The Odyssey

When I have the calculator smashed into the side of my face while my gorgeous little baby says, "haalll-o" I cannot help laughing. She cracks me up.

"Haalll-o..." Smash.

"Hello? Hi! How are you? Bye bye!"

Smash, rub, smash, press. "Haalll-o?"

It was the beginning of a day that continued on this theme of pain mingled with fun.

We made for the beach, the dog beach, because I was going (insert epithets, in a string) insane from being in the house, basically ever since puppy arrived. (More epithets. Okay, now more, with feeling.)

So we were off. We stopped at the 7/11 where the worker dudes get lunch. It was next to an animal hospital. There were vultures out back. That was weird. Won't be taking our pets there.

We got to Lover's Key, north of Naples, and they pointed us to the dog beach, not part of their park. Free, a small trek through warm puddles hauling bags, cooler, umbrella, baby. It seemed really fun, dogs running on the beach and in the water, a dog party. We began to set up. Got the umbrella in the sand, put baby down, when over wanders a mastiff. He planted himself under the umbrella and began drooling and rifling through our bags.

His owner would not come get him.

Then he got on puppy's case, and then baby's.

The owner did not have any control over his dog. We decided we had to leave. He started going on about how we should just take puppy off her leash and everything would be fine, we didn't have to leave (patronizingly). Yeah. Then your dog won't be parked under our umbrella, going through our things and making it impossible to put down our baby or our dog? That will make it all better. (Here would be more swearing of an accusatory nature.)

Clearly we just had to go to Sanibel. Not before Mom bit the head off of the poor park ranger back at Lover's Key, and then and then vented more spleen at the idiotic buck passers at the Lee County Parks Department, who decided they'd call the sheriff. Yeah, because in Lee County they can stop hunting down meth labs and dealing with immigrant gang shootings to go tell a tatooed drug dealer mastiff owner to be nice to the prissy little Naples ladies on the beach. (Again with the swearing.)

I called T and he was so upset by the near scrape of it all he gave me a talking to. So I actually did swear at him. Twice. This is not really something I do. I was a teeny bit tightly wound to begin with, and this episode gave me just enough of a nudge, evidently, to say both "fucking" and "shit" to my husband, while driving, with the rest of the family in the car. I'll tell ya, when one doesn't generally swear, a few well place remarks sure do make clear one's degenerated emotional state. Of course I apologized later. In fact we all laughed at my outburst. I have a generous family.

Finally I told him what I wanted him to say, and that I would call him from Sanibel.

Sanibel was glorious. It's shocking what a difference six bucks makes. Some home made ice cream from Pinocchio's settled us down. When we got to the beach there was one other dog, a far away black lab, obediently playing fetch in the water. There were families, babies, Europeans, umbrellas. We waded out to the sand bar and sat down. It was just the right depth for naked baby and little puppy. Everyone loved it, laughed, played. It was so lovely. We only missed T, but were glad to know we are going back Saturday with him. I'm so glad we got back on the horse and had a great experience. I think it was important to have the last word. Does that make sense?