Ok, so we had a very happening weekend. In fact, I need a weekend to recover from my weekend. I'll start with Sunday.
Late Sunday afternoon we were in the car headed to the RedBox to return some movies. (Defiance and Sunshine Cleaning, both were excellent.) On a whim, I suggested that we go swimming that evening. Keith thought this was a great idea. In fact, he was all for turning the car around right then so we could go get our suits as well as Abigail, as she was, in his words "born for the water."
I should have known right then and there. But I was not paying attention to those little hints life sometimes throws at us. I merely and very strongly told him that we were not bringing the dog to the beach. I did say that if there was no sign saying "No Dogs," then we could bring her the next time.
So we get home and I'm upstairs wrestling with my suit- it's just criminal the way a nylon polyester blend can shrink!-and Keith is downstairs running around getting bathing towels and starting the car and last but not least, putting Abby in it.
I open the driver's side door and see her happy mug hanging over the seat, tongue lolling.
"Keith! I told you we couldn't bring her!"
He insists that she was born for the water. I'm thinking that I'll have to turn off the car, pull out the keys, grab the dog, unlock the house door, put her in and come back and restart the car, since the keys are on the same ring.
With a heavy sigh, I resign myself to Abby being in the car. That was my second major mistake.
"She doesn't get out of the car," I tell Keith.
By now I'm pretty angry. It's the first time going to the Housing Association beach, not to mention the first time I'm in a bathing suit this year and I'm already feeling a little anxious. The last thing I want is to loudly and conspicuously break the rules on the very first trip. I want to be a good neighbor, a conscious member of the community. Blend in.
Ha. My only hope is that because it's six in the evening, the beach will be deserted.
We get to the beach and the entire parking lot is full. Or pretty close to it. As soon as I get out of the car, I see Keith has Abby on her leash and is wandering off into the grass. There's a whole party of people using the picnic tables nearby, so I can't bite his head off the way I want to.
Instead I run up to him and hiss at him to put the damn dog back in the car right this minute. I remind myself of a harpy, only with flip flops. He says ok, but then heads off again. I heckle and hiss until the dog is in the car.
By now, my head is steaming. We roll all the windows down for Abby and head down the short slope to the water. It's as warm as bath water. We play around in the water for about fifteen minutes and then I tell Keith we have to go and remind him of Abby.
We shake sand out of our towels and head back up the slope, only to meet an inebriated beach go-er coming down.
"Are you the people with the dog in the car?" she wants to know, in an accusatory and pained tone of voice, only slightly slurred.
Keith affirms this fact and she goes off on us about leaving her there. I'm somewhat behind Keith, so I miss most of the interaction. I try to catch up, but Keith already has Abby out of the car and on the grass by the time I reach him.
"Get the dog back in the car and we'll just go home," I tell him, as calmly as possible. Which is getting progressively more difficult.
"I'm going to go cool her off in the showers," he says.
In the showers!
"Keith!" I cry, but he's gone around the corner of the bath house with Abby. By the time I turn the corner (I'm quite winded from all the swimming) I see Keith and Abby on the beach. My head is so steaming that you could cook an egg on it. I'm so angry I actually don't even know what to do with myself.
I wait and wait but he doesn't bring Abby back up and I'm not going to holler at him for the entire beach to hear, so despite my aching legs I stomp all the way down the slope. Abby and Keith are in the shallows, swimming around.
"Now I'm asking you nicely," I start out with this kind of dreadful calm. "Take Abby back to the car so we can go home."
"Ok, but hun,' pleads Keith, "look at her! She's loving it! It's the first time she's been in the water her whole life!"
I can't even reply. I just turn my back and start walking back up to the wooden stairs.
Before Abby gets there, she squats and drops a load of dog crap right on the sand.
"Now what are you going to do?" I demand, flinging my arms out. Keith just hurries around me. I know how he is about dog crap. So I go back to the pile and scoop it up in my bare hands, trying to use the sand as a buffer. I throw it into the bushes off to the side.
You can only imagine my state of mind by this time. Also, on the way to the car I step in some slimy mud and sink up to my ankle. As I pass by the picnic beach area, a young boy of about nine gives me the evil eye as he sucks on a Popsicle. "You're the selfish grown up that brought a dog to the beach and then left in the car!" I can see he's thinking.
I pass by with as much dignity as I can muster, all the while limping in order to keep my slimy flipflop on, hair dripping down my back, dog shitty sand on my hands.
Keith and Abby are already in the car with the air condition on full blast. I get in and put my hands on the steering wheel to ground myself.
"I have never been so angry in my entire life," I say, putting the car in gear. And then I go off. I mean, I go off. Like I have never done in our entire marriage. I used to swear like a sailor before I met Keith but he doesn't like me to, so I've cut down on it. But right then, the F word flew like candy on a fourth of July parade.
"You f-ing lied to me! I told you not to bring the f-ing dog and for f-ing good reason as it turns out!" I holler. "But you had to sneak her in behind my f-ing back! You wanted to do whatever the f you wanted to! I just picked up f-ing dog shit with my bare hands! You f-ing humiliated me in f-ing public!"
Since I'd never spoken to Keith like that before, I fully expected him to become enraged and start fighting back, but all he did was sit quietly. He didn't even try to argue, though he mention that Abby is a Lab and was born for the water. I pretend I didn't hear this.
I pulled myself together and we drove for a while in silence. I knew I had stop being simply white hot angry without direction. I usually like anger to have a purpose. So I calmed myself down and thought about natural consequences.
"You want to do whatever you want, fine," I said in a grim voice as we turned into our street. "You're a grown man, you can make that choice. But you'll go alone. We're not going to the beach again together. You can do whatever you want by yourself."
After I'd taken a shower to rinse the sand off and had dressed in a nice cool summer dress, I felt a little better and actually looked Keith in the eye when I asked him about dinner. He came up to me as I was at the sink and put his arms around me.
"You have every reason to be angry at me," he said quietly. "I love you and I'm sorry."
How could I be angry at that point? Though this morning he called me and said for PT he was bringing the guys to the lake for a swim and was thinking about picking up Abby.
"There'll probably be no one at the beach..." he said.
"You will not take Abby to that beach," I flatly declared. "Now, you don't want to make me angry..."
"No," laughed my husband, "no, I definitely do not want to make my little Kitty angry!"
So that was Sunday. Saturday started off well too, deceptively. We decided to check out the local farmer's market so Keith got me coffee from the gas station and off we went, riding in the Ranger for the heck of it.
The farmer's market was pretty small, but with nice produce but we forgot to bring cash so we made a plan to return next Saturday. We headed off to Kroger's where we could use our card. When we got home I was putting everything away when we got a call.
Keith's mom was leaving that day to visit her family in Oregon and Keith's brother was driving her to the Louisville Airport. It turns out that they have broken down somewhere outside the city. The car was overheating and the engine was swathed in a cloud of smoke.
Keith swings into emergency mode and begins to rearrange the ungodly amount of vehicles we have in our driveway right now, so that he can get to the car trailer. Eventually it's freed and Keith loads up. I wave him away and settle happily down to Internetting.
I get a call ten minutes later.
The family has all taken a taxi to the airport, leaving the car by the side of the road. Keith now must drive all the way to the airport with a car trailer attached to his extended cab, pick up the family, drive back to the car and then back home. He's livid.
Twenty minutes later I get another call. The family has decided to eat and are waiting on their cheeseburgers just as Keith pulls up to the pick up area of the airport. With a car trailer. He tells them they have ten minutes to get out to the curb or he's going back home.
They come out and once in the truck, tells Keith their story. Their story of stress at the airport is such that Keith forgets all about being angry at them and calls me to tell me. I can't tell this story on my blog, because it just wouldn't be right, but suffice to say that everyone was so rattled in the quest to get mom in law and her frenetic little dog on the flight that they all decide to go to Hooters for some beer, even my sister in law who is the most laid back person ever.
They arrive here with some chicken hot wings in a plastic container, still rattled. Even my dynamic, back woods, lanky brother in law is strangely subdued. He and Keith begin to fiddle around with the car, a VW Bug.
By the way, at this point there are two rusting trucks parked on the side of the road, my Honda Civic on the other side of the road and the car trailer with the Bug on it taking up the whole drive way. I'm waiting to receive a fine in the mail any day now.
My sister in law and I work on making a blueberry bake recipe and we're both chatting a mile a minute. I'm having a blast, Keith no so much. We put together a lasagna and while that's baking, we grab our purses and drive on down to Kroger's for some ice cream to put on the blueberry bake. When we get home, the boys tell us that the car is an easy fix.
The lasagna comes out perfect, golden crusty mozzarella cheese on top, layers of cheesy goodness inside, rich and meaty. We have a simple salad on the side. After dinner my sister in law and I clean up together in perfect, content rhythm.
We're thinking about getting into the desert when we learn that it's not going to be an easy fix and the boys need us to drive forty five minutes to a specific Auto Zone to pick up the part. (My brother in law has the Auto Zone's number on speed dial.)
So we head off and get forty minutes down the road before Keith calls us to tell us that we have to turn around, it's not that part, it's another part that's broken. We turn around and drive all the way back home. It turns out that they're going to have to get a part from a dealer and it's going to be very expensive.
In the meantime, they have to spend the night and get up at five in the morning in order for my sister in law to get to her job on time, which starts at seven back up in Indiana. Also, Keith finds out that one of his soldiers hasn't eaten since Friday morning and won't be able to until Monday when he gets paid. In short order the soldier arrives for some left over lasagna and blueberry bake.
At ten pm I fall into bed, too tired even to read. And then Sunday dawns.
So that was my weekend. Thank God it's Monday.
