I was standing next to the playground after school with some other kindergarten parents yesterday. These are new acquaintances, so we were chatting, getting to know each other a bit. Suddenly, Hot Wheels ran up.
“May I please get a drink of water?” he asked.
“Sure – go ahead!” I said.
There was a slightly awkward pause. I turned to the other mothers and said, “We have strict water rationing in our household.”
Thankfully they laughed and one said, “When we were at camp this summer, my son ran up to me and said, ‘Mom – can I play?'”
So what’s with the kids, eh? They won’t ask if they can roll one of their bikes down the ditch behind your retaining wall, or climb the tree with the skinniest branches, but they’ll ask if they can drink water? Instead of even answering the innocent requests, we really should be looking around wildly for whatever nefarious plot is really happening in the background.
And now for something completely different: I had some surprise visitors today:
I don’t know their names because they had collars but no tags. As I rounded the bend to our street on my bike today, they were poking around the bushes by the restaurant on our corner. I started up the street and saw a woman heading my way with a concerned, ‘where are those dogs’ look on her face. Thinking they all belonged together I told her the dogs hadn’t gone far. She replied that they weren’t her dogs, but she’d just seen them running across the super busy street together and was trying to nab them before they got hit.
One thing led to another, as it usually does, and once we’d rounded the dogs up it made sense to put them in my house as opposed to her car. Turns out the rescuer was my neighbor’s sister, which was fun – I’ve heard her name for so many years, it was great to finally meet her.
After I called the humane society and gave the dogs some water, I had that funny feeling you get with a baby that’s clean and fed… just what do I do with you now? I couldn’t put them in the yard, because our fence is more decorative than secure. I closed all the doors to the other rooms, since the lab was still young and interested in chewing on the kids’ toys. So they just followed me around as I put things away and tidied up.
That border collie was sweet as anything. She was clearly the older one and just so gentle and beautiful. Too bad whenever she sidled up for some scratching, the lab would jump all over her and shove her away. He was such a pup – all wiggly and pushy and eager. I hope their owner gets reunited with them quickly, and buys them some tags!