Chihuahua bloodbath.

Last week Tinydog picked the wrong cat to chase.

After the dust settled and all the unholy demons had been cast back into the pit of fire from whence they came, I noticed a drop of blood on my hand.

I noticed that the tiny tip of Tinydog's tiny ear was bleeding, and then Tinydog shook his head.

Of course we dashed to the bathroom to find towels or styptic powder or something to stop the bleeding. Tinydog continued to be mildly irritated by his injured ear.

At this point it is pertinent to mention that I have vaso vagal syncope blood phobia. You know that thing you see on tv where somebody faints at the sight of blood? Yeah, I have that. So there is a finite amount of medical attention I can provide before my blood pressure drops so low that I can't stand up. I ended up laying on the couch for an hour, clamping Tinydog's tiny ear against his tiny head, waiting for the bleeding to stop. Z kindly mopped up the buckets of blood off the walls, the floor, the ceiling, all of our bedding, the couch...

We learned some important information about tiny dogs that night.

1. A 6-lb chihuahua can lose approximately four gallons of blood without any ill effects.

2. Copious amounts of styptic powder will eventually stop a bleeding ear, provided the dog doesn't continue to shake his head.

3. There is no good way to securely bandage a chihuahua ear.

4. Despite their large size, chihuahua ears appear to be devoid of any sensation or ability to feel pain.

5. A soft Cone of Shame is the most effective way to keep a dog's ears from whacking against his head every time he shakes.

Tinydog, on the other hand, learned nothing.

My hypothetical child.

I want to have a kid in a year or two, at which point this may become a mommy blog about diaper blowouts and projectile vomit, worthy of an honorable mention on STFU Parents. In this event, I give anyone reading this permission to either humanely euthanize me, or introduce my current self to my future self so I can slug her.

Anyway, I think about my hypothetical child a lot. I'd love to have a highly-articulate and intelligent red-headed little girl that I can dress in pseudo-goth outfits and tutus.

But I'm probably going to end up with my natural hair color on some absurdly independent kid that insists on picking all their own clothes and wears their tutu with an army jacket and a pith helmet.

And is also a boy.

Adult Checklist.

Sometimes I worry that we're getting old and may have to consider ourselves actual adults. I started a mental checklist to see if we've truly gone past the point of no return.

I think we're safe for now.

May I offer you a drink?

My non-demonic cats are idiots. They fall off furniture, run into walls, and are incapable of functioning in the presence of tuna.

Like many cats, they enjoy drinking out of glasses while ignoring the perfectly good bowls of clean, fresh water we leave all over the floor for them.

My mother's cats do the same thing, so she always leaves a glass of water on the table for them. I tried that once.

I can't give them anything plastic to drink out of because one of them gets cat-acne. (Yes, this is a thing.) Once upon a time we had a bunch of adorable ceramic kitty dishes that the Hellions broke one by one. Then we started feeding them on our small dessert plates. When we started to run out of plates, we finally bought them stainless steel bowls. The poor, deprived little bastards are stuck trying to steal an illicit drink from the glasses of unsuspecting guests. It's pretty safe to say that any unattended beverage around here has been tainted with cat feet. Thirsty?

Gripe, gripe, gripe.

I have congenitally bad knees. Normal human knees have two C-shaped pads of cartilage that gently cradle the rounded bottom of the femur. Each pad is called a meniscus, and the cartilage can hurt a lot if it is damaged. I have discoid menisci, mine are shaped like circles. This means that, instead of creating a nice comfy bowl for the femur to move around in, I have a big flat hunk of cartilage in each knee that gets perpetually ground down by high-impact activities like walking in a bipedal fashion. Surgery did not improve this.

So I have trouble running or doing a lot of physical activities. I also have gastroparesis, a stomach problem that prevents me from eating high fiber foods like fruits, vegetables, and pretty much anything healthy.

Despite my horrible knees and my asthma, I've managed to run and hike several times a week. I stick to unpaved surfaces and wear Vibram Five-Fingers shoes. Recently, I developed exercised-induced acid reflux.

Conclusion: my body wants to be fat.

Sneaky Weather.

We live on the coast of California. Once my family took a trip to Disney World. We rented a car for a day and left the resort to go visit a friend in Florida. We also stopped at the beach for a couple of minutes to dip our feet in the Atlantic Ocean. (But not more than that because getting eaten by sharks was very popular that year.)

The day was bright and sunny and beautiful as we arrived. In the time it took us to walk from the car down to the water's edge, something changed.

We went from sunny beach weather to full-blown tropical storm in mere moments. It was incredible. I've also been in the Midwest, where rogue thunderstorms roam the land at high speed and tornadoes are more than rumor. This simply does not happen on the Pacific coast. Our weather never sneaks up on you, and aside from the wildfires and the occasional earthquake, nature is pretty relaxed. Hell, we don't even get real rain here. I mean, yeah water falls from the sky, but it never rains like it means it. Not like it did when we were in Atlanta.

Night Terror of the Week.

Summer is a wacky time of year during which I teach at a very fast-paced arts program for several weeks while our entire household devolves into madness.

For the record, my snake is boy.

(Z hastens to point out that I did bring home a female hognose snake for an evening the week before this incident, but had to ask about the sex before claiming that he was night-terroring about that particular snake.)