Thursday brainfart

There’s a new kid in town

In the never-ending saga that is my job, I found out a few days ago that we are getting a summer intern to work on our team. To make matters even better, she is the niece of the superintendent working on one of my projects…apparently she’s a civil engineering student and has worked with him onsite for the past two summers. And this year, she’ll be doing the same but also working in the office and reporting to me.

I feel kind of strange about this – for one thing, I’m old enough to be this girl’s freaking mother…and anyone who knows me knows that I’m not exactly June Cleaver. I think Eeyore’s idea is that I will be a good mentor for her this summer, and help her adjust to working in a male-dominated industry.

There’s one slight problem. She is apparently very religious. I am not. I curse like a freaking truck driver. If I had a daughter, I don’t know if I would want her hanging out with the likes of me as a mentor. But hey, at least I’ll be a good starting point for her to get used to working with a bunch of construction workers. If I can’t break her in, no one can.

Oh, and Chachi is very excited because he thinks that there’s a chance she may be a hot chick. Personally, I think the chances of that are pretty slim, because if she looks anything like her uncle she will have a handlebar mustache and be wearing a flannel shirt.

*****

Cookies at 5 pm can be a very, very bad thing

Yesterday was the annual Mother’s Day Tea at Monkey Man’s preschool. For the past few years I’ve usually been working late on those days and haven’t made it…and in all honesty, he didn’t really understand what Mother’s Day was about anyway so it gave me an out without feeling too guilty.

This year, he has become aware of Mother’s Day to the point that when the other moms started showing up yesterday afternoon he started panicking and asked his teacher to call me and see if I was coming. I was already breaking the speeding laws in at least three counties when she called, but I whipped on down the road, pulled into the parking lot on two wheels, and hauled ass inside. The look of relief on his face was palpable.

I think that last year they actually hired a little caterer to provide food for the Tea; this year, it was primarily Oreos and other prepackaged crap. Monkey Man was in heaven. He ate two Oreos, a small chocolate chip cookie, some Hershey Kisses, and some other kind of cookie. By the time we met Joey at the restaurant for dinner, the kid was totally buzzing on sugar and couldn’t even sit still long enough to eat his dinner.

I won’t be making that mistake again. Next time, I’ll pick him up early and we’ll go do our own thing somewhere else instead of loading up on junk food. Either that, or I’ll rig up some kind of harness on the treadmill and put him in it and set the thing on 4 miles per hour and hope he burns all that sugar off.

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The dog exploded

As I alluded to in my Boston post, we had a little incident with Rufus in the back of the Tahoe last Thursday. Every Thursday, we take him to a doggie daycare so that he can herd other dogs all day long – corgis are working dogs, and if they don’t have something to do they can be quite obnoxious. Taking him once a week is great exercise and helps him get all of his ya-ya’s out so he leaves us alone instead of nipping at our calves.

Joey had asked me to get the doggie daycare to give Rufus a bath – honestly, he smelled totally like Dog Ass so it needed to be done. And apparently, no one bothered to brush him after they dried him off, so he looked like he had a big red afro when Joey picked him up Thursday night.

They proceeded on to pick up Monkey Man, and then Joey and MM ran into Wendy’s to eat a quick burger while leaving Rufus in the truck with the windows rolled down. When they got back in the truck, Joey rolled the windows back up, turned on the air conditioning, and suddenly the entire inside of the car was filled with flying Rufus hair. Monkey Man was howling in the back, “Daddy, make Rufus stop, he is exploding everywhere!”

Joey was pissed, Monkey Man was covered in hair, and the damn dog just sat in the back and grinned. He is evil.

*****

Have a great night, everyone. I have about two hours of office work in front of me, and Monkey Man needs a bath in the worst kind of way. Not in a Smells like Dog Ass kind of way, but pretty close.