Perfection

Let me start by saying that I am eternally grateful that we have an alarm system in our house.  We live in NE Houston, just a hop, skip and jump over the railroad tracks from some pretty rough neighborhoods (and I know my rough neighborhoods, I used to work in half of the free city clinics in Houston).  That being said, I hate timers that beep or screech at you.  Remember that game Perfection, where you had to put little plastic shapes into their proper holes before the entire game-board would pop up at you, throwing all of your well-placed pieces back into your face?  That game apparently scarred me for life because I live in fear of our house alarm going off before I can disarm it…as if the whole house would blow up in my face if I didn’t reach it in time.

Today, we went out and bought an aquarium and two goldfish…our first foray into pet ownership since Fargo joined the cast of All Dogs Go to Heaven.  I stopped for lunch on the way home so I could get the girls quickly eating and out of my hair long enough to get the aquarium out of the car and into the kitchen.  I had a smooth journey from car to the kitchen table in my sights, and even had each girl carrying a shopping bag on her arm, to help lighten my load and make reaching the alarm easier.  I carried the fish, a bag full of fishy supplies and one Happy Meal box, along with my purse...that was it, totally manageable.

 

Trouble started as I opened the door from the garage to the kitchen.  Obstacle 1 arose when K, out of excitement to open up a box of dollhouse furniture we bought at Toys R’ Us, decided to stop short in front of the door and do a little happy dance.  I tersely asked her move out of my way, alarm stress already apparent in my voice, and dodged around her to quickly but carefully place the bag of fish on the kitchen counter.  Then came Obstacle 2; the bag of fish decided to take a flying leap off of the counter as I tried to get around the door and to the alarm keypad.  I caught it in time to prevent fishy head trauma and set it upright on the kitchen table, my sights set on my alarm objective.  Obstacles 3 and 4 arose simultaneously as K and A both decided to plant themselves on either sides of the door, making it difficult for me to maneuver around it and get to the keypad.  A apparently decided that her shoes had to come off right then and there and K, happy dance apparently over, glowered at me demanding to know where she should put the Toys R’ Us bags.  Right in front of Mommy’s feet, sweetie, so I can trip over them, of course….or that’s what she thought.  I jumped over A, barked a yet terser request at K to move the toys or I would remove them permanently and finally made it to the keypad, objective complete.

There is a time and a place for happy dances...

this is neither.

As I write this, I remember it feeling like it took FOREVER to get that alarm off.  Of course, all of this likely happened in the course of 20 seconds.  So, let’s see, in 20 seconds I managed to snap at K twice giving her yet more fodder for her future therapy sessions, almost give our new fish concussions, set A off onto a crying jag because I wouldn’t take her shoes off tout de suite and cause my blood pressure to rise into margarita zone levels.  Hmmm…all in all, I would call it a successful outing.  Just imagine how much worse it would have been if we had decided to get a puppy.