{"id":963,"date":"2011-05-01T17:08:18","date_gmt":"2011-05-02T00:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/?p=963"},"modified":"2011-05-01T17:13:40","modified_gmt":"2011-05-02T00:13:40","slug":"mom-and-creature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/?p=963","title":{"rendered":"Mom and Creature"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><em><span style=\"color: #333399;\">Together Again. . . <\/span><\/em><\/h2>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/greekkey31.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"545\" height=\"15\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Okay, People.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve got to have another one of our little chats.<\/p>\n<p>Ready?<\/p>\n<p>So you know that Mother and Creature <a href=\"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/?p=847\">have a special relationship<\/a>, right? And you also know that Mother lives 3,000 miles away, in the <a href=\"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/?cat=23\">San Francisco Bay Area<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Creature is spending 4 months at Chez Mom. No, it&#8217;s not because I can&#8217;t deal with him anymore, although good guess, especially after <a href=\"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/?p=947\">the flour incident<\/a>. The reasons are purely practical, and yes, I do miss him. Tons. I keep reaching to fill his water bowl. I get sad when I accidentally step on a squeaky toy and he doesn&#8217;t come running. I drop food, and nobody&#8217;s there to pick it up.<\/p>\n<p>At least nobody&#8217;s barking, or hogging the bed.<\/p>\n<p>As I&#8217;m sure you know, Creature, in spite of his secure, loving upbringing, isn&#8217;t the most secure dog in the world (and that&#8217;s putting it mildly). Hence the barking. Hence the crying. Which is driving my mother insane.<\/p>\n<p>Especially at night, when he&#8217;s alone downstairs and hears things in the back yard.<\/p>\n<p>Not to worry though. My mother has found a solution.<\/p>\n<p>Wait. You may need to brace yourselves for this one.<\/p>\n<p>She&#8217;s given him my bedroom, which is right down the hall from hers. She doesn&#8217;t want him in her room, so she gave him mine.<\/p>\n<p>She actually made my bed, the fancy one I paid for with money from the very first paycheck I got from my teaching career, with sheets she doesn&#8217;t care about.<\/p>\n<p>Technically, it&#8217;s not a bed. It&#8217;s actually a &#8220;European Sleep System.&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/?p=625\">I have serious trouble sleeping<\/a>, so this bed was a very necessary purchase.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t get over this. Since 1989, there have been dogs living in that house. And since 1989, they have <em>not<\/em> been allowed upstairs. Including Creature.<\/p>\n<p>As if this weren&#8217;t bad enough, my mother has actually been sending me photos, from her phone, mind you, of the the indentation Creature makes in the pillows.<\/p>\n<p>I so wish I were kidding. But behold:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/pillow2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-968  aligncenter\" title=\"pillow2\" src=\"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/pillow2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"216\" height=\"162\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Um, can you say <em>spoiled<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s also luxuriating on her relatively new couch. Here he is, just after waking up from a post walk nap:<\/p>\n<p>Is it just me, or does he look stoned?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/PostNapHamudi.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-966 aligncenter\" title=\"PostNapHamudi\" src=\"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/PostNapHamudi-300x268.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"268\" srcset=\"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/PostNapHamudi-300x268.jpg 300w, https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/PostNapHamudi.jpg 670w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>You know what, Mother? I&#8217;m just not feeling the love here.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks a million for not turning my beloved room into a sewing room the minute I left for college.<\/p>\n<p>But. . .<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Is it wrong that I feel I&#8217;ve been replaced by a dog?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">(By the way, is this not sibling rivalry at its best?)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wackystock.com\/thumbnail\/34038-clipart-illustration-of-a-dog-snoozing-under-a-blanket-on-a-bed-by-dennis-cox-at-wackystock.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"109\" height=\"109\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Together Again. . . Okay, People. We&#8217;ve got to have another one of our little chats. Ready? So you know that Mother and Creature have a special relationship, right? And you also know that Mother lives 3,000 miles away, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Anyway. Creature is spending 4 months at Chez Mom. No, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creature-feature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=963"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1006,"href":"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963\/revisions\/1006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/melinakantor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}