My Autistic Boy And Other Adventures In Fatherhood

Now, we’ve been in the house about two weeks.  I’ve met a few neighbors, but not all my neighbors.  So, as Buddy and I are almost home, our neighbor to our right is out…I introduce myself….and her big ass dog attacks Buddy.

Clamping down as hard as possible on his neck.  Now, poor Buddy doesn’t have a bit of ‘fight’ in him, he’s scooting backwards into me as fast as possible.  This dog is trying to twist his neck (Buddy is too big, whew!), but the woman (my next door neighbor) is not strong enough to stop her dog, he’s pulling her every which direction he chooses to go, which is trying to be right on top of Buddy in a kill position, but I’m trying to get in front of him, but leashes are tangled and she’s trying not to fall.

I get him off Buddy’s neck but he bites into Buddy’s chest.  It is no use, she can’t control her dog, whack! I kick as hard as I possibly can. He releases, but as Buddy tries to scatter the dog takes a big ass bite out of Buddy’s rump.  Whack! A good kick to the chest and he goes back, Buddy and I go left and right into the house.  He’s a mess (scared) but at first I don’t see any blood, but he’s limping.

I tell Kim and my in-laws, but they think I’m weaving a bit of a Texas tall tale.  I go over to see if the neighbor is okay, but she’s really shook up.  It isn’t even her dog, it is her daughter’s who is in for the holiday….she chokes up, and tells me she can’t talk.

Fast forward a few hours. Blood on Buddy’s bed.  Trip to the vet, stitches in a couple of different areas from the fight. His chest and rump.  Bad limp will get better, big worry is infection from the other dog. A number of shots. Poor guy. His back leg hurts him too much to hop up on couch.  The agony!

Funny, my father-in-law and I go to a couple of bourbon distilleries.  My foot aches, I look down at my toes in my Chaco (right foot).  Fourth toe is purple, toe nail cracked in half, foot is swelling.

Shit.

Did I tell you the neighbors are both doctors?  They find out about Buddy’s vet trip. They pay the bill. The woman is upset. I go by to their house. She’s okay I ask her husband? Yes. And your dog. He’s fine.  Thanks for paying the bill.  But, could you look at my toe, it really hurts.  How do you think you did it, she asks as her husband starts to look at it….well, um…..when I kicked the dog to get off my dog. She puts her head down. She walks out….

Long and short of it the husband’s (he’s a pediatrician) not sure its broken, but put a buddy bandage on it and come back in a couple of days. It is probably just jammed really bad (I’m thinking to myself - all you soccer players out there, see, another good reason/example why you don’t want to toe-poke the ball) , if not, it may be a hairline fracture.  She comes back and apologizes. We chit-chat for a minute…and the husband chuckles and says, “pleasure meeting you, better circumstances next time, I hope.”

I really can’t take anymore first time meetings like this, I’d rather be a recluse!  Neither can Buddy!

The kids have never really been through an extended thunderstorm like that. While Georgia can get intensely hot and rainy, it is not Texas, Kansas…or many other thunderclap prone state-like weather. And before Georgia, sunny-SoCal…so my kids are thunderstorm novices.

As Zeus roared, my kids…and Buddy…got nervous. First, Mommy is out in this (well, she was at the gym…and to little ones, we need to know where Mommy is during all crises) and the kids have….toys out in the mini-van, which may be struck by lightning!

So the kids race out to get their toys, we come back in, and settle into eating dinner, dessert, watching some TV, playing etc….but, something’s missing – where’s Buddy?

Oh no, is he out back? Nope

Oh no, did one of the children-z leave him in the basement?  Nope

Upstairs? Nope?

Well, he’s a scare-dy cat, so he wouldn’t wander off in a thunderstorm, nope, he’s not on the front step….where’s Buddy?

I again look for him, but he’s nowhere to be found, so as I go to shut the garage door, I see him in the minvan, panting, scared out of his coat.  When the kids got in the van to get their toys, he hopped in, when the kids got out, he didn’t. Poor guy.

So lets fast forward to 5am when I go to the gym.  Buddy is aching to go out, like every morning, but this morning, he’s got an upset tummy. Leaves me a present to clean up when I get back from the gym and taking him for a walk…right on Kim’s new rug. Lovely.

It’s 5:50am, so I take care of it, this isn’t my first pile of love I’ve cleaned up from a pet before. 

Afterwards, I chuckle to myself that Kim will never see it.  I did that good of a job….so I go and make coffee, putz around for another ten minutes or so, set the passwords on the television….and head up to get ready for the work day.

Kim sits up in bed, we chat, we talk about Buddy’s tummy and to be careful the rest of the day
(don’t leave him in the house for hours, etc…) and as I am getting in the shower I hear….
“Awwwwhhhhhh, Jerry!” I quickly am told that there was a second pile, and one that I didn’t see, that I stepped in…and that, well, I had been tracking through the house, you know, as I made coffee, went to the garage, into the family room, and ultimately, on to the new carpet we had laid down in the new house…exactly one week ago yesterday.

I played the get out of jail card that I had cleaned the other pile (and I had done it up to Kim’s exacting standards) and this pile was unseen in a dark room.  It worked, I wasn’t in…well….deep dog #*(!, but Kim was less than happy, if she got some coffee, I might just make it out of the house alive….

And I barely did, because was no longer focused just on me….

She was focused on the water dripping from our ceiling…yea, while she was cleaning the carpet of dog doo….she felt a splat of water from the ceiling underneath our bath tub….

Yea, good times.

Jerry: No problem, let me go get Buddy – he’s around here somewhere (I was out doing yard work)…

Mom: Just get Buddy’s leash, he’s already in the van?

Jerry: He’s already in the van?

Mom: Yes, he comes over to play with Zoe (their dog) when you are out in the yard, he’s been over for about the last :30.

Buddy, on friggin’ queue, looks out the car window at me, not sure if he is in trouble or not.

Jerry: Geez. Okay, let me go get his leash.

I come back with his leash, and he smiles a big dog smile, wags that tail and off the go.

The next day (Sunday), I’m doing more yard work and Susan, a neighbor comes over with Buddy and Teddy (her dog).  

Jerry: Buddy! Don’t tell me, he’s been over at your house?

Susan: No.

Jerry: Good. He ran off yesterday with a neighbor (I told her the story).

Susan: Well, Buddy has just gone for a walk with us, so I wanted to be sure I brought him back.

You know what, since the dawn of time there have been smut stories and TV specials on the ‘secret lives of house wives’ or some other crap like that…

What about the secret lives of Golden Retrievers?  

There is more to this dog than I’m giving him credit for…He always seems to be around when I look up from the yard work… it is when I’m not looking up that he has a good time…

Asleep on Maya’s bed, and laying on ‘blankie’

When she was younger, she used to yell at him to not get on her bed, so I think this is one of his hidden pleasures..plus, he can look right out that window and see everything going on in the front yard….

He’s on that bed alot more than we probably think he is…..

I hope all of you have a happy holiday season.  I’m not going to be posting every day, but I’ll try to give updates on gifts and toothy smiles through family photos, etc….

This morning Demetrius was helping Mommy wrap gifts and Maya was talking about what a good girl she had been this year, so we’re getting good and stoked for tomorrow morning to see what Santa leaves under the tree for all of us.

Chat soon…

Merry Christmas from Jerry, Kim, Maya, Demetrius and Buddy

Buddy’s Had A Good Year In 2007

I have the greatest boy in the world

And these two keep my heart a-thumpin’…..

And no matter how hard the days are, the worries that keep us up at night…..I know that no matter what we do or how much we ham it up….

That I’m one lucky guy to have this crazy life

I love running with Buddy. He’s a great partner, and no matter how much my ‘glass ankles’ hurt when I run, or if I’m having a harder one than usual, or whatever else the malady-of-the-moment is…he’s to my left, kinda smiling in that Golden Retriever way…and if I look at him, he always starts to wag his tail when we run.

I know he’s a dog and likes to just be outside, so when he sees a squirrel or a rabbit, his ears go up and he kinda starts to run in a prancing way, I even..in my most laborious way…attempt to speed up for him, so he gets a bit of fast gallop out of it. And I always think of him when I start running a race…that if he did better in the crowd, he’d run with me. I know he’s with me in spirit.

All that said about the damn dog….

So usually, at 4:30-5am-ish, we are the only ones out on the road…well, minus the rabbits and squirrels and newpaper delivery guys out to kill me….but during the fall, the high school cross country teams are sometimes out.

These kids run in a pack, they talk, they glide in fact, they run about a five minute mile (the slow ones do) and they all weigh about 12 lbs. They tend to pass me on my left or right…and while doing so scare the bejesus out of me (I have the headphones going…) and give me an ‘oh sorry, dude’…hoping they don’t have to give me CPR I’m sure.

This morning, it happens with a gaggle of girl runners…and Buddy tries to run with them at their pace. As soon as they start to pass, he tries to speed up…and then speed up some more….and some more….finally, I look at him, he looks at me….and I hear him whine. He is whining loud enough to be heard over my headphones.

He’s selling me out to go run with those girls.

Periodically through the run, he’d kinda think he saw them (no, dumb dog, that’s a lamp post way off in the distance) and whine and look at me.

No appreciation. I thought about not giving him a treat when we got home. Well, then, I thought - he’s smart, they’d coo him and maybe even pet his belly…that’s better than being sweat on by an overweight almost 40 year old, running haphazardly to your right… isn’t it?

He got two treats instead.

I was cleaning out my mobile device and found this great picture of Demetrius and Buddy.  I think its a Sunday morning and they are snuggling on the couch watching cartoons.  Demetrius doesn’t really snuggle in with the dog like Maya does….he’s a bit unsure of Buddy’s actions - and when Buddy gets needy and wants more petting than Demetrius is willing to give…he gets a bit skittish…not unlike Will Ferrell in his parody of President Bush a couple of years ago.

Anyway, cute picture. Anyone (particularly a parent) could use a surprise like this in his/her day….

While Buddy goes for long runs in the morning, the key to his happiness while Kim and the kids are away is the afternoon walk.  If we don’t do that, he’ll be laying on my lap all night, pushing his head on my leg or against my hands to pet him. He’s totally obnoxious.  With the walk, he’s at least manageable.

So I’m out walking him last night, and of course, we meander by the tennis/swim courts.  One of the neighbor moms asks me how I’m doing?  Am I ‘eating well’? Now, I know that husbands lack a number of basic skills – but I’m not emaciated (hardly), nor is the house in disrepair (well, we are getting some work done on it), nor am I unshaven and smelly.  However, without my wife – to the view and opinion of other wives – I am now a hopeless, lost cause.  How did we get on without you, or your help/direction/whip?  Okay, a bit of dramatic license there….

I’m fairly certain most of them don’t understand I’m a neat freak and there isn’t anything but Buddy’s tennis ball on the floor.  I’ve vacuumed about twenty times, and will clean the place again before the wee-ones return, but no matter – I am what I am, that is, a husband.

And possibly a negligent dog owner.  Ah, Buddy.  He’s eating well, and I’m working from home. He’s not shut up in his room all week in the basement. He’s sleeping in the house, on the couch (how nice!), periodically going out to inspect the yard and the workers, and eating and drinking at his leisure.

As I answer affirmatively that life at the Grassos is okay, and I do turn the oven off after I finish cooking, I pass a Dad.

Dad: How’s it going, how’s the bachelor pad?

Me: Fine, Buddy and I believe it or not, are making it!

Dad: Really?

I look down, at the end of my leash, is Buddy, laying on his back…legs flayed open and having his belly rubbed by the Mom who questioned my cleanliness.

Mom: Are you petting him and talking to him?

Not at all, not at all….

This dog is getting me in more trouble with the neighbors than I could do by myself going out to get the paper each morning in nothing more than my birthday suit while Kim and the kids are out-of-town.  What an actor….

Well, he was getting his belly rubbed, wasn’t he?

Traitor or talented?