Running through a Rainbow

I would never eat something I wasn't supposed to.

      I ran my first race...a 5k through a rainbow. I'm pretty sure all 5k's after this will seem rather colorless and take more effort to complete. There is something exciting about having powered dye thrown at you while you run. Who would have known?
      (Alright, the Indians knew. Since these races, like the Run or Dye that I ran in, are inspired by Holi, an ancient Hindu religious festival celebrated in the spring and called a Festival of Colors, than being covered in color is not a new thing. Just new to Americans. But we're a bit crazy, because of instead of having a party with food and dancing, we like to add exercise to it.)
     I am not Hindu but I do like the thought of celebrating friendship, community, love, and the start of spring. (Even though, we're in the middle of summer. Since I live in a climate where every ounce of heat and sunshine is appreciated, I will take a Saturday morning to celebrate sunny weather.)
   
     My team decided to wear rainbow tutus for the event. You can see a bit of mine in the picture above. The night I finished mine, I quickly put it on when Hero Hottie got home from work and showed him. I'm pretty sure he almost started laughing but he turned away too fast.
      "What?" I demanded, standing there in a bright and poofy tutu, feeling much like an over sized ballerina but a part of me felt giddy and excited. It was like when I was little and dressing up in my Mommy's old clothes. Dressing like a princess. Or a princess explorer. I always tended to be a bit on the adventurous side with my imagination.
       But anyway, he finally turns around and gives me that look. That guy look that says- I'm not sure what to say because no matter what I'll be in trouble for it, but I'm going to open my mouth anyways and just get it over with-
       "You look silly." He pauses briefly and then rushes into more speech. "But that's what you want, right?"
        "Silly?" I fluff my skirt, liking the bright and bold colors. Red, yellow, green, purple. Bold colors that I don't usually wear because I'm not sure how to dress with lots of colors without looking like I stepped from the eighties. But this...this tutu...I can wear and enjoy and be silly.
       Because I can have fun and enjoy this community event that has brought a rainbow to our town.
    

     And because I have a team wearing tutus too...there will be no lone tutu wearing for me.

       He winces, waiting for me to be mad. But I just twirl, like the graceful ballerina I am, and tell him he should wear a tutu next year when he does the race with me.
     
        The look he gives me, says it all. There will be no tutu wearing for him next year. 

         I show up to the race, excited, and wearing my tutu, a white shirt and a white bandanna -a blank canvas.

        There is something joyous about throwing dye at each other before the race. It's fun and silly.
      
          At one point, when we're running through the green color station, a volunteer is holding out his hand, full of green dye, and yelling for a high five. I have to say I got caught up in the moment and smacked his hand hard, sending the dye flying everywhere.
         And I mean everywhere, because when I look behind me, my sister in law's face is covered in green dye.
        Whoops.

         My girls were waiting for me at the finish line and they were soon covered with the extra dye packets that I had saved in my pockets. Even Baby Blueberry soon had colorful hair,  but no smile as she wore her Daddy's expression of seriousness, trying to figure out why we were tossing colors at each other.

         Later that day, I come into the living room and Gibson is laying on my tutu, trying to eat it. I think he started with the yummy dye, and then in typical puppy fashion, decided that tutu material was an excellent source of entertainment. Luckily, he had only managed to munch one strand on purple before he was caught.
         I will simply add tutu to the casualty list, which is growing by the hour. Now it includes, 7 pairs of shoes, numerous baby toys, various bills and other mail (go for it Gibson), an X-Box controller (do you know how happy Hero Hottie was about that one?), a board game, the recliner chair, the corner of the piano bench, and now- a tutu.
     Oh, and lets not forget the pacifier, which for about ten minutes, I thought he had swallowed whole. And in my panic, I started wondering if we got on that show, My Dog Ate What?, would they pay for the vet bill, because I'm pretty sure I don't have the money for a pacifier extraction procedure. Then, we found it, behind the couch and I took a big sigh of relief. And oh, by the way, Baby Blueberry, you can't have that pacifier back, even if I boil it.


    So I ran through a rainbow. And while there was no pot of gold at the end of it...there was friends and family and celebration.
     And I got to look silly and had fun doing it!! 

     I even managed to save my tutu from busy puppy teeth, which Abu has claimed the rainbow for herself, once I fix it to her size. And I'm so glad she's still at an age where she wants to wear a tutu and feel silly.
     Even without teammates.

Muddy Couches, The Art of Hiding Shoes and Chasing Potato Bugs at 3am

You can't prove that those are my paw prints on your white couch.

       As Hero Hottie has been reminding me, bad puppy equals great dog. I laugh, mostly in a sleep deprived hysterical manner because my couch is covered in mud prints, I have been waken up at 3am to hunt for potato bugs and the girls have had to learn to hide their shoes in a shut room to keep them away from the deadly chewing power of puppy.

     And in fact, Gibson is not a bad puppy. He's a great puppy. All spunk, and intelligence and kindness. There has only been two things we have been very harsh with him, no jumping up on people and no biting, even puppy nibbles.
     Right now, he's a puppy and his jumping is more annoying than damaging but he's a GREAT DANE. Jumping up is not an option for him when he's full grown.
     And I know he's a puppy which requires a lot of chewing and nibbling and puppy play. But lets learn now that you, Gibson, are not a zombie and therefore do not get to nibble on human flesh. He's slowly learning that one. Mostly he's using his puppy nibbles to get Abu's attention when he feels ignored. (Which is whenever she's not paying attention to him.)

      I have desperately tried to keep that cream colored couch clean these last few years from five children. Bean, Abu, CT, Bug and Blueberry. Not an easy feat by any means, short of forbidding them from being on the couch, which my parenting style keeps me from doing.
      But one Great Dane puppy with muddy paws wrecked four years of quickly scrubbing out spills and sticky fingers prints with one giant leap onto the couch.
      I had thought I had wiped him cleaned. When he had come in from the yard, I had halted his eagerness to spread his happiness all around my house with a scrub of the towel. Because I knew he would go right for my couch. He seems to think it's his bed.
     Which I suppose probably makes sense to a little puppy who already believes he's a big dog. And big dogs deserve big beds, right?
      One giant leap for puppy kind right across my living room and onto the couch and I realized as he touched down with all the grace of a football player tackling the quarter back, that somewhere he had hid mud between his puppy paws and it was now being playfully spread across the entire cream colored surface of my couch.

      "Gibson! No!!" I screamed, but he was in a frenzy. Running back and forth, tossing the huge cushions around like they're lightweight balloons. Digging himself into the now messy pile of pillows because he thinks we're playing.
       I grab him, hauling him off the couch and just stare at the damage he has done.
       Scrubbing only gets out most of the mud and I can still see traces of it on the arm of the couch. Which he lays his head on while I'm cleaning and tries to help by chewing on my cleaning rag.

      Such a helpful puppy.
      His expression, as seen in the photo above, is so cute I can almost forgive him. Just like I'm getting over the fact that for a while after he discovered he could wake me up in the middle of the night to go potty outside rather than do it on my living room floor and he would actually be a good dog for waking me up than he decided that meant if he woke me up for any reason he must be a GREAT dog.
      Puppy logic, I'm learning, is a lot like kid logic.

      Hence, the 3am potato bug hunts outside. And he's adorable pouncing on them, chasing them, sniffing them down with his little puppy nose...just not at 3am when I'm standing on my front porch in my pj's wondering if Baby Blueberry will stay asleep when I come back to bed or wake up as soon as my head hits the pillow.
      
     After a few nights of him waking me up just to play outside we finally had a long talk, which involved a bit of scolding, something he hates to hear from me, and now he's only waking me if he has to go. So he's a smart dog too.

     And lucky for him, charming and cute.

     Because I haven't even told you what he did to the recliner chair.