Chickenlips Knitting

I have spent today grappling with this and many other issues. Today didn't start off well, and then it just got steadily worse. Let's just say that last night was the end of sharing my bed with Jimmy. I awoke at an ungodly hour to yup, you guessed it. Ew. Last night I'd thought, "oh, he may have some intestinal thing but he surely won't mess the bed." I'd thought wrong, and I'm going to stop calling him Shirley straightaway. I changed the bed and got back into the now-clean snort fort. When I got up for real, I discovered that both mutts were sick as, well, dogs. I called the vet and brought them both in. Bacterial imbalance in the small intestine was the diagnosis for both boys, with Buster being the more acutely ill. Several medications including Imodium, vet exams, lab work, and flea prevention for all our pets (we have 2 cats, and someday I'll introduce them) came to over $300. Also, this bout of tummy distress has caused so much carpet soiling that our house was downright unhygienic. Who ya gonna call? Carpet cleaning--another $150. Yikes.

I wish this tale of woe ended there, but here's the flip side: while still at the vet's, thinking I could get the pets taken care of and then go on to work (you mean I've gotta do that, too?!) my daughter called from school--seems she was once more smarting off to security and staff during assembly, which she is notorious for, and they finally got fed up with her, it being almost the end of the school year. She drew a two-day suspension, something new for her dad and me to deal with. I meted out discipline at home (immediate withdrawal of cellphone and shopping priveleges) and had to endure screaming, wall pounding, and of course the heavy artillery of "I hate you." Oh yeah, that's my favorite. I withstood it calmly, enforcing parental authority without resorting to any of my old coping behaviors (such as smoking, overeating, or overmedicating), so yay for me. Progress, baby!

It's now evening, and although the dogs are temporarily confined to the backyard, peace and cleanliness have been restored in our domicile. Last night I finished half a pair of Fetchings , but my knitting plans for today were of course hosed by the chaos. Monday I get to find out if I still have a job! (Half-kidding there.) I'll keep you posted, f'shizzle.

And to make the title of this post make sense, here are some of the other deep conundrums with which I have been rassling: how can I help my strong-willed, highly intelligent teen avoid turning her life into dreck?* How long can I hang on to a job that has become boring, confining and stale? And what is the appeal of Larry the Cable Guy, anyway?

The answer to all of these questions, my friend, is not blowin' in the wind. It's 'ELLIFINO!

*dreck: Yiddish for excrement. Had to work that in somehow.