Yah Hi, I’d like a double mocha latte with skim milk steamed to precisely 178 degrees please.

Remote blogging in a café, what could be better? Remote blogging in a café that offers free Wi-Fi I suppose, but beggars can’t be choosers. Yes that means I’m out of the house. On a school day. Without the pooch. And I look pretty cute to boot, too bad that the only other people around are Gold Star Members of AARP. What? I might be married but I still like to be admired every now and then. Besides, you know you’re in a sad state of social insecurity when you make it a point of carefully putting on lipstick to sit in Border’s café at 9am. Alas, we already familiar the unstable mentality of our heroine.

So here I sit with my massive 17” laptop that is, quite literally, equipped with its own laser light display, (you would not believe how many strangers come up to me to ask me about this machine… you would think that they’ve never seen a 16:9 ratio screen that projects laser graphics to the tune of the 1812 Overture before). I’m seated at one of the largest tables (to accommodate my machine’s massive girth), a dark roast coffee and a full-fat blueberry muffin (which is essentially a blueberry cupcake… it’s quite fantastic), and I couldn’t be happier. Oh, did I mention that I am WITHOUT DOG?! (I love you doggie daycare).

Just a quick note to you parents, I get it. I do. And to be honest, all you single parents… I don’t know how you do it. Personally, I think you might have Superhero powers.

There’s been a lot going on a Chez Saucy, most of it dealing with my ever-fragile mental state. Mood swings have been coming and going with the kind of regularity that would make one think my hormone dial has been stuck on “Evil Raging PMS” indefinitely. There’s been a lot of crying, a higher than normal frequency of cursing, and on top of that, Sean left me. Well, it’s not that dramatic, he went down to NJ to work for five days, which to me feels like I’ve been abandoned. We knew this weekend was coming for a couple of months but we had a plan. A plan that we knew would save me from, well, my own stark raving lunacy. Hooper was going to have daycare up the wahzoo and I was even going to board him for a night. It was supposed to be like a girls-night-out without any actual people involved. I had the opportunity to be sans husband and neurotic dog and I know when I am free of responsibility, I’m prone to do dramatic things. If I actually had actual friends who weren’t busy or who lived in this state, I probably would have convinced them they had to go away with me. Tijuana, anyone?

That was until Hooper got sick. He picked up some sort of upper respiratory thing at daycare and probably some sort of worms (lovely) and when I took him to the vet last Wednesday they told me “No daycare or boarding until Monday.” Monday?! Surely, woman-who-isn’t-my-regular-vet, you must be joking because I have plans and because I don’t know what the rules are about crossing the Mexican border with a dog, to be safe, I need to be DOG FREE. Sadly, they didn’t think that would be a good enough reason to drop my dog off at the puppy hotel and accidentally forget to tell him that he had this throat-thing. Believe me I WANTED to do it. But I thought better of it, especially because doing a thing like that could potentially shut down a daycare for two weeks. Even though I KNOW he picked it up from there in the first place, I didn’t want to be faced with legal repercussions just because I wanted to get my freak on with an authentic enchilada and a bottle of questionable tequila. So, when Sean left on his NJ adventure, I closed my eyes and started to repeat my mantra “He can go to daycare on Monday… He can go to daycare on Monday…” Thus, this weekend ended up being a weekend full of dog-approved activities such as “Let’s Learn How To Go On Walks Again” and “No, Please Don’t Chase The Cats” and “If You Tip Over That Garbage Can Again I’ll…” instead of the Girls Gone Wild, err, I mean, painting of doors and putting on of new and awesome door knobs that I had previously planned.

Even saddled with a neurotic dog there was an unfulfilled need in me to do something dramatic. Something big that I probably would leave unfinished until another sudden burst of homeowner passion came along to finish the job three months later. It was with this unbridled passion that I decided to cut down 50% of the trees in my backyard with a handsaw (I think a chainsaw in my hands might be just a little scary). Yes… yes… that would do nicely. You see, I’m not a fan of my backyard. Although I’m sure that it’s nice to feel like you live in the middle of a forest, I don’t really dig it. There are a handful of reasons for this, the most prevalent one being that when I lived in the middle of nowhere at the tender age of 5, my dad used to like to scare me because my Dad is very warped and sadistic. One night, during our traditional weekend bonfire, he told me of a creature that lived in the forest across the street from us that was half man and half mountain lion who comes out at night to look for something to eat. What was his diet? His diet consisted of 5-year-old blonde girls named Saucygrrl. Not thinking that my father would use terror and deceit on his youngest daughter for his own amusement, I was alarmed at the amazing coincidence. Later, I fell asleep at the bonfire and when I awoke, the fired had died out and everyone had gone inside without me. I was outside alone with the half-man-mountain-lion thing and I could practically feel it’s hot breath on my neck. Although I was a tough 5-year-old I was certain that odds were good that I’d soon be a tasty snack. With amazing speed, I high-tailed it to the house (I don’t think my feet ever touched the ground) to discover that I was locked out. The story ends with me beating my poor little fists on the cold steel door screaming bloody murder until my mom let me in. Let’s just say that I was fairly scarred by the incident. So, the trees… they had to go, they just held too much darkness and scary half-man-half mountain lion creatures for me to comfortably deal with in my adult life.

Let me tell you, sawing down trees, even small trees, takes a long time. And then there is the clearing of the tree-strewn land and the piling of trees onto a trailer to be whisked away by my dump-running husband. It all made me very tired. The dog, as it turns out, is less than impressed by being in the new and improved backyard. Mostly he just looked bored and indifferent concerning my achievements and more or less soothed himself by chewing on the tiny tree stumps that were left behind. I, however, was mightily impressed with my work and the fact that not only did I finish the task at hand but I went on to make 8 quarts of chicken stock that resulted in a batch of Mexican chicken soup (hello Tijuana!), and a pan of brownies that contains so much chocolate that it should be outlawed.

Even though there was no impromptu trip across the southern border, I survived the scary weekend with what remains of my sanity in tactic and I am now in the company of some pretty old strangers who are loudly complaining that Borders only gives you the choice of half-and-half or skim milk for their coffees. But I have to say, cranky seniors, I’ve missed you. Just don’t get in my way at the grocery store, ‘k?