It doesn’t happen quite as much anymore, but I still find myself undergoing the silent treatment and the slow burn, even after I wisely, preemptively, apologize. I don’t take nearly as long as I used to delivering my mea culpa.
That’s just wasted time.
When I am wrong, I’m wrong. It only took most of my life for me to learn that little factoid.
Just as I will go to TIME IMMEMORIAL before I acquiesce if I know I’m right.
Not coincidentally, I have spent way less time in the doghouse after I stopped drinking.
Where does that expression come from?
If you hit the doggie lottery and happen to end up as one of my pets, “doghouse” is a mythical, sad place in the back of someone’s yard that some poor doggies have to live in.
No, we don’t spoil our dogs.
We don’t spoil them by preparing their daily food from scratch which the Domestic Despot does. You will find her dutifully making a batch which includes fresh ground beef, every three or four days.
We don’t spoil them by sparing no expense when it comes to their health. I can’t imagine what you people with children go through; if my little boy Murphy limps, it must be some horrible, debilitating, cancerous, surely mortal, affliction and there better be an emergency veterinary clinic close by, fully-staffed, and ready to heal my little friend!
More likely he stepped on a pebble.
We don’t spoil them by relegating ourselves to seek out a tiny piece of our California King on which to somnambulate. I am actually spared this dog-squatting routine due to my previous bout of RLS, but many nights Karen will hop in the guest room, only to be joined by the two Diaz brothers for another round of sleep, and then she ends up in our bed where it all started.
This dans macabre has been going on, in one form or another, since we got Karen’s very first dog, Rambo O’Leary McDuff Diaz.
We don’t spoil them by putting one of my Manchester United scarves on the boys every time the Reds play.
We don’t spoil them by holding an annual Easter Egg hunt for the two, stuffing chunks of prime rib inside the multi-colored plastic eggs.
We don’t spoil them by staying up all night to calm them if there is a tornado or heavy thunder and lightning.
Can’t stand to see fear in any animal’s eyes.
We don’t spoil them by making sure we hide their Christmas presents from them before wrapping and placing under the tree, while also making sure we spell out the names of what we got them when they are in the same room as us.
We don’t spoil them by taking them to go walking or running in the harshest conditions imaginable, even if it means, once we fight through the horrible weather, they refuse to get out of the Highlander because it’s too nasty outside.
When you think about it, the doghouse isn’t such a bad place after all.
Stay well.
