Oh, the neediness...

This is my parents' dog, Molly:

She really is so adorable, and everyone loves her.  But, um, she is reeeally quirky:

1.  She feels that she can't jump up on the bed, but she has no problems jumping off of it.

2.  Sometimes she is too scared to jump off a kitchen chair, which is way lower than the bed.

3.  Whoever is newest to the household is her new best friend.  So right now, I'm her BFF.  (When Mom attempted to pick Molly up off my lap the other day, she ran behind my back and snuggled in there to avoid capture.  It was really funny.  Mom was like, "You little twit!")  But when our home teacher came over the night, he was number one and I was number two.

The last clause in that sentence sounds funny.

Yes, sometimes I have the humor of an 11-year-old boy.  (I just said I was number twooo!!  Haha!)

She just naturally assumes that all visitors will love her.  And most do, unless they're not dog people. But for most of the day, every day, right now, I am the novelty and she follows me around, right on my heels, everywhere I go.  If I'm in bed, she wants up.  And I have to roll over and try to reach down and get her without popping my boobs (a serious fear of mine).

4.  Her neediness for lifting onto certain surfaces presents a whole other problem.  She tries to position herself for easier picking up, but she ends up going out of your arm's grasp.  And she doesn't get that she's doing that.  So you're like, "Molly, come here!  You want up?  Come here!"  And she stares at you, like, "I just positioned myself for you.  What is the problem?"  She's nuts.

5.  She will not go potty for me.  She'll go for everyone but me.

Micah terrifies her.  He just...has no concept of personal space.  He's always in her face, picking her up and carrying her around...she hates it so much.  She is such an easy-going dog, but she'll growl at him and bite him when she's had enough.  She'll often jump on the couch right onto my belly (which hurts like crazy - my belly is really sensitive) when she's running away from him.  The other day, I was lying on the love seat.  The couch makes an L with the love seat in the living room, if that makes sense.  And I wasn't facing the other couch.  So I'm lying there, probably watching Teen Titans or some dang thing that Micah likes, and apparently Micah was bugging Molly on the couch.  I didn't notice.  I was too engrossed in the bizarreness of that cartoon.  For realsies.  Cartoons are freakin' nuts nowadays.  I miss Looney Toons.  Anyways, as I was lying there, suddenly, this white fluff ball flies from behind and to my left, over my head, and lands squarely on my sensitive tummy.  It was Molly, making this enormous leap, like, 5 times her body length, to the safety of Kar, her BFF.

But the landing on the tummy thing?  I was pissed.  I swore.

Micah is always on the hunt for Molly.  He thinks they're besties.  And she is constantly hiding from him.  She's not very good at it.  She needs to take some lessons from any cat, amIright?  If someone is bugging a cat, the cat scratches them and then finds very good hiding places.  Molly's just...well, probably too dumb, if you want to know the truth.  I mean, her brain is maybe the size of a kiwi?  If I'm in the kitchen, cooking chicken noodle soup (Micah's and my current favorite lunch) or folding clothes at the table, she'll hide behind my legs, trying to get away from Micah.  It doesn't matter how much we scold Mike about leaving the POOR DOG ALONE - he just...doesn't get it.  And it's not that his brain is too small.  He has a gargantuan heed like me.  I suppose that he just doesn't care that she's terrified of him.  He wants a live stuffed animal, basically.

I feel bad for poor Molly.  She's going to have major PTSD when this period of her life is finished.  I wonder if she'll have a little teeny heart attack at some point during the next three months, honestly.

Yesterday, the two of them were driving me BATTY.  Mike was chasing her, she was hiding behind my legs, and I almost tripped over her a couple of times.  Finally, I was like, "That's it, you two. Time out for both of you."  So I put Micah by the front door (our time out for him) and I put Molly in the back room.

Maybe Molly didn't deserve time out.  But it's seriously like dealing with quarreling children, and that gets super old.  I only have one kid with me right now.  And I've got to say, not playing referee for the first time in, like, 8 years has been awesome.  AWESOME!  Yeah, Micah is bored to tears, being the only kid with three adults, but we knew having him be a latchkey kid with my oldest two in Oregon would lead to CPS being called multiple times.  On account of Micah's...psychopathy?  I'm trying to find a better way to put it.  He's just, um, a very passionate, angry little person most of the time.  And Dylan and Sadie don't know how to cope with it.  Which is why he's here with three adults.  (And sometimes it takes all three of us to make him comply with rules or talk him into doing homework or chores or...anything that helps other people in any way....)  I mean, I could write a whole blog post on Micah's complexity.  I adore him - adore him!  And he has a lot of really fantastic, adorable traits.  But you gotta know...he's a very intense person.

Anyways.

My sister, Beads, adores being needed.  She thrives on it.  A lot of women thrive on it, actually.  I often wonder if there's something wrong with me that I cannot STAND neediness.  Like I lack the nurturing gene or something.  I mean, I hug my kids and help them and love them and fix their owies and all of that, but there are times that, like, one of them will come sobbing to me, and I'm like, "What's wrong?"  And they're like, "My finger is BLEEDING!" and it's like this teeny little hairline scratch that's not bleeding at all.  And at that point, where I should be like, "Oh no!   My poor darling child!  Here, let me put a band-aid on it, even though that's a total waste of band-aids, which are expensive, by the way, and hug you and dry your tears and kiss it better and pat your head and send you on your way..."  Instead, I'm like, "It's not bleeding.  You're fine."

Is that bad?

Another instance where my abhorrence toward neediness was evident was when I taught 7th grade and 8th grade English.  I could not STAND teaching my 7th graders.  They were so stinkin' cute and sweet, but SO. NEEDY.  They would trace their toes in the carpet and tell me this enormous story about why they didn't have their homework, and I'd be like, "To-to-to-today, junior!!"  Of course I was pretty lenient in crazy cases, because if I wasn't, I would have been branded a tyrant and had all kinds of parents up in my grill.

Oh wait, they already were.

Worst part of teaching - the parents.  I'm just sayin'.

Or they would come up to me while I was in the middle of teaching the whole class something and want to tell me this story about their cat falling off the bed.  And I was like, "Um, that is a really neat story....maybe we can talk about it after class?"  When inside, I was like, "Dude, I don't care about your cat.  Stop bugging me."

When I got the chance to teach just all 8th grade, I was like, "I'LL TAKE IT!"  Because I'd so much rather deal with jerkiness (a common 8th grade trait) than neediness.

So if I was a normal person, I would perhaps love that Molly thinks I'm the bomb.com and follows me everywhere and always wants to snuggle, but most of the time, I'm like, "Dude, Mol, I need you to get up out my face."  I just need to be left alone with my rice heating pads.  I don't need her nasty breath in my face when I feel nauseated.  (Or at any time, really.)  So....it's an issue.  I'm trying to be nice.  But there will be many sighs of relief when Micah and I go to Oregon at the end of December. Molly will be sighing in relief that her tormentor is gone.  I'll be sighing in relief to have Molly up out my face.