This post is for a (rather bold) Miss Sarah who…insinuated that she would like more frequent updates. And now that I have a comment to motivate me, here goes (perhaps my sister will even add me back in as a link: www.sugarintheraw.blogspot.com ):

My dog is a persnickety pee-er. We finally broke him of urinating repeatedly on the same tree right next to the deck. A.) it was starting to smell bad and B.) the lower branches of the tree were starting to die. He’s going through a great deal of trauma right now because we are trying to sell our house (which is a whole other kettle of fish), and he’s not allowed up in “his” office anymore (Bill’s home office over the garage that’s recently been repainted and recarpeted where Sunny used to spend the majority of his time). We also took away his favorite dog bed in the living room, and to protest that, he went to the corner of the yard to roll around in his own poo. All this to explain why he’s not allowed out in the yard unsupervised anymore in the mornings.

So that is what led me to be standing out in the middle of the yard, holding my dog on a leash this morning, pleading with him to pee-pee as he stared at me defiantly. I know for a fact that he had to pee as he hadn’t been out for over 8 hours. But it’s like he has decided that that is the one area of his life that he can still control, when he chooses to relieve himself.

He has also taken to putting his paw up on the baseboard in the living room and licking the walls. I have NO idea what that’s about.

So that got me thinking about stupid things that I do out of defiance. When I was little, I would refuse to get out of the car when we got home, and I’d just sit in the stuffy car in the garage. Who was I punishing? Myself. As an adult, I curl up on a chair downstairs and half-fall asleep at night even though it’s not quality sleep, and I know that I should just go upstairs and get ready for bed. Who am I robbing of precious slumber? Only myself. And then there’s the really stupid stuff: refusing to watch the movie “Tommy Boy” because everyone in college used to quote it all the time and said that I “had to” see it; using Kleenex instead of toilet paper when it wasn’t my turn to buy t.p. with past roommates (I was especially stubborn on this one as I would always be the one to buy expensive Scott t.p. that lasts forever, and they would buy the cheapy stuff that lasts 2 weeks); and my personal favorite, as a child, refusing to take the training wheels off my bike even though I didn’t need them because I was lazy and didn’t want to have to bother balancing. And who got mocked? Me.