification. There have been times when we could not even sit out side because they were so loud that we couldn’t hear each other speaking.And frankly, their humor tends to be rather blue which when broadcast across the wash creates a very uncomfortable situation for our children. Maybe you can e-mail them and remind them to either whisper or not speak at all when in their back yard.

Once again, thank you for the notice of our dogs. We will continue to work on subduing their barking.

Debra Gettleman”

This came next:

“Mrs. Gettleman,
I have been patient. But it has been nearly three months since we last communicated. You may not be aware, but both my wife and I work from home.The amount of distraction from the noise generated by your dogs and your children at certain times of day is affecting our ability to engage in our work and personal activities both inside and out.

I respectfully request that the barking issue be addressed before we are forced to take legal action. We simply want to enjoy the beauty and tranquility of this lovely community.
Adolf”

“Adolf,
Let me start by reminding you that this is in fact a “residential” community. If you are having trouble working, maybe you should consider getting a real office somewhere where children and puppies are not allowed. You seem like the type of person who would be very comfortable in a fluorescently lit office cubicle for 8 hours a day. Or better yet, you could take your friend Heinrich’s advice and go live on a farm far away from other people altogether.

We must admit that we hear barking and frolicking children too when we are outside. But that is in fact part of living in a neighborhood. As for my children, they are in school everyday from 8 to 4 and then have various after-school activities. We assure you that the screaming you hear is not from our house. In fact, we know where the screaming originates. But unlike the tactics used in Deutschland in the 40s, we refuse to turn in our neighbors and join this noise pollution witch hunt that you and your colleagues have embarked upon.
Debra”

“Dear Mrs. Gettleman,
I have tried to be kind and patient. But your tone of hostility is undeniable.You leave us no choice but to pursue legal and civic action against your children and animals.

Adolf”

“Dear Adolf,
Bring it on! There isn’t a court in this country that will punish us for having happy kids and dogs who make noise once in a while. I highly suggest you get some
proof that it is in fact our dogs and our children disturbing your curmudgeonly cosmos.

With all love and sincerety,
Mrs. Gettleman

The funniest part of this whole story is that we’ve been seriously thinking about moving. We were trying to decide if we should move or just do some massive renovations on our home. The more irked I get, the more I’m leaning towards months and months of loud, dusty digging, jackhammers, and construction. I sound mean and vengeful. I know that’s what you’re gonna say in your comments. But come on, it’s one thing to lock people in a gated community and take away their personal mailboxes. But to regulate their kid’s enjoyment or charge them with disturbing the peace because their dogs bark when a coyote passes by. You have to admit, this is excessive.